Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category

Posted on August 8, 2001 - by deCadmus

Irrational Weight Loss

After years of wielding a stopwatch as a weapon in the battle to streamline client web sites, I’ve noted an alarming trend to shed page weight at any cost — a good heuristic gone bad.

The latest web page diet fad includes dropping wayfinding hints, icons and images and replacing them with drop-down menus. While this may suit for a more experienced user [and can, in fact, be used to good effect to speed more experienced folk along their way to click efficiency] it too often makes wayfinding far more difficult for new or inexperienced web site consumers.

The subtle cues we use to help users sniff out relevance are important. Far too important to simply eliminate in order to shave a few bytes, or even kilobytes, of download efficiency. At best, our user may take a moment or two longer to ponder the site’s navigation… an exchange of Net bandwidth for the brain bandwidth required to ferret out which drop-down list item is most promising. At worst, our unfortunate user chooses wrong, and must back-track, reload the home page, and start over again. Where’s the efficiency in that?

It’s rarely enough to provide lists of links. At the very least, it’s important that we provide context for those links. Even better, we’ll provide link descriptions and titles, so that our readers can determine what they’ll find on the other end of the hyperlink before they click, thus giving them the power to choose.

Any attempt to cure web page woes should subscribe to the cardinal rule of interaction design… don’t make your user feel stupid.

Posted on August 8, 2001 - by deCadmus

All the news that’s fit to..

well, fit around its new ad format. The New York Times has hopped on the bulging bandwagon of sites that plop large, obtrusive ads smack in the middle of its pages’ content space. Also noteworthy [if not newsworthy] is the fact that they’re using the meta refresh tag to reload pages in client browsers after 900 seconds [that's 15 minutes to you and me]. Is this an altruistic measure to ensure their readers get the very latest news? Or are they artificially inflating page views to boost their ad rates?

Posted on July 25, 2001 - by deCadmus

Cool Tool.

Take a spreadsheet, perform some electronic husbandry with virtual Post-It… ^H^H^H tiny adhesive scratch pad sheets, and you end up with something like Writer’s Blocks. Built for people who write [I first stumbled upon the product in a print copy of Writer's Digest] it’s a nifty tool for quickly assembling, sorting and identifying relationships between discrete bits of unstructured text. I’m using a trial download of Writer’s Blocks to identify content chunks and wire-frame the navigation between them for my latest [and greatest?] project. It’s got all the capabilities of those sticky bits of paper, without the worry of your hard-won design falling off the walls.

And if this whole web thing goes south, I’m all set to outline that novel I’ve been threatening to write.

Posted on July 24, 2001 - by deCadmus

You Go, Google.

Google.com, who last week took home the Webby’s Best Practices prize –a new and singular award that honors overall excellence–finds itself singled out again, this time for its integrity in managing sponsored placements on its search engine. At the same time, eight other search engines find themselves under increased scrutiny for mixing paid and editorial placement. At issue: users’ ability to discern relevant results from an increasingly huge and complex web. J.D. Lasica offers a particularly good read on the subject at Online Journalism Review.

Meanwhile, Google continues to improve the interface and add functionality to its recently-purchased Deja News service [which included more than a terabyte of messages] and has added Zeitgeist, an informative and often amusing looking glass on the world of web search.

Simple, fast, reliable… and accountable. Best practices, indeed.

Posted on July 23, 2001 - by deCadmus

Haptics, Feedback and Immersion

It’s look and feel, right? Try this: move your mouse cursor to any part of the white background of this page, and click. Feel that?

What you just experienced is precisely the same tactile feedback you get when you click on buttons and hyperlinks… a reedy, mechanical click from your mouse that indicates you’ve pressed the mouse button, and another that signals release. This tactile feedback is the same whether you’ve moused over the button surface, or missed it, or clicked the button before the code behind the page had fully loaded. The result? Nothing. A false positive. I’ve recorded false positives like these in usability studies for a while now, and find that they account for anywhere from 20% to 40% of clicks overall–more, with less experienced computer users.

The problem is fundamental: tactile feedback is provided by a device that is unaware of other events in the system, and the feedback it offers is the same, regardless of the outcome [success or failure] of those events. Some effort has been made to provide additional auditory feedback to coincide with mouse-clicks, but these, too, are driven by the mouse itself, and not by the interaction of the mouse with the rest of the system. To avoid this trap, we need to build a better mouse. [Sorry... couldn't help it.]

To really move forward, though, we need to consider a method of mousing that provides more than binary tactile feedback… we need to look at haptics. Haptic perception describes how we use our sense of touch to experience the objects that surround us… the shapes and textures that define our sense of place. A haptic mouse could not only provide accurate click feedback, it could trace the contours of the button. Bump against the edge of the on-screen window. Provide a grooved trail though a cascade of menus.

Happily enough, just such a rodent is currently on the market. The iFeel mouse from Logitech uses force feedback technology pioneered [and patented] by Immersion. While the current model has recieved mixed reviews, it may signal the the future of on-screen navigation… an experience that is more accurate, and more meaningful.

Posted on July 16, 2001 - by deCadmus

Context Switching

Somewhere in Dante’s Hell there must be a room, a pit–perhaps even an entire level–for those who commit the atrocity of abusive context switching. [A term I've appropriated from the programmers' lexicon.] You’re probably far more familiar with its use–and its abuse–than you realize. Consider:

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls and they say, “Because it’s such a beautiful animal…”
There you go.
Well, I think my mother’s attractive, but I have photographs of her.

Ellen DeGeneres is particularly adept at using context switching in her stand-up comedy. It’s a jarring moment when we find that we’ve been led down the garden path to… well, something we didn’t expect. When it’s a stand-up act, we laugh. In film, we’re surprised. But when a context switch occurs in our everyday lives, we are momentarily confused–we stumble–and then we react, often at a visceral level.

Watch the face of any grade-schooler as the teacher announces a pop-quiz. First the stumble–a distinctive, blank deer-in-headlights gaze–and then,”But that’s not fair!” Of course it’s not fair. It wasn’t expected. It’s uncomfortable. And even as grown-ups we still don’t adjust well.

Acts as simple as placing a phone call can bring about a brush with context switching… when the phone is answered not by the person we intended to speak with, but instead by a machine. We stumble–momentarily at a loss for words–and then we react, and mentally kick ourselves for leaving awful, disjointed messages. Is it any wonder voice-mail was resisted so well, and for so long?

And then there’s the web. The web applications we use every day are riddled with context switches that are both unwelcome, and unwarranted. Inconsistent navigation, ill-conceived categories, irrelevant search results, increasingly intrusive ads–each degrades the meaning of the web experience by clouding its context. And just when users need context most–when we require assurances of trust and privacy–we’re sent off to shopping cart systems that live on other servers with different URLs and a completely different look and feel. And we stumble–we click away, and abandon our virtual shopping cart for a real one.

Establishing context is important. Maintaining context is critical.

Posted on July 12, 2001 - by deCadmus

WaSP

I’ve found it difficult to line up behind the Web Standards Project [WaSP]. Not because I don’t support the call to standards, but because one of the legs the group stands on includes pressuring users to upgrade to standards-compliant browsers. I think that’s a tactic that only alienates one’s audience, and demonstrates a real misunderstanding of the users’ lot in this game.

On the other hand, I’m very encouraged by WaSP’s latest tactic: pressuring the publishers of site development tools to create products that write standards-compliant code. Speaking for WaSP, Tom Negrino [an occasional author] says: “None of the big tools–Dreamweaver, GoLive, FrontPage–none of them currently writes standards-compliant code.”

Good on you, WaSP.

Posted on July 9, 2001 - by deCadmus

Not Found

The discussion on MetaFilter about the end of Assembler raises some very interesting points on the transient nature of the web, and the role of the publisher/artist/designer/author. At the same time it rings the alarm bells. Some very good people–folks who’ve done much to both define and stretch the boundaries of this fledgling medium–are packing up their toys and taking their talents offline.

The web has always been an impermanent place. The stuff at the other end of the link can be fleeting: moved [300, 301], not found [404], gone [410]. It’s part of the design. Whether that’s a good thing… time will tell.

Posted on July 2, 2001 - by deCadmus

Dumb and Dumber

Dumb and Dumber: a usability lesson from the phone system.
Not terribly long ago the local telephone company in Kansas City introduced ten-digit dialing. Up to that point, phone system users within the Kansas City metro had been able to ignore the area codes that divide the city, dialing only the significant [and significantly easier to remember] seven digits.

I’m certain that I’ve been using the ten-digit system for more than a year, and still I find it bothersome. There is some part of my nervous system that has associated dialing a three-digit area code with placing a long-distance call… and accordingly dials a 1 first, and then the ten-digit number. When I do, the call is answered by a scratchy tape-loop [almost certainly an old analog recording that was digitized, replete with pops, hisses and scratches] informing me that it’s “not necessary to dial a one or a zero or [incorrectly] an area code when dialing this number…” Would I “please hang up and dial again?”

Clearly, the phone switching system understood precisely what I intended to dial… after all, I didn’t fail to provide dialing information, I provided more than was necessary. Why, then, would the design of the system refuse to actually place the call? Do what I meant!

I’m certain the intent of this scheme is to educate the user. Such an education could be accomplished far better by playing a speedy and cheerful “Remember, there’s no need to dial one for a local number…” and then completing the call.

I feel foolish for making the mistake already. Don’t make me feel worse by lecturing me… and don’t give me the opportunity to make the same mistake all over again by forcing me to hang up and redial.

Posted on July 1, 2001 - by deCadmus

Mediums Writ Large

When Thug the caveman first scrawled an image of himself on a wall of stone, we can imagine the prehistoric critics — “Arg! Ick dannae throg!” Which, roughly translated, imparts that the cave art lacked passion, and what’s more Thug would be better off spearing dinner. Little did the critics know that someday we might define the dawn of recorded history by Thug’s efforts.

When, in the Middle Ages Gutenberg created the printing press, the voices of his critics echo still… “What’s the use! The people cannot read! And if they could they would not understand without us to tell them what it means!” Which suggests that Johannes’ critics may have had some idea how the printed page would usurp their power, though even they could not know how profoundly it would change the world to come.

When Bell uttered his first words through his electrical speech machine, his critics were dumbfounded… “Who would you talk to? And won’t you disturb their dinner?!” True enough, dinner would never be the same. What’s more, dinner would never be the same wherever you might go, as one day everyone over the age of 12 would have a phone in his or her pocket.

When Zworykin [or Philo T. Farnsworth] patented his kinescope, his critics were confused. They argued amongst themselves whether the thrust of their criticism would be the tried and true, “It’ll never work” or the more obscure, “Mid-season replacements will confuse your audience.” In either case, they surely couldn’t imagine a live broadcast of man taking his first steps on the moon, or Ally McBeal’s dancing baby.

When Berners-Lee made the Internet accessible to everyone, the critics on Wall Street were frantic. “Buy!” they screamed. And then, “Sell! Sell!” Which suggests that critics haven’t changed all that much through the ages… they still don’t understand the creation of a medium any more today than they understood it in Thug’s time. Or Gutenberg’s. Or Bell’s. Or Zworykin’s.

A medium has the capacity to not only change our thinking, but to change how we think… how we communicate, experience, and understand. And to tell the truth, we still don’t know what the implications of the Internet and the Web really are. This much is fairly certain, though — we’re not finished. We’re only just begun.

A medium has the capacity to not only change our thinking, but to change how we think… how we communicate, experience, and understand.

So what is this invention, this medium, that has evidently caused us fits throughout the ages? Is it a tool? A toy? A myth? A medium is vehicle for communication. It’s a transport for the expression of ideas… a means for transmitting a message from the sender — the person who wants to express something — to an audience, those who might receive that message. This could be an audience of one, or an audience of thousands, or even millions.

Even as a medium transports a message, it also shapes it, and manifests in that message properties that are unique to that given medium. Likewise a medium lends the message its own limitations. The stark lines of a rock chip scratched against a cave wall, the gilded manuscripts of the thirteenth century, an analog broadcast beamed through the airwaves — each has its strengths and its limitations. To master a given medium it’s critical to learn what those strengths and limitations are. Which is precisely why the Internet — and in particular, the Web — is such a mess today.

It’s not immediately apparent how a new medium is best used. If our early cave artist were given a paintbrush would he paint a prehistoric Mona Lisa? More likely he’d try to use the handle to scratch on the walls. It’s no surprise, then, that early television broadcasts were little more than televised radio plays, or that today’s web sites try so hard to look like television screens with hyperlinks. We’ve got a new set of tools, but we’ve yet to master the techniques required for the medium. For that matter, we’re still trying to discover what they are.

So what do we know about this medium–this Internet? We know that there are three laws that govern the Internet, and none was penned by a legislator. The first of these is Moore’s Law — a nifty bit of insight offered by Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel. Moore’s Law states that every 18 months, processing power will double, while costs remain constant. It’s the principle on which Gordon Moore built his business, and it’s proved remarkably accurate. Moore’s law has been essential not only in terms of how it has driven innovation, but in how it’s made basic computing capability more affordable for a mass audience.

That brings us to the second law that governs the Internet. Metcalfe’s Law, offered by Bob Metcalfe — a guy who knows quite a lot about networks — he invented Ethernet, and founded 3Com. Metcalfe’s Law states that the utility of a network equals the square of the number of its users. Consider the computer you’re looking at now. Imagine it unplugged from the network. Alone. Isolated. It’s still a computer. You can run a spreadsheet, edit a document, play a game. But once you connect that computer to even just one more, the power of your own computer increases dramatically. You can now share those documents, or send messages to the other computer on your network. The utility of your computer continues to increase — geometrically — with each additional node that is introduced to your network.

And that brings us to the third law that governs the Internet. At a certain point — critical mass — the power of the computing network is so great that it extends beyond the realm of technology alone, and affects the social, economic and political worlds in which it operates. This is the Law of Disruption, described by Chunka Mui in Unleashing the Killer App. Between the accelerated curve of technological change and the incremental curve of human change there is a widening gap — a vacuum — and a vacuum is a powerful force. I believe that both the fundamental cause for that gap, and the vehicle that will fill it–the agent of change–are one and the same… the Internet.

And so we are where we began, with the birth of a new medium — the invention of a vehicle for communication that disrupts as it transforms. The effects of this particular medium will be especially powerful, and likely unusually disruptive. While other mediums have empowered the individual to communicate with the masses, to do so on a large scale has always required an intermediary — an art gallery, a publisher, a theatre or broadcast company. These are powerful organizations, groups that are rarely content merely to replicate a message, when they can edit and augment it as well.

The Internet, however, is inherently a many-to-many medium. Virtually anyone who has the ability to browse the web has the capability to publish on the web, without the services — or the editorial predilections — of any intermediary whatsoever. It’s interesting to imagine what might have transpired if Thug’s cave art were instantly transported to every cave that chose to tune in. Or if there had been a printing press in every kitchen.

It’s just as interesting to imagine where the Internet will lead us. I don’t claim to know. But I expect it’ll be a helluva ride.