journal

I think we need to work on usability design before we jump the gun.  What’s so crazy, is that the project I’m working on right now focuses on this very concept.  Sort of like executing a great experience, but also interacting with the user and giving them a new identity through the interactive medium while enveloping the user in the brand.  Kind of like getting into a new car for a test drive.  Its funny you see all of this happening on the internet, but no one has really taken it to the next level.  The user is always driving how he/she is perceived on myspace or digg, but you never really see sites that encourage and guide it playfully. Here’s a great blog post on it… 

I finally got a Chumby!! For all of you that don’t know, Chumbys are a little nerf football type of gadget with a touchscreen, wi-fi, internet appliance that plays flash lite 3 apps exclusively.  I can’t wait to start developing stuff for this thing.  Its completely open source and welcomes software and hardware developers to help build on it.  I never thought I’d be so excited about a glorified alarm clock.  Pick up one or check it out @ chumby.com

Special thanks to my girl for getting it for me!!

One of the craziest trends I witnessed in the web development world was that the end user doesn’t matter.  It’s usually, whatever the client wants, whatever budget allows, whatever new feature the programmer can add, etc.  No one ever said, well how would the end user feel.  Mainly because no one represented the end user in the slew of meetings and planning sessions.  Microsoft specifically was notorious for this.  Microsoft had a company full of programmers and not a designer in sight.  And as it grew, the programmers were in command of the ship and had steered it so far off course its now a serious internal problem to get it back.  Apple on the other hand, has designers at the helm and its success is showing.

So Microsoft decided that when it was time to revamp their OS they hired a team of UX professionals.  But even the UX professionals that they hired couldn’t control the onslaught of features coming from all of the teams of the teams that make up the entirety of the Microsoft platform.  The designers even seem to be focused on the redesign and the look rather than the improvement of the experience.  The overall push to make an OS that was better than anything out there created a slew of features that bombarded the user and forced him/her to relearn and upgrade their computers compounding the general annoyance of just being ‘new’.

Instead of focusing on improving core tasks and productivity gains, Vista designers choose to insert eye candy in the form of Aero.  And Aero itself actually compounds the annoyance factor by degrading performance.  Operating systems in general should be lightweight and easy to manage.  Vista should have included better window and desktop management, not a redesigned window. 

The Office redesign compounded the problems even further.  The Ribbon interface was a big leap taken at the same time Vista was being released.  It forces you to relearn how Office works entirely which is a big deal for any business trying to roll out the product.  The first rule in UX design is that software applications should never need to be taught.  A caveman should know how to use it.

The overall performance in Vista is poor, boot times are still too long, basic file copying takes forever, Outlook freezes up and doesn’t respond.  These problems should have been addressed before hitting the market.  A big sloppy OS will not make it in a world a light unix based operating systems.

And the biggest complaint in the UX field is used more in Vista than in XP, dialogs.  Dialogs and message balloons are everywhere telling the user in cryptic technical terms that they’re idiots.  The biggest complaint comes from the User Account Control.  Everytime the OS accesses information that  isn’t a part of your access rights, a dialog asks you for permission.  The OS should know my permission.  Why is it asking me for permission?

So in general, if you make any form of software for computers, if you’re in the software development field in any aspect, always consider the user.  Always consult your UX pro for guidance.  Their is an incredible amount of research and best practices when it comes to UX design and the general understanding and psychology of the end users.  In the end, your users will appreciate the time and effort you took to help them accomplish their tasks quickly and easily.

Processing is an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity. 

Now MIT Press has published a book by the original developers Casey and Ben on Processing and the recommendations it goes with are worth quoting:

“Processing is a milestone not only in the history of computer software, of information design, and of the visual arts, but also in social history. Many have commented on the pragmatic impact of the open source movement, but it is time to also consider Processing’s sociological and psychological consequences. Processing invites people to tinker, and tinkering is the first step for any scientific and artistic creation. After the tinkering, it leads designers to their idea of perfection. It enables complexity, yet it is approachable; it is rigorous, yet malleable. Its home page exudes the enthusiasm of so many designers and artists from all over the world, overflowing with ideas and proud to be able to share. Processing is a great gift to the world.”
–Paola Antonelli, Curator, Architecture and Design, MOMA

“This long-awaited book is more than just a software guide; it is a tool for unlocking a powerful new way of thinking, making, and acting. Not since the Bauhaus have visual artists revisited technology in such a world-changing way. Ben Fry and Casey Reas have helped a growing community of visual producers open up fresh veins of expression. Their work proves that code is open to designers, architects, musicians, and animators, not just to engineers. Providing a powerful alternative to proprietary software, Processing is part of a new social phenomenon in the arts that speaks to self-education and networked engagement.”
–Ellen Lupton, Director of the graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and Author of D.I.Y: Design It Yourself

“A whole generation of designers, artists, students, and professors have been influenced by Processing. Now, a handbook is published that goes far beyond explaining how to handle the technology and boldly reveals the potential future for the electronic sketchbook.”
–Joachim Sauter, University of the Arts, Berlin, Founder, Art+Com

Tags: Bookprocessing

Adobe has just launched the Inspire Experience Design site to showcase the work of “90 experience-focused professionals” with “expertise in interaction, visual and motion design, user research, information architecture, engineering” and “backgrounds in architecture, education, mathematics, writing, and game design”, who are all “unified around the idea of creating great digital experiences”.

“We are obsessively focused on the quality of digital experiences for a reason: most digital experiences suck. Experience design doesn’t mean making something pretty. It means empowering a user, easing their burden or leveraging their skills. It means connecting people to the things they need, when they need them.

Experience design is born of the recognition that interaction is a process and not a static thing. Experience matters because what’s really important is how it makes you feel, think and respond. The world that we are creating digitally is complex and dynamic. The quality of the experiences that are enabled will determine how we all feel about living in that (this!) world.”

I came across this great article that shows alot of new techniques being used to analyze and display data.  And what’s great is that they’re all listed with an image and explanation for each.  I mean like everything from the past couple of years.  And what’s great is that alot of these examples were built with Flash and Java.

Image USA Today

Ralph Lauren’s interactive shopping window display made a big splash upon arrival last summer and apparently has been in use throughout the year in different locations (Manhattan, Chicago, London). Wonder if anyone has actually bought anything using the application: the physical store is right there, after all. Would it work if installed at bus shelters and selling home-delivered groceries?

Another great tutorial about creating interactive prototypes with Powerpoint can be found here. But also note that you can take these same examples and apply them to Keynote. Hyperlinks can be applied to text and buttons in the inspector panel which link to external resources but can also link to slides in the keynote preso. You can also create master slides and apply unique page content to each master. Note though that I personally don’t prefer Powerpoint and Keynote presentations for web based interaction design due to their lack of scrollable page flow.

So paper prototyping is a big thing in UX design, but did you know you can create a better paper prototype in pdf? One that you can email to your clients and can see the interactive elements, multimedia and dynamic content? Well you can and this author explains how and why pdf prototyping should be an important part of your prototyping process.

Read more here

Jesse James Garrett on User Experience and how eBay and Amazon have gone astray. I think this part of the interview is great…

Do you agree with the top international sites respondents chose for their usability – including Amazon, Google and eBay?

It’s interesting to see Amazon and eBay so high on the list, because I think Amazon was delivering a really terrific experience a few years ago, but have found themselves in a land of diminishing returns in the design choices they are making.

If you compare the sheer number of navigational elements on a present day Amazon page with the way it was just a few years ago, they are just starting to load these pages up with features. I think the reason they are doing that is that they are trying to squeeze every drop of revenue they can out of these pages, but I think the overall usability is starting to suffer. It’s becoming so baroque - all of the different features and components they have loaded onto these pages.

eBay has almost the opposite problem, in that because they have this enormous community of people, the sellers, that depend on eBay for their livelihood, there are a lot of people that have really invested in how the site functions. eBay has been slow to change, because they haven’t been able to make changes that would appease this audience of millions of people that don’t want to see the site change.

Amazon and eBay are two interesting case studies in how a usable site can go astray.

Read the full article here