Sippey pokes fun at Jakob for stating the obvious (mobile phones are annoying), with findings Peterme revealed a while ago.
Just as the popular rags are now popularizing ideas that bloggers covered months and years ago, it seems like a person with Jakob’s noteriety could do the same just by mining the blogosphere.
Imagine this scene: a 40-something art director talks through a design review session in a conference room in front of her colleagues. At one point she reaches over to the Dell laptop which serves as the conference room computer to bring up a website. The laptop has not one but two pointing devices built in, a trackpad and a TrackPoint…
Both pointing devices rely on fine motor control, and she fumbles with the trackpad until the situation becomes embarrassing and the person next to her assists. The situation could be avoided with a mouse.
I’ve noticed many people who will trim their portable computing setup to the minimum but still pack a mouse, usually a full size mouse borrowed from the office. This can be eased a little with smaller mice like the Atek Minioptical…
The Dell approach amuses me a bit, inserting two different input devices that rely on such similar motor control, it seems like a desperate attempt to satisfy users who don’t like one or the other. An alternative is to acknowledge the mouse is the king of the pointing device world and include one with, or in, the laptop. Imagine doing away with the trackpad or the TrackPoint, moving the internals (e.g. CD/DVD drive) over a bit, and using the newly found space to insert a wireless, optical mouse the size of the Atek inside the body of the laptop. A button on top (providing a perceivable affordance for newer users) gently pops the mouse most of the way out the side of the case, where a thumb and forefinger can pull it out.
I call it a Joey — the name for a baby kangaroo — for its marsupial behavior.
Over on the Asilomar email list I started exploring a method of adding search to a site that has grown to need it. The point is to get a pretty good idea of what should be done to arrive at good results in a logical way, rather than just install a search engine and improve through trial and error. With the help of Jonothan and Iwan here’s seeds of a method I’ve collected so far:
Let’s assume we’re working with conventional search engine technology, e.g. mostly relevancy-based.
We have to begin either at the point the content is going into an index or the user’s goals, and because I’m user-centered boy I’ll start with the users. We can learn about their goals, things like do they want precision or recall, what are their most popular search terms, how many queries do users submit in a session, do users repeat queries over multiple sessions, how do the queries change over time, and so on.
Using the user goals we can construct a strawman user interface.
Next we look at the content. We can ask what format is it in, how much is there, how will the volume change over time, for dynamic content will the search index rebuild anew or cumulatively grow, how clean is it (ROT), how often does it change, and so on.
With the strawman UI and a rough idea of what the index looks like we can simulate some search tasks and the result sets. We might then consider how metadata and tweaks to the ranking algorithm could help.
At some point we have to install the search engine, index the content, and try some queries. Then we might use a systematic approach to tweaking results:
Too many results? Try cleaning or otherwise reducing content, changing weighting, change the ranking algorithm, or use a more restrictive search form UI (e.g. more fields that must be selected)
Too few results? Try adding synonyms or a less restrictive search form UI. This might also be a sign that you don’t in fact need a search engine.
Is accuracy bad? Change the algorithm, change the weighting, add metadata, use best bets, improve the search form UI.
Users can’t fulfill goals even if results are good? Try improving the results UI.
I’m sure I’m missing stuff, but it’s a start.
Andrei Herasimchuk’s myth of navigation article nicely attacks the idea of navigation, and brings up some interesting points. I think he falls prey to the interaction-design-as-total-solution fallacy that Cooper has raised, but he’s essentially pointing out that navigation is more than just wayfinding, what Dillon has already shown.
Clay Shirky’s recent essay mentions my friend Alex’s project Dodgeball which just launched. Alex describes it as ‘Friendster for your mobile phone… It’s social software that you can use to meet up with friends while you’re out being social, not at your desk procrastinating.‘ The beta period is NYC only.
A couple of screenshots. And Sippey’s comments.
Started a new page on Security Vs. Usability on the IA Wiki since I’ve been thinking about this for years and finally decided to see what was out there already. I have a little continuum in my notebook that says what security to do when, I just need to clean it up.
Use cases and interaction design by Henrik Olsen very nicely discusses the intersection of use cases and other work downstream. I think it does a great job summarizing how use cases can describe essential features while not making UI or technical assumptions, avoiding use case re-work when the wireframe, comps, and technical implementation change. It’s all especially important if there are different people collaborating, some on the use cases and some on the interface design.
The Whole Whole Product is essentially about customer experience: ‘The core focus has shifted from ³how good can we make our product?² to ³how happy can we make our customers?² Two very different questions, looking at the marketplace from two very different perspectives.’ But it’s from a marketing perspective, so you get different terminology: ‘A product is, to the potential buyer, a complex stream containing numerous clusters of value satisfactions.‘ The design and marketing fields may be on orthogonal paths, speaking about the same thing but rarely interacting. Some bridge material would be helpful.
Also, it’s interesting that Gerry McGovern is writing for the same publication.
In one week the Intro to IA brochure (PDF) I created with Dan Willis has been translated into Spanish and Japanese. The latter was also printed in the Japanese journal ‘WebSite Design vol.10,’ who did a great job with the layout, not surprisingly considering its overall quality. And they paid me $65. Not a huge amount, but it’s nice to be compensated and watch the work take on new lives beyond what I imagined, all from a little piece Dan and I threw together for the hell of it.
I saw the Barbara K tools for women in Bed, Bath & Beyond this weekend and they’re very nice, the handles are all curvy and feel great. After owning hammers whose head would slide off the handle I now own a solid, heavy hammer I love, but my wife thinks it’s too heavy. In a world of big, burly tools these are so smart.
The AIfIA Translation Initiative translated several new pieces from me and several others into Spanish.
“This is not a hung jury based upon a lack of unanimity,” the note continued. “This is a jury that has ceased to be able to conduct respectful, open-minded, good-faith deliberations.”
I was on a criminal court jury last summer, deliberating a case that could have put someone in jail for a long time. I spent a week and a half sitting silently next to a randomly selected group of eleven other New Yorkers, and then moved into a room with them to discuss the defendent’s fate. I was singularly impressed with the seriousness and intelligence every person brought to the situation. Now, I ride the subway looking at strangers knowing what they are capable of, but also that I might have been lucky.
We’re posting our wireframe templates over on the Asilomar site.