Balancing fidelity in prototyping

Striking the right balance of prototype detail ...

"Choosing the right level of graphic detail, interactivity, breadth and depth.

Deceived by their ideas of what clients will accept, many web development teams build prototypes that are too costly and doesn't serve the purpose prototypes are supposed to. To exploit the full potential of prototyping, it's critical to choose the appropriate level of fidelity.

Some projects put an undue emphasis on certain aspect of prototypes, such as the graphic design or the implementation of advanced functionalities. Often they don't want to show clients something that appears unfinished. Fact is that prototypes by definition are unfinished, and if you start building prototypes that are highly detailed, things quickly gets overly costly and time consuming."   continued ...   (Via GUUUI)

Low vs. high fidelity prototype.

Looking Back on 16 Years of Paper Prototyping

A good overview of paper prototyping and future directions ...

"Despite amazing advances in prototyping technology, paper prototyping is still one of our favorite tools for gaining quick insights on new designs. As we look back at how we've used this technique over the last 16 years, we can see that it has adapted well to the new demands from today's design process.

The Basics of Paper Prototypes Haven't Changed.

In 16 years, building and evaluating paper prototypes hasn't really changed very much. It's still the simplest method we know for getting feedback about a design. All we need to do to learn about a design is to draw the design elements on paper and place them in front of our users, as if they are working on a real screen.

We learned a long time ago the secret to this technique: it's not about 'showing' the interface, it's about 'using' it. You want enough detail in the design for users to complete their tasks. Sometimes, this makes creating the prototype a little burdensome, but the quick ability to change the design outweighs the upfront effort requirements."   continued ...   (Via UIE) (Image copyright Nielsen Norman Group, reproduced by permission).

Sample of Web Page prototype.

Persona Sketching

A fast and inexpensive way to develop a persona ...

"User goals are important to the success of any Web endeavor, large or small, and it’s too often that the users of a Web site get left out of the process. Buy using a simple technique I call “persona sketching” you can get to know the needs of your users while at the same time easily test your site against user goals.

A persona is an simple document that describes, in varying amounts of detail, a typical user or group of users. In essence “giving a face” or personality to those users. On a large, high volume site you could have many personas, each representing a subset of your user base. A good persona is always based on user research and data and will give you a manageable icon to work with when advocating for your user group(s).

A persona sketch, in essence, is a persona that is based on rough, incomplete or assumed data and best guesses. I want to emphasize that it is always better to have real user data to work with."   continued ...   (Via D. Keith Robinson)

Sample persona sketch.

Interaction Design & Written Language

An interesting notion - "Design Communicator" ...

"Anyone who has observed even a single usability test knows the importance of the words used to label navigation, actions, and content for user comprehension and task completion. But a writer’s skill set extends beyond copyrighting. When designing solutions for activities, it is especially important to understand that an activity, like a written narrative has a beginning, an end, and above all a point.

Leading users through a narrative requires maintaining enough context and information to communicate current status as well as enough interest and clarity to get them to the end. Likewise enabling activities through design requires the right amount of communication: some verbal and some visual. This wide definition of Design Communicator (DC) is reflected in the evolution of the role at Cooper:

“We originally started out thinking that DCs were either going to be like tech writers, or be junior Interaction Designers (IxDs) who would eventually move into the IxD role. As the role evolved, though, we realized that when we combined a visual, structural thinker (the IxD) with a more sequential, verbal thinker (the DC), great things happened. We could iterate the design and uncover potential problems very quickly, and the end result was better and more thoroughly articulated than it otherwise would have been.” -Kim Goodwin, Cooper"   continued ...   (Via Functioning Form)

Interface Designer as Design Communicator.

Part One: State of the Mobile Web

The Mobile Web will require a new set of User Interface Design principals ...

"However, we’re looking to the future of the Mobile Web, where’s it’s headed, or better yet, where it’s supposed to be headed, regardless of geographic differences. If by authoring this series we have any influence on the direction of that path, we’ll sleep well at night knowing we’ve completed the task we set out to accomplish.

On that note, consider some of the more encouraging signs of mobile design and development:

• There are three times as many mobile phones as PCs worldwide, and that gap doesn’t show any signs of decreasing
• Virtually all phones on the market today are web-enabled
• Google maintains a separate index for “true” mobile-friendly sites, Google Mobile
• Mobile startups are currently experiencing large amounts of investment dollars
• Location-based services, such as GPS and RFID technologies, are right around the corner, providing local context to web content

So in short, we know mobile users are already accessing the web on their devices, and we can safely bet they’ll continue to do so. The question then becomes, How do we design for the mobile web? A superb question, indeed, and one that will have to be answered in Part Two: Methods to the Madness. Stay tuned."   continued ...   (Via Authentic Boredom)

User Interface Design has to accomodate various screen sizes.

Making Meaning: The Business of Experience Design

Chapters from a new book ...

"Throughout the past decade, the term experience has spread into the business world with increasing quantity and intensity. No doubt, you’ve heard terms like experience marketing, experience branding, experience design, 360° experience, 360° branding, experience economy, etc. This is because the business world has quickly understood that their customers have both broader and deeper interactions with products and services than those characteristics normally found on a feature list. In addition, these relationships are becoming the most valued component of business.

Separately and together, we (Steve, Nathan, and Darrel) have counseled hundreds companies on both strategies and implementations that help create better experiences for their customers and audiences. We’ve worked with many of the dimensions of successful experiences, such as:

• Time
• Space
• Senese (visuals, sounds, etc.)
• Context
• Interactivity
• Emotions
• Value

Most of these are either already understood or have become much clearer over the past 10 years (such as interactivity). But, there was something “missing.” In interviewing consumers all over the world, we’ve found their intonations and adjectives used when describing commercial experiences similar to when they described their most personal experiences, such as a wedding or the birth of a child. The “something” underlying these experiences that made them so immensely valuable was MEANING."   continued ...   (Via Making Meaning)

Experience design need meaning.

Examples of Bad Web Design

You have to see this one. Talk about bad navigation ...

"I don't know if you have come across this one before, but it is one of the most user-unfriendly sites I've seen in a long time. This website has the following worrying design features.

1. Moving Mystery Meat Navigation in the form of various roman numerals floating up and down the left hand side of the screen.

2. More "mystery meat" navigation with ? symbol which loads up a help pop up - which in my case went straight to the toolbar so I had to hunt for it.

3. Several More."   continued ...   (Via Web Pages That Suck)

Usability? Everything is constantly moving.

Two simple but effective usability inspection techniques

Two inexpensive methods to ensure usability ...

"These two techniques can improve the usability of your software without needing large amounts of time or resources.

The support of managers, colleagues and customers in the development and testing of a complex product or web site is vital. Planning the sequence of events and judging the time required can be hard to estimate, and this is often particularly true for usability engineering because of its relatively high reliance on subjective data. This element of uncertainty is a factor which can increase the risk that usability testing is kept to a minimum or dispensed with altogether, especially if usability testing is not part of a formalised department or process.

Much of the development work carried out by usability engineers is intended to address the time and resource-intensive nature of the usability testing process with a view to ensuring that at least some testing gets done. Certain testing techniques are now widely used as methods of gaining a good general overview of a product’s usability as well as a quick way of identifying potential as well as actual problems. Many of these can be done by a small number of people in a single day or afternoon, but represent a significant investment in product quality.

Two of the most popular belong to a set of techniques called Usability Inspection methods, and are known as Thinking Aloud and Cognitive Walkthrough."   continued ...   (Via Builder UK)

Achieving usability by thinking out loud.

Limitation and Inspiration

Usability is always achieved within a variety of constraints ...

"For every project a designer embarks upon, there's a part of the process where the constraints are defined. It has to fit inside a car trunk, it can't be wireless, or the marketing team has found that fuchsia just won't work this season. Often these limitations can be frustrating, but a good designer can see it as an inspiration, not just something to work around.

Next time you're presented with a set of design requirements that seem absurd or just plain annoying, try to face them with enthusiasm. This is an opportunity to simplify your design, or to create a clever mechanism that has an exceptional wow factor to it. You don't have to feel like it's compromising your design, but rather presents you with a well-defined space within which to create."   continued ...   (Via IDFuel)

Usability limitations change over time.

The Good and the Bad of Self-Service Call Centers

User Interface difficulties with "self-service" ...

"The people who make those maddening speech-enabled call center systems met this week at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel, where the management just installed an even more maddening and irrational elevator dispatch system, to the constant annoyance of SpeechTEK 2005 attendees.

Appropriately, one of the show's first panels featured a group of industry leaders discussing what makes for a successful speech recognition implementation, and why businesses should avoid infuriating customers with badly designed speech interfaces.

Lynda Kate Smith, chief marketing officer for Nuance Communications Inc., offered food for thought by exploring the importance of the customer experience and how call centers help or harm that experience."   continued ...   (Via eWeek)

Designing for Amnesia

If you design for dysphasia there will be enough information to remind the user of their task ...

"Here’s an idea: software’s usability is measured with reference to its effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction (ISO 9241). Simple and straightforward stuff that every usability person should know and much can be inferred from running even just a few observational studies - sit the users down in front of a computer, tell them to do a particular task, and watch them make mistakes, maybe get them to complete a questionnaire with a Likert-type scale. As an aside, I’ve always been wary when no mistakes are made by the users. It either means that the users are too familiar with the software, or that the task wasn’t hard enough. Don’t forget that there needs to be a bit of a challenge in these tasks!

But this makes me think of problems with observational data. Yes it is argued that they possess a high degree of ecological validity (in other words, they are quite realistic tasks), but they are not real-life. Because putting camera’s in work places unknown to the staff and observing them that way is probably illegal - don’t do it! - and hard to control (just when you want them to perform a task, say editing a document, they may go off and have a cup of coffee or a natter."   continued ...   (Via Milui HCI/Usability)

Activity Centered Design

A good comment on Don Normans article on activity centered design ...

"I guess we would be remiss if we didn’t discuss Don Norman’s recent article on Activity Centered Design. Reading through it brought a few things to mind, but more than anything it had me thinking about the mechanisms by which our field evolves.

Although HCI/UCD/UX/etc has gained visibility and achieved significant diversification of roles, our discipline is still quite young. As recent as twenty years ago, very few pieces of software had any formal usability evaluation, and outside of very small circles there was no discussion. Since then, we’ve gone through several phases of learning and adaptation, and there’s no doubt that these efforts have grown the field and improved software usability. But regardless of how much we think we know, it is valuable to assess where we are. Do we know all there is to know about UX? Is there even an endpoint to reach?

It seems pretty clear to me that we are nowhere near the endpoint of our learning in usability and design. Given this, it makes sense to keep pushing, questioning, and exploring new (and in this case, reviving old) avenues of thought. So why has Norman’s article caused such a stir?"   continued ...   (Via OK/Cancel)

Designing user interfaces with gestures and sound.

A scholarly paper about the benefits of the multimodal feedback combined with non-speech representations of content via sound. The focus is on the benefits of the multimodal feedback combined with non-speech representations of content via sound ...

"This paper explores the use of sound and gestures within a tangible user interface, towards influencing the performance and appeal of browsing through a voice mail collection. Three browsers were developed, in which speech and non-speech sounds were projected in a sound-scape above a tangible interface. For each of the browsers, users were given the task of locating voice mail messages. Search behavior in terms of gestures, task time, and errors, were recorded and categorized. Users’ experience was measured in terms of appeal, consisting of hedonic and ergonomic qualities. Results showed that users’ explorative behavior changed, depending on the specific type of browser. Subjects were observed to utilize non-speech sound cues effectively in searching for target voice mail messages. Subjective results showed that ergonomic and hedonic qualities of appeal were found to interact in an averaging way, such that overall appeal was similar across conditions. Implications towards designing multimodal interfaces are discussed."   continued ...   (Via The Journal of Design Research)

Politics of User Interface Design

The User need representation too ...

"Trying to design an interface is nothing short of agonizing at times when we are dealing with users and their needs (or more to the point, requests). Most of us can relate to how hard it can be to get coherent requirements for an application. It is often equally challenging to solidify the design of a user interface and get buy-in from all stakeholders. There is usually someone who is responsible for seeing that business objectives are met. Then there is someone responsible for deciding technical feasibility and another that is responsible for scheduling and budgeting. And of course there should be someone representing the users. If software is being developed for internal use, then a representative from the users’ area or department will fill that role. If the software is being developed for outside customers a representative from marketing or sales is often appointed to act on the users’ behalf."   continued ...   (Via Fiat Developmentum)

Customers lash out over service

A User Experience result that might have been expected ...

"Efforts by companies to improve customer service through the internet and other new technologies have failed to improve service standards and produced a backlash from consumers, according to survey results.

Customers gave the thumbs down to the way companies have overhauled sales operations with the help of technology, onshore and offshore call centres. Almost 70 per cent of the 1,000 plus consumers surveyed declared that service has not improved over the last five years.

Consultants have helped drive the shift in selling by advocating more sophisticated information technology techniques but Mr Delesalle maintains that the blame for failure lies with companies which have introduced a "self service" element but destroyed the "customer experience" in the process."   continued ...   (Via Telegraph)

Web Accessibility: A Broader View

A scholarly paper from IBM about the objectives and economics of accessibility ...

"Web accessibility is an important goal. However, most approaches to its attainment are based on unrealistic economic models in which Web content developers spend too much and receive too little. We believe this situation is due, in part, to the overly narrow definitions given both to those who stand to benefit from enhanced access to the Web and what is meant by this enhanced access. In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing an approach that costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow confines of limited adaptations for small populations."   continued ...   (Via IBM)

Bad UI in OS X - Spotlight

Some small but annoying bad UI from OS X ...

"In today's post I'm going to show you some UI from Tiger and I'm going to point out all the obvious flaws in its design. These are flaws that if I can spot, any one with some serious training in HCI should be able to see in the first few seconds of looking at it, and one does hope that Apple still employs such people (and that someone actually listens to them!).

First of all it looks like a shining beacon of unified goodness. It could have been a brushed metal monstrosity, but someone put their foot down and said no. My thanks to that person.

Unfortunately they didn't similarly put their foot down on some other more pressing issues. Look at all those blue gradient bars. What do they remind you of? Perhaps a selected item in the iTunes' source list, or an item in the Finder's source list? What's the difference? These items are not selected, someone just thought it would be cool if they had a gradient blue background. Bad UI design point number one, don't make two items visually the same but give them different meanings."   continued ...   (Via ThinkMac)

Usability is child's play

If a child can do it, everyone can. Some good design tips ...

"Almost every programmer, analyst and designer thinks that user interface design is a piece of cake. This is almost true: designing a poor user interface is easy; designing a good one is much trickier. To see why, you can look at something as simple as a child’s mechanical toy.

In our house a favourite object is the toy cash till, which looks like this: (image below)

Even if you present users with an instruction manual it’s likely to go unread, at least before they use it for the first time. The poor users then have to guess what happens when they do X, and somehow relate this to what they actually want to do (which usually isn’t to explore your program). As learning the program isn’t what they actually want to do (unlike e.g. write a letter) they probably won’t be keen to devote a lot of time to it. Add to this physical problems like response times (has it crashed?) and limited screen resolution and eyesight, and it gets quite tricky."   continued ...   (Via Thinking About Computers)

Users, activities, practices etc.

Almost a philosophical discussion of approaches to Human-Computer Interaction ...

"For the past month or so, I've been working with a brilliant psychologist on a design project and trying to understand the privilege accorded to psychology in human-computer interaction. My colleague is perhaps the archetypal user-centred researcher and designer, and we share many common assumptions and interests. But we also come from different academic cultures and we bring fundamentally different ideas to the table.

My interest in human-computer interaction began with an interest in how humans were being defined. In broader terms, I was interested in the cultures and practices of HCI and design. Very quickly I learned that psychology and/or mental models were the dominant paradigms; Kuhn's normal science in action. So, from my perspective, activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modelling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding."   continued ...   (Via purse lip square jaw)

Information scent: helping people find the content they want

A new concept to enhance Usability - Information Scents ...

"Enabling people to find the specific information they require amongst the hundreds and thousands of other pieces of content available on a site can be a difficult task.

Most research into the way users navigate a site reveals that people follow one path and then, when that doesn't provide the information they require, they retrace their steps using the back button, until they find another suitable path to follow. Users can find this process frustrating and after following a couple of unsuccessful attempts, give up on a site.

Much is made of the importance of clear navigation headings and adherence to the three-click rule, but there is another largely under-employed, cheap and simple technique that has a more positive impact on the usability of a site.

This article introduces the concept of information scent and explains how creating strong information scents enables users to confidently step through a site and find the information they require."   continued ...   (Via KM Column)

On Tweaking

An insightful article with lots of examples of "tweaking" a design to increase Usability ...

"Sometimes, design is about fixing old things; Updating products that fell behind the times, or addressing problems in rev 1 so rev 2 will work better. And sometimes, design is about explosions of creativity; Entirely new user paradigms dreamed up in a flaming burst of muse-driven box-leaving stratospheric glory. The first is easiest, done the most, and pays the most consistently. It is the bread and butter of the design consulting world. The second is tricky, inconsistently solvent at best, and the lucky claim of only a small portion of practicing designers. But, like so many things, there is a middle ground. Simple changes that produce a difference, subtle at first glance, which in reality, alter completely the effectiveness of a product. This is the black art of the Tweak.

Tweaking is all about finding the hinges of a product's usability and stacking the features so the functionality tips into something entirely new. We're not talking about lasers on everything, or anything that drastic. Sometimes, the best tweak can be a little more metal here and there, or the movement of a feature by 90 degrees."   continued ...   (Via IDFuel)

RGB LED slims for colourful backlighting

Color coding will add another dimension to the User Interface opportunities ...

"Agilent Technologies has introduced the industry's thinnest top-firing tricolour surface-mount LED (light-emitting diode), intended primarily for backlighting and status indicators in ultrathin feature-rich mobile phones and PDAs.

The new top-firing LED, in addition to Agilent's recently announced side-firing LEDs, permits handset and PDA designers to mix separate red, green and blue light sources in any combination.

In handsets and other handheld devices, separate colours can indicate incoming SMS (short messaging system) messages, e-mail and stock news.

They can even identify different callers."   continued ...   (Via ElectronicsTalk)

Designing From the User's Experience

Getting our terms straight: User Experience, Usability, user-centered design ...

"Analyzing customer needs and market trends are essential competencies for managing complex design projects. However, after confirming user needs through market research, design teams often focus on the product, neglecting users until completing the product, or at best, usability testing. From consumer goods to websites, many design-driven projects limit front-end analysis to market research, focus groups, or concept demonstrations. While these approaches are necessary, they overlook the opportunity for designing from understanding the user’s authentic experience.

Innovation emerges from truly understanding the fit between product and person. The understanding of real experience with a product and its fit to a lifestyle, affords insight into product and interaction design, feature priorities, and adoption cycles. For many years in the software product industry, we encouraged this type of research only in the form of early usability testing. As design and research methods have evolved, we now hear of user experience. People working in the field often suggest use of the more inclusive term “user experience” instead of “usability,” or “user-centered design.”

The notion of user experience has advanced quickly, encompassing multiple disciplines and interests. Some authors, such as McCarthy and Wright1, note how user experience has followed the usability tradition. That is, we have learned from usability to invest attention to the user’s total experience that includes the product, but is really centered on experience. “User experience” has arrived, survived its challenges, and is expanding its market. Hopefully we intend to really focus on our users and their experience, and not merely design products by adding some user involvement.

The recently organized UX Network (www.uxnet.org) articulates a clear definition, emphasizing the umbrella function offered by User Experience."   continued ...   (Via DMI)

Success with user-centered design management

A great list of principles for implementing user-centered design management ...

"With the proliferation of digital products, including computers, desktop and Web-based applications, and mobile and embedded devices, the quality of the user experience (UX) has become one of the key determinants in the success of competing products. Productivity, entertainment, and business-application programs for non-technical users in particular must have "intuitive" interfaces.

Successful user interface design requires:

• multidisciplinary product development teams
• designers who can mediate between management, marketing, and
development, and negotiate good resolutions of design issues
• designers who can shepherd products to their completion

At conferences, UX professionals typically hear about the process of user-centered design or how to design a particular type of product or feature, but rarely hear about how to facilitate the inclusion of design management in the product development cycle and successfully ship a well-designed product."   continued ...   (Via uiGarden)

Methods - Making use of user research

The need for both Usability Testing and Ethnographic Research ...

"Designing or redesigning a product often feels like a risky proposition, especially in today's business climate. Those responsible for defining the product offering and marketing want reliable, measurable data to define success both incrementally and overall.

Hard data helps us make choices about where to spend resources, but placing a product under the microscope every step of the way can also introduce as many opportunities for error as it avoids. By focusing on how a product performs in the lab without broader knowledge of the user's environment and goals, measurement alone may be misleading. To get the most value and meaning out of user feedback it is important to choose the appropriate method for conducting and analyzing user research.

User research can be roughly broken down into two types: usability testing and ethnographic field research. Many people are already familiar with usability testing, and many companies make use of it during development. However, ethnographic field research can yield valuable results for improving products that can't be easily measured by usability testing."   continued ...   (Via uiGarden)

Apple's mouse goes Mighty

Usability of Mighty Mouse features scrolling vertically, horizontally and even diagonally ...

Dubbed Mighty Mouse, the new $49 pointer has a 360-degree scroll wheel and can be programmed to recognize a click on either the left or right side. For Apple purists, it can also act as a single-button mouse.

The design itself is similar to that of the current Mac mouse, with the white plastic case not immediately revealing itself to have multiple buttons. Touch sensors, rather than actual buttons, can detect a right or left click. As for the other changes, the small trackball peeks out the top, and two other, slightly grayish buttons can be squeezed on the side of the mouse. The side buttons can be programmed to get one-click access to 10.4.2 Tiger operating system features such as Spotlight and Dashboard, the company said."   continued ...   (Via CNET)

RoboLase: Real-time Cell Surgery via Internet

Notice the User Interface and amount of control offered by this innovation ...

"The University of California, Irvine reports that scientists from the University of Queensland were able to perform surgical holes on a cell located in Southern California laboratory. The collaborative effort between UC Irvine, UC San Diego and the University of Queensland employed the RoboLase software."   continued ...   (Via MedGadget)

Toshiba 3D display adds realism to images

Some interesting User Interface Designs will emerge from this development, a la Star Wars ...

"Display technology which allows 3D images to be seen on a flatbed display has been developed by Toshiba, supposedly offering a "realistic touch of depth," reports Nikkei.

Toshiba said that viewers feel odd when shown the 3D images that stand out on the board. The images themselves actually only stand out about a few centimeters from the surface of the display but give the illusion of being larger than they are. Toshiba thinks that through the use of stereoscopic images on the flatbed display, seemingly more realistic in nature to other 3D displays, "3D displays will change from something interesting into a must have tool."

The flatbed uses both software and hardware to help the display look more natural. The display projects multiple images of the same object as seen from different angles, and so allows viewers to see 3D images without the need for geeky special glasses. Apparently, the display can project 12 or 16 horizontal images of an object."   continued ...   (Via The Inquirer)

Color Theory for the Color-Blind

An excellent overview of color blindness along with recommendations for designers ...

"Being color-blind can be a real obstacle for anyone involved in design. For Web designers, this does not need to be true. In any other field of design, it is expected that the designer has a keen eye for colors. It is generally assumed that you need to “just feel” when colors look good together and when they don’t. You should just be able to see them and say “Yeah, that looks good,” or “That looks really bad.” This is a fair expectation if you’re working with paint or ink. However, colors take on a new dimension when our work is based on computers: hexadecimal code.

By understanding the science and logic behind color theory, I—and other color-blind designers—can intellectually know why colors go well together or don’t. We don’t have to actually see them. If we extend our knowledge to why certain colors make us feel the way they do, we can also create very emotional color schemes, without actually seeing the colors.

I’m going to give a brief overview of color theory and provide practical advice for the color-blind designer. But first, if you would indulge me, I’d like to brief you on what color blindness is."   continued ...   (Via Digital Web Magazine)

[something]-centered design

There is no one way for User Interface Design? ...

"As I mentioned in my last post on Tracing Genres, author Clay Spinuzzi levels two critiques at the user-centered design community:

1. Designers, in their efforts to incorporate users into the design process, end up treating users like victims, oppressed by technology.
2. Typical design processes diagnose and analyze organizations from one perspective, offering solutions at only that perspective.

As Livia pointed out, the timing of my post coincided with a recent article published by UX luminary Donald Norman on his site jnd.org. Peter Merholz and Andrew Otwell responded on their respective blogs. Both come-backs, if I may paraphrase, draw back the curtain to reveal very little behind Norman’s approach. Merholz indicates that Activity-Centered Design is nothing new, and points to Spinuzzi’s Tracing Genres itself as an example of activity theory applied to design. Activity theory, says Merholz, “has emerged as perhaps the second most important theoretical platform in human-computer interaction research, after cognitive psychology.” And though he doesn’t like the approach, he does like Norman’s escalation of questioning UCD “dogma.”   continued ...   (Via Greenonions.com)

Friendstr: UI Case Study

This is a User Interface analysis of a popular site compared to Flickr and Basecamp ...

"In 2004 Friendster got the first of several additions and revamps to deal with its booming popularity. The underpinnings moved to a faster PHP-based dynamic system, and new features were added such as groups, horoscopes, job searches, chat functions, and photo albums. Jumping on the blogging bandwagon, Friendster brokered a deal with Six Apart to incorporate TypePad-powered weblogs into their service.

The interface design, on the other hand, was, and is, pretty haphazard. There were plenty of boxes-within-boxes with outlines and gutters, perfect examples of Edward Tufte's visual rule that 1+1=3, because the eye perceives the space between boxes as an object as well. The links and buttons are uniformly tiny. Aesthetically, it's less grey-on-grey than it used to be, but it's no beauty, either - it certainly doesn't match up to the design, and promise, of the splash page. At the time, it was a 1.0, we were forgiving, and the novelty and value from the service outweighed its shortcomings.

First off, the biggest complaint I have with it is the circa-2001, liquid-layout paradigm which makes the placement of user interface items random, depending on how wide your window is. It doesn't let you see more information, as with expanding a window on your desktop, it just creates more whitespace."   continued ...   (Via King Marketing)

Ajax Mistakes

The more options, the more opportunity for Usability errors ...

"Ajax is an awesome technology that is driving a new generation of web apps, from maps.google.com to colr.org to backpackit.com. But Ajax is also a dangerous technology for web developers, its power introduces a huge amount of UI problems as well as server side state problems and server load problems.

I've compiled a list of the many mistakes developers using Ajax often make. Javascript itself is a dangerous UI technology, but I've tried to keep the list to problems particular to Ajax development:

1. Not giving immediate visual cues for clicking widgets.
2. Breaking the back button
3. Changing state with links (GET requests)
4. And several more."   continued ...   (Via Alex Bosworth's Weblog)

Web 2.0 as the Era of Interfaces

Several good articles about Web 2.0 and User Interface opportunities ...

"You know you have trouble when people start calling something a “buzzword” and a lot of folks have been calling “Web 2.0″ a buzzword lately. I don’t think it is one, or rather I think that what it refers to is a real thing. If we end up calling it something else, that’s fine, but I believe that we’re seeing a huge shift right now: to the Era of Interfaces. (which may or may not be a buzzword in itself).

In this Era of Interfaces:

• There are two kinds of interfaces: interaction interfaces and programming interfaces
• The Interface is where Innovation Finds Value
• Attention is scarce, and therefore highly valuable
• There is a tension between centralizing knowledge and decentralizing knowledge
• Attention is not Automation
• People have little time to learn
• Fast Clarity is crucial
• Your Interface is your product
• You need to give up control in order to keep it"

   continued ...   (Via Bokardo)

No Go Blues

A small but irritating UI feature ...

"I have experienced this terrible feature in so many sites (including Google's Gmail): A drop-down menu that executes when you select an item from the list (as opposed to select and click the 'Go' button). How does it hamper usability of a website? Read on: 1) It is so easy to select the wrong choice. If there is a 'Go' button, you can always retract and correct your choice. 2) On some sites, when you select an item, the respective page loads but the window focus is still in the drop-down. If you use the scroll-wheel on your mouse, it scrolls the item list in the drop-down, changes your choice, and leaves you with, 'WTF did I do just now?' Please have the 'Go' button. Please."   continued ...   (Via Usability Watch India)

Sentence or Title Case for Labels?

Odd ISO rules, but whatever you do, be consistant ...

"For those few of us who are deeply interested in forms, there’s nothing so fascinating as a subtle detail. Like, for example, the question that appeared in my email in-box earlier this month.

Martin McGuire wrote to me to ask 'How labels/captions for forms should be formatted'. As he points out, the ISO-9241 part 17 standard seems to recommend that the first letter of the word only is capitalised: It says that you should use: "Initial upper-case (capital) letter for field labels: To facilitate readability, the text field labels begin with an upper-case letter.

So, for example, the client’s labels are like this (taking a random selection): First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, Email Address.

Whereas ISO 9241-17 would recommend labels like this: First name, Last name, Date of birth, Email address."   continued ...   (Via Usability News)

Quotes on the importance of Design !

A great list of quotes for User Interface Design ...

"In doing research for a DevTelevision.com segment on user interface design I found a collection of uotes on the importance of UI Design, the best are included here.

“[Users] said they were more likely to believe Web sites that looked professionally designed.”
—Stanford Web Credibility Study, 2002

“Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.”
—Tom Peters, 2003

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
—Steve Jobs, 2003

“Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability — they should go hand in hand.”
—Donald Norman, 2003"   continued ...   (Via JoeOn.net)

INTERACT 2005

"The INTERACT '05 conference will highlight to both the academic and industrial world the importance of the Human-Computer Interaction area and its most recent breakthroughs on current applications."