The User Experience Scrapbook

Derek Powazek: Hey Apple, Don’t Make Me Think: ”On the iPhone, the web browser is called Safari, just like on the Mac. This sameness is reinforced by the visual design of both applications. But in the new iPhone software, when they added a search icon, they did it on the left, instead of the right, which puts it out of sync with its desktop cousin. I know it sounds like a small difference, but small differences add up. […]Apple has added a layer of decision-making, and any interface designer will tell you, these little additions add up”

Things I’d like to see: Selective IM contact notification

I love Adium. It is probably the best IM client ever made, works with any protocol out there and it’s extremely versatile. But there is something I wish to have on it, and it is the ability to select which contact(s) I get online/offline notifications from via Growl. By default, every time a contact (meaning, anyone who signs on or off the IM networks I’m in) shows up or leaves, Growl will display a status message notifying the fact.

The problem comes when you have to handle hundreds of contacts. Our company actually uses IM as a fast, cost-effective way to communicate across all our offices in different countries, but being hit with messages saying “Joe Sixpack connected” hundreds of times a day, is no fun. I don’t really care if some random guy connected or disconnected, but I do care about knowing the status of those workmates and friends who are closest to me. So, if there was a way of applying the following logic:

IF FavoriteContact shows up, THEN display status message

IF Contact shows up AND it is NOT FavoriteContact, THEN do nothing

then Adium would turn from a great to a perfect application for me. Hope some keen enough with creating plug-ins or the application itself gets to read this by any chance of fate.

At last, the Optimus Maximus keyboard… for real

Folks at Engadget -one of the sacred cows of technology blogs with access to cool, new and shiny toys- have finally received a test unit of the Optimus Maximus keyboard, which has proved to be one of the most famous pieces of almost-vaporware to make the rounds through the Internet for years. The biggest deal about the Optimus Maximus is that every key is a small OLED screen, making it possible to create endless combinations of keyboard layouts and colored button shortcuts to sites, applications and such. However, according to Engadget, once you get past the visual drool factor, the keyboard itself is anything but typing-friendly, and a rather excessive force is required to depress the keys. Did we mention it also comes with a $1500+ price tag? I’ll stick to my slim new Apple keyboard for now, thank you.

A futuristic mobile gadget concept

In this age when cell phones can use Wi-Fi and access the Internet from anywhere, it is just natural to think about possibilities like this concept from designer Mac Funamizu. A portable know-it-all of sorts that gathers Internet search and dynamic information display on everything you can put through the see-through device - buildings, parks, colors, even printed words from a newspaper or book. In Mr. (Ms?) Funamizu’s own words:

“This is what I wish the internet search will be able to do with a mobile device in the NEAR future. Touch screen, built in camera, scanner, WiFi, google map (hopefully google earth), google search, image search… all in one device. Like this way, when you can see a building through it, it gives you the image search result right on the spot.”

Fully contextual Internet search taken to the utmost degree. Imagine that. 

While the idea and execution itself are worth drooling for, the technology to pull something like this out is admittedly still closer to the Jetsons’ galaxy than to planet Earth - although we could easily see someone like Apple attempting to cash in on this concept in the near future.

Scope creep: When “more” is actually less

We all have had it at some time or another - the typical client that dreams of having an application deliverable that should be a rough equivalent of a Swiss army knife (and for the very same budget, of course - but that’s a different topic).  That it should do this, that, that other thing too and -yes- if it can also do X, Y and Z, all the better. After all, isn’t our job about incorporing as much “usability” as possible into whatever we work on?

Turns out, the amount of features has little to do with usability in itself, because it’s not about if something does X or Y, but how you, as an user, can be able to do/make/achieve X or Y through a device without even thinking about it - because the moment you have to think about a way to do something, that becomes a stumbling block in your train of thought (a cognitive strain), ruining what should otherwise be a seamless experience. And the more bells and whistles you have to deal with, the cognitive flow suffers and the potential for confusion (and consequent user frustration and anger) increases. Not the best case scenario for anyone.

Steve Krug analyzed greatly this fact in one of the best UX books ever written, in my opinion: Don’t Make Me Think. Take that VCR you bought in the mid-90s, for example. You probably bought it because you were told it did everything between A and Z - and then some. Now ask yourself: How many times did you use it to the 100% of its feature capability? If you are like 99% of the population, you probably learned to use the basic controls, change channels, use the TV/VCR switch - and that was it. And what about the other myriad functions? They were there all right, but you probably had to skim through a thick manual and operate some cryptic key commands on your remote control to access them. And -as thousands of appliances with clocks flashing permanently at “12:00” can attest- who has time and patience to do that? 

This hasn’t stopped people from thinking the more bells and whistles something has, they’re getting “more” for their money, though. One of the most interesting “less is more” cases might well be Apple’s iPod - When it debuted, there were many, many things the competition did and it didn’t do, like video, and others that still doesn’t do out of the box, like radio. However, the iPod has become the best-selling personal music player in history. Why, you may think? Apple didn’t really invent anything that wasn’t there before the iPod. However, by rethinking the way people accessed and used the few, expected features of a personal music player in a way everyone could access and use them, it won the hearts -and wallets- of people everywhere. There are few better examples of “doing one thing right instead of a hundred things wrong”.

It’s up to you to fight scope creep. More isn’t “more” all the time. Underpromising and overdelivering is much better than the opposite.

OfficeMax ‘gets’ Customer Service

Office supplies giant OfficeMax has just unveiled a marvelous, yet deceptively simple, solution to display of product categories, which on these kind of sites usually translate to a mind-boggling, cluttering and confusing sea of links on screen. The solution? Display a simple, clickable alphabetical list on top.

When you select a letter from the alphabetical index, categories matching that alphabetical match will appear.

Compare this to the site look of OfficeMax’s direct competitor, Staples:

Which place would you most likely buy at?