User Interface Design for Programmers - Chapter 8

One of the early principles of GUI interfaces was that you shouldn't ask people to remember things that the computer could remember. The classic example is the Open File dialog box, which shows people a list of files rather than asking them to recall and type the exact file name. People remember things a lot better when they are given some clues, and they'd always rather choose something from a list than have to recall it from memory.

Another example is the menus themselves. Historically, providing a complete menu of available commands replaced the old command-line interfaces, where you had to memorize the commands you wanted to use. And this is, fundamentally, the reason why command line interfaces are just not better than GUI interfaces, no matter what your UNIX friends tell you. Using a command line interface is like having to learn Korean to order food in a Seoul branch of McDonalds. Using a menu based interface is like being able to point to the food you want and nod your head vigorously: it conveys the same information with no learning curve.

Consider the file selection process in a typical graphics program:



Luckily, Windows 98 introduced thumbnail support, so you can see the files like this:



This makes it significantly easier to open the file you want; it doesn't even take the mental effort to map words onto pictures. (Via Joel on Software)

With RealReflect, Virtual Reality Looks More Real

Virtual reality (VR) modeling has been used for years in various industries, including the automotive sector. But most of the applications were neglecting the effects of lightning. In "Getting the Feel of Virtual Reality," IST Results, a EU organization, says that RealReflect, a project started in 2002 at several European universities, is about to change this. It uses "a new image acquisition technique known as Bidirectional Texture Function (BTF) that captures the look and feel of different materials." The system handles both lighting and viewing direction and can acquire and render very subtle textures in VR environments. With previous VR modeling applications, you could see the results as believable. But, according to the researchers, with RealReflect, you think the model is real. The system has been targeted for the automotive industry, but could be used for other applications, such as architecture design or computer games. (Via Technology Trends)

Crossing Boundaries: 2005 IA Summit Wrapup: Overview and Pre-Sessions

Boxes and Arrows has an excellent review of each day's presentations at the 2005 IA Summit. Check several pages worth of reviews.

User Interface Design for Programmers - Chapter 7

When the Macintosh was new, Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini wrote a column in Apple's developer magazine on UI. In his column, people wrote in with lots of interesting UI design problems, which he discussed. These columns continue to this day on his web site. They've also been collected and embellished in a couple of great books, like Tog on Software Design, which is a lot of fun and a great introduction to UI design. (Tog on Interface was even better, but it's out of print.)

Tog invented the concept of the mile high menu bar to explain why the menu bar on the Macintosh, which is always glued to the top of the physical screen, is so much easier to use than menu bars on Windows, which appear inside each application window. When you want to point to the File menu on Windows, you have a target about half an inch wide and a quarter of an inch high to acquire. You must move and position the mouse fairly precisely in both the vertical and the horizontal dimensions.

But on a Macintosh, you can slam the mouse up to the top of the screen, without regard to how high you slam it, and it will stop at the physical edge of the screen - the correct vertical position for using the menu. So, effectively, you have a target that is still half an inch wide, but a mile high. Now you only need to worry about positioning the cursor horizontally, not vertically, so the task of clicking on a menu item is that much easier. (Via Joel on Software)

All watched over by machines of loving grace: Some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings

It can be difficult, initially, to consider ubiquitous-computing environments as a special case for user experience work. Before they are knit together, the elements constituting ubiquitous systems may appear to be merely conventional technological devices, with relatively well-documented interfaces and affordances. It is only as they join and fuse that the emergent properties we think of as “ubicomp” come to the fore. It can be equally imprecise to speak of “users,” in a context where a human being encountering ubiquitous information-processing technology may more accurately be considered as a subject. Nevertheless, I have used the term throughout, as it is established and widely understood.

Ubiquitous computing is coming. It is coming because there are too many too powerful institutions vested in its coming; it is coming because it is a “technically sweet” challenge; it is coming because it represents the eventual convergence of devices, tools and services that became inevitable the moment they each began to be expressed in ones and zeroes.

It is a future structurally latent in the new schema for Internet Protocol addressing, IPv6, which, with its 128-bit address space, provides some 6.5 x 1023 addresses for every square meter on the surface of our planet, and therefore quite abundantly enough for every pen and stamp and book and door in the world to talk to each other. And of course it is a future economically latent in the need of manufacturers and marketers for continuous growth, and the identification of vast new markets beyond the desktop, laptop, personal audio player and mobile phone. (Via Boxes and Arrows)

Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study

Our Problem - 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.

Our Goal - Our first goal was to find a way to communicate standards for interaction design to increase consistency, predictability, and usability across Yahoo! with the ultimate intention of strengthening the brand. This aligned with the business goal of increasing both the number of return visits and the average number of products used per session. Our second goal was to increase the productivity of the design staff by reducing time spent on “reinventing the wheel.” If we were successful, other designers could re-use the solutions contained in the library, reducing development time.

Our Solution - We designed and built a repository for interaction design patterns, created a process for submitting and reviewing the content, and seeded the resulting library with a set of sample patterns. We organized the content to make it findable, structured the content so it was predictable, and tested and iterated the design of the user interface of the tool to make it usable. Throughout this process, we introduced incentives for participation for both the contributors and management to encourage submissions and support. (Via Boxes and Arrows)

Interview: Steve Krug

BA: So Steve, what have you been up to since you wrote Don’t Make Me Think?

SK: Well, it’s going on five years. How much detail would you like?

I still spend some of my time doing the same client work I’ve always done, mostly expert reviews. But the nicest change for me is that now I also get to travel around with Lou Rosenfeld, teaching our public workshops, and I really love doing them. This spring, we’re going to San Diego, Boston, and Denver.

The other big change is that I have a lot more email to answer (or to try to answer). Maybe this would be a good chance for me to offer a public apology to anyone who’s ever tried to reach me by email and not heard back, especially in the last year. If you write me again, I promise I’ll get back to you. The problem is I can’t seem to bring myself to use canned replies, so I end up writing the same answer from scratch again and again, so I always have a backlog. It’d be fine if I was avoiding boilerplate on principle, but it’s really more of a character defect thing. (Via Boxes and Arrows)


Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability



Check-out more books atUsernomics.

The trouble with tagging

In my last post, I provided links to a lot of well-written criticism of the “tag cloud” / folksonomy approach to organizing content. Yet it’s pretty clear that tag-based folksonomies make it easier to find certain types of information.

Tags turn out to be a lot faster than google at identifying new, important blog articles. Most of the taggers are subscribing to blogs via rss feeds, and saving the articles that they are interested in using some kind of tagging site (del.icio.us, technorati, etc). As a result, before google has even picked up a particular blog article, it starts showing up on the “what’s popular right now” pages of the various tag sites. This immediately introduces the article to a new wave of readers who are very likely to be using tagging, creating a self-sustaining effect (much like an action potential in a neuron).

This demonstrates the critical aspect of tags right now: all the tagging is being done by web-obsessed information architecture / web developer / blogger types. This has both positive and negative effects. On the plus side, if you are an IA / web dev / blogger type, the content being marked up by tags is the content you are interested in, and the vocabulary used to mark up the tags is a vocabulary that you share (sweet!). On the down-side, much of the value provided by tag-based systems seems to be the result of this “gated community” effect, and thus will disappear when tagging becomes more of a mainstream activity (damn!). (Via Jonathan Boutelle)

Graphics and Structural Markup: Keeping "pretties" out of content

Pet peeve time! Let's talk graphics. You know, the catchy visual dujibobs that have been part of the Internet since the Gopher went south. As far as I know, there are only two types of graphics on the Web: content graphics and presentational graphics.

Content graphics comprise the content of the page or serve as illustration for text content. For example, a news story on nuclear research breakthrough may feature a photo of a glowing (pardon the bad pun) scientist in a hazmat suit. A page containing a gallery of pictures with cut lines could serve as another example of images as content.

Presentational graphics serve the decorative purposes of a page. Typically, these are ingredients for what you'd call "page template" – they survive, with some degree of consistency, from page to page on a site. Taking away or changing the presentational graphics does not affect the content of the page. The nice white-space background texture that makes your eyes feel happy, or the heading that expresses the spirit of the site, or rounded corners that give your sidebars the look of a candy bar – all of the above are presentational graphics. (Via Dimitri Glazkov)

Will Longhorn Try to Rival Google?

Microsoft may have a keen interest in search, but its next-generation Windows operating system looks to be more of a threat to super-organized executive assistants than to Google.

Although the software maker has been steadily investing in search, its upcoming operating system, code-named Longhorn, is taking a new tack when it comes to helping users locate desktop files.

In Longhorn, Microsoft is "moving away from search" and concentrating on how people organize and find documents, says Brad Goldberg, general manager of Windows Client Business Group.

"We're hoping our users never say they can't find a file again," Goldberg says.

Longhorn will not tie together desktop and Internet search capabilities, but instead focus on organization and offering users more ways to view their documents, Goldberg says. (Via PCWorld)

Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface Design

This paper introduces dimensions of culture, as analyzed by Geert Hofstede in his classic study of cultures in organizations, and considers how they might affect user-interface designs. Examples from the Web illustrate the cultural dimensions.

The Web enables global distribution of products and services through Internet Websites, intranets, and extranets. Professional analysts and designers generally agree that well-designed user interfaces improve the performance and appeal of the Web, helping to convert "tourists" or "browsers" to "residents" and "customers." The user-interface development process focuses attention on understanding users and acknowledging demographic diversity. But in a global economy, these differences may reflect world-wide cultures. Companies that want to do international business on the web should consider the impact of culture on the understanding and use of Web-based communication, content, and tools. This paper contributes to the study of this complex and challenging issue by analyzing some of the needs, wants, preferences, and expectations of different cultures through reference to a cross-cultural theory developed by Geert Hofstede. (Via Aaron Marcus)

Tabletop 2006

Call For Papers -The First IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer System (TableTop2006). (Via IEEE)

Check more events for 2005 - 2006 at Usernomics.

Dyson Reinvents The Wheel

First James Dyson changed the way the vacuum works -- now he's changing the way we vacuum. Dyson's DC15 vacuum with The Ball technology is Dyson's most significant advancement since his creation of a vacuum cleaner that doesn't lose suction. The Ball has taken three years to develop and has 182 patents. The Ball is Dyson's solution to the stiff, inefficiency of the back- and-forth movement that makes vacuuming a chore. Because there hasn't been any major change in the layout of vacuums in the last 100 years, we have simply put up with this frustration. Changing direction with traditional upright vacuum cleaners involves several push-pull maneuvers or requires walking around to direct the machine. You crash into chairs, bash into boxes and scuff the base boards. It can be tiring, frustrating and often, due to the lack of control, you miss whole areas of your home. (Via gizmag)

FoundCity

FoundCity is a collective mapping tool. It allows everyone in a city to map the interesting things they discover throughout the day to a dynamic online map, where they can then compare their points of interest with other people's points. In doing so they both share what they like about the city with others, and discover what other people find fascinating about the city. It is an open-ended, continually evolving tour guide to the city.

To discover points of interest with FoundCity, you surf the tagging categories listed to the right. (Note: do not use Safari or older browsers with FoundCity. For best results use Firefox). When you come to a point of interest on a map, you can then click on the links embedded in that point to surf on to other categories, revealing other different points of interest. You can also do this starting from your personal home page, to find people with interests similar to yours and discover their tagged locations. Or if you're out adventuring in the city, and away from your computer, you can discover the tags around you via your cell phone.

Ah, a novel concept. Great idea ...

Yahoo Updates Yahoo News and Personal Search

Search Engine Giant Yahoo! has been beta testing their updated News Syndication site since quite sometime and yesterday they launched it officially. The updated site comes with a totally new interface, which is less cluttered and is aimed towards usability. Efforts have been made to help users make full use of the offered functionalities using advanced web technologies. The company has also introduced their YQ search technology which enables the users to get results related to their searched for keywords and phrases without leaving the Yahoo! News website.

Users can add new sources of information using RSS features provided by most online news sources. This let them keep updated with their choice of information as the Yahoo! servers keep retrieving the latest information making it available on the user’s customized News page. Another interesting feature Yahoo! is providing its users with is the facility to receive the latest news stories view Instant Messages. They have been already providing the facility through email alerts since quite sometime. (Via Search Engine Journal)

Foam Roller for RSI Help?

I've recently joined a new gym and one of the physical trainers there introduced me to something called a foam roller. It's a three foot wide dense foam cylinder, maybe about 6 inches thick. You basically put it on the ground, then roll your muscle over it (pretty much any muscles in the body, legs, back, etc.) and if you hit a tense spot (i.e. trigger point), you hold it for a moment with pressure, and that's supposed to help relax and get the knots out of your body.

I was a little inhibited since we were trying it next to all the big guys grunting and throwing weights around, but I decided to order one with instructions and what not so I could try it at home.

I'm excited to give it a try because any number of the RSI books I've read have implyed that problems with the wrists or hands often stem from issues higher up. For example, I sit at a computer all day and tend to develop tension in my upper back, despite having ergonomic furniture and taking frequent breaks. As I understand it, the knots that develop can pinch your nerves and lead to long term problems. I've found massage somewhat helpful, but who can afford to go get a massage three times a week? (Via Office Ergonomics Reviews)

Apple Mac OS 10.4 Tiger review

New Finder features; better interface responsiveness and overall speed, even on legacy hardware; Safari includes improved performance and RSS; QuickTime 7.0 offers higher-resolution video; new Automator allows systemwide scripting; Core Data and Core Image open up new opportunities to developers; better cross-platform compatibility.

Most upgrades are hidden under the hood; features the average user will notice, such as Mail, clash with Apple's own user interface design; some features are unavailable on hardware older than a year or two.

The Berkeley Software Design (BSD) underpinnings will appeal to Unix and Linux fanatics alike, while the smooth, intuitive interface makes Mac OS X friendly to new users. (Via CNET)

Formal Usability Report vs. Quick Findings

Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice.

I recently asked 258 usability practitioners which methods they use to communicate findings from their studies:

42% produce a formal written test report with full details on the methodology
36% write a "quick findings" report
24% circulate an email that lists the study's top findings
15% disseminate a spreadsheet of the findings
14% enter usability findings into a bug-tracking database
21% conduct a meeting in which they offer a formal presentation of the findings
27% conduct an informal meeting or debriefing to discuss the findings
1% show full-length videos from the test sessions
4% show highlights videos from the test
3% create and display posters or other physical exhibits

There's no one best approach to reporting usability study findings. Most people use more than one method, depending on their corporate culture and usability lifecycle approach.

That said, the survey clearly found that formal and brief reports are the two dominant means of disseminating usability findings. Both approaches have their place. (Via Alertbox)

Why Listening to Users Can Damage Your Website

The first time I noticed that people tend to say one thing and do another in a usability test was back in 2000. We had been building a new company website and testing it with real users brought us an unexpected problem. All the users liked the new design a lot more than the old one, but nobody could work out how to use it.

Over the course of the following year we repeatedly encountered the same type of problem. In one study where users performed a task repeatedly on 5 different websites, the majority reported they favoured one because they completed the task more quickly. Unfortunately, the timings we took indicated completion times for this site was the slowest of all five.

After looking at the usability literature, it became clear this was not an uncommon experience. In the evaluation of computer interfaces there is a history of mismatch between user’s success with an interface and their verbal assessment. In the field of commercial Web Site Usability, this mismatch is critical, as poor usability can alienate potential users and divert them to competitor sites.

Nielsen and Levy (1994), for example, admit that users may not always choose optimally, while Dillon and Morris (n.d.) quote a study by Bailey, claiming that “when choosing between design alternatives, users will rarely prefer the interface that bests supports their own performance”, an effect also found by Toub (1999), Walker et al. (1998) and Spool (1999), who found users preference ratings for web sites were almost in reverse order to their success. No wonder Nielsen in 2001 advised in his Alertbox "pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behaviour." (Via UPA Voice)

Problem with Usability Change Recommendations

Contemporary user testing methods have proven highly effective at identifying problems in computer interfaces. By directly measuring users’ ability to complete key tasks, practitioners can expediently uncover what are often colossal failures of usability that are otherwise difficult to perceive. User testing, then, affords a strong empirical basis for recommending that designers make changes to resolve the problems found.

Most test reports take the additional step of actually suggesting what those changes should be, and it’s at this point that they start running into trouble. While the existence of the problems is based on observational evidence, the efficacy of the proposed changes is not established by the test itself.

This can invite the false impression that the recommendations are determined with the same rigor with which the problems are found. In fact, there is usually no proof that the changes will actually resolve the observed problems. This is an important issue in usability practice.

The point would be academic if it didn’t carry tangible and substantial harms. Change recommendations can be costly to implement, and a failure to demonstrate improvement can be damaging to the reputations of usability professionals and to the quality of user interfaces. (Via UPA Voice)

In Defense of PowerPoint

I started this essay in January 2004—over a year ago—but it lay hidden in my file of "in progress" writings. I didn't finish the essay because I gave an interview with Cliff Atkinson on the topic, but the paper goes into the issues in much more depth than the interview. So, here it is: it may be late, but the lessons are just as relevant as ever.

It has become commonplace to rail against the evils of PowerPoint talks; you know, those dull, boring never-ending ordeals where the speaker — or should I say "reader" — displays what appears to be a never-ending progression of slides, each with numerous bulleted points, sometimes coming on to the screen from unexpected directions in unexpected ways, each one being slowly read to the audience. PowerPoint should be banned, cries the crowd. Edward Tufte, the imperious critic of graphic displays has weighed in with a document entitled "The cognitive style of PowerPoint," in which, among other things, he credits poor PowerPoint slides with contributing to the Challenger shuttle disaster.

I respectfully submit that all of this is nonsense. Pure nonsense, accompanied by poor understanding of speech making and of the difference between the requirements for a speech-giver, the speech-listener (the audience), and for the reader of a printed document. These are three different things. Tufte—and other critics—seem to think they are one and the same thing. Nonsense, I say, once again. (Via jnd.org)

Designing for shuffling

Following on from the previous post on contextual information we could infer from increasingly smart, self-aware social informational products - or, how devices learn - is a pointer to Matt Webb's great observations on using the Shuffle here and here. I particularly like his thoughts on navigation in this screenless, backgrounded, 'blinking' context.

"Or maybe a better interface would be this: The shuffle should have two slider controls: volume and more/less like this. Don't like a track? Hit Less Like This and the next track is more randomised. Like a track? Hit More Like This are the next track is more likely to be from the same genre--hit it again and it's more likely to be from the same artist, the same album, share a BPM."

There are several axes we might want to enable, ultimately. The classic ones Webb describes - artist, genre, holding the album container inviolate or fluid etc. But also the ones in this old chestnut about music's rich facets. (Via cityofsound)

Thin Slicing in Information Space

If term frequency is anything to go by, thin slicing is becoming the phrase de jour in my information world. Digital or analog, I cannot seem to browse anything at the moment without being hit over the head by Malcolm Gladwell’s latest tome, Blink, which pertains to the power of thinking without thinking. The essence of this book is that snap judgments are often based on fairly deep knowledge, freed from the constraints imposed by consideration of too much information. No need to get started on the data versus information argument here – psychologists never cared much for that distinction anyhow, and we all surely know by now that an antelope is not a data point, it is an information “thing.”

What is cute about thin slicing, apart from the phrase, is its justification for the cognitive miser in us all. (That equally cute phrase comes from BJ Fogg, a keynoter at this year’s IA Summit). In a world of overwhelming perceptual stimulation, it seems that reducing the data and allowing intuition to guide us may be a useful coping strategy – it was surely such a blink reaction of my own that led me to avoid Gladwell’s earlier book, The Tipping Point. Blink is a wonderful collection of anecdotes exemplifying this natural cognitive response in multiple situations and contexts. (My favorite is the expert who knew instantly upon seeing a new acquisition that the museum had sunk millions of dollars into a fake sculpture, despite its having conducted myriad tests of the object’s authenticity). I have the same experience with many websites – just one look and I get an uneasy feeling. (Via ASIS&T Bulletin)

Card sorting. Part 3 - Analysis and reporting

In the final part of the article I talk about perhaps the most important part of the procedure - Analysis. This is the part in which you can get the most bogged down. You must be thorough, ruthless and accurate.

Card sorting won’t always give you the answer - it may just give you more questions. This is where the analysis comes in.

Section Label Analysis

- This most commonly applies to Open card sorts but it might be applicable for closed if several users proposed new names for sections
- Put common labels together and decide on the best label
- It is possible the most common suggestion is not the best label though - use your judgement. (Via Mark Boulton)

The Historical Development of Information Infrastructures and the Dissemination of Knowledge: A Personal Reflection

My research over the years has focused on historical questions related to library and information science as providing the intellectual underpinning of a variety of professional practices related to the dissemination and use of information. I have published a number of historical studies examining utopian schemes for managing knowledge, the evolution of institutionalized or organizational aspects of information infrastructure (as represented especially by libraries, museums and systems for the international organization and dissemination of information), and the emergence of what I think of as an interdiscipline – nowadays often designated library and information science – concerned with the study of these phenomena.

The Universe of Information: The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International Organization was an initial study of a hitherto neglected figure. A Russian translation of this book was published in 1977 and a Spanish edition in 1996. With the advent of the Internet and the Web, it has become clear how pioneering and important historically the work of Paul Otlet and his colleagues was. It seems yet even more relevant today with the recently announced agreement between Google and a number of research libraries to digitize and make their collections available through the Web. I have argued that in Otlet’s world of paper, card and cabinet technology he provided a theoretical basis for, and described many of the functionalities characteristic of, today's information technology and the uses to which it has been put. Two articles that might be mentioned in this context are “Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext,” and "The origins of information science and the International Institute of Bibliography/International Federation of Documentation (FID).” Both articles were reprinted in ASIS&T’s Historical Studies in Information Science. (Via ASIS&T Bulletin)

Voicsec Talking Notes Gadget Review

Say hello to the Voisec Talking Notes. This little device will change the way you communicate with everyone around you. As you can see by the picture (the model actually loves it too), it is small; to be precise, 42mm (1.65”) in diameter and only 18mm (.07”) in height. Now for the details of this communication wonder:

Maximum of 70 seconds of digital speech (reproduces sounds crystal clear).

Over 800 one minute recordings operating on two 1.5volt SR44 lithium batteries.

Solid design and recyclable plastic.

Delivered with one attachment tray (housing for Talking Note device), included batteries, five small double-sided adhesive “dot” patches (for easy placement on any surface) and one large adhesive magnet (for attachment on metallic objects).

Many accessories you can order including Velcro patches, neck loop with silicon holder, Velcro wrist band, adhesive backed pin badge and additional batteries. (Via I4U News)

Tiger Leaps Out in Front

Despite all the advances in personal computing, one problem has remained constant: It often is really hard to find a file months or years after it was created. To have any hope of doing so, users have to create a logical, structured system of folders, and take care to give consistent, descriptive names to their files. But few have the patience to do that.

Tomorrow, Apple Computer will introduce a new edition of the operating system for its Macintosh computers that finally solves the missing file problem, and introduces other features as well, including a new "Dashboard" that instantly displays small, frequently used programs like a calculator, dictionary and stock tracker.

The new release, called Tiger, is the latest version of Apple's excellent Mac OS X operating system. Its key feature, called Spotlight, is the first universal, integrated search system ever offered as part of a mainstream consumer PC operating system. In seconds, Spotlight can peer inside e-mail, office documents of all kinds, photos, songs, address books, calendars, and all manner of other files to see which ones match a search term you type in.

Spotlight is vastly better than prior built-in search functions on either the Mac or on Microsoft's Windows operating system. It also beats the add-on search programs for Windows. Spotlight can rapidly find almost any file, any time -- even years after it was created, and even if it is hidden among tens of thousands of other files. So as users learn to trust it, they no longer will have to worry about where they store files and what they name them. (Via The Wall Street Journal)

The Difficulty with Articulating Design

Jeremy Keith over at Adactio brought up an interesting point a couple blog-years back (2-3 weeks ago). He pointed out that the whole fixed-width, liquid-width layout debate was a sham (my word) because there was, at the bottom of it, no solid reason for a designer doing one thing over the other. Instead, they simply copied others. He felt cheated because so many designers chose fixed-width and he assumed that there was a good reason for them doing so. When he found out there wasn’t, he was frustrated.

Do We Need a Return to Design? Jeremy’s post reminds me of the common cry we hear now and again from designers: they call for a “return to design”. A return to design would mean a return to the craftsmanship of building things right, and not by copying others or by building things in homage of the latest buzzword, be it user experience, usability, findability, or what-have-you. It would mean to design deliberately, for our audience, and for them only. Keith Robinson over at Asterisk recently shared this frustration.

Though I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think we need a “return to design” or a “return of design”. I think we’re doing fine in that category: designers are doing what we’ve always done, and some are doing it exceptionally well. (Via Bokardo)

With the User Experience, Small Things Add Up

Tiger coming out in a few days, I am hoping that some of these things have been fixed, but tonight I ran into two oddities that reminded me how small, irksome user interface design decisions can build up, making me think less of the whole.

One thing I noticed about Apple's Mail program is that with an aural notification of new mail, it takes longer to finish the download process than it does without sound. It was really bothering me on the laptop, because with only 128mb of RAM, all things were incredibly slow. I have since added an extra 256mb of RAM, but that little bit of slowness bothers me.

Next oddity in Apple's Mail program is the ordering of items in a list. This isn't about alpha ordering or ordering for frequency (well, it could be ordering for frequency), but about showing a list of items in the same order all the time.



The above image displays when you select from the application's menu bar.



The above image displays when you select an object and bring up a contextual menu. (Via usabilityworks)

Longhorn Focuses on Usability, But Is It Just a Copy of Mac?

The bulk of Gates's speech covered Longhorn's visual and organizational features -- which Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs described last week as "shamelessly" copying his company's Mac OS X operating system.

Microsoft Corp.'s ambitious plan to keep data safe on PCs will make a scaled-down debut in the next release of Windows, though the operating system's most anticipated improvements in graphics appear to mirror what's now available from rival Apple Computer Inc.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on Monday demonstrated Longhorn's new graphics, which include better ways to visualize data, including seeing through windows that are stacked atop each other, more natural file organization and faster searching. (Via Top Tech News)

Should You Ignore Your Customers?

Do the best ideas for new products come from customers, or in spite of them?

That intriguing question was at the heart of the panel discussion, "Ignore Your Customers, They Don't Know What They Want," at the 2005 Harvard Business School Marketing Conference on April 9. Anita Elberse, marketing professor at HBS, was the moderator.

Elberse started the discussion off with a question: "Should [marketers] ignore their customers, or do customers have something to offer?"

At BMW, an engineering-focused company with seven-year product cycles, risk taking is part of the culture, said Patrick McKenna, manager of marketing communications at the luxury carmaker. And sometimes that risk involves creating products based more on intuition than on deep analysis of customer needs. (Via HBS Working Knowledge)

interactions: Whose profession is it anyway?

April 27, 2004: The May + June issue of is a special issue on "Whose profession is it anyway?" - in part a reaction to some of the collaboration and cooperation discussions UXnet has been encouraging.

This issue should be arriving in your mailbox any day now - it is also available in the ACM digital library where subscribers can download articles and non-subscribers can purchase items.

Articles related to the special-issue theme, with selected quotes from each:

* (Rant) It's mine, by the editors-in-chief, Jonathan Arnowitz and Elizabeth Dykstra-Erickson. "It's only logical that human-computer interaction professionals take ownership of the user experience."

* Introduction, by guest editor Pabini Gabriel-Petit. "In a culture of collaboration rather than competition, there is a healthy cross-pollination of ideas among all the design disciplines."

* Who owns UX? Not us! by Dirk Knemeyer. "The business decision makers."

* Building positive team relationships for better usability, by John C. Ferrara. "There are simple and pragmatic ways to build positive team relationships while retaining control."

* The vision of good user experience, by David Hawdale. "You can own the user experiene by taking the lead and pursuing your vision."
User experience: Back to business, by Peter Bogaards and Ruurd Priester. "Offer your design expertise to the key business stakeholders in your company."

* and more ... (Via User Experience Network)

Something a little different

I really like the interface of eyebeam.org. Props to Method for doing something different with an HTML/CSS web interface. (Via antenna)

CyberWalk - Unconstrained Walking in Virtual Worlds

The development of a walking platform which will allow unconstrained movement in virtual worlds is the goal of the CyberWalk project, initiated by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen, Germany, together with their colleagues from the Technical University Munich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland and the University Roma, Italy. The platform will serve as a tool to study human spatial cognition and movement in space, but later will also allow visits to historical sites or help improve training for athletes in virtual environments. The CyberWalk project is supported by the European Union with 1.7 million Euro for the duration of three years.

For the creation of so-called "virtual worlds", towns, scenes and situations are reconstructed as lifelike as possible in the form of three dimensional programmes. These virtual scenes are presented to the viewer via a projection screen or specialized glasses equipped with small projectors. In contrast to passively viewing a film, the viewers can move within and interact with the virtual environment. As soon as the viewer turns to the right, for example, they will see the same virtual scene but from another visual angle - the same as in our natural environment. The goal of such developments is to create virtual worlds which are able to give us the feeling that we really are a part them. (Via PhysOrg)