Usability and the Joy of Motoring

If you're not familiar with BBC's show Top Gear, it is ostensibly an automotive review...but the reality of it is so much more entertaining than just that.  The hosts are very funny, the metrics by which cars are tested and rated are, let's say, unique and quite often they touch on some interesting usability issues.

One such issue involved the Russian-built TVR Tuscan, a rather expensive roadster.  Host Jeremy Clarkson offers a group of people 20 quid if they can get into the car, start the engine and get out of the car within one minute.  Easy, right?  Watch for yourself.  The portion begins at 5 minutes 26 seconds into the clip.  

I mean, I've had occasional trouble figuring out how to release the keys from the ignition of some cars but this is a absurd. File under "Form Mugs Function."

Clay Shirky and the Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky gave a talk at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco that is definitely worth viewing.  

My only point of contention?  Perhaps gin wasn't a reaction to the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution so much as the Industrial Revolution was a byproduct of the large migration of population to places that had gin carts.

Coming Up

I've been negligent in posting (again) but let me whet your appetites.  Coming this week, BBC's Top Gear Focuses on Bad User Experience.  

Really.  I'll do it.

UIRC Article with Adobe's Ethan Eismann

UIRC (User Interface Resource Center) has just posted a new interview with Ethan Eismann, Senior Experience Design Lead on Thermo.  If you have yet to check out UIRC, you're in for a treat.  There are some outstanding articles from a number of thought-leaders in the UX space (Jared Spool, David Armano, Stevent Heintz, etc.).  True, the site is sponsored by EffectiveUI (a.k.a. my bread and butter) but it's the ideas and info expressed through the site that keeps me going back.  

Wyld Stallyons - eBay Desktop 1.5 Preview

I've been given the okay to show some of the approved comps for eBay Desktop 1.5, code name Wyld Stallyons. Right now the developers are hard at work bringing it to life and I'm looking forward to the upcoming user testing.  The design goal for this incremental update was 1) to create a more intuitive user experience, 2) improve consistency of interface metaphors, and 3) provide an extensible interface model that will allow for future growth of the application.  

In subsequent posts I offer larger screens of particular section and discuss the reasoning behind the changes (functional, aesthetic, and production -- the big news about this last one is that we are using Degrafa to create most all the assets) from the 1.0 San Dimas version of the application.  For now, however, here are a few comp thumbs.

For more news about developments with eBay Desktop, check out Alan Lewis' eBay Desktop blog and, of course, if you don't have eBay Desktop, you can get it here and give it a try.

Crying Over Spilt Milk

Costco and Wal-Mart have adopted new milk jugs which, according to NYTimes reporter Stephanie Rosenbloom, "are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less."  Hooray, right?  Well, not so much.  Apparently the new jugs are a spectacular failure when it comes to user experience.  Awkward to grip and difficult to pour without spilling, the jugs represent a conflict between efficiency and usability.

Read the article here (NYTimes account required - but if you don't have one already, it is really worth the two minutes to set one up).

Yahoo & Google Crawl Flash

RJ Owen, a Senior Developer at EffectiveUI who also blogs for O'Reilly just alerted us to this delightful tidbit.  Adobe has been working with Yahoo and Google to make Flash content more searchable.  I think this is a very wise move on Adobe's part (and not only because it will mean that a certain Flash-hating friend will lose one of the only strong arguments he had -- that's just the cherry on top).

Read RJ's article.