Comments on: Finding Steve Fossett: When UI design can be the difference between life and death

By: Alun Rowe

Alun Rowe — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:49:13 +0000

I felt exactly the same about the task.

I can understand the first time they want people to read the details of the task but after that you just want to get through as many photos as possible. Adding a preloader would be useful too so it is just a case of look, click, look click etc

By: pauldwaite

pauldwaite — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:15:03 +0000

A few months back someone put up a little Java app, which showed frames of Michael Jackson’s first TV performance of Billie Jean, and got users to drag a square around where his white glove was.

I guess it’s easier to craft the UI when you’re the only person writing the software (as I assume that person was), but it’s always important.

By: Sjors

Sjors — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:45:39 +0000

Amazon’s website was never designed to be a search and rescue platform, so you can’t really blame them, I think. That said, the sooner they upgrade the layout, the better.
I need about 3 seconds per photo, because I scroll down while the page is loading, press the no button and hit ‘enter’ after I’ve seen the image.
Another great feature would be a ‘back’ option, because I tend to make mistakes every now and then.

By: Nice Paul

Nice Paul — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:22:27 +0000

Sjors: I think that websites should be easy to use regardless of the task at hand, not just if its needed for search and rescue.

By: Ken Barbalace

Ken Barbalace — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:34:38 +0000

Paul I completely agree with you, Mechanical Turk’s UI design is simply awful and I wrote as much in my own blog post earlier this week.

It always amazes me that companies as big as Amazon.com can do such a bad job of UI design. There doesn’t seem to have been one ounce of thought into usability or function. I can not imagine how much potential effort that could have been used looking for Steve Fossett was wasted on the clunky process that is Mechanical Turk.

I will disagree, however, about requiring people to log in. I see this as very valuable in tracking reporting habits. As an evaluator, I would want to know if reports are coming from someone who has an excessively high rate of reporting leads. At the same time I would take keen interest in a lead posted by someone who has looked at lots of photos, but made very few reports. I also see requiring logins as reducing the potential for mischief.

By: Anita

Anita — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:32:27 +0000

I couldn’t agree more! As a person with (beginning) arthritis and full-on mouse-elbow, I know my head and heart could go a LOT longer working HITs if my poor old body didn’t give out first!

By: Duncan Cumming

Duncan Cumming — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:02:32 +0000

I would add that some exposure corecting software would also be very useful. Some of the images are very dark, and yet the information is there. It takes a long time to save the picture, then fix it using Adobe Photoshop or whatever, then go back to mturk to report. A simple “fix the exposure” buton would make the user’s task much simpler. Of course, this is a substantial programming effort but a lot of mturk tasks are based on photographs, so such a feature would be useful long after the Fossett search is over.

I agree with requiring a log in, any life-and-death task must have at least a minimal amount of accoutability involved.