Showing posts with label user experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label user experience. Show all posts
2/19/2010
On URLs, user ignorance, and ui changes vs education
Following the ReadWriteWeb Facebook login story, there has been a lot of discussion on what the actual root issue is and how to solve it. Funkatron takes a stab at the UX design failings that led up to this situation. But Phil Crissman and UI&us do a better job of breaking down this issue further and pointing out the dual standards of user education, something I think we need to spend more time trying to solve.
10/26/2009
8/21/2009
8/19/2009
8/17/2009
The Android Oportunity
That doesn’t mean Android won’t still be successful in some sense if it remains on its current course, but that I don’t expect it to be successful in the “holy shit is this awesome!” sense that the iPhone is.
All products should strive for the "holy shit this is awesome" status - there is really no excuse for them not to but you need to give the designers the power to do what they do best for this to be possible.
8/14/2009
Operating Systems and Learning Styles & Keyboarders vs Mousers
Very interesting thought courtesy of Caroline:
Mac is designed to be intuitive for visual/spatial learners which Windows (and even more so Linux) is designed for non-visual linear text-based learners. She commented that her mother found Windows more intuitive than Mac specifically because she was looking for a text-based way of completing an operation while she or I would look for a visual mouse-based way of doing the same thing.
(There is also a very strong argument to be made that many users are simply more accustomed to Windows and had they started off using Macs instead the situation would be much different - it has been shown through UI studies that our first interaction with a device shapes our internalized paradigm for how that device works and is supposed to be used - see the book The Design of Everyday Things for more)
This certainly seems to fit with my own experience: My mother and I find the Mac much easier and we both have nearly-identical spatial-non-linear learning styles while my father who is a linear thinker doesn't. And my sister who's learning style is a hybrid of mom and dad find the Mac just as frustrating as the PC (I think neither one is well-suited to her style of learning... whatever exactly that weird style is...). Most of my engineer and other linear learning style friends prefer Windows or Linux, while any artist/designer I've ever met is a Mac person. Having used all three I can definately conclude that the Mac is designed for the way I think while I have to work much harder to figure out how to use the others - I just know where to look for a given feature or option on the Mac because it was designed by and for people who think more like me.
Another interesting comparison is between mouse users and keyboarders (and trackpad, pen-tablet, and touchscreen users). I suspect that like the OS's, visual learners like myself are more inclined to use the mouse since is it inherently more visual/spatial, while more linear/non-visual learners prefer the keyboard. Both are quicker and more intuitive to their respective users. I remember and learn everything spatially/visually so I even remember my keyboard shortcuts by their physical locations on the keyboard (give me a different keyboard and I'm screwed!) and have to use a shortcut quite often before I can remember it. My Dad can remember a keyboard shortcut after only the first or second use though. For either user it is most efficient to keep one's hands in the same configuration instead of switching back and forth, so naturally we each try to find the best shortcuts for our preferred device. For keyboarders there are tons of excellent shortcuts built into all the OS's and great add-ons like Quicksilver and Butler for the Mac that make keyboard users efficiency gods.
Unfortunately mouse shortcuts have failed to keep pace. Users of the Mac at least have a fairly good starting point, and with customizations like hot-corners (so handy!!) can be pretty efficient. But the only equivalent of apps like Butler or Quicksilver that I know of is CocoaSuite which enables mouse-gestures for all Cocoa apps in Mac. (Cocoa is the native coding language of OS X and most new apps use it but there are some legacy or ported apps like Finder that use alternative languages.) There are app-specific mouse gestures available for Opera (ugh) and Firefox (ick), but these are limited in scope and power. I have to say that CocoaSuite is my new favorite add-on to the Mac, and I can't imagine computing without it.
(interestingly, I use keyboard shortcuts much more when I'm just on the laptop - the keyboard is much closer to the trackpad and there is no mouse to move back and forth between so clearly most of us can adapt to both conditions if the conditions warrant)
All of this clearly warrants further thought and research - sadly I'm unaware of any user testing on this subject though it would be the perfect research experiment. Are you listening Nielson Norman Group?
Mac is designed to be intuitive for visual/spatial learners which Windows (and even more so Linux) is designed for non-visual linear text-based learners. She commented that her mother found Windows more intuitive than Mac specifically because she was looking for a text-based way of completing an operation while she or I would look for a visual mouse-based way of doing the same thing.
(There is also a very strong argument to be made that many users are simply more accustomed to Windows and had they started off using Macs instead the situation would be much different - it has been shown through UI studies that our first interaction with a device shapes our internalized paradigm for how that device works and is supposed to be used - see the book The Design of Everyday Things for more)
This certainly seems to fit with my own experience: My mother and I find the Mac much easier and we both have nearly-identical spatial-non-linear learning styles while my father who is a linear thinker doesn't. And my sister who's learning style is a hybrid of mom and dad find the Mac just as frustrating as the PC (I think neither one is well-suited to her style of learning... whatever exactly that weird style is...). Most of my engineer and other linear learning style friends prefer Windows or Linux, while any artist/designer I've ever met is a Mac person. Having used all three I can definately conclude that the Mac is designed for the way I think while I have to work much harder to figure out how to use the others - I just know where to look for a given feature or option on the Mac because it was designed by and for people who think more like me.
Another interesting comparison is between mouse users and keyboarders (and trackpad, pen-tablet, and touchscreen users). I suspect that like the OS's, visual learners like myself are more inclined to use the mouse since is it inherently more visual/spatial, while more linear/non-visual learners prefer the keyboard. Both are quicker and more intuitive to their respective users. I remember and learn everything spatially/visually so I even remember my keyboard shortcuts by their physical locations on the keyboard (give me a different keyboard and I'm screwed!) and have to use a shortcut quite often before I can remember it. My Dad can remember a keyboard shortcut after only the first or second use though. For either user it is most efficient to keep one's hands in the same configuration instead of switching back and forth, so naturally we each try to find the best shortcuts for our preferred device. For keyboarders there are tons of excellent shortcuts built into all the OS's and great add-ons like Quicksilver and Butler for the Mac that make keyboard users efficiency gods.
Unfortunately mouse shortcuts have failed to keep pace. Users of the Mac at least have a fairly good starting point, and with customizations like hot-corners (so handy!!) can be pretty efficient. But the only equivalent of apps like Butler or Quicksilver that I know of is CocoaSuite which enables mouse-gestures for all Cocoa apps in Mac. (Cocoa is the native coding language of OS X and most new apps use it but there are some legacy or ported apps like Finder that use alternative languages.) There are app-specific mouse gestures available for Opera (ugh) and Firefox (ick), but these are limited in scope and power. I have to say that CocoaSuite is my new favorite add-on to the Mac, and I can't imagine computing without it.
(interestingly, I use keyboard shortcuts much more when I'm just on the laptop - the keyboard is much closer to the trackpad and there is no mouse to move back and forth between so clearly most of us can adapt to both conditions if the conditions warrant)
All of this clearly warrants further thought and research - sadly I'm unaware of any user testing on this subject though it would be the perfect research experiment. Are you listening Nielson Norman Group?
8/10/2009
Windows Mobile Phone HTC Ozone
Well, so I finally managed to get my hands on a Verizon smartphone. I bought a $30/mo data plan and then have an app on the phone that turn it into a wifi router so that my phone is essentially a mobile wifi router allowing me to get my iPhone online without an AT&T contract at half the price - yay! It wil also give me internet access for my laptop on the bus, at work, and in class (yes, many UMass classrooms STILL don't have wifi!!! GAH). I got the HTC Ozone, a new relatively-cheap windows mobile smartphone (that is also called the Snap on Sprint).
How to do the hacking to enable wifi sharing:
First I installed the ICS app from this thread
then I installed the WMwifirouter trial
I also changed the DUN setting (not sure if this is necessary or not) as described here (the ##778 bit):
and yes, it does eat the battery life like crazy - gonna have to buy a spare battery or three...
Thoughts on the HTC Ozone:
The hardware is not bad - it's a standard candybar phone - not too clunky, but not exactly compact. It does need a more convenient keyboard lock switch though. The physical keyboard takes some getting used to, and I'm much slower than on the iPhone with its predictive text, but I did pick it up more rapidly than I did the iPhone keyboard. Some dumb key positioning choices - like the FN (function) button should be larger, etc, but rather useable.
Thoughts on Windows Mobile:
Not as bad as I'd feared, but it is clear why people don't use the features on their conventional smart phones much. It takes a zillion taps to do anydamn thing with this UI - everything is buried under a million stupid menus. There are some very powerful apps out there, and the ability to run background apps is handy, but there's no easy way to quit an app. Also, it seems impossible to change the shortcuts on the home page rendering it largely useless and forcing you to search through more menus to get to even the apps you use the most. Also, many of the apps and the system UI, especially the older parts, are just butt ugly to the point of actually hurting functionality (they make it harder to pick out what's important at a glance).
Will I use this phone much as a smart phone? Probably not - I expect I'll stick to using my iPhone whenever I can for it's much quicker and more intuitive UI experience. But does it serve my needs of giving me roaming internet access at a reasonable-ish price? Seems so - but we'll see how robust and useable the wifi is soon enough. (reception is so crappy at home that I can't really test the internet effectively - the signal keeps dropping out)
[Followup 1 year later: The HTC hardware is crappier than I'd thought and has already given out. The entire top row of buttons (nav, power, call, etc) DON'T WORK anymore - I have to mash them super-hard and they will respond about 50% of the time. WIndows Mobile is about as crappy as I'd anticipated, and the single app I ever use on it is the WMWifi router one.]
How to do the hacking to enable wifi sharing:
First I installed the ICS app from this thread
then I installed the WMwifirouter trial
I also changed the DUN setting (not sure if this is necessary or not) as described here (the ##778 bit):
and yes, it does eat the battery life like crazy - gonna have to buy a spare battery or three...
Thoughts on the HTC Ozone:
The hardware is not bad - it's a standard candybar phone - not too clunky, but not exactly compact. It does need a more convenient keyboard lock switch though. The physical keyboard takes some getting used to, and I'm much slower than on the iPhone with its predictive text, but I did pick it up more rapidly than I did the iPhone keyboard. Some dumb key positioning choices - like the FN (function) button should be larger, etc, but rather useable.
Thoughts on Windows Mobile:
Not as bad as I'd feared, but it is clear why people don't use the features on their conventional smart phones much. It takes a zillion taps to do anydamn thing with this UI - everything is buried under a million stupid menus. There are some very powerful apps out there, and the ability to run background apps is handy, but there's no easy way to quit an app. Also, it seems impossible to change the shortcuts on the home page rendering it largely useless and forcing you to search through more menus to get to even the apps you use the most. Also, many of the apps and the system UI, especially the older parts, are just butt ugly to the point of actually hurting functionality (they make it harder to pick out what's important at a glance).
Will I use this phone much as a smart phone? Probably not - I expect I'll stick to using my iPhone whenever I can for it's much quicker and more intuitive UI experience. But does it serve my needs of giving me roaming internet access at a reasonable-ish price? Seems so - but we'll see how robust and useable the wifi is soon enough. (reception is so crappy at home that I can't really test the internet effectively - the signal keeps dropping out)
[Followup 1 year later: The HTC hardware is crappier than I'd thought and has already given out. The entire top row of buttons (nav, power, call, etc) DON'T WORK anymore - I have to mash them super-hard and they will respond about 50% of the time. WIndows Mobile is about as crappy as I'd anticipated, and the single app I ever use on it is the WMWifi router one.]
8/07/2009
7/27/2009
Smartphone Web Useability Findings
existing webpages unsurprisingly enough fail miserably when used on phones - I find it fascinating and exciting that we have a world where you now have two separate platforms that you're designing a given webpage for - computer and smartphone, each with distinct constraints and purposes
7/21/2009
mouse gesture for all cocoa apps on Mac!!
SO SWEET - I am a huge fan of mouse gestures as a more powerful UI tool and wish they were OS-native - this comes damn near close and I can't wait to see how well it works for me but so far I'm loving (only complaint - the 90's ere dorky graphics...)
7/08/2009
New Google Operating System Announced
Very exciting and not at all surprising. I have a very strong love-hate relationship with Google - their design style both excites and aggravates me.
7/01/2009
6/30/2009
5/17/2009
4/12/2009
Excelent Userability Podcast Episode: Why is design userability so poor even after decades of research and education?
Userability Podcast Episode 6
(short answer - general public is still unaware of the importance of design and what actually makes design good or bad and in many cases simply finds a workaround without worrying about it)
(short answer - general public is still unaware of the importance of design and what actually makes design good or bad and in many cases simply finds a workaround without worrying about it)
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