Interactive is a meaningless word

Making websites more useful, not just interactive ...

"Making your websites more interactive is a meaningless strategy. Make your website more useful instead.

Picture this scene. You are sitting in a meeting with some very cool people. These cool people think that, when it comes to the Web, they totally get it. They're very smart people and they're so important that they have to leave their mobile phones on during meetings.

They like to talk about things like color and mood and corporate identity. They want customers to have an enhanced brand experience. These people have moved way beyond Web 2.0. On their skateboard attention spans they have arrived at Web 5.0 and are moving beyond that too. One of their favorite phrases is: "I think the website needs to become more interactive."

I have never quite understood what the word 'interactive' means in the context of the Web. The Web is inherently active in that its corner stone is the link. The link is a call to action. We go to the Web to act, to do. Saying that a website needs to become more interactive is like saying that a football game needs more football.

In a Web context, 'interactive' is thus a meaningless word and it tends to be used by cool, meaningless people. In fact, the objective of making a website 'more' interactive is often absolutely not what the customer wants.

Customers don't want interactivity from your website. They want results. They want to do what they came to do as quickly as possible. You have to interact with a hotel booking process in order to book a room, but you want that interaction to be as fast and painless as possible.

Do you think that Google designers sit around drinking lattes and mouthing meaningless statements about more interactivity? Here is one of Google's key design principles: "Every millisecond counts."

"Nothing is more valuable than people's time", it goes on to state. "Google pages load quickly, thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. The most essential features and text are placed in the easiest-to-find locations. Unnecessary clicks, typing, steps, and other actions are eliminated. Google products ask for information only once and include smart defaults. Tasks are streamlined.

"Speed is a boon to users. It is also a competitive advantage that Google doesn't sacrifice without good reason."

A core objective of Google is to get you off its website as quickly as possible. It has a relentless focus on making the first result the right result so that you will leave its website in the shortest time possible. Google makes most of its money from advertising.

Many traditional media websites are now measuring success based on how long they can keep people on their websites. They obviously have lots of people employed trying to make their websites more interactive.

'Save people time' should be written in 10 foot letters across the walls of every web design team's office. Do not listen to the fools who talk about more interactivity. It is from the minds of these fools that the truly awful Flash Intros crawled out. Focus all your energy on saving your customers time. Be useful. Be functional. Be brief."    (Continued via Usability News, Gerry McGovern)    [Usability Resources]

Multitouch, New Taskbar in Motion

The Windows 7 Taskbar ...

"Yesterday, during the opening hours of the D6 conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher jointly interviewed Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. While the interview dealt mostly with the past, Yahoo, and a bit of Vista, by far the most interesting part was the first ever public appearance of Vista's successor: Windows 7. Earlier today, the team behind D6 posted a video of the demonstration, which was conducted by Microsoft's Julie Larson-Green. From a graphical user interface point of view, there were some interesting things in there.

The video shows Larson-Green talking us through the various touch features while answering questions from Mossberg and Swisher.

Let me give you a little history on Julie Larson-Green first. She joined Microsoft back in 1993, and throughout her career at the company she focused on user interface design. Her most important responsibility was the user interface design of Office XP, Office 2003, and most recently, Office 2007. Larson-Green led the massive interface redesign of Office 2007, a bold redesign that led to a completely new and - yes - innovative user interface. She was brought onboard the Windows 7 GUI team almost a year ago.

The demonstration obviously focused on the various multitouch features built right into Windows 7 - they will be available system-wide. Larson-Green called it an "evolution of Surface", and they're of course working together with the Surface team itself. The multitouch features require a digitiser built into the display, which is already shipping on various displays today. So obviously, you're going to need a new monitor.

To me, it seemed as if Larson-Green and the rest of the GUI team realise fully well that multitouch is not an answer to everything, but that it is "much faster to do certain tasks". As Larson-Green explained: "Use touch when it makes sense, use the mouse when it makes sense, use the keyboard when it makes sense." I believe it is indeed wise not to focus all efforts on multitouch as if it is the only sensible input method, but rather see it as an additional input method, that make sense for certain tasks. Larson-Green confirmed Microsoft is working on adding gestures for things like window management.

The applications that were part of the demonstration will not necessarily be part of Windows 7; they are applications written to demonstrate what can be done with the multitouch features in Windows 7. Interestingly, the Concierge application made use of circular menus, a user interface element frequently appearing in mockups lately. As we know, circular menus are potentially easier to use thanks to - dead horse alert - Fitts' Law.

The final interesting part was the rather odd-looking taskbar - assuming it even was a taskbar. The bar was twice as high as an ordinary taskbar, and lacked text, using what looked like icons or thumbnails instead. It reminded me of the RISC OS icon bar, mostly. Apparently, Larson-Green was not at liberty to discuss it, because when Mossberg asked her about it, she replied: "It's something we're working on for Windows 7 and I'm not supposed to talk about right now, today..."

While all we received was a small glimpse, I'm excited about everything that's going on behind the scenes. Larson-Green and Steven Sinofsky have delivered a truly innovative product with Office 2007, and as a GUI enthusiast, I'm excited to see them working on the Windows interface in quite a - for Microsoft - secretive manner. Some people are extremely cynical, and that's fine - I'm more of an optimist and await more information from Redmond."    (Continued via OS News)    [Usability Resources]

30 Beautiful And Original Product Designs

Interesting and unique product designs ...

"Successful product design manages to reveal useful functionality beyond its appealing form. No matter how excellent a design looks like, most customers aren’t likely to spend money on something they won’t be able to use. On the other hand, most people are likely to buy something useful despite the design it has.

Yet the key to a truly successful product design lies in designer’s ability to combine both beautiful design and functionality making it obvious to the customers how the product can be used and which benefits it delivers. However, one can combine the beauty of design with the utility it is supposed to provide.

Most products fail to pass this test and never reach the production stage; some products do manage to get to the stores. In the overview below you’ll find an overview of some beautiful and original product designs which will hopefully make the cut and will be available in the next years. Some of them are already available today.
Way Out Fridge Magnet

Way Out Fridge Magnet
Way Out magnet is an original imitation of the standard exit sign illustrating a run to the fridge for a midnight snack. We, however, are not sure why this sign should actually be placed on the fridge."    (Continued via The Best Article Every day, Smashing Magazine)    [Usability Resources]

Fridge Magnet

Fridge With Magnet

Microsoft Is Officially Out of Ideas

Microsoft borrowing UI design for Windows 7 ...

"Windows Vista has sold 140 million copies, but it's such a resource hog with unreliable hardware drivers that users keep asking Redmond to extend the support for Windows XP. Many corporations refuse to upgrade their server farms and cubicle-bound desktops at all. It's not often that 140 million copies of a software package that costs hundreds of dollars can be called a disappointment, but this one seems to fit that bill.

Vowing to release a new operating system every three years, the company now has about 20 months until the supposed release date for Windows 7. The tight-lipped mastodon has just started to let a trickle of feature details slip out, and I have to say that the early glimpses have not been very impressive.

The big news!
You know how the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch have these cool screens where you drag stuff around with your fingertips? Yeah, Microsoft will do that, too. Great, huh?

OK, so this version will do a bit more. Drag five fingers across the screen in a painting program, and you could leave five colorful glowworms in their wake. Play 10-finger chords on an on-screen piano, and resize photos by dragging the corners apart with two fingers. Wow, that's neato!

Yeah, so I lied. That's not really an update over the iPhone at all, save for the larger screens you'd see on a Dell desktop screen or a Hewlett-Packard laptop. The iPhone screen can do all of these tricks already, and I'm not really sure what the big innovation is here. At least Microsoft seems to be imitating an established leader in user interface design this time.

I understand that it's early in the game, but if the best Microsoft's army of engineers can come up with is a simple update to the touchscreen technology you see on nearly every ATM today, then the company is in trouble. There may not be much of a reason for anybody to migrate to Windows Vista 360, Windows You, or whatever they'll call this one.

All quiet on the Pacific Northwestern front
More troubling than the lack of major feature upgrades is the insistence on sticking to Vista's bloated core with similar minimum hardware requirements. Most people tend to use their computers for simple tasks like Web browsing, typing up the occasional text document, and maybe organizing their digital photos. This audience isn't all that interested in a bucketload of memory-sucking extras and a desktop environment that requires high-end graphics processors. Keep it simple, silly.

The exceptions include graphic designers (who have been Mac users for years), hardcore gamers (who are doing just fine with a Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 or Microsoft's own Xbox 360), and early adopters who just like to play with new technology. Fine, go for the niche audiences if you must. But at least make the bloat optional rather than turned on by default.

There's an alternative core technology by the name of MinWin deep inside Redmond's shops, and it's supposed to take the fatness out of the Vista experience. But management is saying that the next Windows will not be a dramatic departure from Vista, and the underpinnings will remain the same. That's a huge mistake. Don't these guys listen to user input anymore?"    (Continued via The Motley Fool)    [Usability Resources]

Early Windows 7 screenshots

Usability of new Windows 7 questioned - see gallery of screen shots ...

"So, word on the street is that part of the first day of the All Things D conference tonight will be the unveiling of the first time of the Windows 7 operating system by Microsoft. To be clear, we shouldn’t expect Windows 7 any sooner than 2010. That said, what is shown is very much a work in progress. If you can’t wait for the video footage, which we are sure is soon to come, we also have a bunch of Windows 7 screenshots in our gallery.

We see a lot of concepts in these images. An expanded bar at the bottom of the screen, an OS X-like dock, some sort of disc-based nav system that reminds of the OLPC OS, etc. Still, nice to see that things are progressing."    (Continued via Gear Live)    [Usability Resources]

Windows 7

Design Thinking

An interview with Tim Brown, IDEO CEO ...

"Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.

Thomas Edison created the electric lightbulb and then wrapped an entire industry around it. The lightbulb is most often thought of as his signature invention, but Edison understood that the bulb was little more than a parlor trick without a system of electric power generation and transmission to make it truly useful. So he created that, too.

Thus Edison’s genius lay in his ability to conceive of a fully developed marketplace, not simply a discrete device. He was able to envision how people would want to use what he made, and he engineered toward that insight. He wasn’t always prescient (he originally believed the phonograph would be used mainly as a business machine for recording and replaying dictation), but he invariably gave great consideration to users’ needs and preferences.

Edison’s approach was an early example of what is now called “design thinking”—a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos. By this I mean that innovation is powered by a thorough understanding, through direct observation, of what people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.

Many people believe that Edison’s greatest invention was the modern R&D laboratory and methods of experimental investigation. Edison wasn’t a narrowly specialized scientist but a broad generalist with a shrewd business sense. In his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory he surrounded himself with gifted tinkerers, improvisers, and experimenters. Indeed, he broke the mold of the “lone genius inventor” by creating a team-based approach to innovation. Although Edison biographers write of the camaraderie enjoyed by this merry band, the process also featured endless rounds of trial and error—the “99% perspiration” in Edison’s famous definition of genius. His approach was intended not to validate preconceived hypotheses but to help experimenters learn something new from each iterative stab. Innovation is hard work; Edison made it a profession that blended art, craft, science, business savvy, and an astute understanding of customers and markets.

Design thinking is a lineal descendant of that tradition. Put simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. Like Edison’s painstaking innovation process, it often entails a great deal of perspiration.

I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business world in which most management ideas and best practices are freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process."    (Continued via putting people first, Harvard Business Review, Tim Brown)    [Usability Resources]

The Future of Usability Testing

Incorporating usability into an IT Department ...

"I recently chaired a round table on the Future of Usability Testing. It was sponsored by Techsmith who supply the Usability Testing Tool Morae (see my earlier article).

The invited attendees included developers, usability experts, an internet psychologist, and journalists all with considerably understanding and strong opinions about usability. I came with a strong interest in accessibility, which to a great extent can be seen as a subset of the usability requirements.

The aim of the roundtable was to better understand how to make usability design and testing business as usual in IT systems. This big question was approached by looking at several more specific questions:

* Why is usability important?
* What are the barriers to usability design and testing?
* How should it be imbedded into all phases of development?

Importance
Usability is important because:

* It drives down production costs. There should be fewer calls to the help desk for assistance in using the system. Customers will complete more transactions without having to turn to call centre staff to process the transaction for them. Internal users will complete tasks faster and more accurately, so increasing their efficiency.

* It improves sales. If a system is easy to use a customer is more likely to complete a transaction, so increasing conversion rates. If it is too hard the user will turn to another supplier, with the short-term loss of this sale and the probability of the long-term loss of future sales.

* It enhances brand loyalty. If a system is easy to use then the client should be delighted by the experience. This will add to their positive feelings about the quality of the brand. This is becoming more important as users are being exposed to best-of-breed systems which shows what is possible.

* In the public sector it provides access for all. Government bodies have an obligation to provide services to all members of the community; this should be true of the private sector as well but in reality they can decide not to service some groups. A system that is usable and accessible will reach a very large percentage of the population.

Barriers
Usability design and testing is not imbedded into the development cycle because:

* The benefits of good usability are not recognised by commissioners of the system. Advocates of usability in IT systems have not been sufficiently vocal. It is assumed that systems will be usable by default. This is in contrast to the effort that is put into the usability of the physical environment such as shop layouts or car design.

* The concepts of usability are not understood by the IT industry. Usability has not been a key part of IT education. IT developers are experts in IT and the technology and do not understand the difficulty many users have.

* The cost and benefits are not visible until a system is in production. When problems are discovered the best solutions may not be obvious and the cost of remedial action may be considered too high, so the system remains less usable than it should be.

* Extra design and testing seen as a cost. Development is driven by budgets and deadlines; if usability is not included explicitly in the requirements then any usability improvements that could lead to overruns will be shelved until a version 2 fix cycle."    (Continued via Usability News, IT-Director.com)    [Usability Resources]

OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK?

Small UI issues ...

"Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box.

We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes:

* OK/Cancel
* Cancel/OK

Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences:

* Listing OK first supports the natural reading order in English and other languages that read left-to-right. Many other button sets have a natural progression (say, Yes/No or Previous/Next). You should always list these so that the reading order matches the logical order — in this case, OK/Cancel. Further, assuming users need OK much more frequently than Cancel, it's better to place this option first so that keyboard-driven users who tab to the buttons can get to their preferred choice with one less keystroke.
* Listing OK last improves the flow, because the dialog box "ends" with its conclusion. Also, as with Previous/Next, you could argue that OK is the choice that moves the user forward, whereas Cancel moves the user back. Thus, OK should be in the same location as Next: on the right.

In cases like this, it often doesn't matter what you do. Either choice has good arguments in its favor, and no choice is likely to cause usability catastrophes. It might save some users 0.1 seconds if you pick the "right" choice for certain circumstances, but it's simply not worth it to conduct sufficiently elaborate research to find out what that choice is. Better to spend your usability resources on those things that can change your key performance indicators by 83% or more.

So, to make this specific choice — as well as many other small choices in application design — it's best to follow the platform GUI standard. Applying consistent design that follows user expectations saves people much more time (and many more mistakes) than doing something that might be a tiny bit more optimal for your application, but introduces an inconsistency.
Inconsistency Costs More Time than It Saves
Deviate from the standard, and you'll easily cost users several minutes — or possibly hours — as they overlook or misuse UI elements. The time people spend pondering inconsistencies typically sums to much more than the small savings you'll hypothetically derive from a specialized design.

Sadly, the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines differ from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines when it comes to the sequence of OK/Cancel buttons:

* Windows puts OK first
* Apple puts OK last

If you're designing a desktop application for one of these two personal computer platforms, your choice is easy: Do what the platform owner tells you to do.
Dialog Buttons for Web-Based Apps
If you're designing a Web-based application, the decision is harder, but you should probably go with the platform preferred by most of your users. Your server logs will show you the percentage of Windows vs. Mac users for your specific website or intranet. Of course, Windows generally has many more users, so if you can't be bothered to check the logs, then the guideline that will apply to most situations is:

* OK first, Cancel last, as in this screenshot from Office 2007: (below)

Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button? Following platform conventions is more important than suboptimizing an individual dialog box.

We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes:

* OK/Cancel
* Cancel/OK

Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences:

* Listing OK first supports the natural reading order in English and other languages that read left-to-right. Many other button sets have a natural progression (say, Yes/No or Previous/Next). You should always list these so that the reading order matches the logical order — in this case, OK/Cancel. Further, assuming users need OK much more frequently than Cancel, it's better to place this option first so that keyboard-driven users who tab to the buttons can get to their preferred choice with one less keystroke.
* Listing OK last improves the flow, because the dialog box "ends" with its conclusion. Also, as with Previous/Next, you could argue that OK is the choice that moves the user forward, whereas Cancel moves the user back. Thus, OK should be in the same location as Next: on the right.

In cases like this, it often doesn't matter what you do. Either choice has good arguments in its favor, and no choice is likely to cause usability catastrophes. It might save some users 0.1 seconds if you pick the "right" choice for certain circumstances, but it's simply not worth it to conduct sufficiently elaborate research to find out what that choice is. Better to spend your usability resources on those things that can change your key performance indicators by 83% or more.

So, to make this specific choice — as well as many other small choices in application design — it's best to follow the platform GUI standard. Applying consistent design that follows user expectations saves people much more time (and many more mistakes) than doing something that might be a tiny bit more optimal for your application, but introduces an inconsistency.
Inconsistency Costs More Time than It Saves
Deviate from the standard, and you'll easily cost users several minutes — or possibly hours — as they overlook or misuse UI elements. The time people spend pondering inconsistencies typically sums to much more than the small savings you'll hypothetically derive from a specialized design.

Sadly, the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines differ from the Apple Human Interface Guidelines when it comes to the sequence of OK/Cancel buttons:

* Windows puts OK first
* Apple puts OK last

If you're designing a desktop application for one of these two personal computer platforms, your choice is easy: Do what the platform owner tells you to do.

Dialog Buttons for Web-Based Apps

If you're designing a Web-based application, the decision is harder, but you should probably go with the platform preferred by most of your users. Your server logs will show you the percentage of Windows vs. Mac users for your specific website or intranet. Of course, Windows generally has many more users, so if you can't be bothered to check the logs, then the guideline that will apply to most situations is:

* OK first, Cancel last, as in this screenshot from Office 2007: (below)
The screenshot illustrates two additional guidelines for dialog box buttons:

* It's often better to name a button to explain what it does than to use a generic label (like "OK"). An explicit label serves as "just-in-time help," giving users more confidence in selecting the correct action.

* Make the most commonly selected button the default and highlight it (except if its action is particularly dangerous; in those cases, you want users to explicitly select the button rather than accidentally activating it by hitting Enter)."    (Continued via Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)    [Usability Resources]

OK/Cancel

Google's 'Analytics Evangelist' Explains Why Websites 'Suck'

HIPPO - Highest Paid Person's Opinion ...

"Avinash Kaushik thinks one of the reasons why so many websites "suck" today is because of the hippo -- as in the "highest paid person's opinion."

And, yes, you're likely a hippo -- a successful advertising executive, CMO or brand manager, pulling in a six-figure income, often found pontificating about what does and doesn't work online. You use tried-and-true metrics such as unique visitors and click-through rates to decide on the best design for your landing page or what content is best suited on your product site.

'Least closest'
Yet, despite your mounds of data, Mr. Kaushik thinks you are the "least closest to the customer."

It was a blunt indictment, considering Mr. Kaushik offered it during a talk before roughly 200, well, hippos -- marketing executives from Procter & Gamble, Victoria's Secret, Coca-Cola and Timberland -- at an invite-only client conference held by Resource Interactive, a Columbus-based digital agency.

Mr. Kaushik is the "analytics evangelist" at Google, a new post created after his one-year consulting gig with the search giant expired. (Mr. Kaushik was previously director of research and analytics at Intuit, the personal-finance software company, and he is also the author of "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day" and web analytics blog Occam's Razor.)

Mr. Kaushik employed the word "sucks" frequently when he talked about the traditional metrics used for measuring online marketing. And as far as online marketing goes, it sucks too. He likened it to a "faith-based initiative."

Getting the 'why'
The point of Mr. Kaushik's candor is that he wants marketers to start thinking more about the "why." To get at that, he espoused the use of more online surveys of site visitors to find "segments of discontent."

He advised marketers to create conversations with consumers using a simple, short and free online survey created by Iperceptions.com, an online research firm. The survey asks: Who is coming to your website? Why are they there? How are you doing? What do you need to fix?

The surveys "get customers involved in fixing things," he said."    (Continued via Advertising Age, Livepath)    [Usability Resources]

High vs. Low Design

Simple vs. complex UI ...

"I recently did a phone interview for the User Interface Resource center which is sponsored by the folks at Adobe, Microsoft and Effective UI. The folks at Effective UI were interested in having an informal discussion around the concepts of "high design vs. low design" that is, highly-designed "experiential" applications that push the limits of technology and human interaction (Think slick desktop applications) vs. solutions that don't quite push as hard on (think Craigslist, Flickr, or Twitter). Any insights I maye have provided may be rooted in common sense. We use philips screwdrivers for cross head screws and regular screwdrivers for regular screws. Skilled practitioners know they should carry both and really skilled practitioners build homes that people actually want to live in.

Below are a few highlights:

Tim Wood:
That’s a great segue into the context of today’s discussion. I want to get your take on two contemporary user experience trends that we see on the Web today — that in many ways seem contradictory or divergent. That is, simple design versus complex design. On one hand we have sites like Delicious, Google Apps and Craigslist, all of which have a very minimal hypertext-based UI presentation. On the other hand we are seeing a strong emergence of RIAs of various flavors — in Flex, Silverlight and AJAX — that support a very rich presentation of user interface elements, as well as very dynamic interaction. Do you see these two trends as being contradictory or do you see them as complementary?

David Armano:
That’s a really big question without a black-and-white answer. Way back in 2003, Kevin Mullet wrote a Macromedia white paper titled The Essence of Effective Rich Internet Applications which was a precursor to what we’re talking about today regarding high and low design. He made a great case for rich design. In hindsight, I would have thought that was where everything was going because it just made so much sense.

Mullet proposed that when you take something with function and value, which most applications have whether they’re Web-based or desktop-based, you should create a really engaging experience around it using the “breaking the page” metaphor. That makes total sense because when we interact with the Web, it’s not natural to wait for a page to load. Back then, it was safe to assume that everything was going to move in the rich direction. But then the curveball got thrown, as you mentioned, with the popularity of simple HTML sites like Delicious, Flicker, Twitter and Google Apps. Why are they gaining so much steam?

Tim Wood:
Are you saying that people are more willing to accept experiential failings as a trade-off for successful utility?

David Armano:
I think it’s a reality. Whether we’re developing using a high-end design or a low-end technique, we need to focus on what the project does and what kinds of needs it actually fulfills at the end of the day. We should think about usability as a continual process."

...In the white paper that I referenced earlier, Mullet talks about this idea of fitness to purpose. A basic example that he gives is: you shouldn’t use a mallet to try to drive a nail and you shouldn’t use a hammer to pound in something that could break. In our discussion today, the same holds true; you really have to think about when to go with a rich Internet application and when not to."    (Continued via Logic+Emotion, userinterface)    [Usability Resources]

Apple to 'rule the home' by 2013

Future developments will require new UI's ...

"Apple is poised to become the hub of the digital home by 2013, according to a new study from Forrester Research.

The analyst firm's 'Future of Apple' report examines how Apple's product strategy will evolve over the next five years.

Forrester predicts that Apple will offer eight key products and services to connect PCs and digital content to the TV-stereo infrastructure in consumers' homes.

A "re-engineered" Apple Store will expand into in-home installation services to deliver what Forrester describes as a "fully integrated digital experience".

Companies likely to be hardest hit by Apple's consolidated drive are PC makers like Microsoft and HP, which are going after the same consumer markets.

Apple's predicted dominance will also affect service providers that deliver broadcast content and broadband, retailers that provide in-home installation services and consumer electronics device makers like Sony and LG.

"Consumer product strategists frequently ask Forrester how Apple's product strategy will evolve," said J P Gownder, principal analyst for Forrester Research, and lead author of the report.

"We do not possess any secret knowledge of Apple's product roadmap, but we want consumer product strategists to consider this highly likely vision of the Apple digital home offering."

To back up its claims, Forrester highlights a "mishmash" of audio-visual and IT technologies and products, including TVs, stereos, set-top boxes, DVD players, PCs, home networks and game consoles, which remain isolated products in most homes.

Gownder believes that, although a few 'bridge' products exist, the AV/IT divide remains and that there is a clear gap for an industry player to unite these systems and make in-home installation easier for consumers.

The eight essential pillars on which Apple will deliver this platform, based on four existing offerings and four new product concepts, are expected to be:

* Apple Macintosh home PC
* Apple TV digital media extender
* Apple Store
* iTunes and its successors
* Apple home server product
* AppleSound universal music controller
* Network-enabled gadgets
* In-home installation services

However, the analyst warned that the move into the completely connected digital home will not be plain sailing for Apple."    (Continued via vnunet.com)    [Usability Resources]

Interview: Simplifying Web app design

An interview with Robert Hoekman Jr. ...


"If we make the application too simple is there a risk the user will get bored of it?

You don't get bored with the hammer, you get bored with the hammering.

Web applications are tools. They enable people to perform activities, get things done, organise information, and so on. As long as the need exists to perform these activities, the need for the Web app will persist as well. And since we're all busy, frantic people who are constantly inundated by the business of our lives, we appreciate simple solutions that enable us to do what we need to do in a quick and effective manner.

I doubt that many people have wished for a more complicated hammer. And despite that so many of us make purchasing decisions based on feature lists, we really don't end up using more of a particular than we need. The average cell phone, for example, comes loaded with features, and many people never even tap into half of what it can do. In the end, we use only what we need to use.

If a hammer is all you need, a hammer is what you'll use. And every time you use the hammer, you'll appreciate how simple it was to get the job done.

What are some of the most important Web usability issues to consider?

I wish it was as easy as writing a list, but in reality, the most important issues to consider all relate to whether or not we're communicating the right things to our users.

Our sites and applications communicate things to users all the time. Our job is to ensure we're communicating the right information, the right cues about how something works, and so on. Regardless of whether you're working on a drag-and-drop interaction or a registration form, the key to a good design is making sure the user will have the information and clues she needs to succeed with the design.

What is the biggest challenge of designing usable Web applications?

Sadly, the biggest challenge seems to be getting buy-in and support for design. As a consultant, I don't encounter this problem much -- when companies come to me, they've already decided they need design work -- but I've experienced this often with in-house positions, and it's the number one thing I'm asked about by the community.

Every situation is different, and each person struggling to get buy-in for design has to navigate the internal politics in a way that's appropriate for that organisation, but there are a few things I've seen work well in a myriad of circumstances."    (Continued via Builder AU)    [Usability Resources]

Web users 'getting more selfish'

Jakob Nielsen on how the web is being used ...

"Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.

The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

Search rules

Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.

Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.

There were two reasons for this, he said.

"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.

Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.

"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.

"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."

Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.

Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen."    (Continued via BBC NEWS)    [Usability Resources]

Beating Google requires someone to do search better.

Is Universal Design Really Universal?

What universal design really means ...

"In 1988, Ron Mace, Ruth Lusher, and I authored an article that I believe was the first published reference to the concept of Universal Design. Our purpose was to promote the positive side of a design concept that had previously been associated with eliminating poor design (barrier-free) for a limited population (handicap accessibility) and to emphasize the positive aspects of designing for all people. In 1992 when the first issue of Universal Design Newsletter was published, we conducted a search of the internet to identify potential copyright infringement. We found no (0) references to the term Universal Design. Today, as I write this article, my Google search found “about 13,200,000” references. There is no denying that the concept of Universal Design has gained widespread use. But what does it really mean?

At the February 2008 International Conference on Aging, Disability and Independence (ICADI) in St. Petersburg, FL, one track investigated the meaning and future of Universal Design. While international gathering of attendees generally agreed that Universal Design incorporates designs that are inclusive and provide choice, there are many definitions. My currently favorite definition emphasizes the process rather than the end product:

Universal Design: The process of imbedding choice for all people in the things we design.

Each of the following) terms in this simple statement has important meaning.

* Process implies a methodology rather than a product
* Choice involves flexibility, and multiple alternative means of use and/or interface
* All People includes the full range of people regardless of age, ability, gender, economic status, etc.
* Things include spaces, products, information systems and any other things that humans manipulate or create.

I have watched an evolution in the thinking of what is Universal Design over the last 20 years. My involvement in this area has taught me that as we learn more and more about the people for whom we are designing (best provided though user input and involvement in the design process) our designs change and improve. This brings me to the inevitable conclusion that Universal Design is not static. Universal Design changes, mimicking the needs of the users as they differ over time and in different places. Universal Design in Chicago in 1990 was and should be different from Universal Design in Nairobi in 2008. The key is understanding what is the best fit of the environment to the users."    (Continued via uiGarden.net)    [Usability Resources]

Measuring the Online Customer Experience

Getting the consumers' view ...

"Epitiro, a company offering expertise in comparative broadband benchmarking, has just announced ISP-I™ Reportal, a new website testing enhancement to the company’s portfolio of broadband benchmarking solutions. Businesses that depend on their websites for effective communication and e-commerce will now be able to fully understand the true online customer experience and address performance issues.

Epitiro provides broadband performance and customer experience benchmarking data to ISPs, media providers, multi-national corporations and government regulators. ISP-I™ Reportal is the first website testing solution to be located on multiple consumer broadband (DSL, Cable, Wireless, WiFi) networks thus enabling a true and accurate analysis of a website’s performance from the end user perspective. ISP-I™ Reportal conducts testing via the leading ISPs worldwide and uses popular browsers, including Internet Explorer and Firefox, to measure response times, security levels, page flows and other transactions that affect the customer experience. The comprehensive analysis is performed using Epitiro’s extensive deployment of edge-based agents.

"In order to get a consumer view, it is essential that customer experience testing is performed at real end-user locations and not some technically or logistically convenient mid-point sited within the carrier network or data centre," said JP Curley, Technical Director, Epitiro. "On-line experience is dependent on both the website design as well as variables beyond the control of a business such as an ISP’s traffic management policies, the browser a customer uses, and of course, the customer’s location. With ISP-I™ Reportal, businesses will now have visibility of their customer’s on-line experience and be able to make immediate improvements."    (Continued via Usability News, Epitiro)    [Usability Resources]

Speed Dialing (1939)

In simpler days ...

"A blast from the past. “Finger” Speeds Dialing (1939).

Easily attached to the top of a dial-telephone receiver, a metal finger now on the market fits snugly into the dial holes, helps prevent inaccurate dialing, eliminates the danger of broken finger nails, and speeds up the dialing process by about ten percent."    (Continued via textually.org, Modern Mechanix)    [Usability Resources]

Finger Speed

Design anthropology: What can it add to your design practice?

Design anthropology

Designers primarily concern themselves with how to create a "successful" communication, product, or experience. But with the past 10 years of globalization, digitalization, and ever increasing design complexity, designers have come to realize that to answer the question of design "success" requires that they answer that question of how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human. This "humanness" can range from how humans control the environment through tools (homo faber); how high-heeled shoes affect natural ways of walking; to moral issues of how participation in the design process empowers marginalized communities. In this space, the practice and theory of design anthropology has emerged.
Design anthropology: What is it?

Design anthropology is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the role of design artifacts and processes in defining what it means to be human (e.g., human nature). It is more than lists of user requirements in a design brief, which makes it different from contextual inquiry, some forms of design research, and qualitative focus groups. Design anthropology offers challenges to existing ideas about human experiences and values.

For example, I conducted a project for a large retail company in which I was expected to deliver an information architecture for the website. The method used was a standard card sorting exercise, but I also did research into how humans classify information. In addition to the information architecture, I delivered statements about the continued meaning of gender classifications. In the course of conducting the card sort, I learned that men and women continued to classify domestic products based on stereotypical gendered spaces of male equals outside/garage, and female equals inside. This was in spite of their lived gendered roles where the women where the heavy power-tool users and the men used blenders to make smoothies for the kids. My colleagues pointed out that my anthropological perspective produced insights beyond what the card-sort could deliver. The fact that the classification of consumer products lagged behind contemporary gender roles had strategic implication for how the client should and should not arrange the website site or retail spaces."    (Continued via Putting people first, Adobe - Design Center, Dori Tunstall)    [Usability Resources]

Gendered classification of consumer products.

The Psychology of Time Perception in Software

Expressing time in the UI ...

"How you express time in the user interface (UI) can determine how your user experiences and perceives your solution. This chapter discusses when and how you should express time in the UI of your solution and introduces the use of time anchors.

In many instances, especially in progress indications, you need to communicate to your user some aspect of time, such as remaining time or estimated completion time. Although it may seem trivial and superficial, how you express time in the user interface (UI) can determine how your user experiences and perceives your solution. Simple words—for good or bad—can alter perception and affect tolerance. This chapter discusses when and how you should express time in the UI of your solution and introduces the use of time anchors.
The Timing of Time: Past, Present, Future

Besides what you express (phrases, time units, etc.) and how you express it (text, graphical, etc.), you also need to consider when you provide timing information to your user. For example, telling a person who is about to stand in line how long it will take to get to the front of the line has a different effect and serves a different purpose than informing the person who is already standing halfway in the line. Simply put, when you release information can make or break an experience. We all have our share of horror stories of how the mistiming of some information, sometimes by a matter of mere seconds, changed the course of events.

Users will use any information revealed by the UI—by design or otherwise—to form a perception of an interaction or process. This shouldn't be a surprise because we all do something similar every day. We make predictions based on patterns we see (long lines equal long wait), evaluate the quality of things based on signs and symptoms (blemishes equal carelessness), and form theories about why things happen the way they did (broken because of poor-quality parts). Likewise, users will use any timing information to help them understand and decide how they feel about and respond to the duration of an interaction.

Consider the following questions:

* How long will this take?
* How much longer will this take?
* How much time did that take?

Each of these three questions relates to a different temporal perspective; that is, where you are in temporal relation to some event. We can perceive durations from three basic temporal perspectives. First, we can anticipate, set expectations, or predict the duration of an event before it begins. Because the event has not happened, we'll describe this as prospective. In the UI, informing users how long a download will take, for example, is giving users a prospective estimate of the duration of the download. Second, we assess the duration of an event in real time while it is transpiring. A great example is reporting remaining time as the download is progressing. Finally, we can also evaluate the duration after event has transpired. We describe this last one as retrospective. Telling users how much time the download took after it has completed is an example. As mentioned, when you provide information about the duration of some event can influence user perception and shape user experience. Let's take a closer look at each of the perspectives."    (Continued via Usability News, InformIT)    [Usability Resources]

22-23 inch monitors

The usability of new monitors ...

"As monitors get bigger, are they also getting better? Or are designer features taking the place of ease of use and performance?

This year, 22in is the new 20in, and panels are bigger and sometimes brighter. The new standard resolution stands at 1680 x 1050 – it’s wide enough for HD video, while still being small enough not to take over all of the available space on a typical desk. It’s also nearly wide enough to squeeze in a couple of applications on the same screen – although you’ll find that you’ll get a lot more done with the next size up, at 1920 x 1200.

But there’s more to a monitor than panel size, and it’s here that design is lagging behind what is possible. It is not an exaggeration to say that monitor design has become very conservative and unadventurous. Panels get cheaper and bigger, designer touches are added, but there’s been little progress on usability. It might not seem like a lot is needed – most people plug in, power up, and go – but getting the best from a monitor means using the on-screen display (OSD) to set the best operating mode, and it’s here that user-friendliness hasn’t caught up with user needs.

Historically, only NEC made the effort to replace OSDs with a remote control, and that attempt was short-lived and only available on PCs. We’d like to see more development in this area, with monitors being given a full-featured Mac-based control panel, perhaps with different presets assignable to different applications. Imagine how useful it would be to be able to flip between web browsing, word processing and photo editing without having to keep flipping OSD presets manually.

We’d also like to see better colour management. Colour control remains a high-end feature, but it’s something that could surely appeal to non-professionals who want to be sure that the photos they see on their monitor are an accurate representation of the files copied from their camera. There’s no good technical reason why this has to remain expensive, and in an ideal world reasonable colour accuracy is something users should be able to take for granted.

But manufacturers seem to be taking a different approach, either paring essentials such as stands to a bare minimum, or pushing the benefits of designer stylings for home use. So we’ve collected a representative mix of monitors, from plastic panels to the latest in interior chic. You should find something to match your needs here – but some of our conclusions may surprise you."    (Continued via Macworld UK)    [Usability Resources]

A robotic brain-computer interface

New UI methods will be needed ...

"California Institute of Technology (Caltech) engineers have developed a robotic device able to act as a brain-computer interface. This is the 'first robotic approach to establishing an interface between computers and the brain by positioning electrodes in neural tissue.' According to the researchers, their approach 'could enhance the performance and longevity of emerging neural prosthetics, which allow paralyzed people to operate computers and robots with their minds.'

You can see above an earlier version of a prototype of such a system. It "is designed to fit inside a standard laboratory cranial chamber, used for acute experiments in non-human primates, to allow semi-chronic operation. A semi-chronic design has the advantage that the device can be repositioned over a different region with minimal effort and without need for additional surgeries." The device "is capable of positioning four neural electrodes to optimize recordings of action potentials." (Credit: Caltech)

This research work has been conducted at the Caltech Robotics Burdick Group by a team of engineers led by Michael Wolf, Joel Burdick, his mentor, Jorge Cham and Edward Branchaud.

Here is how Wolf describes the project. "Our approach consists of implanting a small robotic device (and accompanying control algorithm) with many individually-motorized electrodes that each autonomously locate, isolate, and track a neuron for long periods of time. To further complicate matters, we wish to find signals only from neurons dedicated ('tuned') to a particular task, say controlling an 'arm reach.' While the primary aim of such technology is for a neural interface for neuroprostheses, such a device may also advance the state-of-the-art experimental techniques for electrophysiology."    (Continued via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends)    [Usability Resources]

A robotic brain-computer interface

Thoughts on Interaction Design

Paper available for PDF download ...

"Interaction Designers are the shapers of behavior. Behavior is a large idea, and may, at first blush, seem too large to warrant a single profession. But a profession has emerged nonetheless. This professional category includes the complexity of information architecture, the anthropologic desire to understand humanity, the altruistic nature of usability engineering, and the creation of dialogue. These topics are discussed in the four sections of this text.

Section One explores the foundation of the rich field of Interaction Design.

In Chapter One (Multiple Roots, and an Uncertain Future), the historic roots of this field are described, and the relationship between engineering and business is explored. Additionally, the future is painted as an unknown field of potential for this field, as the study of human behavior has become of a primary interest to the worlds of business and marketing in recent years.

Chapter Two (Computing and Human Computer Interaction) describes how Human Computer Interaction arose as a field advocating for usability and efficiency. This is paralleled by a similar growth in the field of Industrial Design, with emphasis placed on human factors and anthropometrics. Both fields have evolved as user-centered professions, laying the groundwork for the field of Interaction Design (which, as practiced presently, seems to combine both physical and digital design into artifacts, services or systems).

Section One is concluded with a contributed article by Chris Connors, entitled Interaction Design in an Engineering Centric World.

Section Two describes the three facets of Interaction Design as related to Usable, Useful and Desirable, and the Interaction Design Process that is used in creating designed artifacts.

Chapter Three (A Process for Thinking About People) discusses the procedural focus of Interaction Design as it pertains to designing what people want and need. The role of intuition is examined as compared to the necessity for ethnographic user research.

Chapter Four (Managing Complexity) examines the role technology plays in the development of Interaction Design solutions, with attention placed on the relatively new subfield of Information Architecture as applied to the design of technology-driven products.

Chapter Five (Shaping Aesthetics to Inform Experience) investigates the role aesthetics play in the development of Interaction Design solutions, specifically with regard to brand and identity.

Section Two is concluded with a contributed article by Justin Petro, entitled Interaction Design as Business Lubricant."    (Continued via Thoughts on Interaction Design)    [Usability Resources]

Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

Overlap between marketing and UX ...

"Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives me a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only do I have a good idea of what the other discipline does, I am a practitioner of the other discipline. However, in attempting to play both roles at once, I often find that client companies keep these two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.

To help demonstrate my point, here is a brief quiz for UX professionals and other members of your product team:

1. When building personas for use in your UI evaluations what role did your Marketing or Marketing Research department play in helping you build those personas?
2. When was the last time you or your CIO read the results of a customer marketing research or branding study that your marketing team conducted?
3. If you wanted to get your hands on such a study, how easy would it be?
4. Your company’s ad agency has spent numerous billable hours writing a detailed advertising and communications plan for your product, service, or brand. Tell me some details about these four key components: ad strategy, brand definition, brand positioning, and intended customer communications take-aways.
5. When was the last time you attended a meeting in which someone from senior management or marketing discussed goals for satisfying customer experiences—both online and offline—across a broad range of communications channels?

If you had trouble answering the above questions, you are not alone."    (Continued via UXmatters, David Kozatch)    [Usability Resources]

The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research

A paper on research behind user interface design ...

"Introduction

Dealing with a design task in an unknown or only partially known situation, with demanding and stressed clients and users, with insufficient information, with new technology and new materials, with limited time and resources, with limited knowledge and skill, and with inappropriate tools, is a common situation for any interaction designer. Dealing with such messy and “wicked” situations constitutes the normal and everyday context of any design practice (Alexander, 1964; Dunne, 1993; Cross, 2001; Schön, 1983; Pye, 1995; Heskett, 2002; Rove, 1987; Lawson, 2005; Thackara, 2005).

Research about design practice has shown that designers who successfully can handle complex design situations use an approach sometimes labeled as a designerly way of thinking and acting (Cross, 2001; Buxton, 2007; Moggridge, 2007). There has also lately been a more general and growing interest in what is seen as an increasing complexity in our society and how to deal with it (Castells, 1996; Coburn, 2006; Friedman, 2005; Gladwell, 2005; Pink, 2005).

A substantial part of interaction design research has for some decades developed theoretical approaches, methods, tools, and techniques aimed at supporting interaction designers in their practice. This research has showed significant progress, and the field is today rich with a diverse set of approaches, methods, and techniques. Some of these approaches are new constructs, but many of them have intellectual roots in other academic areas, such as science, engineering, social science, humanities, and in the traditional art and design disciplines (Carroll, 2003; Rogers, 2004). (In this paper, the terms Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and interaction design research are used interchangeably).

Over the last few years, criticism has been raised concerning the success of some of these contributions. It has been argued that the results are not always useful for practitioners, and that the developed approaches are too time-consuming, too difficult to learn, too abstract and theoretical, or that they do not lead to desired results when used in practice. An excellent overview and formulation of this critique is found in Rogers (2004). Rogers presents a thorough analysis of the state of the major theoretical approaches in HCI in relation to practice. She also presents empirical results that confirm her theoretical analysis. Rogers’ analysis shows quite convincingly that if the measure of success for this kind of research is that it is understood and actually used in practice then the results are minor.

One assumption in this paper is that the critique presented by Rogers is valid and that it constitutes a serious and real problem for the interaction research community. Based on that assumption, I will examine why it seems so difficult for HCI research to produce results that are appreciated and useful within interaction design practice.

It is important to recognize that there exist many examples of successful HCI research reaching and influencing a large population of practitioners. This is also recognized by Rogers, and is something I will discuss later in this paper. It is also important to recognize that this paper is not about all forms of HCI research. It is only about research aimed at improving interaction design practice.

My main argument is that one reason why HCI research (aimed at supporting design practice) has not (always) been successful is that it has not been grounded in and guided by a sufficient understanding and acceptance of the nature of design practice. As a consequence, HCI research has developed and/or borrowed approaches and methods not always appropriate for interaction design practice, even though they may be successful in their respective “home” fields or in research settings."    (Continued via International Journal of Design)    [Usability Resources]

Study: Business software apps complex and hurt productivity

Business applications lack usability ...

"A recent survey found that the majority of end users (60 percent) find enterprise applications somewhat difficult, very difficult or almost impossible to use, hampering employee productivity.

The study was conducted by IFS, a business software vendor based in Sweden, with customers in 23 countries. The company polled more than a 1000 end users at mid-market companies (companies with revenue ranging from US$100 million to $1 billion). While many were users of IFS software, the company reported some had not used it before.

The study sought to define what the word usability meant to end users. Nearly 50 percent said usability means software that helps them do their job better and faster. Others said usability means "no need to read the manual" (24 percent), "looks like familiar products" (13 percent), and "fits the way I work" (14 percent).

"The trick for us vendors is to make applications that live up to these expectations," says Rick Veague, CTO for IFS North America. "It can't just look cute; it has to help them do their job."

The issue of usability has often caused end users to seek out technology in the consumer space. A recent CIO consumer technology survey found nine technologies in the consumer space that end users had gravitated towards, often in response to enterprise software failing them.

Of the time wasters presented by enterprise software, many different categories plagued end users: navigating between and around applications (11 percent), difficulties in searching and navigating through the application (19 percent), learning different modules (21 percent), transferring data between apps (14 percent), progressing via ungrouped functions (14 percent), application "doesn't work the way I'd like" (7 percent), and waiting/slow response (8 percent). Only 6 percent reported that their enterprise applications didn't waste any time.

Another category the study measured was what types of applications people found "most usable." Garnering the largest tally was Web-based applications (34 percent), while these categories trailed: PC/Outlook (27 percent), business applications (20 percent), word processors (17 percent), and "other" (2 percent)."    (Continued via IDG)    [Usability Resources]

Using Unified Separators and Containers to Draw a GUI

How would I describe today's GUIs? A mess. -- A mess that grew as new features were needed, with lack of proper design, with a desire to keep backward compatibility, and with tools from the past trying to achieve future needs. I propose a new design philosophy for GUIs. We'll call it Vermaden's GUI. Note: This is the latest entry in our 2008 article contest.

At the beginning they were designed, but as time passed by they just grew. Most of today's GUIs use a grid of dots on which other GUI elements are placed: menus, buttons, lists, draw areas, folder lists and everything that you can imagine. Today's GUIs, such as GTK or QT toolkits can do almost everything we could want from a classic GUI -- the problem is how all our wishes are realized under the hood of the interface. Speaking precisely, lots of different types of content, different combo boxes, different margins, borders ... Many widgets have a scrollbar included, some need external placing of the scrollbar, or even two of them if we also need to scroll horizontally, like Anjuta's IDE GUI for example, some scrollbars are outside widget content, some are placed inside content.

Displaying a lack of unification, today's GUIs are not coherent. They are like a big bag of tricks that try to get the job done. The Nautilus File Manager, which, similarily to Anjuta, uses the GTK toolkit, "prefers" putting scrollbars inside widget content area, where Anjuta puts them outside. Some of you may say "what about QT?" Well, things are not better here; let me tell you why with Konqueror as an example: a widget with folders on the right has a border, a tab with that widget also has border, which also includes a status bar in the bottom part of the window ... again with the border, don't you think that there are too many borders around there? Well, you are not alone. It's big waste of space and functionality (which border would you like to resize today?), not to mention ergonomics."    (Continued via OS News, vermaden)    [Usability Resources]

Nautilus vs. Konqueror File Browser

UX Design-Planning Not One-man Show

Experience planning teams needed? ...

"A lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounds the term "user experience." The multitude of acitivities that can be labeled with these two words span a vast spectrum of people, skills and situations. If you ask for UX design (UXD), what exactly are you asking for? Similary, if someone tells you they are going to provide you with UXD for an application, website or intranet or extranet, what exactly are you going to get?

Is it just one person who is responsible or is it a team of people who are in charge of UXD? In this story I´ll sketch my ideas of UXD based on my experiences and at the end of this story I will give you my answer.

Let us start at the beginning – UXD starts with experience – experience of the users. And so I will talk about the users first.

UXD-P – every person is an individual

Every person is an individual. Every person is in possession of different roles. For each individual there will be many roles and each person adopts a different role depending on the circumstances.

User Roles

Sometimes the individual person holds one role, but mainly he will hold quite a few roles like consumer, customer, user, client, investor, producer, creator, participant, partner, part of a community, member, and so on."    (Continued via Boxes and Arrows, Holger Maassen)    [Usability Resources]

Every person is an individual.

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations

Designing for your target audience ...

"... Though interaction and conversion becomes a bit more complicated at the point the interface meets the visitor, though there are a few more shades of gray, in the end it comes down to the same thing: yes or no.

You will succeed in attracting and engaging your audience…or you won’t. Your audience will visit your site looking for information they want to find or a product they are interested in. If they don’t find it, or if you don’t otherwise engage them, they’ll leave.

We know this, and yet the attraction of designing for ourselves, because we know best, or simply giving the client what he or she wants, after all they are paying, tempt us regularly.

As web designers, we have a unique and thorny task. How do we present the information we most want a visitor to see while simultaneously serving the visitor the content they came for? The two may not be the same, so an awareness of who our audience is as well as why our audience is there should be considered before a single design decision is made.

If you know who your target audience is, you can tailor your site’s look and feel, content, and action areas to appeal to your audience and draw them in. If you know what your site visitors want, you can use that information to mutual benefit. Site visitors will leave having found what they came for, and—if you have done your homework—you will have gotten the response you wanted from them. This may be their contact information. It may be a product purchase. If you are really lucky, the site visitor will sign up to receive email and you will have a chance to forge an ongoing relationship.

We all know that site visitors prefer a site that is easier to use. An optimized site will have more traffic. A site that is cross-browser compatible will carry the same message and branding to everyone who looks at it, without unpleasant and unexpected behavior. Usability, Standards and Content Optimization are, at the end of the day, also audience considerations.

In this article, I’ll discuss the process of deciding or determining who your audience is, the basics of understanding audience motivation and response, the process of making design decisions based on audience considerations, and how to use what you know about your audience to influence behavior."    (Continued via Digital Web Magazine)    [Usability Resources]

The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it)

Usability mistakes we should avoid ...

"I recently gave a talk to a company that is beginning to invest more in the customer experience of its website. They wanted to know: how do we avoid the errors of other teams making this investment? There are lots of gurus, blogs, and trade groups, all promoting their own tools and methods - usability, user experience, interaction design, information architecture, and so on. The team knows that they want "better usability" but aren't sure about the next step.

And this company is growing fast, so a lot is at stake in them getting it right. If they build the right processes in-house (or hire consultants that offer them), they'll reap the rewards.

I told them that when committing to customer-centered development (of a product, service, website, or whatever), it's important to stay strategic, always try to improve the business, and listen to customers (as human beings, not as users of a tool).

But in doing so, avoid the following:

1. Not conducting any customer research.

Some companies still don't conduct customer research, but instead rely on their best internal guesses as to what their customers want. Except in organizations where ESP is a common employee skill, this tends not to lead to healthy, customer-centered operations.

2. Conducting "pretend" research.

Let's pretend our user's name is Jane. Let's pretend she is 38 years old, drives a purple Prius, reads mystery novels, loves bulldogs, and likes to go sailing. Let's pretend she comes to our website and likes feature A but not feature B. Therefore, we should develop more things like feature A. See? We're very customer-centered.

This is the fun of creating a persona, which allows teams to make decisions based on fictional people, rather than doing the hard work of listening to real customers. (Yes, I'm being provocative; yes, personas can be useful in some cases - see more in this post.)

3. Conducting research, but the wrong type.

One of the most popular research methods in business today is the focus group: an individual moderator, typically a high-energy person, encourages a live panel of many respondents to give feedback on a product or service. This can be useful in some situations. But where customers interact individually with a company - say, on a website or in some other customer experience - the one-to-many method of focus groups doesn't yield very appropriate findings.

4. Conducting one-on-one research, but with tasks defined beforehand.

Traditional usability dictates that the moderator should write the test questions beforehand. But how can you know the right questions to ask before you've even met the customer? Task definition comes from the age of software, when the tool - a piece of software - was being optimized (thus the term "usability" refers to - and focuses on - a tool, not a human). Customer experience is concerned with the customer; their individual, real-life experience is what we're supposed to be observing. It's beyond presumptuous to think you can predict the appropriate tasks before the session starts. (Read more in this column.)"    (Continued via Good Experience)    [Usability Resources]

A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Evaluating Design Alternatives

Comparing design alternatives ...

"Last week, a client called looking for advice on their first usability study. The client is a large consumer information site with millions of visitors each month. (A similar site might be a large financial information site, with details of individual stocks, investment strategies, and "celebrity" investor/analysts that people like to follow.)

They are about to redesign their home page and navigation. They have three home page design alternatives and five navigation alternatives, created by an outside firm who didn't do any evaluations of the designs.

To help figure out which design to pick, the team has (finally!) received approval for their first usability testing study. While their site has been around for years, they've never watched visitors use it before now.

Up until now, management has perceived usability testing as a nice-to-have luxury they couldn't afford, primarily because of the time it takes. The team called us because they are very concerned everyone views their very first test as an overwhelming success.

They fought long and hard to get this project approved. If it's a success, it will be easier to approve future studies. If anyone thinks that it didn't help pick the right design, it will be a huge political challenge to convince management to conduct a second project.
The Challenges of Comparing Design Alternatives

When we started our conversation, the first thing the team members asked was how to compare the design alternatives. Ideally, they thought, we'd have each participant try each of the home page designs and each of the navigation designs, then, somehow render a decision on which one is "best." After two days of testing, we'd tally up the scores, declaring a winner.

Comparing designs is tricky under the best situations. First, you have to assume the alternatives are truly different from each other. If they aren't, all the alternatives may share a core assumption that could render each as a poor choice.

Assuming the team has done a good job creating the alternatives, the next problem is evaluating them with users. To do this, you'd need to run each alternative through a series of realistic tasks.

Choosing tasks is difficult in any study, but it's more complicated when the team has never really studied their users in the past. They've collected some data from market research and site analytics, but, as we talked to them, it was clear they weren't confident they understand why people came to the site.

If we think the team could come up with realistic tasks, there's still one more big challenge: evaluating all the alternatives. Since they wanted to test new designs, the best thing is to test against a benchmark.

A minimum study design would have each alternative (along with the current design) going first, to correct for "learning effects." (Learning effects happen in studies where the tasks and design alternatives are similar. How do you know if the second design succeeds because it's better or because the user learned something from the first design?)

For ratings, we wouldn't recommend less than four people evaluating each alternative in the first slot. That means, for six alternatives, we're talking a minimum of 24 users.

This presented the problem -- there's no effective way to test all these alternatives with 24 users in their allotted two days, within their budget. We needed to think creatively."    (Continued via UIE, Jared Spool)    [Usability Resources]

User Assistance: Writing for a High-Context Culture

Writing for a high-context culture ...

"Jean-Luc Dumont is a respected authority in international technical communications, but he is most renowned for a particularly entertaining presentation he gives about road signs. This genre of tight communications that are written for small spaces and meant to read by users in motion holds many lessons for those of us who write user assistance.

Especially enlightening is the distinction Jean-Luc makes between high-context cultures and low-context cultures and how that difference in cultures influences the language of road signs. While technical communicators tend to write in a low-context style, user assistance occurs in high-context situations. So, in this column, I’ll discuss the need to reexamine how we write user assistance in light of this cultural proclivity.
High Context and Low Context

Jean-Luc points out—nonjudgmentally—that the American culture is a low-context culture. Figure 1 shows one of Jean-Luc’s examples that makes his point most vividly. I see this kind of sign several times a week in my own neighborhood.

This is a typically American-style road sign, because in low-context cultures, the assumption is that people know only what you have explicitly told them, and anything that is not expressly prohibited is allowed. On the other hand, people in high-context cultures do not need to be told not to hit pedestrians, because not hurting people is part of the cultural value system, and the assumption is that this guideline applies to traffic scenarios as well. In a low-context culture, it is apparently not only necessary to state this rule, it needs the further status of being law—versus a general guideline for drivers to follow or ignore at their discretion.

The Culture of Technical Writing

What we consider to be good technical writing often reflects an American cultural perspective. One facet of this cultural orientation is that technical writing tends to use a low-context style. Most notably, we tend to write user assistance as if users have never seen the user interface we are explaining. Secondly, we tend to write user assistance as if users have never even used software before. But users rarely go to Help before they have tried to accomplish a task on their own first, and most users today have extensive experience using software and are familiar with the standard ways of interacting with user interfaces. So a user interface is a high-context artifact—one a user has already seen before reading our documentation and that uses rules and conventions the user already knows."    (Continued via UXmatters)    [Usability Resources]

A sign for a low-context culture.

Everything in Moderation: Using Content Units to Manage UX

Content can drive UX ...

"The Roman philosopher Cicero stated, “Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.” The trouble is, even though people have repeated this particular quotation over the past couple of millennia, our clients often push the limits excessively—beyond moderation—for both content and presentation.

As a UX professional, how do you demonstrate to your clients the benefits of moderation in user experience? You show them.

Stop Right There

You’re sitting in a meeting with a client and the first thing they say to you is: “We’d like the site to have some sort of movement on it. It has to be interactive, and it needs to include some Ajax, or whatever that’s called, and make sure people can see everything without scrolling….”

Rather than running from the room screaming, because your client has given you a hodgepodge of unworkable requirements, take a deep breath and respond to each and every one of the things your client has asked you to do. You could approach doing this in a couple of different ways, but I’ve found that separating client requests into content units removes uncertainty and offers clearer direction, while helping your client recognize each individual request as a deliverable, requiring assignments and responsibilities.

To do this, I follow a four-step process that helps delineate what content units each section of a Web site must cover—as opposed to content that acts as filler, or filler units. Before I outline this process, I’ll define these two main content types.
Content Units

Content units are any type of content that

* is sectional in nature
* is updated with some degree of frequency
* has a direct impact on the structure of a navigation tree or site map

Examples of content units might include client case studies, products or services, core offerings, and any application-related content such as Help files, a wiki, or a glossary.
Filler Units

Filler units are content that

* does not have a definite destination
* does not impact a Web site’s overall structure or linking strategy
* has a short life span
* you could remove without changing the integrity of a site’s navigation

Examples of filler units might include a video you intend for a single viewing, a news article, a signup form, a short-term promotion, or a contest."    (Continued via UXmatters)    [Usability Resources]

Good old Times

Displaying the data ...

"Many cut axes just because of Excel. And go to charting hell. Because when you cut you distort. And when you distort you lie. At least with your graph. The graphical change in your data is no longer proportional to the change in values. He explains it quite well with a demolished graph from the SportAuto magazine. Here is a positive example. From the German newspaper “Die ZEIT”. This newspaper is off the mark sometimes, too.

Die ZEIT, 2008–04–30, p. 37, market share of Deutsche Post (left) and number of letters in Germany in billions (right)

All my rules are observed. Time runs from left to right. Scale starts at zero. The graph is proportional to its values. No exaggeration. No gadgets. No unnecessary percentage signs. Letters in billions, not in single pieces.

In the same issue another good graph. Structure is shown top-down. Labeling where it belongs: next to the columns. At least for the values. I would have left out the series “andere” (“others”). The dots, too."    (Continued via Bella consults)    [Usability Resources]

Die Nachfrage Steigt

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

Free PDF download ...

"My new book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks is now available for purchase in both paperback and digital editions.

Description
Forms make or break the most crucial online interactions: checkout (commerce), registration (community), data input (participation and sharing), and any task requiring information entry. In Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski draws on original research, his considerable experience at Yahoo! and eBay, and the perspectives of many of the field's leading designers to show you everything you need to know about designing effective and engaging Web forms. See Complete Description."    (Continued via Functioning Form)    [Usability Resources]

Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks

Touch Usability: Samsung SDI laptop concept

New form factor with touch keyboard ...

"Engadget writes about this Samsung laptop concept design: Samsung's 12.1-inch OLED concept makes us swoon.

Are we ready for touch panel keyboards? Probably not quite, though the trend in laptop design does seem to be towards flatter and flatter keyboards with less travel distance, and people seem to like them. Apple too has moved in this direction with their latest keyboard, on which I'm typing this. So it may just be a short leap to totally flat keyboards. Add some high-fidelity tactile feedback and they might work quite well.

Presumably the touchpad for this computer would be overlaid on the keyboard and accessible with some sort of mode switch."    (Continued via Engadget, Touch Usability)    [Usability Resources]

Samsung SDI laptop

Considering the User Perspective: Research into Usage and Communication of Digital Information

Research paper on use of digital media ...

"Abstract

In this article we present the methodology and initial results from qualitative research into the usage and communication of digital information. It considers the motivation for the research and the methodologies adopted, including Contextual Design and Cultural Probes. The article describes the preliminary studies conducted to test the approach, highlighting the strengths and limitations of the techniques applied. Finally, it outlines proposals for refinement in subsequent iterations and the future research activities planned. The research is carried out as part of the Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) project.

1 Introduction and Background

As the digital evolution becomes infused into everyday life, the ways in which society communicates and uses information are changing. New processes are emerging that were inconceivable in a solely analogue world. National libraries and archives, as the custodians of a society's information, have the responsibility to safeguard these records and to provide sustained access to digital cultural and scientific knowledge. If these organisations are to fulfil these responsibilities, as a community of practitioners we must understand the nature of new communication and usage processes, both to ensure the appraisal process captures the right material and to guarantee that the new kinds of emerging working procedures are supported by the institutions.

Since the 1980's, there has been an ever increasing focus on user studies within the fields of both archives (Duff 2002; Anderson 2004; Harris 2005; Sundqvist 2007) and libraries (Siatri 1999 and Carr 2006). The first user studies in archives focused on evaluating the performance of services (Conway 1986). Since then archivists, librarians and social scientists have extended the range of user-focused research (Wildemuth 2003). Many studies have focused on quantitative analysis of usage statistics to improve the usability of a specific service or class of services, including nation-wide studies with performance rankings (PSQG 2006). At the same time an alternative method has been to use ethnographically based studies to contribute to the design of appropriate services (Nardi and O'Day 1998, Seadle 2000, Akselbo et al. 2006). The idea behind this approach is that only by understanding users can one develop new and innovative services to meet the needs of the users themselves; put more simply, 'the people involved must be understood before services can be assessed' (Seadle 2000).

The primary aim of user and usage studies is to improve the quality of service. Knowledge about the wants, needs and activities of customers can be employed to change, adapt or update services, or to prioritize management and implementation decisions. A recent trend of user-centred research in archives and libraries has been to focus on two general issues, namely typologies of users, or user groups, and search strategies and techniques, essentially user behaviour (Sundqvist 2007). Introduction of new technologies has accelerated the process of including user studies as one of the basic elements in an overall program of customer service. The sophistication and richness of our understanding of the issues surrounding usage of digital objects and consequent implications for digital preservation requires more research.

Libraries and archives have traditionally been the guardians of analogue communication channels, whether these are scholarly publications housed in a library, or records preserved by an archive. The usual communication channel for scholarly research results, the journal article, has remained a relatively unchanged and consistent form, even with the arrival of digital e-journal versions (Lynch 2007). The digital evolution has since enabled the evolution of whole new processes and techniques for communicating and disseminating results. The emergence of e-government has created new communication channels affecting the business processes between government departments and between them and citizens. Scholarly communication itself is undergoing a transformation, with 'the nature of engagement with and use of scientific literature becoming more complex and diverse, and taking on novel dimensions' (Lynch 2007). Both the social activities of scholarly communication and the unit of information itself have been altered, with data sets, simulations and social networking venues all becoming accepted ways to share and disseminate research (Van de Sompel and Lagoze 2007). These recent transformations have affected the objects libraries and archives have a responsibility for preserving, and in turn affect even what we perceive to be a 'digital object'. Further investigations of these issues are therefore required."    (Continued via D-Lib Magazine)    [Usability Resources]

Psychology Behind Usability

The application of psychology principles to usability ...

"Eye-Tracking
Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (”where we are looking”) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. eye tracking monitor records every eye movement and highlights the most active areas on the site visually. Eye-tracking studies can help to estimate how comfortable web users are with the web-site they’re browsing through and how quickly they can understand the structure and system behind it. You can find some interesting usability findings from recent eye-tracking study.

Fold
The fold is defined as the lowest point where a web-site is no longer visible on the screen. The position of the fold is, of course, defined by the screen resolution of your visitor. The region above the fold (also called screenful) describes the region of a page that is visible without scrolling. Since the fold is seen directly without scrolling, it is often considered as the area which guarantees the highest possible ad click rates and revenues. However, Fold area isn’t that important.

Foveal viewport (Foveal area)
The fovea, a part of human’s eye, is responsible for sharp central vision, which is necessary in humans for reading, watching television or movies, driving, and any activity where visual detail is of primary importance. Foveal area is a small wide space area where your eyes are aimed at and it is the only area where you can perceive the maximum level of detail. Foveal area is a tight area of about two degrees of visual field or two thumbnails held in front of your eyes. This is the place where you’d like to deliver the most important messages of your visitors.

Foveal viewport is important, because outside of this wide screen area how your visitors see your web-pages change dramatically. Inside this area is the only part of your vision with the maximal resolution - only here no eye scanning is necessary.

Gloss
Gloss is an automated action that provides hints and summary information on where the link refers to and where it will take the user once it’s clicked. Hints can be provided via title-attribute of links. From the usability point of view users want to have the full control over everything what is happening on a web-site; clear and precise explanations of internal and outgoing links, supported by sound anchor text, can improve the usability of a web-site.

Graceful Degradation (Fault-tolerance)
Graceful Degradation is the property of a web-site to present its content and its basic features even if some of its components (partly or at all) can’t be displayed or used. In practice it means that web-sites display their content in every possible “fault” scenario and can be used in every configuration (browser, plug-ins, connection, OS etc.) the visitor might have. “Power-users” are still offered a full, enhanced version of the page. For instance, it’s typical to offer alternatives for Multimedia-content (for instance image) to ensure that the content can be perceived if images can’t be displayed.

Granularity
Granularity is the degree to which a large, usually complex data set or information has been broken down into smaller units.

Hotspot
Hotspots are clickable site areas which change their form or/and outer appearance once they are clicked. This is typical for :focus-effects when a link or any other site element is clicked."    (Continued via Web 3.0)    [Usability Resources]