Mental model: Shifting gears

I got my new bike a week ago (and all of a sudden spring is very, very far away). As mentioned in the previous post my old bike is actually very old. That means that shifting gears were done using two levers positioned on the down tube. My new bike (OK - so I took it for a small ride even though I shouldn't - considering the weather) has the shifting mechanism built into the handbrakes which is really cool. The right one shifts on the rear derailleur and the left one handles the front. Just like my old bike.

To get to the user experience point of view: There are two levers on each handbrake, one for shifting down and another for shifting up. You press them inwards to trigger the shift. I had no problems using the one for the rear derailleur; I shifted down and up like I never tried anything else. Piece of cake. But my left handbrake was obviously broken - I couldn't get it to shift up on the big chain ring. Until I tried the other lever (the one shifting to a higher gear on the left).

My "problem" is this: I correlated the shifting mechanism with the gears: Move this lever and you shift to a higher gear; move the other to shift to a lower gear. Basically they work just like the old ones - pull the left one for a lower gear, pull the right one for a higher one.

So why would I all of a sudden be confused by this? My guess is that with the old ones the mechanism was quite obvious - it just pulled the cable for the derailleur. And I knew that pulling the cable for the rear would get me a lower gear, whereas pulling the cable for the front would get me a higher gear. Now the mechanism is all wrapped up and hidden from view and I can't see how the cable is pulled. If this should get real "nerdy" I would say that this is usability heuristic #1: Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

I do believe, though, that they real key here is this: My mental model wasn't matched with how things worked. I'm pretty sure that I'll get the hang of it when spring comes and I can actually take the bike ot for some rides (instead of driving my wife crazy with frustration and the kids with laughter when riding it around in the living room).

Cycle fitting on-line

I've just bougth myself a new bike. The company is German and they only sell via the internet (pretty strange considering how backwards the Germans normally are when we're talking about adapting to new techology; there are still gas stations in Northern Germany where you cannot pay using a credit card!!!).

Anyway - this story is about how you can reduce the fairly complex task of buying a bike to a pleasurable experience in front of your computer (we are NOT talking bikes like the ones you get in the local supermarket).

Try out their Perfect Position System and come back here.

Pretty easy wasn't it? The only thing that isn't optimal, is the box with explaining text in the middle which only goes away when you click "Start". This is so easy. And also necessary. I've been checking out bikes for 6 months now - and I was convinced that I needed to do a lot of "trial runs" to determine which bike would be to my liking. Also, because the last time I bought a bike, sloping top tubes weren't all the rage it is today (you used to determine the right size of bike by standing slightly at ease over the bike. There should be a couple of centimeters of air to the top tube from you crotch).

So all my anxiety of finding the right size was taken away by this tool - I felt rather confident that they wouldn't make serious mistakes (if you're a company that only do business online you'd better do the right thing. Everytime). Therefore I was willing to part with a substancial amout of my savings without even trying the bike out. Just because someone created this little tool (and made it simple to use and pretty to look at!). I don't know if I am representing the average user here, but it is an interesting observation.

And OK - it did help a bit that it looked to be the sweetest deal on the planet at his point in time.

Update: Culture may not be in such grave danger after all

I now finally(!!) finished "The Cult of the Amateur" mentioned in the previous entry (it was quite a hard read and I finished up 5 other books before this one was done). Anyway: I am pleased to announce that while I was rather annoyed by Andrew Keens writing (because his doomsday approach turned me off, and I thought most of his examples (especially the economic ones) were ridiculous), the book turned out to be OK in the end.

After all the hubbub about web 2.0 and no one respecting copy-rights anymore the book turned more sombre and looked at the internet in general and some of the effects of what can happen to our kids. As a parent to a 7 year old who is now enjoying web 2.0 through Club Penguin and a 5 year old who is sleeping in a card board box on the floor in her room next to her perfectly good bed, and who before she goes to bed (card board box), almost always seems to manage to get my PC infected with malicious spyware and stuff, I pay attention when someone warns me how my kids can get in trouble.

After all the gloom Mr. Keen actually lets us know that it may not be so bad after all. There is still hope he claims (and I agree), because even though there will always be criminals and pundits, there are also sensible people (and most of us belong to that category) which will legislate, agree, and veto what is good for our common good.

Our culture in ruins?

I'm in the proces of reading "The cult of the amateur" by Andrew Keen, and I know that I should probably finish it before commenting, but this guy is really depressing me. He comes across as a really grumpy old guy. His basic claim (which isn't all that far of) is that the coming of Web 2.0 is killing or culture, because basically anyone can become (and soon is) a voice on the internet. The first half of the book is filled with examples. Of how everyone cheats and lies and how we can't distinguish facts from fiction anymore. Well, here's my take: Cheats and liars have existed since we crawled out of the slime quite some time ago. Some time later, in the early days of the telegraph elaborate ways to use this new medium to cheat were not uncommon as Tom Standage explains in "the Victorian Internet".

Another example of how Web 2.0 is undermining our community is the claim that our economy is crippled by having amateurs doing the jobs of professionals. In one example he calculates that $331.000 were sucked out of the economy because a company choose to have amateurs compete to create their Super Bowl Ad. Somehow I don't really feel sorry for the Ad professionals being cheated this way. Also, could it be that the $331.000 were spent on something else, or maybe even given to shareholders? And finally - I do believe that the marketing people will have made a decent cost benefit analysis of this before going this way.

I really feel insulted that I should not be able to distinguish between what's good and what's bad. I'm a normal person - but that doesn't mean that I'm naive and don't question the validity of any source of information I come across. And even if I can't tell right from wrong, I hope that they will teach my kids more thorough source criticism, than I was taught.

The most ironic thing is that Andrew Keen has his own blog!

Sorry that there were no user focus in this entry - but I just had to get this of my chest. I'll get back when I've finished the book - I might just end up being positive after all.

Web 2.0 or is it 3.0? Second Life

In a recent article in Time Magazine, the much touted game/universe of Second Life was put in for a mid-term evaluation. Check out this quote:
The overall traffic has been disappointing: the site has nearly 8.7 million registered members, but the number of active users is closer to 600,000. One reason for this gap may be that the technology isn't intuitive. (I spent my first hour on Second Life wearing both sneakers and high heels because I couldn't figure out how to discard one pair. And yes, I passed Computer Science 101.)
From: Time Magazine: Second Life's Real-World Problems, Thursday, Aug. 09, 2007

You'll be inspired by the user behaviours described in the article. I never cease to wonder as this virtual world is mostly made up of people acting out fantasies, it will be full of "freaks" - people acting out things here that they could/would not act out in the real world. Somehow The Dice Man springs to mind.

However, as Second Life is for everyone some sort of regulation is also needed (how else to prevent the otherwise ordinary plumber becoming a child molester or serial killer?). Who provides that regulation? Or should it just run de-regulated as some sort of ultimate experiment to see if anarchy really is the way to go?

Banner blindness revisited

Once again Jakob Nielsen concludes that banner blindness is a de facto phenomenon. Not really surprising for those of us working in the user experience field. But why, then, do they keep using banner ads? If they don't work? Well, the thing is they DO work. People actually click on the things (especially younger ones). The thing is this: only a very small percentage of visitors click on an add. But if the total number of visitors is large enough that small percentage will add up.

Also, don't tell me that marketing people are so studpid that the don't want bang for their bucks. Especially as it is so easy to track and measure. You can actually pay for what you get (i.e. number of click-throughs).

Before we can get Joost: Cycling TV!!

This is where I can get my cycling TV coverage (as I refuse to pay for a bunch of TV channels that I never watch anyway): Welcome to Cycling TV — Cycling TV

The content is actually what I would expect - and absolutely to my satisfaction. But the design (both interaction and visual) leaves much to desire. Why do I have to login everytime? Why can't it just remember who I am? Cookies have been invented a long time ago (and one of the (many) reasons Amazon has become so popular). And when I'm logged in: why does it not remember which Channels I have subscribed to? Oh! And why can't I see which channel I have currently selected?

I could go on but will not, except for noting the fact that it is really silly constructing a website that does not fit in a 1024x768 pixel resolution (and then even less in a 800x600 pixel resolution). According to www.thecounter.com there are still 12% of users running 800x600 (admittedly most of these are probably over 60 and not necessarily hard core internet TV users). But 52% still use a resolution of 1024x768. And you get to scroll horizontally!!! This has been a "no-go" from day 1. Even if it is only a silly banner ad hiding out there on the right.

Why Invest in Social Features for Your Web Site?

UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » Why Invest in Social Features for Your Web Site? This is a great article by Joshua Porter. Funny thing that just struck me: Isn't this exactly what David Siegel said would happen back in 1997 when he wrote "Futurize your Enterprise" (and Seth Godin in "Permission Marketing")? Pretty smart guys - those two. Only thing is: How much is media hype and how much actually converts to revenue? (And how do you measure the amount attributed to social features? But then again: how do you measure the effect of billboard marketing - what without considering general ecomic factors as unemployment rate etc?)

The effects of online advertising

ACM: Digital Library: Communications of the ACM: The effects of online advertising.

Interesting article but hardly news - just proof that this is the way it is. I do believe that while it is annoying - it will not go away (because some marketing people must believe that it works) - just like TV commercials (also mentioned in the article). My take on it is this: If site content is sufficiently good/relevant for you, you will return despite the annoyance from ads (there's a reason why Super Bowl ads are so high priced - there ARE viewers). Case to prove my point (well just as seen from inside my head): http://www.edbpriser.dk/ has this enormously annoying ad that scrolls down over my main navigation (the category index), however the content of the site is so good that I will bear with them and re-visit again and again.

The customer is always right. Right?

I just recently re-designed the web site for a public institution. The revamp involved killing a very central but also very sophisticated (i.e. not very user friendly) search function. I had replaced it with a simple search field and then specified how search results should be ranked based (among other things) on META data already in the system. Also I placed an index with categories linking to major topics with the database. The design was based on the research done in the last 20 years about users search behaviour as well as interviews with users (upon the customers request). The customer was appalled. Their database was much more complex than that - you could not just use a simple search to get what you wanted! I've now drafted a memo outlining why we specified the design to be the way we did, citing both user interviews and numerous scientific articles on the subject of information foraging, and also why we cannot be held responsible for the solution that the customer now has designed by themselves.

This is not the first time. Another customer a couple of years ago whose business was to be ASP (Application Service Provider) for a number of clients was completely baffled after I reduced their number of menu items from around 70 to 15. There was no way their very complex and advanced application could be "reduced" to just this. Fortunately they choose to listen to their customers input (upon which the design was based) and ended up being very happy.

I fear that the soiled reputation of the database mentioned in the first paragraph will not improve (even though it will look better because the graphics have vastly improved).

As I always say: Everyone thinks they are experts in user interface design. (Oh! And graphic design as well).

Living Room PCs Will Take Off???

Usability News - Living Room PCs are not going to Take Off, argues Ovum

Well - there you go! While I do agree that a PC is generally too complex to just becoming another appliance, I beg to difer greatly in opinions about this article. Just this saturday night I argued tha case that if we could somehow come up with somthing that has my current Media Centers capabilities, bundled with Apples cool design and usability practices and then priced a bit lower than what Apple does historically, we'd be sure to have a hit. If you can even build it all into a TV set even better. Like the iMac. I guess that the iPhone will also turn the mobile phone market upside down. Precisely because they know how to create contextual aware software and wrap it into some real nice packaging. Therefore: Living Room PC's will take of - provided they are done right!

The Green Button - New QuickGuide Beta

The Green Button - New QuickGuide Beta: OK - here's the deal. After installing a new TV-tuner that should enable us to watch digital tv I've been fiddling around with a number of different small utilities to make our Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) in Media Center actually show listings for the various TV channels that we can receive.

After installing the TV tuner we got all the channels I hoped for. However for some reason Microsoft has decided that we can only receive 3 digital channels (only Danish). We have an additional 6 Swedish channels to chose from as well. Media Center, being as user friendly as it really is, does not give me the option to chose where I want to download EPG data from (this would probably confuse some users), and for some bizarre reason also applies its own format to the data instead of following the standard XMLTV format (but then again that's Microsoft for you). This is a know issue (especially for us living outside the U.S) and there are numerous post in various forums about this.

I've now tried various grabbers to get the data down and they all work fairly seamlessly. Another issue entirely is to actually get data from the XML file into Media Center. Enter QuickGuide. I found that this works rather well (although file tweaking, batch file writing, and XML editing was involved). But following the instructions given in the link in the title made it work. And now I have all the EPG data I wished for.

Now only one (or maybe a couple) question(s) remains: Why can't Microsoft make it so that normal users (like me until 2 weeks ago) can just set it up as it is now, but leave it to the "pros" to decide for themselves (hide the option well in the back of the Settings menu)? And why don't they use standard XMLTV? And why don't they just use the EPG data actually transmitted with the digital TV signal (during my nights searching for a solutions for this I found that they plan on this sometime in 2007 - I hope that is so!).

At last: PS2 in the house

Finally! My 6 year old wanted a Play Station for Christmas - and of course he got it. Being an old (and misery) dude I never wanted to buy one because I know myself good enough to know that I couldn't argue the case of spending the money and then using it so little as would be the case (I'm way past the time (untill he gets a real intersting game) where I spent whole nights shooting monsters in dungeons).

I was through serious considerations of going for the X-Box (because I could use the Media Center Extension on it, and he would therefore be able access the favorite recorded kids-shows from the living room), but ended up with the PS/2 because he needs to get into the gaming world first.

We've had some serious football games (FIFA 07) and it's really amazing to watch his approach to learning the system. There's absolutely no reading (or asking for that matter) of manuals. It's pure trial and error. And it seems to work: he already beats me half the time. I'm not quite sure how much is inteded and how much is pure luck that he hits the right buttons at the right time (he hits the buttons a lot!!!). Anyway: Quite impressive user interfaces that are easy to learn; the kid of 6 (who can't really read yet) navigates effortlessly through them. And even more funny: much easier to watch DVD's on than our regular (low price) DVD player residing in the little girls room.