What I'd like from my real estate agent ...

Wouldn't it be cool if I could check out which houses where on sale when I passed through a nice neighborhood? Maybe I can (but my phone does not have GPS). Oh! And on that note until recently I had a Palm with a GPS built in. Pretty cool. I was cycling in Italy up this really nasty mountain and wanted to find out how far from the top I was. All I got was a grey map with a dot on because the darn thing used the mobile coverage to download the maps (and there was no mobile coverage at that particular point). Pretty un-cool. What if the phone downloaded the maps needed for say a 20 km radius when I last checked the maps and used those if no there's coverage? Now I just use my cheap Nokia (without GPS) and Google Maps. Works for me ... :-)

PS: Blackberry sucks. Big time. I never got used to the strange operating system (what's with the two options when reading mail: "More ..." and "More All ..."? - btw. normally "..." after a menu item indicates that a separate window opens up :-)). Also I can type faster on my Nokia with spelling turned on than on the crummy keyboard on the Blackberry.

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.

User behaviour when taking photos

Have you noticed how people now a days always hold the camera in front of their face (between 20-40 cm)? On our recent summer holiday in France a friendly person offered to take a picture of the whole family (normal photographer included), and he did exactly that. Problem is, we've got a digital SLR camera, which means that you can only view the picture on the screen on the back AFTER the photo has been captured. He never even thought of putting his eye to the finder on top of the camera. 10 years ago this would never have happend. Interesting how our habits change due to usage patterns without us even noticing.

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!

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

Twitter etc.

I'm not sure what I think of this. Although I've become hooked on lancearmstong. Not that it's particualry interesting, but I keep coming back ... strange. I suspect it's the same reason we love to read gossip about the VIP's of the world (Oh! And don't deny it - you do it too).

From a usability point of view there isn't all that much to remark. It works - even though tinyurls suck without a title (but that's not twitters fault).

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"

OpenOffice.org - 5 minutes in to it

Long time no blogs - been busy, and not very user focused :-)

Anyway - I'm polishing up my resume and as the home laptop does not have MS Office (only MS Works which sucks big time - I suspect it's MS Write and Calculator dressed up a bit), I've had to try out OpenOffice.org. It ROCKS. I've now spent 5 minutes with it and already created a "copy" of my meticulously formatted MS Word version (from scratch, mind you!). Try it out - it's free.

Touch pad vs. Track stick

The household got a new PC (or rather laptop), because I got a new job where security is important and we therefore only have desktop PC's. Anyway - we ended up buying a Compaq Presario A900 with a 17" screen. It's really cool. BUT - there is no track stick (the small "joystick" between letters G, H and B introduced by IBM back in the day). I knew that I preferred this, but hadn't realized how hard it is to go without. I've now disabled the "click" feature on the touch pad so I don't accidently click something (which happens quite a lot - I'm beginning to fear Parkinsson disease). I also mark areas up without wanting to, when just writing (because I rest my hands down close to the touch pad). I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon because my 8 year old son clearly prefers the touch pad (he's even a bit angry that I disabled the click-feature on the pad itself). But then again - it's not like he's writing anything much (other than URL's to gaming sites) - so that may be the reason. I'm sure tons of usability testing has gone into the design of this - so why do I have trouble with it (and not a touch screen like the iPhone)? Really annoying.

Chrome - Google browser

Just a short entry from here. Yesterday I downloaded and tried out the new Google browser, Chrome. At first I was angry that I apparently couldn't chose the language myself (it determined that I needed Danish!). And then I was a bit dissapointed that the interface was so much like what we know from Internet Explorer. But it worked alright (except for a few crashes in Facebook). I'll look into it more.

A small note on Google Docs: Tried it out the other day when I received an Excel spreadsheet in the gmail and I don't have any other computer available than my Home Theater PC (which does not run MS Office). 2 clicks and I could see the data I needed in my browser. Nice. I'm not sure I want to buy any Office software on our new home pc/laptop. Check out Google Docs.

Google and Web 2.0

This is interesting: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/is-this-the-future-of-search/ how do social features relate to search results? I haven't really decided what I think of this just yet - but cool. I think?

Office 2007 - The Ribbon has failed?

Check this out: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx a really cool tool from Office Labs that helps users find the commands they need in the Ribbon. Question is: It his because user can't find what they need or is it just an added cool feature (I'm guessing the latter - and it IS cool)

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)?

Search engines gone beserk?

I wrote in an earlier post about Spacetime and how cool I thought it was. Well someone just upped them with a browser-based version of the same concept: SearchTime. Amazing how much easier it is to find the right result (but also slower - I think? - enter the debate of perceived speed). Another interesting user experience is Oamos. I'm not quite sure what to think of this from a user perspective. One thing is certain: it isn't very effective in getting me to what I need - but I do get an experience along the way.

The simplicity debate ...

There's a debate running around the UX community initiated by Don Norman (typical of him really - and quite refreshing) that our long stated goal that simple is better may not be quite true. Joshua Porter's Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication (a repsonse to the article by Don Norman) argues back and forth about Don Normans claims that Simplicity is Highly Overrated because "the truth is, simplicity does not sell." Joshua's piece is well argumented and he gets around the subject.

But what I'm missing in this is the price tag. Joshua Porter has an example where price is factored in, but it isn't really conclusive of anything. I would argue (as does Joshua Porter to some degree) that you cannot discuss an either or scenario. It is a combination of several factors (including price) that triggers a buying decision. Other factors are features and design (as well as support - which may be considered a feature).

Some of us actually want to live with less features if it means that products are easier to use. An example: Last year our family decided that we needed our own GPS navigation device (instead of borrowing from family and friends). As per usual when such buying decisons are to be made I'm the one doing it (as my wife really is not that fascinated by the wonders of modern technology). The specification ended up something like this (abbreviated list):
+European coverage (because it should be used for holidays)
+User friendly software
+Nice design of hardware
+Could have TMC (but not crucial)
-No camera
-No MP3 player
-No external antennas
Note that there were several things we didn't want: Camera (we have a perfectly well functioning digital camera that at any given time will take much better pictures than any old device designed for something else (GPS or mobile phone). Same goes for MP3 player. It was important that we could easily enter an adress and get an accurate result quickly. And that was basically what we wanted from it. My wife usually waits about 6 months when new gadgets enter our home before venturing into the user domain. And if the experience is crappy she never goes there again (and I'm left to do all the operations on said gadget). Apart from these features that should be there I had placed an upper limit on what we wanted to pay (maybe because I'm a cheapskate).

To conclude: We (in our family) often forego features hoping to ensure better adoption. And I don't think we're all that special (except of course that given my work field I may be more conscious of this). But then again as Don Norman says: A majority will probably choose features over simplicity

PS: I almost forgot - before we got our media center we had a NAD stereo which I do believe is famed for their no-nonsense approach to features (i.e. there really are none). Also my wrist watch which an IWC Portofino hand wound is completely devoid of features (apart from telling time, of course).

Spacetime - 3D search results

SpaceTime is just too cool. Consider how much easier it is to actually decide which of the search results you want to check and which you'll discard in an instant.




In the screen shot I've done a Google search and the first page shows the results from Google. The next page shows the first result (a report from iProspect). I can scroll through the results by clicking Next.

So why is this cool? Well - first of all - my decisions of which search results are relevant are much easier - by browsing the pages themselves instead of some text that hopefully was created by the owner of the content (and not Google) it is much faster to check if results are relevant. When (OK - I guess there's an if option also, but I'm pretty much a Google fan) Google ports this onto their common user interface they are again miles ahead of the competition. Man - I just can't wait.

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

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)

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).