On kids and user behaviour

In a recent article on useit.com Hoa Loranger (from NN/Group) published a summary of a study about: Teenage Usability: Designing Teen-Targeted Websites. Interesting reading and something of a myth buster (again - there was a previous study showing many of the same findings).

I have two kids at home (currently aged 10 and 12). It is with great fascination and also some trepidation that I watch their ways with computers. They have no fear (as opposed to my parents (the other day my father "destroyed the Internet" :-)). And they also have no clue! It is so fascinating to talk to them about this computer usage - the have absolutely no idea about the concept of the Internet (servers running software and linked with cables). It's just there for them to enjoy. And the best part of it - they don't care. I talked to them about this, and during the talk I realised that to them it is a part of life just as the telephone, TV and radio have been for me. I don't remember how old I was when I first started wondering about the workings of a phone.

But here's the thing: They are morons. Writing a document in a Word-processing they never format using styles (so they're not that different from the majority of users). They have no clue how to get an Internet connection. They don't know how to update their system (or the reason why this is a good idea). I do realise, though, that my kids are not as computer-savvy as some of their class mates (who on the other hand are distinctly unhealthy to look at).

So in conclusion: All of us trying to make computers easier to use, can rest assured that we will not loose our jobs anytime soon. Rather - we need more of us to help all those hapless children get on in the world,

I'm being forced into the Apple Sect ...

My company has switched to Apple phones (and me with them). I was actually very happy with my Windows 7.5 Phone. It was sleek, looked cool and was not exactly mainstream :-)

Now I'm the (happiness-wise undecided) owner of an iPhone 4S. And frankly I'm not impressed and have some difficulty grasping the almost religious approach to all things Apple. OK - from a User Experience point of view it works. Kinda. But, and there are a few of those, there really isn't anything special about it. Apart from the fact that they were first (which of course counts for something), and therefore has a head start into the app-market. This was where the Windows Phone fell through. If I was Microsoft, I'd spend 5 developers with only the job of cranking out cool apps for the Windows phone for the next year (they can just start with the most successfully ones on the iPhone and copy those!). Note to self: create next "killer-app" for Windows Mango and I don't have to work no more - this is an untapped market.

Microsoft's handling of contacts is way superior to Apples. Although the iPhone does a better job recognising phone numbers and generally is better at making the user interface context aware. And finally - Microsoft should either scratch the ridiculous Bing-thing for us Europeans (and everybody else not residing in the US). Especially the maps which are nice enough but doesn't have anything apart from telling me where I am to offer (searching for Pizza gave me the Italian city of Pisa?????).

The thing I miss most from my Windows phone, though, is the hold-finger on item to give me options (this equals a right click on a normal computer). Really useful and a gesture that's sorely needed in the iOS where I have to click an Edit button on the top of the screen. Also it baffles me why I have to scroll to the top of a list to be able to search it on the iPhone. Man, that sucks!

I like my iPhone - but I refuse to succumb to the pressure and become a preacher. They aren't better (anymore) - just different.

American peculiarities

Having just returned with wife and kids from a trip to Florida (to soak up a bit of sun, dolphins and alligators), I thought about a few things on the plane. First off: To lock a public restroom you just press a button on the doorknob. Pretty cool and easy to figure out. But why don't I get any indication that it's actually locked? In most places in Europe a small red tab will show itself on the door somewhere to indicate it is occupied. I felt quite insecure and certain that someone would barge in on me anytime.

Another observation: I was a bit worried that the car we rented didn't have GPS navigation. As it turned out, I needn't worry at all (interesting that we've come to this: in the good old days (10 years ago - i.e. pre-Garmin and TomTom) I was never worried that I should get lost). We got a map from Hertz which basically just showed the major roads in Miami (something like this)- and I thought that we would be totally lost because details on the map where sketchy at best. All roads where clearly marked and even showed numbers corresponding to the map. How is that for user friendly?

On a side note which has got nothing to do with user friendliness but everything with user experience: Our hotel in Miami, was quite nice, as was our somewhat cheaper stay in Sarasota in Holiday Inn on Lido Beach. The more expensive Miami hotel charged for internet access!!! $5 an hour!!! When will these people learn? I never make phone calls from the hotel room because they over-charge. And now this. If I was travelling on business I might have considered signing up, but frankly this hotel was not a business venue (as far as I could tell from the location). Ridiculous - I just waited for the next (and cheaper, mind you!) hotel where internet access was free.

PS: I finally got my hands on a touch screen device for own personal abuse (iPod touch). Will get back to you on that.

Writing for the web?????

In a recent series of articles Jared Spool & Co. (www.uie.com) has given useful tips and tricks of Breaking up Large Documents for the Web. They are a much more hands on "how to guide" of Jacob Nielsens by now age-old research findings of how people read on the web (and on computers), but not much new is seen (as far as I can see).

I find myself reading my news of the web more and more (rather than just the newspaper). But I *really* miss the more thorough articles from the newspaper on the web. In Denmark we have two national broadcasters who just so happens to also be worthy news sources, but they (like the newspapers online versions) have taken the short and sweet motto to the extreme (I've got a feeling that they just get a feed from Reuters and publish this completely unedited). When reading news I want more. Not 7 pages more, but definitely more than 5 lines. Am I the only one?

Plumbing

This weekend I've moved a water faucet 2 meters and stopped another one (as part of a minor wash room project). I'd prepared meticuously and gotten all the spare parts needed. But I know how it is - so I started early saturday morning knowing that I would probably need to go to the shop to buy something extra. After dismantling most of the old stuff I needed to put in a 90 degree angle thingie. And sure enough - the one I bought didn't fit. I had bought a ½" and the one sitting there was made for a 18 mm pipe. Down to the shop I went - and it turns out there was no direct subsitute with what I bought. I ended up having to do all kinds of ugly go-betweens to make it fit. Now someone tell me why we don't use a standardized size of piping - I don't get it. And it sure ain't userfriendly!

Danish drivers

Having just spent 2 weeks in France on summer vacation (even got some cycling sneaked in), we got back to the ferry and had to wait in line (a long one) to get ticketed. To cut a long story short: our line broke down and we had to merge in to the line next to us. This line (as most of them) were of course full of Danes like us going home from summer vacation. No one would let us in. We even got yelled at. 2 weeks of driving in France and you're always let in (not to mention they always stop for pedestrians to cross the road), and then back to road rage Danes. Depressing.

Todays lesson: this is why you can't generalize usability findings across cultural differences!

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"

Futurize your enterprise in Denmark (10 years late)

Today in the daily paper Berlingske (in Danish) there was an article of how business is losing control over their communications. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it online - but here's the "low-down": Kirsten Dinesen (whom I've never heard of before - but that's probably due to my own negligence) has written a book: Pull Society. From the article in the paper it seems that the book is basically a revisit of the eminent book Futurize you enterprise by David Siegel written 9 years ago. Back then it was very visionary, today it's reality. I don't really know what to say - why re-write a book (except of course to make some money)?

The return of Jakob

Finally - after many not so precise and meaningfull alertboxes - Jakob Nielsen has turned out two in a row which offers some of the "old" provocative observations and alerts, but also some very good advice on designing user interfaces that we sometimes tend to forget in our (well, at least my own) search of new and cool looking application design. I wonder what Jakob thinks of Joost?

Check out the alertbox

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.

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!