Blogging on User Interface and experience

Google friend connect is all about making the user life easy, you can join any web site with your Google account, and any web site can have ready made social elements, like friends (subscribers) and comments.

The basic flow of the service is:
I want to accomplish a goal-> I see I can on a site-> I choose to register -> I am redirected to Google accounts-> I login (one click action) -> I share with friends -> I set settings -> I get back to the site to complete my task.

Google engineers have forgot some basic rules of web usability:

1. Most people have a goal in mind when entering a web site, Help people perform that goal as fast and as easy as possible.
Instead of one click registration to the site users are asked to take a long road to complete their goals with sharing, entering details and getting settings organized. If a user just wants to add a comment, this can be way to much for him.

2. Keep users within the context of their goal environment.
In order to register to a site, users are redirected to Google accounts. The originating site design is not kept as the interaction. Users can get easily confused and irritated by the sadden change of context. This problem can go away with time if usage of Google connect becomes frequent and users expect it to happen, but until then…
On the other hand, how hard was it to accomplish login within the original site environment, something like a widget box that they have there anyway.

Waiting to see facebook connect…

User interface and user experience practitioners have a new blogs aggregator in town:

UI.altop.com

Altop.com (by Guy Kawasaki) is a "by topic" aggregator and they just opened the UI/UX topic page for the messes. The page follows most of the leading UI/UX blogs and in a clean and simple design.
What I miss in this page is the podcasts and videos follow up, but I believe it will follow shortly.

I follow my RSS feeds on Google reader. I like it for the basic simplicity of it and for the complicated options it enables me to follow.

Today I got a first look of what a “share item with note” looks like:

As you can see - the Image is very small and not really clear.

So, I thought it’s me…

I tried going for the extended view (I use the list view):

What did Google do wrong?

Google enabled users to share an item (was able before) and add a personal aspect to it (note).
Google transferred a social element - Identity (a picture that represent me), that is very common on social websites and implemented it poorly.
A common method for creating user interfaces is copy the familiar.
In order to create a feel of familiarity UI practitioners copy from real life, or from digital elements that most users known before or still using.

So Google wants to become a social network, but why represent it with a 10 pixels on 10 pixels picture?

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).

Continue reading →

This year the CHI2008 event was in Florence, Italy. This was my first time in CHI and in Florence. Both interesting, but for me looking backwards now CHI was much more of an attraction. I was amazed by size of the event, so many UI experts in one place, how comes there are still UI problems out there? Continue reading →

Recently I got a look at this manual from apple - has a lot of good guidelines from the company that is known for its user experience.

Enjoy

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Several interesting entries, I didn’t want to post separately:

1. This post is written using Drivel Journal Editor running on Ubuntu 7.10. It is not polished as the MS Windows live writer. I was happy to find it includes a build in speller, though in a brief look it seems as if it is only capable of highlighting miss spelled word, later I found an option in the context menu called Spelling Suggestions. This is not the common way, but a nice solution for crowded context menus.
The meaning of Drivel is To slaver; to let spittle drop or flow from the mouth, like a child, idiot, or dotard. The software delivers basic operations (e.g. writing a post), it is straightforward and seems nice and friendly. Next …

2. Season of Usability 2008 is open and offers some interesting and challenging UI/UX practical experience. More details here: http://season.openusability.org/index.php/projects.

3. Do you have a wish list? From time to time I make a wish regarding new functionality in programs or services I use. For example, I wish I could stream my desktop using IM or at list send a screen capture easily. This can be a powerful tool for collaborative work, teaching and supporting. If this exists somewhere, let me know, if you decide to develop this feature… well this was my idea. If you have other wishes, write to us.

While installing the new MS (Microsoft) live messenger I encountered the platform I am trying right now - Windows live writer.  

The over all feel is nice, MS feel but still, familiar and smooth.

Installation was also easy and configuring my blog and user was also easy.

Downfalls: They just don’t learn… MS got a great new product out there - office 2007 with a complete new user interface method, this is based on the old UI and that is taking a step back, entering an  Image and manipulating it was easy, but not consistent with the new method - on the right of the interface.

Can’t see code? what a shame…
A lot of bloggers like their code, and manipulate it, it is part of the task flow:
I write -> embed code -> write some more…

The carryover from other blog editing (especially web based) tools is apparent by the text editing tool, and the non friendly text behavior (can’t move the pic around with the arrows?) but when writing on a pc client I would expect more.

Took me some searching to be able to play with font size.

Good stuff - MS style, there is 3 ways (or more) to do every action and the options compared to other tools out there are far greater.

One thing that is not apparent at first are the plug-ins. this is a very broad.

Bottom line - A lot of "MS going for free code" is going around… This all platform is that, the addons are suppose to be by "users/ free developers. A lot of marketing and features, again experience is lacking.