Entries Tagged 'Interaction' ↓

After hearing this sentence too many times from developers I start to wonder do they need us? I guess they don’t. User interaction experts just make their life more complicated. So who need us? The users of course, and this certainty is caused by the programmers ideas and solutions to interaction issues. By no means I take the programmers’ work lightly, nor encouraging not to listen to them.

Many times programmers vision is limited by their knowledge, experience and the desire to experience with new technology. The latest example is three state check box in a web application (MSDN, example). For those of you who say three states is normal considering check, not checked and disabled, I address here an additional state (that makes four states total) which can be described as slightly checked. My opinion is that option should be deprecated until some one will explain me why it is needed.

Any way listening to the programmers is good, especially when working on a detailed design of the interaction. The analytic nature of their work and the ambition to identify stages, actions, event and responses can discover missed interaction scenarios. The more detailed the design is it is simpler for the programmer to understand and implement the interaction correctly. But this raises a problem, the user interaction expert becomes the writer of a major part of the system specification document. This sounds good from the point of view of user centered design (UCD), but such a tight integration requires the UI expert to be a system analyst as well. This is not good…

Many UI experts basic education is computer science, but as this is a multidisciplinary profession some are graphic designers or from the field of cognitive science. That makes a mess, especially when talking to a programmer, in some cases they even don’t share the same vocabulary. Then the programmer say “I think the best thing for the user is…”

For all of you there, doing god’s good work:

The IPhone human interface Guide!!!

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/iPhone/
Conceptual/iPhoneHIG/

Enjoy.

Lately I tried to buy a laptop. I searched online for hours and hours and most of the product I found raised an eyebrow and a - “It looks nice, but I don’t know if it’s for me?” response.

Most ads had a lot of technical terms as the kind of the processor or the amount of memory, but I could not translate most of the details into information I can use.

A lot of consumer products have that problem, all the technical terms are very impressive, but users usually but what someone who they think know more than them is telling them to buy, usually using the line– “this is for you, it’s what you need”.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could just know what I need without the help of superior minds?

Well, it can be done.

A nice solution to this problem is found in some surfboard sites. These sites add a little matrix that gives you a range to place yourself on –

Am I a novice surfer or a pro?

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In ergonomics there is a basic concept called knowledge transfer. It relates to transferring knowledge from training situation to real world (work / production) situation. In addition it refers to transferring knowledge accumulated from using one device to another device. Knowledge transfer is especially relevant when introducing new products to the market and divides into two categories, positive transfer which is good, and negative transfer which is bad.

A simple example for positive transfer is the computer keyboard which transferred knowledge user gathered while using a typing machine. It is much harder to fined examples for negative transfer; some think that the method of shifting gears in automatic cars is a negative transfer, in buses it is done by pressing buttons (no knob).

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On the front panel of my all my sound system components, which are about three years old, there are large ON/OFF buttons. The remote controls have them too. The amplifier remote control even has a separate buttons for ON and OFF.

When I got my last mobile phone I could not find an ON/OFF button. “Start Call” and “End Call” functions are very salient, the number pad too, but how do I turn this device off? I feel that the ON/OFF function that was one of the most important and some times was even safety related had lost its significance and this is an act of interests. The service providers wish to keep my phone ON, making the act of turning it OFF hidden in the only menu that is reachable by long press on the “End Call” button. Continue reading →