Color Deficiency and User Design

    This blog entry will be a little different than my others; I will discuss a broader issue as opposed to a given user interface. I suffer from color deficiency myself and I think this issue doesn't get enough exposure as it should.
    When designing a user interface, there are several factors from my experience and touched upon in this cited article [1], that could significantly improve the interface for color deficient people while not detracting from the experience for those who are not color deficient. These are: color selection, input forms, and links.
    By definition of color deficiency, colors are difficult to identify for the color deficient. Being mindful of the colors that color deficient people have a hard time differentiating is key. It's as simple as typing in a google search to find out. If two colors look the same on an interface to someone with color deficiency, this could prevent them for using the interface all together which is severe. Building off of this, this applies especially so to input forms and links. All to often, I've seen links which were colored dark red. To me, these links appear black and look just like any other text would. I've spent tens of minutes just trying to figure out where to go next while this could have been prevented altogether if the link was blue. The same logic applies for input forms.
    The fact of the matter is that user interfaces can be improved significantly for color deficient people with little to no effort. An increased awareness of this issue would go a long way.

Citation:
Silver, A. (2017, March 14). Accessibility: Improving The UX For Color-Blind Users – Smashing Magazine. Retrieved March 19, 2017, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/06/improving-ux-for-color-blind-users/

Norton Safe Search Interface Flaw

    Above you see the Norton Safe Search interface. Essentially it is a search engine with some built in safety features. It behaves like any other search engine does, however user experience suffers from one key flaw.
   In the image, I had search for "bad interfaces". Now we don't particularly care about what I've searched, but instead how the results are displayed. The view above is a full screen view of what you see after you make a search. The flaw is that you don't actually see the search results in your screen at first. Instead, you see the top six ads for your search, followed by some suggested searches related to your search. Then only after that do your search results come up. In order to view the results, the user has to scroll down after every single search.
    Two of the most important features for a search engine are the ease of use "for searching and navigating, and the provision of direct, actionable information relevant to the query" [1]. The Norton Safe Search engine fails both of these criteria as clearly illustrated. While the search engine may be safer, it is extremely frustrating to use. The average user may make several searches per use and having to scroll down just to see the results of the search detracts so much from the engine's usability.
    To conclude, the Norton Safe Search engine's interface could be significantly improved. If you can overlook the flaws, it does provide safer search functionality.

CITATIONS:
SEO: The Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization from Moz. (2014, March 04). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-usability-experience-and-content-affect-search-engine-rankings [1]