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.

Barbarians at the Gate

Damn!   

Another Take on Google

Development manager Sergey Solyanik is on his way back to Microsoft after having putting in some time with Google after having worked for Microsoft. A little drive around the block as it were. Given that Google is the figurative Tom Jones of the tech industry at whom most can barely resist flinging their undergarments, this reversal may seem somewhat curious.  What is most interesting however, is Solyanik's explanation of the decision in his blog 1-800-MAGIC particularly in light of the last post about Google's user experience principles.

Consider Solyanik's assertion that,"Google software business is divided between producing 'eye candy' - web properties that are designed to amuse and attract people - and the infrastructure required to support them.  Some of the web properties are useful (some extremely useful - search), but most of them primarily help people waste time online[.]"   This impression is exactly what the Google UX manifesto seeks to avoid as stated in their very first principle -- "Above all, a well-designed Google product is useful in daily life."  At the same time, however, the principles focus much more on the holistic, experiential quality of the Google's offerings more then it does on strict utility.

Of course Solyanik points out a number of Google's strengths but I find his position that Google's culture is "not geared to delivering enterprise class reliability to its user applications" to be very intriguing in light of their recently released UX principles.  Read 'em both and let me know what you think.

A Googley UX Manifesto

Interestingly Google has exposed what most companies would consider some internal doctrine.  In the corporate section of their site they've posted their "Ten Principles that contribute to a Googley user experience."  Say's Google, "[t]he Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is "Googley" -- and will satisfy and delight people all over the world."

It's ambitiously broad for a group's vision statement (and despite being presented as goals, it really is more of a vision statement) and some of the aspects of the ten principles strike me a coming perilously close to contradictory.  Nevertheless, it is an interesting read and a nice testament to user-centric design.

Read the whole manifesto here.

Everyone Poops...Some Just Poop Stuff We All Use

The other day I watched Mike Rowe’s show on The Discovery Channel, Dirty Jobs.  The episode focused on dirty jobs (predictably) with an environmental agenda.  Mike’s theme throughout the episode was that such jobs were proof that the color of environmentalism is not green but rather brown.  I then got to enjoy him come in contact with various forms of filth and feces.  Well, more evidence to support this assertion.  It seems that a company in San Jose has genetically engineered a very small but that eats wheat straw and wood shavings and excretes...petroleum.  It poops gas.  And this gas needs very little in the way of refining before it is ready for the pump and ready for your regular old car...no special modifications required.

Of course just having more petroleum to burn isn’t necessarily a good thing, right?  It seems that the stuff we’ve been burning up to this point has had some less than favorable effects on the environment.  Interestingly, crapoleum these bugs produce is carbon neutral.  

Of course large-scale production of the stuff is a bit beyond the company’s means at the moment and I doubt that the oil industry is going to finance additional research but it is pretty interesting stuff...very sci-fi.  You can read more about it here.

Acrobat.com Unveiled

Adobe recently officially unveiled Acrobat.com, a slick online suite of office apps for the creation, sharing and conversion of documents along with ConnectNow for holding Web conference.  It's a Flash-based app sporting Adobe's characteristically sharp interface aesthetic.  

A pretty face, however, only gets you so far.  This suite has been and will continue to be held up against others in the space like Zoho and Google Docs and even office applications' rex mundi, Microsoft Office.  

Having played around with Acrobat.com briefly, I can definitely see potential but a very long road between where it is now and where it will need to be to draw users away from the alternatives.  The workflow between the applications is shaky and some of the applications seem feature-poor when compared to the competition (I'm looking at you BuzzWord).  Of course, what else would you expect in a beta?  One thing I can declare for certain is that I will be eager to watch Acrobat.com's maturation.  

Light At The Tunnel's End

I've been very remiss about posting recently.  What's that?  You want to hear my excuses? Well okay, if you insist.  Apart from get all of the main comps done for eBay Desktop 1.5 (codename "Wyld Stallyons") and putting together my session presentation for eBay Dev Con 2008,  I took a trip back east with my wife and son to visit the families (remember what Michael Corleone tells Fredo in Godfather II) and we've had a number of guest come out to Denver.  Pretty much every time I thought about blogging, I thought, "Sure I could do that or, I could flop on the couch and vegetate to one of the countless programs beamed into my home for just such a purpose."  In the Rock, Paper, Scissors game of life vegetating trumps blogging.

Well, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Chicago after having delivered my Dev  Con session (it went okay; I could have managed my time better and there were a few other lessons learned) and most all the major design work for eBay Desktop 1.5 in the books, I should be able to get back to this blog more frequently.  In fact, I used the Hyatt Regency's self check-in kiosk when I got to the hotel very very early this morning and it got me thinking.  I'm going to revisit it later today and snap a few pics for an upcoming post.

Now, a nap awaits (did I mention that I got in very very early in the morning?).

Adobe Kills GoLive

No more speculation, it's official.  Adobe announced that it has discontinued it's WYSIWYG web creation/editing program, GoLive (if you're old school, you might remember it as CyberStudio).  After Adobe's purchase of Macromedia back 2005 there were many questions about which products would be discontinued and which might be merged.  GoLive seemed to be in prime position for the chopping block since Macromedia's Dreamweaver was by far the better tool.  

As a side note, a friend at work attended Microsoft's Artist in Residency training (which, get this, they call AIR...doesn't Adobe have something by that name...?) where there was unofficial mention that Frontpage is also about to be discontinued.  It will be replaced by a Expression Web, part of their Expression Suite of programs.

For the whole story on the demise of GoLive, check this out. 

Microsoft Pisses Off Users...Intentionally.

ZDNet posted a very interesting article a few days ago entitled "Microsoft: Vista feature designed to 'annoy users'" (read full article here) in which Microsoft product unit manager, David Cross, states, "The reason we put [User Account Control] into the Vista platform was to annoy users -- I'm serious."

Since I like to be able to pay my bills and buy life's little luxuries (like food), annoying the user is a quality I try to keep out of my design.  So what is the deal?  Is it just Microsoft thinking way, way ,way outside the user experience box?  In a twisted way, maybe.  As the article explains, "...[A]nnoying users had been part of a Microsoft strategy to force independent software vendors (ISVs) to make their code more secure, as insecure code would trigger a prompt, discouraging users from executing the code."

I guess when you have the lion's share of the market you can hold your users ransom to get your vendors to fall in line.

Adobe Releases Adobe Media Player

Today Adobe rolled out its Media Player...or was it this coming Wednesday that they did it?  Their press release is dated April 16.  The news must have been "For sooner than immediate release."  Anyway, let's just call it today because writing in the Future Past Perfect tense will have was too difficult (or would that be "will was have been"?).  

According to the future press release, "This desktop application expands Adobe's Internet video solutions, adding to an emerging ecosystem that enables new ways to distribute and monetize media, while helping viewers discover and view high-quality content both online and offline.  Leveraging Adobe's Emmy® Award winning Flash® arechitecture, the Adobe Media Player delivers more engaging video experiences to viewers while offering content publishers new abilities to distribute, track and build businesses around their media assets." (Adobe.com.  "Adobe Unveils Next Generation Internet Video Solution." 16,04, 2008. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200704/041607AMP.html).

When they say "...discover and view high-quality content" I wonder if they mean substantive content or high-def content.  Having downloaded the player, watched the handy tutorials, and futzed around with the app for a bit, my initial impression is that this may be a bit of an overstatement in either respect.  The player is capable of delivering high-def content (it plays H.264 encoded MPEG4's as well .flv's) but I didn't see much high-def representation in their offerings.  And their offerings, from a substantive stand point, are rather lacking (though you can catch some very brief clips from Good Eats and Nova which is never a bad thing).

Of course it would not be fair to criticize paucity of content on the app's very first day and I don't mean it as a criticism so much as an observation.  I look forward to seeing what else shows up -- not only for the sake of my viewing choices but also as proof of viability.  Most folks don't produce their video content as .flv's or H.264's and it will be Adobe's challenge to change this (and hopefully while larger content producers may get onboard, will the typical user really utilize the "Personal Videos" portion of the app?  Adobe's media encoder is going to have become a lot more visible).  

I wonder if pushing format adoption is the real motive behind the player...hmm, just some speculation but YouTube is a huge reason for the insanely fast adoption rate of Flash Player 9.  But then again, that was content driving application adoption and this would be application adoption driving content format which is quite a different scenario.  Anyway, enough of that.  I'm not nearly savvy enough to anticipate Adobe's marketing machinations.

 The app itself is quite slick-looking with an appreciably Adobe aesthetic and having been designing for a Flex application on the AIR platform for the last nine months, I'm really excited to take a closer look at it.  You can download the app for your very own right here.

Art and Home Depot

Today my wife, son and I took a trip over to the Denver Arts District and were browsing some of the galleries when we came across something pretty interesting at Nine10Arts.  On the sidewalk outside was a sandwich board that read "Come in and see how easy it is to be Green!" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist).  Essentially they were calling attention to the green architecture of the building itself but in a very compelling way.  Artwork from each of the dozen or so studios located in the building spilled out into the common areas (hallways, stairwells, coffee bar, etc.) and mixed in were installations demonstrating the environmentally-friendly construction techniques and materials. The method of framing, the material used as trim (a substance called wheatboard) and the reclamation of typically unutilized space (a rooftop garden among other things) presented in the same context as the artists' works got me thinking about the changing ideas about form and function in user-centered application design.

The distinction between design and development is being obliterated -- or at least extremely blurred -- both in workflow methodologies (the abandonment of waterfall or silo models for spiral or iterative) and production technologies (Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's forthcoming Thermo are perfect examples of technologies that determine the way in which designers and developers will interact.  That they approach this interaction from opposite ends of the spectrum is a topic for a future post).  The bromide, "Form follows function" is less and less accurate as our work with and perception of each cast them as inextricably bound.  The way in which the purely functional elements of this gallery (support structures, building materials, etc.) were worked in with the exhibits demonstrated this very nicely.  At one point I was looking at a cross-section of the ceiling braces that was extending out into the space of an open stairwell and thought it was one of the artists' pieces.  Granted this chopped out section of ceiling was removed from its typical context and it had a placard on the wall next to it that explained its green construction but looked very much like a title placard next to any sculpture you might find in a gallery...but now I'm just trying to defend myself .  "Yes, that wall outlet has a certain je ne sais quoi.  It speaks to the isolation of the human condition.  And have you seen the exhaust fan?!"

This is a Test.

As I've mentioned in my bio blurb thing, I am a User Experience designer for EffectiveUI in Denver, Colorado and am currently the lead designer on the eBay Desktop application.  It has been a really interesting project in many respects but chief among them, at least for me, is the design issues that have arisen in our attempts to translate a well-established browser experience into that of a stand-alone app.  It is an issue that I'm going to address in much more detail in an upcoming post but the sometime surprising user test group results that earlier, public beta iterations of eBay Desktop generated has been very much on my mind lately as I've been redesigning the default skin and layout of the application.  We are now at a point to start thinking about another round of user testing which means we are about to find out that a number of our "obvious," "utterly intuitive" ideas are neither.  It's bubble-bursting time.  

Of course, better to find out now.  We would have much better software, hardware, homeware, officeware, userware, if more companies didn't fail to conduct an adequate testing phase.  

Another Voice in the Overwhelming Din

So I've succumb and started a blog.  With relatively few exceptions, I consider blogs to be an exercise in extreme narcissism though, to be fair, this is more a product of how they are employed by their users than an inherent quality of the medium.  Or maybe I'm just rationalizing.

Nevertheless, I'm going to join in the cacophony of blog prattle and spend some time thinking about User Experience and User-centric Design, its underlying methodologies, and asking a lot of mostly-related questions (i.e. "How blurred has the line between designers and developers truly become," and "What were they smoking when they chose that design?").

If you've been known to use things or if you like having experiences, you just might find something of interesting.