Microsoft dispatches anthropologists into the field to study small businesses. Here's why...
Yahoo’s multiple business units, each containing decentralized user experience teams, have a natural tendency to design different solutions to similar problems. Left unchecked, these differences would weaken the Yahoo! brand and produce a less usable network of products. Designers and managers have discussed “standards” as a way to solve this problem but this standards content (often contained only in the memories of designers) has never existed in a commonly accessible format...
Boxes and Arrows has announced the winners of its re-design contest. Though the winner looks nice, my personal favorite was the bronze winner from Behavior Design.
You can check out all the entries here in a self running presentation mode...
While developing accessible applications it is a nice practice to provide short-cut keys for key operations. But which key for which operation? This article takes a look at the challenges of using accesskeys.
According to Jakob Nielsen:
“Testing ever-more users in card sorting has diminishing returns, but you should still use three times more participants than you would in traditional usability tests.”
So Nielsen's reccomendation is to have 15 users for Card Sorting tests. Sounds quite reasonable...
“Keyboards and mice will face competition from motion-sensing, gesture recognition and haptic technologies.”
Input devices have driven the user interfaces have developed over the years, so yes the next generation of UIs will have to be driven by the next generation of Input and Display technologies.
Jason Fried on feature management:
How I wish my product team thought like this...
Good to see RIAs getting some focus in the CHI community. If you're in the Bay Area around Aug. 10th this should be an interesting discussion to attend. And looks like Rashmi is chairing this panel...
I've been using Google's Gmail for about a week now (thanks Abdul) and it's amazingly fast in all that it does.
Now, today I turned on the Keyboard Shortcuts feature and noticed that the shortcuts are non-quasimode. In plain English, it means that you need not press any modifier keys like 'Alt' or 'Ctrl' to access the shortcuts.
This means there is a greater chance of errors happening in while trying to type into, say the URL box, while it is not in focus. Google of course has disabled the shortcuts in the compose or data entry mode, but wouldn't a quasimodal shortcut make it possible for the shortcut to be operational even in the compose mode?
But that said, non-quasimodal shortcuts are much faster to use...
Haven’t been posting very often lately as work is keeping me extremely busy. Sometimes I feel if it is worth taking a break, considering the amount of work that piles up once you return ;)
In any case, this is something I needed to bookmark this article about the ‘Haptic Chameleon’ a shape-shifting button that is being developed at Sony. While it is an interesting concept, it needs a bit of getting used to and unless it is accepted as a standard, this is not really an intuitive design. I mean who would think of depressed knobs as happy and sad faces? But there is definite potential in something like this, and though the virtual experiment was apparently not very successful, it may be an useful concept for game developers to explore…
I'm personally not too sure if there is an answer really. Karel Thönissen tried to answer it in this article but unfortunately the article has a stereotypical view of the various professionals/skill sets. Taking this topic to the other extreme is a discussion on Joel’s Discussion Board. But while all these points of view are quite interesting, im my opinion, to be an interaction designer you need a few important soft skills.
For example, it's imperative that and Ix Designer is able to understand the user goals in order to design according to their needs. But at the same the Ix Designer should have their feet grounded in reality by understanding the constraints of Marketing and Engineering.
It's a thin line to walk on, and in my opinion, one needs a balanced approach to work as an interaction designer. And while soft skills are great, they are of no use if they are not complimented by design skills. After all, that is what you will be paid for at the end of it...
“ Physical products, from consumer electronics to cars, are needlessly complex because they're developed by insular companies that continue to ignore the growing usability trend.”
I agree with most of what the article has to say, except that with most consumer products, if it is essential to the user, they develop a degree of familiarity with it. I’m not denying a case for usability, but it’s not as Black and White as Mr. Nielsen would have us believe…
PS: Another interesting read on the same topic is Andrei Herasimchuk's Open Letter to Nielsen
Yesterday I attended a workshop by Rashmi Sinha and Jon Boutelle of Uzanto.
It was an interesting workshop with the first half dealing with Remote User Research techniqes. Uzanto advocates a quantitative methodology to develop Personas and gather user information. Often relying on web based surveys and phone calls, these techniques work quite well in salutations where one does not have the liberty to interact with users on a one-on-one basis for qualitative research. (Of course, these quantitative results need to be validated later qualitatively, but that is step two.)
The second part of the workshop dealt a lot with the business aspects of promoting usability. This was a really interesting session, and one final open question was 'What next?' as far as a career in usability is concerned. Rashmi was of the opinion that Usability/UE people will make good project managers. True, but really is that kinda it? How popular do you think the Chief eXperience Officer (CXO) position is? Any thoughts?
Last week I conducted a small workshop on Interaction Design for a few Technical Writers. The workshop was called 'Interaction Design: A Primer' and this is the material used for the presentation. If you attended the workshop, or are generally interested in knowing more about Interaction Design, you can download the ppt (zipped @ 3 MB) from here.
Christian Ricci in this Boxes and Arrows article looks at web personalization and how it can be user to improve user experience.
“Personalization, properly implemented, brings focus to your message and delivers an experience that is visitor-oriented, quick to inform, and relevant. Personalization, poorly implemented, complicates the user experience and orphans content.”
While it does a good job of explaining how personalization can be useful, the article does not go deep into how it complicates matters. Apart from sensitivity to revealing personal information, are there any other impediments? The article does mention an increase in the complexity of the interface, but isn't this just the complexity of setting up the personalization? Does the end-user even have to know about this?
Tomalak's Realm
Adaptive Path: Seven Resolutions for 2004. The Adaptive Path partners share their resolutions for a better user experience in 2004.
E M E R G I C . o r g: Tackling Information Overload
Daily Herald writes about information overload: "The always-connected nature of our world can be overwhelming. Instead of driving technology to better our lives, we're often letting technology manhandle us. And the longer we stay connected, the more data we tend to produce for others to process, quickly cycling into information overload."
Jakob Nielsen adds that "a steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone's health." A suggesed solution is the Internet control panel (or what I prefer to call the Digital Dashboard):
This would be a single central base for monitoring and prioritizing all the information a user is interested in. Do you want to keep track of your eBay auctions? Instead of five e-mails per auction, all scattered throughout your inbox, you would have a single flag in the control panel. Discussion groups? The control panel would show when hot topics of interest to you are being discussed and would call attention to discussions with contributions by writers you particularly respect. E-mail? Restricted to truly personal communication. Newsletters, intranet status reports, and other nonletter communications would be summarized and available for perusal on request. IM would have a small role, but your personal agent would be very strict at screening incoming requests.Whether or not you believe in my control panel, the most important point is to change our ideology for computer-mediated communication. The old thinking was that more information was better. If a unit of information were sent, it would have to be transmitted and received at all costs. The new thinking must be that human time is our most precious resource. Stop strip-mining
it.Traditional operating systems managed and scheduled computer resources. The next generation of computers must protect users' time just as strictly as the most vigilant executive secretary protects a CEO's calendar.
“Microsoft's history of holistic software development can be seen in many of its projects over the years, some popular some not. There was the Microsoft Bob social experiment (an utter failure, which is sad, as the Bob interface was a great UI for kids); the friendly (yet ultimately annoying) Office Assistant, which attempted to provide users with help when it appeared they needed it; the inductive UI work (LINK) most recently seen in Windows XP's task panes and Office XP's task panes and Smart Tags; and the roles-based administration in Windows Server 2003, among others.”
Interestingly, that is not the image most users have of the microsoft user experience, and a lot of these attempts have either been invisible (which is the way it should be, eg inductive UIs) or left a bad taste (office assistant) wonder if Longhorn is going to change all that or is it more vaporware...
Boxes and Arrows: The Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garrett
In October 2000, Jesse James Garrett introduced a site architecture documentation standard called the Visual Vocabulary. Since then, it has become widely adopted among information architects and user experience professionals.
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E M E R G I C . o r g: User Interface Hierarchies
Russell Beattie writes:
I'm looking at user interfaces more recently. Online, on my desktop and on my gadgets and I'm taken aback by their complexity. But I've had an epiphany about their underlying structure that I wanted to try to express here.Is there a reason for the icons and the buttons and the menus and the tabs and the list boxes and all the other GUI crap that we have to deal with both on a computer and increasingly on our mobile devices as well? I honestly don't know. I personally think less is more when it comes to user interface design.
Maybe it's just me, but I think in hierarchies and outlines. Even if I don't always use my outliner for everything, I still organize my documents like that, and the text within those documents are usually indented as well.
What's my point? That we need to do like Apple did with the iPod and review how our UIs work. We need less widgets, not more. We need more than simplicity, we need consistency. And since *all* data is a hierarchy, using that as a base for all UI elements would be a good thing. Teach a newbie: "This is how a hierarchy works. Now, anytime you need to find or edit information - whether it's the MP3 you want to play or the settings on your phone, now you'll know how."
It doesn't make sense any more. Now that we're all comfortable with the idea of computers and the mouse, we don't need "buttons" and "gauges" and "files" and "tabs" and all that crap that are analogies to real things. They're not real things - it's just data.
This is a very interesting discussion at Slashdot, that sparked off from a couple of articles re-examining the ‘Three click rule’ and the ‘7 +/- 2’ rule…
Is it time we do a holistic review again? After all times they are a changing…
Boxes and Arrows: Executive Dashboards
Contrary to first impression, an “executive dashboard” is not found in a CIO's car. Rather, an executive dashboard, also known as a manager dashboard, executive cockpit, or digital cockpit, is a child of what in the 1980s was referred to as the Executive Information System (EIS).
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http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/executive_dashboards.php
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Metrics for User Experience Design projects have never been easy to define. Mark Hrust at goodexperience defines what he calls the ROSE framework, which stands for Results, Organization, Strategy and Experience. While it is still intangible and cannot be well defined like stanadard Project Management metrics of Schedule Compliance and Earned Value, it still sounds like great starting point.
“So often, user-experience designers are held accountable for process objectives. A successful project is one that meets budgets, deadlines, and specifications.
There’s a problem with measuring success this way — process-objective metrics don’t really tell you how good you are at developing a strong user experience, only whether you completed the job specifications efficiently.
But what about the project itself? Was it chosen wisely? Was it grounded in user research and customer insight? What effect will it have on the business? ”
As Scott says, it is really important to define what you as user-experience designers will bring to the table. But it is equally important to note that most projects will still be measured using traditional metrics.
One of the best way to handle this is to define the user-experience design phase as a sub-project itself, so that it can be measured using independent metrics.
The Interaction design Institute at Ivrea is hosting an important event
today and tomorrow. This is an international symposium on the foundations of
interaction design.
The institute is making it possible for anyone who wishes to observe the
presentations and dialogue to do so by live video streaming.
Tomalak's Realm
Ask Tog: D'ohLT #2: Security D'ohLTs. Only a D'ohLT would come up with a security scheme that is so overly complex that it's guaranteed people will write down their passwords. And yet, this kind of D'ohLTishness is par for the course with these guys. They are the most clueless profession I know, and they are showing no signs of getting any better.
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James Patten is PhD candidate with MIT Medial Lab's Tangible Media Group and his work on the physical object based interface is truly amazing to look at.
But are these 'Tangible Interfaces' really intuitive? They look very cool though. I'm sure this will have its own learning curve...
Also, keeping this on-topic and still getting Flash into the picture, I remember something Yugo Nakamura had been working on with Sony, where he had given a demo at a FlashForward of a way to tangibly exchange business cards. You basically drag a business card from your computer desktop on to a table and the other person can pick the card up from the table and put it into their computer. And it seems it was prototyped using Flash. Anybody remember?
Now here's a really useful site. Web Design Practices deals with patterns and practices that are prevalent in web design. Not only does it give you statistics and looks at various patterns it also gives you links to studies on the subject. I was looking for some information on breadcrumb navigation, and lo the site has some good links and patterns there. Very cool. [via Digital Media Minute]
Another similar resource is Martijn van Welie's collection of Interaction Design Patterns
Jon Udell looks at what the implication of getting richer UIs on applications means. He talks about his user experience with Windows 2003 as an example
<quote>
Jon is right to some extent. We desperately need to simplify the interactions. This would call for newer UI paradigms. Some that are much simpler and can effectively display information and expose functionalities. Jon gives Sam’s Fisheye Menu as an example. The disadvantage of introducing new interactions for existing functionality is that people need time to get used to them. And the best way to get used to them is if the interactions are present in the OS itself. Apple has been leading the way on this front. I and certainly wish for Apple to separate the OS and the hardware or at least, there should be an alternative to the MS OS (I know, I know, Linux) that can really lead the way with pioneering interaction design.
OK, if you've heard this term and are not sure what it exactly entails, you may be interested in this page on the AIGA site which gives you detailed look into experience design.
Also on the same site was this nice presentation that looks into the role definition of an interaction designer.
theOTHERblog: Good Experience - Four Words to Improve User Research
Mark challenges the accepted methods for conducting a usability test, which if I'm right comes down to relying on your intuition, winging it and riding by the seat of your pants, but listening carefully throughout.Which sort of points towards not being able to tell anyone how to conduct tests, which I quite like the sound of, when the methodologies for usability tests are all sorted out, the magic has gone for me. Sometimes I don't like to know how I do what I do, or like being able to guarantee results. Where's the fun in that? ...
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http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/03/1001.fourwords.html
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It will be out in Jan 2004. But you can read a few sample chapters from Emotional Design here...
Vishi has an article on Sitepoint. Good pointers and makes a nice read...
AIfIA has launched its IA Tools initiative. The Tools are a collection of model templates and deliverables that can be used by information architects and UI designers to help sell IA services to clients.
The current list includes the following:
Nokia here presents results of a game usability study it had commissioned.
The study concentrated on solving usability and playability issues in games developed by three companies for Series 40 devices. The most visible result is a detailed collection of usability guidelines that are available on the Nokia website.
[via Usability News]
…writes Alan Cooper in this wonderful article. The article talks about the economics of the new economy. While in the industrial age, reducing cost was difficult and was a selling point, in the new economy it is a given. After all, how much does it cost to duplicate software? Thus the emphasis in the new economy has to be on quality and user experience.
Further:
[via Viswanath Gondi]
Manu has a very nice study of the new CNET 'Save Article' widget on the ICHI blog...
Excerpt from the article:
“The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users.”
Interesting article but also goes on to add the following:
“…companies are more likely to commoditize software development and move it to cheaper locations, causing some concern due to the poor state of usability practices in the main offshore countries.”
Personally I wish Nielsen did come down to the ‘Offshore Countries’ to check out the state of usability here. It may not be rosy, but it ain’t bad either here in India…
Boxes and Arrows has an article about sitemaps, site indexes, what they are, and why you should use them...
There is a school of thought though, that believes that if a site needs a sitemap for navigating around it, there is something wrong with the navigation, and maybe the sitemap should be made the homepage...
Can the same logic be used for large sites?
Personally I do not provide a sitemap link anywhere on sites I design. But the 404 page (page not found error) itself can be a sitemap. So users see the sitemap only if they are not able to find what they are looking for, otherwise the navigation should take care of the rest...
You can check this implementation on the latest Digité site...
Baddesigns has a collections of some of the world's 'worstly' designed objects, displays, controls and signs...
The good thing is that most bad designs mentioned also have design suggestions.
Which reminds me I need to re-read Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things...
According to the newsletter:
Jef Raskin (The Humane Interface, Mac fame) has a Flash Demo of a ZUI (Zoomable User Interface.) It's an 8MB Flash file so it takes a while to load. There are also some performance issues with the demo, but it gives you a fair idea...
Jef, understandably, did not have all insights into the Flash development process and mentions that he could not get Flash to recognize the left mouse click. He should have come here first...
But nevertheless it's great to see Flash being used as a prototyping tool. I think it serves the purpose extremely well...
Eric Raymond (of the Cathedral and the Baazar fame) has come up with a classification schema for the levels at which users are willing to invest effort to build competence.
Also:
All of this is fine, but personally I found the text on the Revolution site a bit difficult to read and you could not even control the font size as it was fixed using CSS. Maybe they should look into it now that they've published the report.
Over the last few weeks, heavy discussions on the interactionarchitects Yahoo! Group has culminated in the formation of this new group, which is currently just a Working Group or Steering Committee. Challis Hodge, Rick Cecil, Jim Jarret and David Heller are taking the lead, and here's what Challis Hodge has to say:
So if you're interested, head over to the InteractionArchitects group...
Finally the indiachi blog is up. For now there are 10 contributers, including Ananthraman Mani, Anshuman Singh, Apala Chavan, Bhavin Turakhia, Manu Sharma, Navin Pangti, Navneet Nair (me ;) ), Saurabh Wadhwa, Shilpa Suresh and Vikram Chauhan...
Keep an eye out for this one...
CHris MacGregor of Flazoom has an interesting analysis of the new menus on Macromedia.com.
Alison J. Head has a very nice article on personas. If you're not familiar with using user personas in interface design, check here for some more links...
[via viswanath gondi]
Scott Berkun look at the myth behind discoverability. According to him, a prioritization of how to think about the relative importance of tasks and features is based upon:
1. Things most people do, most often.
2. Things most people do, somewhat often.
3. Things some people do, most often.
4. Things some people do, somewhat often.
5. Things few people do, most often.
6. Things few people do, somewhat often.
Another thing that Scott misses out in this list is to find out how many users will perform the task. This is very important of your application supports multiple roles. In that case each of the above questions have to be factored by the number of users using the feature. And if the ultimate prioritization can be done when the feature is used by your primary persona or role...
[via Emergic]