One iPhone/iPad feature I actually love

I am not a huge Apple fan (as those you know me will testify). Primarily because I don't like the locked in approach which makes Apple decide everything for me, and the fact that it feels like you're signing up for an occult sect of some kind when you join the Apple bandwagon. And because everyone (or at least members of the sect) says that Apple is the most user friendly phone out there. It is this last part that really gets me. It's *not* the most user friendly phone out there. It was very user friendly when the first one launched, mostly because it was the first actual context aware device. But that's just not the case anymore; all the competitors are just as good now; some are even better! But Apple does have one feature that I love: The "reader" button in the browser - for an old man like me who normally use my phone (apart from the obvious phoning and texting) for reading online news of various kinds when I have 2 minutes of spare time away from my computer, it is just bliss to be able to get an online article in a font size that doesn't hurt my eyes. Well done!

Microsoft Surface ...

I would love to get my hands on a Microsoft Surface. It keeps getting mixed reviews, but my experiences with Windows Phone makes me believe that this must be the tablet I would like to have (as opposed to the tablet we DO have in the household: IPad 2). The Metro design just works for screen interaction and I would love to be able to bypass the ridiculous iTunes software which is at the best of times still surprises me with the features it lacks and strange hidden commands (although it does look nice - that's what you get when form conquers function). And I think I can easily do with an RT; I don't need to run older Windows programmes on my tablet!

Samsung Flatpanel LED TV

We got ourselves a new TV. Because we had to re-paint the living room.

Anyway: The deal was that I had to get rid of the Media Center PC. I did a thorough analysis of the most used features and concluded that what I initially thought (back in the day): that it would be cool to have PC-access in the living room on the big screen, really wasn't cool at all. What with emergence of the iPad and notebook PCs and all. What we did use, though, was the guide, and especially the ability to record TV and occasionally watching a movie - this almost solely by streaming from various Internet services.

So I started hunting: and ended up with a 40" Samsung LED TV. The picture is crystal clear, it can record TV (although it only has one tuner so we can't really record something and watch something else), it can stream movies, which was exactly what we wanted. The sound does not match up to the external speakers we had on the Media Center PC, but no one expected it to.

It does a host of other things, too. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter(?) - you name it. And the thing is this: it doesn't do it real good. I don't know why they bother - do people really want to spend 5 minutes waiting for the TV to connect to Facebook - I can walk to the kitchen, grab the iPad, check my mail, Facebook, make myself a cup of coffee and get back in front of the TV before it's ready. Sheesh. And then there's the dialogues - I don't know where they teach developers that you need to confirm that a file was deleted (after being presented with a very nice progress bar). I can only confirm that I noticed the file was deleted. Hmm.

Apart from these small glitches I do believe that we've got what we need - and the user experience is probably better than I expected (feared?).

Now I'm just waiting for the Microsoft Surface to come around; now that will be a treat and make Apple think.

Smart phones (Windows 7 and Android 2.2)

Here are my thoughts on the user experience of Windows 7 Phone and HTC Android 2.2.

First off: Finally! Phones that makes sense and to some degree can predict what I want to do when I want to do it. The Android (with HTC overlay "Sense") is really good. Especially the mapping app that lets me use and interact (share) with Google maps on the go: In Berlin in November last year I had agreed to meet with some friends. We'd agreed on an area and that I should pick out a restaurant. I found a restaurant that looked fine, entered got a table, whipped out my phone and started Google Maps. The app found my location. I could tap it and the name and adress of the restaurant popped up. I could then choose "Share" and send the adress and name to my friends. They received a text from me with the information and could just choose "Map it" and then ask their phone to use the built in GPS navigation to direct them to the place. Really cool. There are glitches - sure - but they are minor. Only downside on the phone I had was the hardware which couldn't always match the apps I wanted.

Windows Phone 7 has a user interface that just blows me away. It looks so sweet and acts so smooth. Unfortunately it is still very US-centric which makes it less usefull here in Denmark. Mapping sucks big time. The maps look nice enough and the phone finds the location pretty quickly. BUT: there's nothing there. Searching brings out Bing entries of WIKI stuff and businesses in Seattle. Not really usefull when I'm in Copenhagen. This *may* be rectified in the Danish release later this year. But I'm not really all that hopeful as this is a Bing-map "feature" or lack of it, rather than a crappy phone app. Also: The dialing list (recent numbers) does not collapse callers - so I have a very, very long list of the same 3 people I call most and the rest waaaay down the list. I normally use this list as I tend to call the same 10 people most, and would rather not have to go through the adress book and search every time. On the same note the keyboard for the phone does not look up in the adress book (as the Andorid does - which is really cool). I'm annoyed by the many US-centric features and some of the not so thought-through solutions MS have come up with. But I still love the phone and mostly because the interaction is so sleek.

On-hands demo (Cycling computers and more)

A year ago I bought myself a new cycling computer (I wanted one where I could see altitude meters as I've begun bringing my bike to some mountains around Europe and riding up these mountains). I ended up buying a Sigma BC 2600 (price was a factor too - otherwise I would probably have gotten myself a Garmin, which would - in theory - ensure that I didn't get lost). Anyway - Sigma has this cool feature where you can "try" the computer in your browser - click various buttons and see what happens. Pretty nifty.

So I'm wondering - given that many of the mobile devices we use are built on some sort of platform, how hard is it to port this to the web for us common folks to try out before to see if we like it? I'm thinking mostly of the plethora of new touch screen devices. It would be so cool to actually try out how it works before buying it (and not in some store with a sales clerk breathing down your neck). I realize that some of the more quirky motions would be hard to emulate using a mouse (e.g. "pinching" an image), but just to give the general idea it would be great.

Chrome - re-visited ...

One year has passed since I downloaded Google Chrome to check it out. It's now my default browser. Can't really explain why, as most of the features (if not all) are in IE also. It just seems faster. Some of the reason is because they don't steal screen real estate at the top (or bottom) of my screen as much as IE does. And I love the ability to search directly from the adress bar (although you can also do this in IE). Interesting note on this: I tested a client app that was a Document Management System and we'd made one example using this approach (i.e a more or less blank screen and then an adress/search bar at the top. Only one of 8 users found out how it worked unprompted. The rest where stuck in the old "filing cabinet mode". Would be fun to test this approach in 2 or 3 years.

SharePoint 2010

I've just had a sneak preview online of the new SharePoint 2010 (MOSS). If Microsoft keeps their promises, this is going to be the best ever! They've ported the ribbon (long live Silverlight or AJAX), and it just looks sweet. But then again demo's often do! :-)

Check it out: SharePoint 2010 Overview Sneak Preview

Blackberry

I've had the mixed pleasure of being the user of a Blackberry the last 9 months. What a piece of crap! The menus suck and seems like in the "good old" WordPerfect days to just have grown and grown without ever being completely re-thought.

The browser works pretty decently I must admit, especially on sites built for mobile devices, and at least as good (if not better) than most of the Nokia's I've tried out.

Best of all when you read your mail, you don't always get everything in the mail (if it's too big), and you can the choose between "more" ... and "more all". "More all" - c'mon!

Although - other phones could learn from the watch feature which actually gives you the opportunity to use it as an alarm clock (you can choose to use the alarm time on weekdays, or everyday - which means that you don't have to set it every night - pretty smart).

And then there's the keyboard - what can I say? I don't even have "fat" fingers (many will testify to this), but find it close to impossible to use.

In conclusion: If ever I get the choice, the blackberry will be pretty far down the list of preferred mobile devices. Although the Pre looks "kinda slick"

Joost (at last)

I've been fiddling around with Joost a couple times now. First of all: The image quality is surprisingly good. The number of shows quite overwhelming. This leads to the first user experience challenge: How to organize this enormous amount of "channels"? This is done surprisingly easy with a left hand navigation of categories. Clicking each category lists the channels within the category in an explorer kind of view with thumb nails. Works pretty well.

There is also a control panel which pops up when you mouse over it. A few of the icons are hard to understand, but most of them are pretty straigth forward what you're used to from other players. They all have mouse-over text to help you along, so no worries there.

The only thing that is so-so is the content. They even have my cycling.tv in a much easier to use way than the original (see earlier post). Unfortunately since it is free (which is nice) they only show content that's fairly outdated. If they could provide a payment scheme I'd be more than happy to fork over my £25 that I paid to cycling.tv to them. I even log in to Joost so it shouldn't be that much of a problem to handle.

Joost really delivers a refreshing view on how you can design user interfaces running on Windows. If you're just a bit interested in interface design I really urge you to try it out. (It's a beta and crashes from time to time - but it's worth a go anyway)

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.

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.

Coffee machines

This morning I experienced a coffee machine (or rather an espresso maker) at work. I love espresso so I was thrilled. I had these buttons to chose from:

What will you get when pressing the button on the right? My guess was something with milk in it (and I expected the button on the left to give me something cappuccino-like (because of the foam on the top)) - I therefore pressed the middle one. With two cups set behind each other (there was also one with two milky cups behind each other). I was therefore slightly confused and quite embarrassed when the quite normal, and very un-espresso like, coffee floated in large quantities over the edge of the cup. Afterwards I was told by a friendly colleague that the "milk" button would have given me my espresso and the "double-milk" the desired double espresso. This was after I had struggled with the error message from the nice display which told me to refill the water tank but gave absolutely no instructions how to do this. Later on I was also prompted to empty some sort of tray (and again had to ask a colleague for help). Why, I ask myself, do they not use the nice display to tell me more precisely what to do (or rather how to do it)? Granted, the display was not big - but it was big enough to accommodate an arrow pointing in the direction of the water tank (or the tray).

While on the coffee machine track: At work we have another type of coffee machine. Actually there are two kinds but they look identical; one uses grind coffee the other uses whole beans and grinds them on the way to cup. Otherwise they are identical. Well, except that they switched the two top rows which means that when you start the morning getting your first cup of coffee (all bleary eyed) you accidentally get (what they call) espresso but is really nothing more than regular coffee with less water when you expect regular coffee. Why did they switch the top rows?

And finally: impressive how many permutations drink can come from 3 powders (coffee, milk and chocolate) and hot water.

More on Media Center - or rather having a PC in the living room ..

Well - Media Center PC is up and running and everything works as a dream. There are, however, other user experience related observations that I'd like to share. The PC is of course online and is therefore also used for general surfin' - and this is interesting; I've always been aware that usability also to some degree is a matter of accessibility - but it has been a theoretical knowledge. Now I know.

Sitting in the sofa some 3 to 4 meters (9 to 12 feet) from the screen (even though it is 26") makes almost everything hard to read. I had to tweak both Windows to use larger fonts and set the browser to overrule fonts specified on websites - something I never had to do. And everything looks crummy. More surprising, though is the fact that you very quickly become accustomed to the crummy look and it doesn't even distract you (except if the design is so ill thought out that it becomes impossible to use it).

Even though I've always checked designs for how they handle this it was always on a normal computer screen and I had no problems viewing the design in it's intended lay out - therefore it was more of an academic test than anything else. This experience has really thought me something about accessibility - that it is necessary, and that you get used to a lot as long as it doesn't obstruct your goals.