Entries Tagged 'Interaction' ↓

Lately I have been hooked on twitter- a service for micro blogging, and there is a lot of buzz about it nowadays.
The twitter personal page looks like a good example for simplicity, and the main content section is just that.

A Twitter profile has a very simple (first impression) interface:
There is the noticeable Logo, a big question "what are you doing?" and a big text box.
Below you see "twitts" of people I am following. Delicate tabs show the user the ways of interaction.

However, The rest of the page is not understandable at first - what are device updates? what are followers? what are following? what is the difference between them (facebook and such social networks require interaction to be two way).

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A Name is an identity one can relate to, respond to, feel empathy to, and have a dialog with.
Web sites have been using their users names in numerous ways to increase their activity’s and emotional relation to their service.
Some of those ways:

• create an emotional connection and empathy.
• Increase user activity and involvement in activities.
• Ownership of information by a specific user within the service.
• Dialog between users.
• CRM - Get the user back to the service using email messages.

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I really like the relatively new breeze coming from Google. Well off-course I’m using the search engine, but recently due to limited storage space on the university mail server I started forwarding my emails to GMail. It was a pleasure to find out I can still use Thunderbird (my email client) using POP3 at home and IMAP at the university (firewall issues…). Than I discovered Google Calendar and more surprisingly I found out I can synchronize it with with Lightning, a calendering task manager plug-in to Thunderbird (which I was using).
One day, not long ago I got an event invitation, probably generated using MS-Outlook. Happy to see that I can Accept or Decline from Thunderbird and amazed when it appeared correctly in my online Google calendar. One day before the meeting I got a nice reminder.

In the following hour or so, I got a mail from one of the attendees, politely thanking me for the reminder.

I DID NOT ASK FOR ANY MAILS TO THE OTHERS!. I’m the last one in the food chain of this meeting. This was a disappointment…
Probably the Thunderbird interface is not 100% aliened with Google’s, but still this should be my decision. So what should my workflow be?
Accepting the meeting on my email client, opening the browser, logging to my Google account, accessing the calender, finding the event, editing the event. This is too much.
I don’t need two interfaces to manage my appointments. One more scary thing, I didn’t fined where this option exists in Google calender. I could only find a link labeled “Email guests” and I’m too scared to click it…more emails might be send.
So from now on I will not accept meeting invitations but create my own, at least until someone will explain me how it works (Danny are you free?).

Some funny Internet culture trivia information, do you know what is “Godwin’s law”?
Read on here.

Presented a usability calender: LOVED IT

Here are my two cents about it.
January:
choose a presentation that suits your content - I would add - Choose a presentation that suits your users needs.
February:
Offer personalization only where it adds value - Completely true.
March:
Keep novel choices visible: don’t hide information in dropdowns:
This item is kind’a problematic - above all you have to support your user, so primary navigation is totally true, but when it comes to secondary actions it has to be kept in mind that too much information creates a clutter on your page, so sometimes it is good to keep some things aside, Jared spool has a good podcast on the subject.
April:
Video is dandy - as long as it support the user task.
May:
Don’t require login if you don’t have to. - again, Jared Spool (I follow his articles and podcasts regularly).
June:
Who said usability should be boring - all fun and games, article here.
July:
Fitts law: Bigger IS better - or at least easier to click - I would add - Bigger also catch more attention, so bigger isn’t always better - don’t let action objects take focus from the content.
August:
More navigation doesn’t always make your site easier to use.
September:
Don’t copy every fancy web2.0 element you see - Tag cloud anyone?
October:
Focus on your core content: the home page sees fewer visitors - does your HP visitors know what your content is about?
November:
One word: Oversharing, technically two words , but more seriously, this is pure marketing issue, has little to do with usability.
December:
We’ve all seen enough Facebook clones now, thank you! - If something is done right copy it! as for usability you don’t have to be unique, you have to be smart about what you pick to copy.
Have a great 2008

D.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: calender, fun, usability

Experience is getting clustered.
Facebook, a little while ago added a little feature with a very sexy name: “News Feed Feedback”, it’s that little ‘thumbs up’ and ‘x’ icons next to every item in the news feed.

This is, from what the facebook blog say: “News Feed will use this feedback to further tailor stories for you and to identify the types of stories and applications you might like to see in the future”.

Just this morning I got a glimpse on a new feature by Google, doing kind of the same thing -

The wisdom of the crowds is getting more popular?

Now let’s compare this to Digg.com

Digg is a very good example of a good experience.

What are the user goals:

In Google- search and find - I am looking for something, I go in to Google search and I find it.

In facebook - follow - I am wondering what my friends are up to, I go in and follow the news feed.

In Digg - see what’s new - I am browsing digg, with no real goal, except getting a wide view of information, others users have liked or found important.

Who participate?

Google - everyone that is searching for something.

Facebook - Me and my friends.

Digg - a community that has some mutual interest.

Experience?

The first thing in experience design is to understand and design for the user goals and needs.

Digg tells me how many people in the community think the item I am looking at is important, and in a very easy step - one click, I can say I like it too.

Google and facebook don’t give me any feedback, I like an item, I click on it, but what does this action mean? Where does it lead to? Who else think this is good? In digg I know immediately.

So facebook and Google just made their screen a bit more crowded with actions a user don’t really need for his goals and needs.

Are more features always good?

Tags: Google, Digg, Facebook, experience, experience design, usability

A nice slide show

| View | Upload your own

Did it for work….

Blogged with Flock

Tags: usability, slide,

In my opinion, the greatness of facebook is its distribution system.
This system use several psychological tools:
An app acceptance’s is based on the credibility of my friends - by distribution.
An app acceptance’s is based on the credibility of facebook - by design.
Making the application part of a profile is a 3 click process.

Enjoy the movie

Blogged with Flock

A Video by New York Times technology columnist David Pogue.
Great talk about simplicity in design - funny and inspiring

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/7

Enjoy!!!  

Tags: Talk, David Pogue, simplicity

Flock - a social browser has a great tool - screen shoot. This tool give a possibility to “photocopy” an entire web page, above and below the fold.
These Images can be of use when I want to study the structure of a page,
see the relationship between above the fold items and below the fold,
and study methods used (like tutorials) or study the competition.

Another great use for page photocopy is paper prototyping, and once in a while, it even comes up in a board presentation.

During my work on Websites, I found my self looking for a way to “photocopy” a complete web page (including fold), some tools I found, but many times I found my self cutting and pasting….
The flock tool is a great tool for UI professionals.

There is a browser out there named flock, it has very interesting features, including social tools, blogging tools, social bookmarks tools and over fun feel.
The most interesting thing about it is the overwhelming amount of data on each page and how my eyes got used to it so quick.
You would think this is a very crowded view, but once you make good of some tools on the left and figure out those are just tools (like the blog editor I am using right now) you focus all your attention on the main part of it, and just have a very quick access to what ever you need.

I have been playing with it for several hours now, after I got a recommendation from a friend and I pass on this recommendation - Flock, give it a try http://www.flock.com/RC3/

But are we blind to tools? once we learn tools, we place them, one of the first things users do (according to eye tracking systems) is map all the action Items in a page.
We look for those action buttons again only if we need them and then we look in the places we mapped them before.

Flock sure makes a good use of this trait.

D.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, new, Interface