The Designer Who Made the Mac Smile

An old but interesting article about the MAC UI and how the icons were developed ...

"Much junk food has been eaten and many caffeine-laden drinks have been consumed. The code is almost complete. Then suddenly, someone realizes that the new software program will be used by people, not programmers, and not too much thought has been given to its public face.

That is often when the phone rings at Susan Kare's San Francisco studio. It is where Ms. Kare, who designed the signature icons of the Macintosh (the moving watch, the paintbrush and, of course, the trash can) as well as most of the icons in Microsoft's Windows 3.0 program, spins the threads of her imagination onto the computer screen, and thence around the world.

Her goal is to help software writers improve the overall "look and feel" of their products, from the borders on the overlapping windows to the drop-down menus.

But her bread and butter are the tiny electronic images known as icons that computer users click on dozens of times a day."   continued ...   (Via CyberTimes)

Mac Icons.

Interface Design Sketchbook

Just a sample of what other UI designers go through to create a good design ...

A lot of thought goes in before a design comes out. eBay User Experience & Design project management system."   continued ...   (Via Functioning Form)

eBay Sketch.

Modes And The Office 12 UI

A good analysis of the use of modes in Office 12 ...

"As soon as I saw the new Office 12 interface I questioned why you would add modes to a user interface when modes are so frowned on in usability - particularly by Jef Raskin. I was immediately banging my head against the table with the thought that to do anything in the new Office I'd have to figure out which mode the functionality was hidden under instead of just working with the menu categories that I was used to (no better than the ribbon modes but at least I'm used to them). Then I watched Scoble's video about the new office interface and felt a little better - hey, they've got a ton of user data to back them up, people do seem to work in different modes with Word and now the user interface matches the user model. Something just kept bugging me about it though.

This morning I came up with a theory of what I think is wrong. I think the Office team is right, people do use different modes when working with Office, and in fact software in general."   continued ...   (Via Symphonious)

Contextual Tabs.

Full-screen Pocket PC keyboard app lets fingers type

This might help to solve the small input device problems with usability ...

"Spb Software House is shipping a major upgrade of its full-screen keyboard application for Pocket PCs. Spb Full Screen Keyboard 3.0 supports Windows Mobile 5.0, and features an ergonomic keyboard layout along with a "self-learning algorithm" that dramatically reduce the number of typos, according to the Russian company.

Full Screen Keyboard covers the entire Pocket PC screen area, and has keys large enough to be typed with finger-tips rather than with a stylus, according to Spb. The company says that extensive usability testing has shown that the leading cause of typos, when typing with thumbs, is a user's individual typing manner along with device-specific screen-press handling. To remedy this, the company says it developed an algorithm that "learns" a user's typing style over time, and compensates accordingly."   continued ...   (Via WindowsForDevices)

Spb Keyboard.

Patterns Occur at all Levels

Good points on Patterns from a series of articles ...

"Lesson five from the 9 Lessons from 9 Years of Interface Design retrospective: Patterns Occur at all Levels.

“As you move from project to project, interface designs begin to reveal patterns on multiple levels. Application, module, and function level patterns provide a great opportunity to leverage past successes and may ultimately allow you to develop a library of proven design solutions. Of course, not all patterns are a perfect fit. Most evolve over time and are best used to jump start the design process.” –Interface Design Pattern Levels, Functioning Form, 2004

In order to maximize the value of patterns, designers need to be aware of common design opportunities and limitations at both macro and micro levels."   continued ...   (Via Functioning Form)

Visual Symbols.

A Natural History of the @ Sign: Part One

A great definition and description of the @ Sign with it's name in various languages ...

The "@" symbol. . . used by grocers and accountants throughout the English-speaking world to indicate a rate, or cost per unit, as in "10 gal @ $3.95/gal" [ten gallons at three dollars and ninety-five cents per gallon] has become the de facto delimiter in e-mail addresses, separating the user's name from the domain name.

Although the change from at meaning "for a given amount per" to at meaning "in a specified (electronic) location" comes fairly naturally to English speakers, it does not for native speakers of other languages, for whom neither "at" nor @ meant anything until e-mail came around.

Indeed, a fair number of internet users live in countries that don't use the same alphabet English does (Japan, China, former republics of the Soviet Union including Russia, and Arabic-speaking countries, to name some major ones), and where the keyboards did not conveniently include the @ character until after it's widespread use on the internet made it a necessity."   continued ...   (Via Herodios)

Email use of @ sign.

Menus and Dialogs and Office, Oh My!

Insight into the logic used in Microsoft UI decisions ...

"OK, I've found myself in the midst of what has become a really interesting discussion over here. I started writing a response in the "comments" section there, and it got very long, so I'm moving it over here. I encourage you to go read the thread from the beginning, especially if you are into user interface design. This conversation started as a critique of the Office 12 user interface, which has been drastically reworked in this release.

Soeren, you have many interesting ideas. You could argue that in the earlier days of Office, with OLE used for many embedded objects, they were sort of doing exactly what you said: have a separate application for various things. Context menus (i.e. right-clicking) is also the same general notion.

The Office team has experiemented with all sorts of twists on this over the years. Early on in any product development cycle, they prototype several different approaches and test them out. They especially do this when they are biting off a major re-vamps of the UI -- which fortunately doesn't happen very often.

Let me throw something else out here for you to chew on: an alternate explanation to why cascading menus are only effective for 2 levels of depth. It turns out that studies show a strikingly similar effect for file/folder hierarchies: most people,when left to their own devices, never go beyond two levels of depth of folder hierarchies. And it correlates very highly with math/science/technical education: the more your education in those areas, the more likely you are to have deeper folder hierarchies."   continued ...   (Via Kevin Schofield's Weblog)

Context Menu.

Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide

A good list of suggestions for creating passionate users for those working in Big Companies ...

"It's one thing to talk about--and execute--a user-focused approach when you're a small company or an independent contractor. But what if you are, in fact, a fish in a sea as vast as, say, Microsoft? Can you hope to make a difference? Or does working at the "DarkStar" suck the soul from any employee with a passionate users bent?

I spent yesterday at Microsoft. And yes, it was on a "passionate users" mission -- something even my teenage daughter found hilarious given the Microsoft we all know and love to hate. But the day was a string of surprises and challenged assumptions (starting with finding Liz Lawley in my workshop (someone I'd never met but long admired), and ending with meeting some amazing MS guys including Furrygoat's Steve Mafosky, Shawn Morrissey, and Lou (whose-last-name-I-forgot)).

It's so tempting to say that anyone who really cares that much about users ought to get the hell out of the big company. I know, having done my time at Sun. But I'd forgotten how to see Microsoft as something other than a Big Company. I'd forgotten (or never recognized) that it's a collection of individual people, and no matter how entrenched the company's views, policies, practices, values, bureaucracy, etc. are, there are motivated, smart, caring, creative people who work there."   continued ...   (Via Creating Passionate Users)

Subvert from within large companies.

Making Systems, Tools, Products, and Environments User-Friendly - Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 49th Annual Meeting

Presentations highlight research and applications on making systems, tools, products, and environments user-friendly The HFES 49th Annual Meeting, to be held September 26-30, 2005, at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando, Florida, showcases the work of hundreds of human factors/ergonomics researchers, designers, engineers, and other professionals who focus on making systems, tools, products, and environments safer and more effective.

Sessions and papers will cover current issues such as homeland security, patient safety, driver distraction, automation, simulation and training, human performance modeling, computer systems, and usability methods and techniques."   continued ...   (Via Medical News Today)

The 2-faced mouse

A new idea for presenters. But does it have wider application like games?

"Forget everything you know about your mouse... this is the DOUBLE-FACED mouse, used in both head and tail configuration! As you can see, it's wireless, and you can hold it like you would hold a remote control, and when you turn it upside down, all you need to do is move your thumb over the optical sensor, just like on the trackpoint on a laptop. A really good idea for the Media Center users or if you're running demo's far away from your PC."   continued ...   (Via Akihabara News)

Double Faced Mouse.

VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality

A platform for new User Experience and User Interface Design concepts ...

"VirtuSphere provides a mechnical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking.

The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment. Sensors under the sphere provide subject speed and direction to the computer running the simulation. Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator."   continued ...   (Via Technovelgy)

VirtuSphere.

Are handsets suitable for e-books?

Talk about a usability problem - read a book on your phone ...

"An announcement from HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishers, that it will offer free chapter summaries direct to consumer's handsets in Australia started me thinking about the viability of the mobile handset as an e-book platform. The technology, of course, already exists - storing and reading large volumes of text is possible on most of today's mid-range and high-end handsets. The real question is whether the more fundamental aspects of reading text in the mobile environment are conducive to a good user experience.

Handheld computer manufacturers have been promoting their products as e-book platforms for many years now. There are obvious similarities in form-factor between PDAs and traditional paperbacks, but early attempts fell some way short of recreating the relaxing experience of reading a 'real' book. There were problems with the weighting and balance of the devices, which made them uncomfortable to hold in the hand for long periods of time, the legibility of text on the screen and the ergononic aspects of locating hardware scrolling buttons for flipping the digital pages.

It is these sort of problems which pose the greatest challenge to reading e-books on a mobile device, even more so on phones than PDAs. Issues such as storage capacity, digital rights management and the download process are overcome relatively easy with the latest technology. The human factors which determine whether an experience is enjoyable are more complex."   continued ...   (Via PMN)

Reading a book on a phone.

Tell Time the New-Fashioned Way

Now here is a usability wonder. A candidate for the usability hall of shame? ...

"Ever wonder why you never see a grandfather clock on Star Trek? The reason is the TIX LED clock. Sporting the oblongular dimensions of 10-inches x 3-inches, even your Klingon friends will feel at home reading the time as if they were prisoners on the Starship Enterprise. Split into three panels, time is read depending on how many LED units are illuminated. So the clocks above, for instance, read 12:34. Looks simple enough, but we’re not sure how AM and PM factor into this baby."   continued ...   (Via Gizmodo)

A test for users everywhere.

Formatting: An Act In Three Plays

Another good article in the Office 12 User Interface Design series ...

"One challenge that some people have raised against a gallery-based approach to formatting is that "all of the documents are going to look the same."

In today's episode, I'll explain why I'm not overly concerned about this and in the process share with you something we've learned about how people approach beautifying documents that I like to call "Three Stage Formatting."

A pleasure of working at a place with the resources of Microsoft is that our relatively small UI team has access to a team of researchers and usability engineers that can help us frame questions and find out the answers to them. And not just through the well-known "one way mirror usability test" either. An innovative new UI has required innovative usability and research practices as well--in a future set of articles I'll describe some of these techniques or perhaps even get a guest writer to chime in."   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Microsoft Office12.

Footnotes

It's worth looking at these articles if you use footnotes ...

"This isn’t exactly news, so if you’ve already read all you want about the footnotes John Gruber uses at Daring Fireball, skip this. In case you missed these posts from a couple of months ago, John Gruber talks about his use of footnotes in About the Footnotes, Joe Clark responds in There’s no such thing as a footnote, and Richard Rutter does a bit of analysis in Gruber’s footnotes."   continued ...   (Via 456 Berea Street)

Use of footnotes.

Results-Oriented Design (Galleries: Part 3 of 3)

A good continuation of Office 12 User Interface Design ...

"Over the last few days, I've explained some of the major capabilities of the gallery control in Office 12 and shown how we use it to make formatting objects easy. Today, I want to write about how we use galleries in Office 12 to make the entire product--not just applying visual styles--easier to use.

Office has this fantastic templates web site where people download millions of resumes, form letters, newsletters, greeting cards, and all kinds of different starter documents. One of the things we did early in the design of the new UI was to download a number of our most popular templates (as well as look at templates from other products) and try to learn why they were popular. One of the most obvious things that jumped out at us was that most of the templates used the product in more depth than the average person. For example, many templates rely heavily on text boxes and pictures that have the text wrap around them in order to get a polished effect. Yet, in the usability lab, we found many people unable to perform this seemingly straightforward and common task.

It turns out that moving a picture to the upper-right corner of a page and having text wrap around it is a pretty involved task. Not because the commands or concepts involved are themselves too complicated, but because you need to know how to synthesize a set of unrelated commands and settings together in order to get the desired result."   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Office 12 Templates.

Interview with Peter Morville

A great interview about findability and search engines ...

“Findability will eventually be recognized as a central and defining challenge in the development of web sites, intranets, knowledge management systems and online communities.” – Peter Morville

I recently had the opportunity to participate in an online interview with Peter Morville regarding his new book “Ambient Findability”. Morville, information architect evangelist and Founder of Semantic Studios (http://www.semanticstudios.com ), identifies connections between wayfinding, nanotechnology, evolutionary psychology, librarianship, authority, and information literacy for their power to guide us toward making informed decisions. In a world filled with ubiquitous computing, wireless interdependent networks and applications, the user context is hard to predict. According to Morville, it is not enough to concentrate on usability, but important to evaluate a company’s findability. Findability plays a key role in the user experience. If you can’t find it, you can’t use it. "   continued ...   (Via Infonomia)

Human Factors Methods for Design: Making Systems Human-Centered



Check-out more books at Usernomics.

Special on Karen A. Schriver

A great interview with insights into Information Design ...

"Regularly, InfoDesign interviews a thought leader in the design industry, focusing on people who are identified with or show strong sensibilities to the design of information and experiences. This time, Peter J. Bogaards interviews Karen A. Schriver.

Karen is the author of Dynamics in Document Design: Creating texts for readers (John Wiley, 1997), an extensive, multidimensional portrait of what readers need from documents and of ways to integrate word and image in order to better meet those needs. She is the former co-director of the graduate program in technical communication and document design at Carnegie Mellon University. Her company, KSA Document Design and Research, helps organizations improve the quality of their paper and electronic communications through strategies based on research and best practices. When she is not writing, working with clients, or running to catch a plane, she spends time playing with her two crazy dogs: Cody (a Bearded Collie) and Tika (a little Muttley). She can be contacted via e-mail at kschriver at earthlink dot net."   continued ...   (Via InfoDesign)

Human Factors Methods for Design: Making Systems Human-Centered



Check-out more books at Usernomics.

Standard dozen may become mobile past

A new keypad for cell phones ...

"One of the most familiar technologies we use today may be on the verge of being replaced. The twelve-button design common on most mobile phones the world over and the standard for over 50 years, may finally disappear as new technologies like 3G require easier data usage from our handsets.

Or so says David Levy, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Digit Wireless, creators and patent holder for the new "Fastap" keypad. He believes that in the light of 3G advances and ever-greater access to data-sending technology, the time is right for a new design for our outmoded keypad. "It's one of the oldest pieces of technology that we still use," explains Levy. "We don't consider how it has aged because it is so pervasive. But from a technology standpoint the inside of the phone has advanced tremendously and the outside of the phone, the interface, has not."

The design itself, based on the old twelve-pad keypad but with letters on their own buttons interspaced between the number keys ("a traditional keypad on steroids"), is both faster to use and easier to understand for consumers, says Levy. Furthermore, if the current standard twelve-button keypad were to be launched on the market today it would be rejected, he says. "If you told people that you had to press this one key over and over again just to get the letter 'b', people would reject that idea completely. It's just a bad interface."

Levy should know a thing or two about ergonomics and user-friendliness within the electronics sector. It was when he was head of Portable Device Ergonomics at Apple Computer for five years that Apple introduced its first laptop with the keyboard "moved to the rear" and the first with a touch pad - both having since become industry standards for portable computers. "The whole focus of this technology is to be 'Apple-like'," Levy goes on to say. "It has to be extremely simple so that any individual is able to pick it up and use it and I believe it meets that criteria. There are a lot of different approaches that significantly change the design of the phone or change the way you input text. But this is an amplification of what we already have. That simple change seems to be dramatically increasing the data usage and messaging usage of people who would otherwise not do it."   continued ...   (Via China Daily)

The Fastap Keypad.

Progress in Search: A Conversational User Interface (CUI) by 2015?

A great interview about the present state of search and it's future direction ...

"Ron Kaplan, Director of Natural Language Research, Palo Alto Research Center and Marti Hearst, Professor, SIMS, UC Berkeley; Science Advisor for Search, Yahoo! spoke on the state of natural language interfaces for search.

Synopsis: Kaplan says we're at the level where where it's like talking to a one-year-old today. What's desired is something more akin to conversing with "an intelligent research assistant." He adds, "It's not just about search. How do we interact with the world of ubiquitous computing [talking to remotes, your fridge, your car, sensors of all kinds, etc]? They'll be useful to extent we can have natural conversations." His prediction: "We'll be at 8-year-old level in 2010. In the [classic] hockeystick curve, I'm going to claim we're at the inflection point."

Marti Hearst claims that a well thought out user interface itself can help guide people and speaks about the role of inference: "What will people want to do next based on other people who had same question?" She's even more optimistic: "Shouldn't online travel agencies be more like a travel agent? Maybe we'll be there in about 4 years. And a pretty good desktop assistant? I'd say 5 years because there is a lot of government research in this area."   continued ...   (Via Future Salon)

Where will they be in 2010?

Persuasive Technology

Paper submission deadine: November 15, 2005 ...

"Can computers help fight obesity? Can technology motivate you to waste less energy? Can communication devices help overcome racial prejudice? Can a virtual agent persuade you to break your smoking habit? Can a mobile phone help you study? Can a robot challenge you to perform rehabilitation exercises?

PERSUASIVE 06 is aimed at exploring technology in the service of human well-being, within the broader context of a socially and ecologically sustainable society. Join academic researchers, designers, and technology developers from around the world in investigating the potential of persuasive technologies to positively affect human attitudes and behaviour.

The goal of PERSUASIVE 06 is to bring together a multidisciplinary group of social scientists studying persuasion, and engineers developing persuasive technologies in areas such as health and rehabilitation, housing, information and communication, and energy conservation, so they can meet, share experiences, present research, and exchange ideas."

Experiencing design. What were they thinking? (20 Sep 2005)

An excellent HCI document from the British HCI Group (PDF) ...

"Interface designers can often gain insight from past efforts to solve a problem. Imagine that I’ve been asked to design a new interface for some task, to replace an existing interface. I might find that my user population is a small group of experts who have only limited time to meet with me to talk about the new design effort. Design documents for the existing interface are nowhere to be found. Whatever the reasons for the lack of information, it’s useful for several reasons to analyse the existing interface: it may improve my understanding of the task; it will have flaws and shortcomings to avoid in a future design; it may suggest partial solutions that I hadn’t considered.

This kind of analysis is a staple of HCI research and practice, and yet it is by no means easy to work backward from a finished artifact to the designer’s rationale."   continued ...   (Via Usability Views)

British HCI Group.

Build quick, slick Web sites

Building faster and better Web sites with XHTML and CSS ...

"For the past two years, the industry has inundated you with messages that you've reached a new plateau in high-speed connectivity. Around 25 percent of the world's computer users now have at least a cable modem or DSL connection; of course, this implies that speed is no longer an issue. And, as such, throwing huge images or Flash movies on to a Web site is now fine! I mean, if everyone has all this bandwidth, why not use it?

Personally, I've always been able to use just about all the bandwidth I can get. With my mail application constantly polling my IMAP server while I download the latest version of Firefox, update my forum on IBM developerWorks, and surf, I still find myself waiting on pages to load. And, I still get annoyed by a site that seems slow, despite the amazing connectivity we're all supposed to have. Does any of this sound familiar? If it does, then it's time to be proactive: Assume people are just as annoyed when your site is slow, and then strive to fix it. Hopefully, if enough people start to write solid Web code, this waiting around will soon be a thing of the past (at least, as long as you don't land on that Flash newbie's site, complete with a 250 MB opening movie sequence!).

This article offers you a great start to building fast and slick Web sites. I picked a few things that the average site designer or developer usually doesn't use, but will find effective, as well as features that bring more benefits than you realize. Adjusting to these new techniques might take time, but your end result will almost certainly be a happier customer (which often turns into revenue, in one form or another)."   continued ...   (Via IBM / Brett McLaughlin)

Making Web sites load faster.

Web 2.0? Why Should We Care?

A definition and discussion of Web 2.0 plus a series of links to articles ...

"If you've been following the latest developments in Web publishing, design and development, then you've certainly heard about "Web 2.0."

It's a term that is, in most cases anyway, meant to define the bleeding edge of Web technology, best practices and implementation. Depending on who's using the term, you could be talking about the Web as a platform for applications, a philosophy in building and designing Web applications, a group of powerful Web technologies, and much more.

You can find the generally accepted "official" definition on Wikipedia.

"Web 2.0" as a term, in other words, is pretty meaningless. And yet, many people are talking about it—and you will only hear more about Web 2 dot 0."   continued ...   (Via Publish)

An extended definition.

Why software sucks

A good article about ways and means to make software usable ...

"No one makes bad software on purpose. No benevolent programmer has ever sat down, planning out weeks of work, with the intention of frustrating people and making them cry. Bad software, or bad anything, happens because making things is hard, making good things doubly so. The three things that make it difficult are:

• Possessing the diverse skills needed not to suck.
• Understanding who you’re making the thing for.
• Orchestrating the interplay of skills, egos and constraints over the course of the time required to make the thing.

Individually these challenges are significant, but combined they create a wall of suck so high that few people can see the top, much less throw anything over to the other side."   continued ...   (Via scottberkun)

And where the twain shall meet.

Playing on the 'ooh' factor / Apple's new iPod Nano elicits consumer lust with its sleek, clever, touchable design

Creating a User Experience through simplicity ...

"Laverne Francis took one look at the sleek new iPod Nano and was smitten.

"This one is really thin, it's really sexy, it has color, it shows you pictures of the albums, and I want one,'' said Francis, 27, after checking out the display models inside Apple Computer's downtown San Francisco store.

"It really has become a product that has transcended technology,'' said Nicolas Aparicio, executive creative director for Landor Associates, a San Francisco design and branding consulting firm. "They've connected with their audience on an emotional level. Even the tactile feel of it is appealing."   continued ...   (Via SFGate)

A new user experience.

Visualize Whirled Peas (Galleries: Part 2 of 3)

A coninuation of Office 12 capabilities and the user interface design ...

"Yesterday, I started discussing the "gallery", which is a new control that appears throughout the Office 12 user interface. Today, I want to discuss the most obvious use of galleries in Office 12: choosing visual styles. The underlying graphics engine of Office has undergone a substantial upgrade in Office 12. If you've seen the charts and diagrams demoed online or in the PDC keynote, you've seen some of the possibilities. The quality of the graphics you can make are just dramatically better. (I find myself thinking: "is this really Office?" It's some really eye-popping stuff.) But, we knew that we'd be wasting all of these new capabilities if we didn't provide an interface to help people produce beautiful results without having to understand how many pixels they should offset a drop shadow, or where the light should precisely hit a 3D object. Hence, the gallery:"   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

New capabilities add to the user experience.

Research Discovers That Phones Are Phones

As features get added to cell phones, does usability and user experience get degraded? ...

"Only 17% of those with a mobile use their phone for anything other than to make calls or send text messages on a daily basis, avoiding the more complex features available according to research from Mobeon.

The NOP Omnibus survey interviewed 999 nationally representative adults in Great Britain aged 15+ via telephone between 26-28 August, 2005 was conducted on behalf of Stockholm based mobile messaging company Mobeon. It found that, on a daily basis, advanced services such as call diverts, picture galleries, calendars, MMS, email or web access are left untouched by all but 17% of mobile users.

Mobeon concludes that, although the services may be clearly explained in accompanying manuals, users often do not understand the purpose of additional services and therefore do not feel any need to learn how to use them."   continued ...   (Via 160Characters)

Increased features = decreased usability?

Windows MCE on Vista

A new interface design featuring tanslucent everything ...

"This came out last week, but it’s still interesting enough to take a peek at. You’re looking at a sample of Windows Media Center Edition on Visita. MS is taking the whole “translucent bezel” idea to its obvious conclusion: “translucent everything.” Sure, you can do it, guys, but SHOULD you do it.

I played a bit more with Vista last week and saw some of the good and bad sides of the new OS. Graphically, OSX wins hands down. In terms of productivity, however, IE 7 and Office 12 are looking pretty hot. I’m not going to switch back any time soon, but it’s nice to know I have a choice."   continued ...   (Via Gizmodo)

Transulcent all the way.

Packaging is Part of Design

User Experience with product design includes packaging ...

"Not too long ago, I received a gift from a friend in Japan that echoed several themes I’ve discussed on Functioning Form. The gift was a flashlight from ±0 in Japan and (though I love the light bulb like design of the product) I was really struck by the packaging.

The simple design of the flashlight’s box matched the minimalist aesthetic of the product to a tee.

When product designers take the time to package their designs with this much attention to detail, their customers enjoy the experience of receiving the product that much more. This principle also holds true for interface designs since they tend to be accessed repeatedly by returning users. Delighting users in many small ways is a great way to build an overall experience they’ll want to return to."   continued ...   (Via Functioning Form)

Packaging is part of the user experience.

Why Ajax Matters Now

If it improves the user experience, it's a good thing ...

"In the earliest days of the Web, designers chafed against the constraints of the medium. The entire interaction model of the Web was rooted in its heritage as a hypertext system: click the link, request the document, wait for the server to respond. Any designer who asked if the basic call-and-response interaction model of the Web could be defied was met with the flat answer “No.”

Eventually, with the evolution of browser technology, that “No” became a “Yes, if…” Yes, if the user has the right browser and the right operating system. Yes, if the user’s connection is fast enough. Yes, if the user has the right plug-in or the right runtime.

For some designers working in some environments, “Yes, if…” was good enough. But for the overwhelming majority of designers, the caveats and restrictions were simply too great. So they returned to the task of making the Web work the best it could within the hypertext interaction model, developing new conventions for Web interaction that allowed their applications to reach audiences who never would have attempted to use desktop applications designed for the same tasks."   continued ...   (Via OK/Cancel)

An example of Ajax at work.

Consistency in Design is the Wrong Approach

An argument for using the user's current knowledge as a guide rather than consistency ...

Current Knowledge is a much better way to think about the problem.

Consistency in design is about making elements uniform — having them look and behave the same way. We often hear designers talk about consistent navigation, consistent page layouts, or consistent control elements. In each case, the designer is looking for a way to leverage the usability by creating uniformity. After all, if the user learns to operate the design in one place, why not have that knowledge transfer to the next. This is all good. But wrong.

For example, let’s look at the problem I discussed a while back by our friends from Avis.com. They chose to use the asterisk (*) to denote optional fields instead of denoting mandatory fields. Less than 10% of the fields on the entire site are optional. If they were consistent with the outside world, entire forms would have every field denoted with an asterisk. That might create its own problems."   continued ...   (Via UIE Brain Sparks )

Go with user knowledge.

I'm In Louvre! (Galleries: Part 1 of 3)

About the user interface design of Office 12 and its use of a Ribbon navigation view ...

"As I mentioned last week, the Office 12 Ribbon was designed to host a variety of control types. Most of these control types have been around as common controls in Windows for over a decade: push buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, edit controls, combo boxes, etc.

In addition to these, we designed a new control type for the Office 12 user interface that was conceived from the start in partnership with the Ribbon. This control is called the "gallery" and it's debatably the single most important concept in the Office 12 UI. It is the Ribbon and the gallery together through which the user interface presents the power of Office in a way that more people can take advantage it.

Anyway, at its heart, the gallery is a simple concept: a control designed to present a choice to the user visually. The most familiar-looking flavor of gallery looks somewhat like a menu with better graphics; it's called a "dropdown gallery.""   continued ...   (Via Jensen Harris)

Office 12 drop down gallery.

Improving Business Intelligence Usability

Usability issues in a vertical market application ...

"Until recently, business intelligence product vendors have focused mostly on improving their reporting and analytical processing. Although this increased functionality has benefited power users, such as business analysts and information workers, it has not effectively encouraged the use of business intelligence by less experienced users. Common examples of this are business executives and line-of-business (LOB) managers.

The tide is now turning, however, as vendors seek to expand the sales of their solutions to a broader user base. There is now more awareness by business intelligence vendors on the need to improve the usability of their products. They are now listening to customer complaints about the need to reduce IT workloads. Customers feel this will enable business to become more self sufficient through self-service applications. They are beginning to realize that Microsoft Office and Excel are successful, not only because of Microsoft’s dominance, but also because less experienced users find these products easier to use than other business intelligence tools.

The movement toward improving usability is evident from several of the major business intelligence vendors as evidenced by their upcoming product releases. There is now improved integration with Microsoft Office, increased support for business portals, and a focus on today’s favorite buzzword—the business dashboard. Given this trend, it is important to understand the relationship between business dashboards, business portals and collaborative products like Microsoft Office."   continued ...   (Via Business Intelligence Network)

Business user workspace.

Online Extra: Building Yahoo's New Front Door

An interview with Larry Tesler about Yahoo! usability and redesign ...

"Design honcho Larry Tesler says the portal's home-page redesign will happen gradually -- and only if it provides "a delightful experience."

Yahoo! may not have the prettiest home page, but with nearly 14 million Web surfers visiting it per day, it's doing something right. And Larry Tesler, Yahoo's new vice-president for the User Experience and Design group, doesn't want to screw that up.

But don't expect to see big changes made overnight. Comparing the job to remodeling a house, Tesler says Yahoo will make modifications continuously, bit by bit, so as not to spook users who rely on Yahoo for news, e-mail services, or finding a date."   continued ...   (Via Business Week)

A cluttered home page.

Forms vs. Applications

A good artcle on when to use or not use forms. Good real-world examples ...

"Once an online form goes beyond two screenfulls, it's often a sign that the underlying functionality is better supported by an application, which offers a more interactive user experience.

Forms are rarely the best metaphor for complex interactions with computers. Most big companies, however, have a legacy of paper forms. As a result, their intranets are littered with online forms that attempt to meet needs that are often better served by real applications with a real dialogue flow and more of a full-fledged GUI.

We recently got a call from someone who wanted a usability review of a single intranet form. I usually don't like giving feedback on a single page because the project overhead becomes too large and usability insights tend to be too narrow because you lack the context of, say, a full website or a targeted intranet area. In this case, the request came from within a highly respected company that's been a good client of ours, so we owed them extra service and agreed to take on their form. Good we did, because this single form turned out to be a goldmine of usability issues: our final report contained twenty-seven recommendations."   continued ...   (Via Alertbox)

Limited number of radio buttons.

What the Pros Think Yahoo! Should Do

A great example of using rollovers. Check the website to see the effect ...

(Via BusinessWeek and Aletbox)

A good use of rollovers.

World's First PC Keyboard with User Programmable Display Keys

Adding usability to a standard keyboard with visually identifyable function keys ...

"United Keys, Inc. announced today at DEMOfall the world's first PC keyboard with user programmable display keys. The 205PRO PC keyboard has small, changeable LCD displays embedded in the keytops of all twelve function keys.

The limitation of traditional PC key programming, including "shortcuts," is that users can't remember them. As a result, tremendous usability and productivity advantages are lost. With United Keys 205PRO, users or software developers can create custom icons or other images that visually identify complex functions or next steps in software operation. The small displays change dynamically, updating as new software is loaded or new applications within programs are utilized."   continued ...   (Via Yahoo! Finance)

Adding usability to a standard keyboard.

Web Application Form Design

A continuation of a good article on forms design ...

“Input elements should be organized in logical groups so that your brain can process the form layout in chunks of related fields.” –HTML: the Definitive Guide

Quite rare is the Web application that doesn’t make extensive use of forms for data input and configuration. But not all Web applications use forms consistently. Variations in the alignment of input fields, their respective labels, calls to action, and their surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior.

When the time to complete a form needs to be minimized and the data being collected is mostly familiar to users (for instance, entering a name, address, and payment information in a check-out flow), a vertical alignment of labels and input fields is likely to work best. Each label and input field is grouped by vertical proximity and the consistent alignment of both input fields and labels reduces eye movement and processing time. Users only need to move in one direction: down."   continued ...   (Via LukeW)

Vertical alignment is best.

Another usability tool - Marketing

Some counter-intuitive concepts about Usability ...

"Sometimes, to make a product easy to use, you have to reach beyond the screen and touch the hearts and minds of the user. When that happens, the Marketing Department can be a good friend.

In academic circles, usability is often defined in terms of task success, error rates, and satisfaction scores. In practical terms, I notice that the situation is a little different. People sometimes seem enthusiastic about difficult error-prone interfaces while talking down simple straightforward products.

Don’t believe me? Consider file-sharing programmes that are used to illegally share music. Many are difficult to set up and use, and would not test well in a narrowly-defined lab study. Users will admit to sometimes agonisingly slow downloads, to poor quality files, and the danger of viruses. But still the file sharing programmes are popular because they offer something that a certain audience wants very much: free music.

Compare that to a particular mobile payment scheme we know of, where even unsophisticated users could navigate the prototype system successfully to pay for CDs or parking places, but the system had to be cancelled because no one did so."   continued ...   (Via Usability News)

But I like the interface.

Nintendo controller steals limelight from Microsoft's new Xbox

A new type of input device with a lot of potential ...

"Nintendo trumped its rivals at the start of an industry show by revealing a one-handed remote controller that stole attention from Microsoft's new Xbox games machine, which was demonstrated in public for the first time.

The device, which looks like a television remote control and is fitted with motion sensors, created the biggest buzz at the opening of the three-day Tokyo Game Show which is expected to attract 150,000 people.

By waving it around frenetically or gently swishing it through the air, players can kick, punch, jump or steer their way through the on-screen action, though not yet -- the Revolution and its software are still under development. "The feeling is so natural and real, as soon as players use the controller, their minds will spin with the possibilities of how this will change gaming as we know it today," said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who presented the new gadget to the show."   continued ...   (Via PhysOrg)

Nintendo immersion controller.