NetLife Research is a Norwegian based User Experience design and consulting firm. For the last couple of years they have been releasing a bad usability calendar which is meant to show examples of bad UX and usability.
This year's calendar has great examples of exaggerated use of web 2.0 design,social bookmarking proliferation, drop down menus, message feeds etc.
You can download this year's calender here.
Interesting way to portray UX and design bloopers!
As envisioned by Donald Norman and inspired by his book "The invisible computer".
The following skills are required for building the best user experience into a product (could be any product from hi-tech to manufacturing)
So here's the deal, in a typical technology product, there is no luxury of time to go about doing all the above mentioned steps and in many cases some of the steps can't be executed because the target audience characteristic is too far and wide.
What do you think is the best model that can work for a typical web based application scenario in order to make sure that the real needs of the user are met ?
What goes on in your mind when someone says Library Management System? You usually dust it off with "College project", "Oh, no! Not another" (even "fake resume"). True, designing or developing library applications is treated like a Hello world problem for spec creation, feature breakup, OO design and development. It is a rat trap, a wheel, that someone is always reinventing.
Why am I writing about it then?
I discovered this wonderful feature as I was looking for a book at my local public library. (See highlight below).
There, amongst all the actions/searches clutter (we'll discuss the form design later) was a "Nearby items on shelf".
The closest one could come to actually browsing books in the library. I'm sure you have spent enough time in libraries and bookstores browsing shelves to know how valuable that is to discovering books. Translate this into online KPIs - more time spent on the site, potentially more transactions.
The more I thought about it, the more I realize that designing (I include spec-ing) this feature isn't straightforward - it isn't a "find more in category" or "more by this author". It could be as simple as a list of next accession numbers or as complex as a recommendation engine (a virtual shelf opens up possibilities).
So here's the Open Challenge: How would you design this feature? What would your search results show, how would you arrange the shelves and how would you handle special cases? The best idea gets a Barnes and Noble (for US residents) or a Crossword (India) gift card.
A very happy new year to you and your families on behalf of the team that brings you Ux Unleashed. Thank you all for giving Ux Unleashed your time.
Thought I'd spend a moment rounding up some of the posts in Ux Unleashed that stood out - each for its own reason. The idea is to give you a sampling of whats gone by, no grading or rating of any sort.
It all started with Sunil's holler in the darkness with a suggestion on making MSN Messenger smarter.
I'd like to say there was no stopping us then, but thats wrong. We took some tangents before we our bearings right, but we got there. From product reviews to humor, from ipods to irons, we've covered some range. And in some sense we're still getting there.
I'm opening the jewelry box to show off the gems.
First, some insightful posts that probably deserve to get some more readership. These were written early (when we had very few readers): Arun's post on data representation, Kiran's post on Web 2.0 UX, Sunil's post on implicitly rating media content. I loved these, let me know what you think of them.
Upma's post on Invisibility mode in GTalk is an SEO dream come true. According to our site analytics, this post is the most common landing page from search engines thanks to the use of niche keywords. A lesson for us bloggers.
Some posts that caused debate and discussion:
Good user experiences make things happen - the way you wanted them to - without you having to. By being a natural extension of the thought process. Compensating for discipline or memory or structure.
Better user experiences are not noticed. Just enjoyed at a subconscious level. Like a walk on a quiet beach at sunrise.
Nice concept ! The new Twitter poster from Spanish company Come n Click Networks provides a mashup of Twitter users sized relatively to the influence of each Twitter user, based on the number of followers and the number of Tweets the populars make.
These posters are now available for the United States, Japan, Brazil, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Canada, France and Taiwan, in addition to a global poster on the front page. Now this is a nice concept and goes to show how mashups can surface up a lot of important information.
However I wonder what would be the real usefulness of something like. It's eye candy! yes, no doubt about that, but could this lead to a digg style user rating mechanism in Twitter ?
How do you think this can be leveraged and can you build a business idea through this mashup ?
I stumbled upon this piece of writting from Elliot Jay Stocks, a reputed designer and a popular speaker here. It's a good take on approaching differentiation through design and he outlines the reasons we go wrong when designing the Web 2.0 look. It's a good read and I would encourage you to look at it.
His basic analysis is that
1. The design elements are getting repetative leading to a cliched look
2. Web 2.0 may seem like an aesthetic relook at UX but in reality , it is far beyond just design.
Therefore, we need to approach design differently and match elements to context. Ergo, destroy the Web 2.0 look and go for designs that stand out.
I have a couple of problem accepting this analysis.
But before that, let me outline why I think it would have resonated immediately with lot of readers, including me.
1. It is easy to sympathize with a non conformist POV because it plays into the my need for a new perspective, little spice, more variety, leftist titillations etc.
2. It is easy to poke a hole or two , easier than engineering a whole new look at any rate. Hell, even Shilpa Shetty and Microsoft are objects of hatred in some communities !
Having said that, this is my take on the analysis.
1. It comes across as more of a bored yawn than an invigorating contra point. What he is doing is pointing out standard design tenets and expecting the audience to realize their folly. Imagine if I wrote a similar presentation saying all wheels are round and hence conclude that GM ought to think out of the box henceforth. Point is these design concepts work and users love it. I will keep my friendly bevel, seductive shadow and pleasing pastels over DOS teletype and Roadrash colors. Thanks for the progress.
2. His counter example about ‘big name designers’ are outright shallow. A > they are not big name web apps company; B > the UX examples propped up are cluttered , punkish, dirty, hurried and unfriendly, to say the least.
3. His suggestion that over usage makes the look clichéd begs the wheel example once more. If something works, I would rather use it than be left looking like Australopithecus. That’s the reason to use it and that’s the technique to ape as well. Big designers can have their field day trying out cutting edge revolutionary concept but if their evening wear, plastic bridal wear and horrendous page layouts are anything to go by, thank you once again.
4. His conceptual defense is valid and so are his conclusions. Some do think that it’s all about the look and there is some need for education. But that is a minority segment. For the rest Web 2.0 means more about community than anything else. And as long as we design for that , all other goals are secondary.
He makes the point about understanding what concepts work in which context. Well, the very design concepts he picks on works brilliantly in Web 2.0 context (if user adaptation numbers and usage frequency are anything to go by). It’s more worthwhile to try being original/creative in solving the business problem you had set out to design a solution for than spending your money on big name designers to create a Jackson Pollock. Spare the poor users and spare my bevel edged pastel shaded shadows.
Life is good. I see a subtle outer glow.
In my search for a good video editing software (any recommendations?), landed up on the Pinnacle Studio web page and was trying to find the nearest brick and mortar to buy the software.
This is what I got.
Not only can I not expand a zip-code based search without a radius parameter, would it not have been F-DAU had they just showed the nearest dealer based on what ever information they had? Wasn't this a fabulous opportunity for continuity of experience by suggesting other ways to buy? etc?
Isn't this game incredibly cool, check the video below. Looks like you really need to know your physics well to play this one :) This one is from Kloonigames and runs on the tablet PC. A PC version of crayon physics is coming soon.
The user experience on this is incredible, watch how the game reacts as the user draws different figures and tries to achieve their objective. With the Wii and PS3 giving PC games a run for their money, I think innovative concepts like this one are a really good answer.
We're always on the lookout for a good picture - whether it is for website, header image or presentation. Here's a list of where to look for images and icons.
Free Images. (move over, Mr. Getty)
My first search is on Flickr's CC pool. And usually the last, because I find what I need here. Change the sort order (recent, interesting) for completely different results. Use it as you like as long as you give credit.
Image After has a fairly large collection of photos and texture, which is free for personal or commercial use.
everystockphoto has a service that looks across sites for CC photographs. It has indexed over a million pictures so far. A good place to start searching for pictures. An account here can also give you bookmarking capabilities.
The photoshop tutorial blog has a list of free photo sites too.
Icons
Iconfinder.net has been around for years now, and I use this to look for icons. I only wish they would have some common groups or a "related icons" feature to make it easier for a user to find other icons with a similar look and feel. E.g., if I need icons for a website and I search for "home" it should somehow show me related icons (typically home, about, products, services, contact, careers, sitemap are on a website) with the same look and feel so I can pick those up immediately without having to eyeball through other search results.
Got this in a mail from Upma (that really triggered this post). A set of resources of icons. A lot are Mac-inspired/Mac-intended, but there are good web and Windows ones as well. I like the rss icon set in this one.
Please post a comment with your opinion on these or any other you may have used. I'll add to this list as we find more resources too.
Adding to my list of traveler's travails...
Delta airlines. Web check-in screen.
There are three ways to identify your itinerary : frequent flier, confirmation and e-Ticket number.
And I am asked to identify the identifier through the radio button. Unnecessarily. Each type has a unique pattern. In this example, the eTicket number always starts with 006, in other cases, say Alaska, confirmation number is 6 digit alphanumeric, eTicket number is 13 digit numeric. Etc.
Cummon, don't make me work. Make those programmers work :)
BTW, at an uber-level, web check in as a feature itself is great usability for the airline "users".
or, The Three Little Pigs: Then and Now.
"C'mon, its almost English**!" said the PGM pig. "We could all finish up before the Big Bad Wolf came, and go home."<Button>Control.Background PE
<Control.Background>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="1,1">
<GradientStop Color="Yellow" Offset="0.0" />
<GradientStop Color="LimeGreen" Offset="1.0" />
LinearGradientBrush>
Control.Background>
Button>
The Expression around the clock event happened yesterday in Bangalore at Fuga, a cool venue for an even cooler event. This was a global designer conference(taking place simultaneously in 10 venues around the globe) aptly themed “Design is back!”
The event started with out with registration, Microsoft had a very strict registration and confirmation process for this event and inspite of that the place was packed with people. There were about 200 people and seating was available only for about 70 people.
The event kicked off with a keynote from Shelly Armstrong of the Microsoft Design team. Shelly has been involved in various projects in Microsoft, including the interaction design for the XBox and the Zune. Her talk was totally targeted towards designers and tips on improving UX, design, importance of keeping up with latest trends, networking etc.
After this there was a break, with the bar being opened up [:)]. There was more action ahead though. The next session was by Supreet Singh, an UX designer and Pandurang, a dev. They started out with a desinger dev duel and demostrated how Expression Studio supported the designer-dev collaboration with ease. This was pretty interesting, with Surpreet putting in a video on to his canvas and then Pandurang writing a bit of code for the play and pause functionality.
The dev, (as they put it, didn’t have much idea about UX) and hence he puts up text messages for play and pause. Surpreet then takes this XAML and immediately ports this message into a cool button.
The next part was demos - impressive stuff overall, though I had seen most of them before. The demo which impressed me the most, was the one of a Silverlight video player being able to play 10 high definition videos simultaneously with ease, and the ability for the user to seamless switch between them with no system overload.
Post this was the usual networking session (with more beers though!). Met a couple of interesting people and managed to market our UX blog. People seemed to be very interested by this, especially because we are not a design only firm.(Thanks Ram ! for mentioning our blog in your post.)
At the end, Microsoft gave away a goodie bag to each participant. It had a 60-day trial of the Expression Studio, a design magazine and a Reebok t-shirt!.
I just got around installing the latest msn live messenger 8.5.
Some things that really appeased my subconscious..
In the earlier versions of messenger, it used to be both an optical and ergonomic challenge to click on the close button. It looked nice and all that, but was super hard to point to and click. A prime example of a good-looking UI at the cost of better UX.
The other options(minimize and maximize) have a blue hue on hover signifying a less destructive action.
Subtle touches go a long way in creating an intuitive user model.
The undo problem is one key aspect I am hoping future web apps will support. I just deleted all my mails in my hotmail inbox and I need to ‘Undo’ but I can’t do it. If this was a desktop application I could have done this in a jiffy.
This is a huge problem in web apps, though they are not covered too much and not many people talk about them, as we are now pretty much used to this kind of behavior. Web apps work excellent, they store all our data, enable us to access them from anywhere and give us no worry about licenses etc.
But as we move towards looking at a cloud or what some people call as a ‘cloud OS’ it becomes increasingly important to have all the desktop paradigms on the web. This problem was probably not thought about by people because when the web started it was more a data storage medium where documents, files etc were stored and people would read from it, so probably there was never a need for offlines access or storing states. But as we move towards having a cloud OS, and making the web a operation system, it becomes very very important to look at such issues.
John Dowdell from macromedia has some interesting thoughts on storing states where he basically argues as to whether the Back button on the browser needs to smart to capture these changes and also talks about capturing states in web apps.
Having an undo functionality brings about a sense of simplicity in the user’s mind - “What the heck, I can always undo it” and hence brings more confidence. This will play a vital role as people from different age groups, degrees of tech saviness etc start using the web to perform very important and secure activities like paying bills, making purchases online etc.
So what's your solution to this problem ? Or is this a problem at all ?
Image courtesy : NewbieGamerBlog
Take a look at this video
Whats your opinion of touchscreen displays? Is it the way of the future? (or, will the next Apple computer come with just a screen and nothing else?)
I for one am imagining a PGMT SIG UI review with all of us jabbing our fingers on the screen...
Beautiful graphic which shows the evolution of the Apple from factor from Apple I to the iPhone over 30 years from 1976 through 2007. This goes to show the improvements in usability and user experience in Apple products.
Web 2.0 UIs look different. The way they behave is different. The user experience is different. Why is this? Is the average user of Web 2.0 different from Web 1.0?
The Pew Internet & American Life Project April 2006 Survey (which only includes those above 18) puts the average age of "Omnivores" (8% of American adult population) as 28. Excerpt below:
"They are highly engaged with video online and digital content. When the next popular user-generated fashion comes along, Omnivores are likely to testdrive it. One might even invent it."
But are Web 2.0 sites designed for omnivores? The next set of users, the "Connectors" (7% here) seems more like the group they are trying to attract. Definition below:
"The Connectors’ collection of information technology is used for a mix of one-to-one and one-to-many communication. They very much like how ICTs keep them in touch with family and friends, but they are also twice as likely as the average to blog or have a Web page. They like how ICTs let them work in community groups to which they belong, and overall they find their information gadgets a boon to personal productivity."
The study challenges some widely held beliefs of Web 2.0, that of the long tail. The belief that Web 2.0 is used equally by all, but some more than others is a myth. Web 2.0 users are a demographic.
That said, why is the UX different?
I think there are some basic reasons, beyond the target users:
Simplicity - Web 2.0 applications usually have simple features with large scale/complex aggregation. The user does not see the aggregation, but the results, which are again presented simplified.
User Participation - engaging the user and making them contribute is tricky. Too many steps and complicated structures when submitting information will easily take the user away. The ease of contribution is the primary attraction for user participation.
Continuous Improvement - the concept of the perpetual beta means there are constant addition of functionality. A complex UX would mean longer release cycles.
