Analoguisation

2008-01-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

Be careful what you ask for

I believe that product teams get away with developing feature creep driven programs because a significant number of users believe more is better and will make purchasing decisions based on that thinking, sales are an enabler for bad development habits.

It would seem reasonable to think that only enlightened users can bring about better design through buying products that meet needs and not desires.

Therefor, good design processes alone will not make for a successful product. Organisations must engage with users in a two way dialog that educates both parties on needs.

2007-12-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Judging sucks

I was one of the judges at Phizzpop on the 14th. I cant believe the level of work created in just 3 days. We, the judges, were divided on two teams that went the extra mile. I wish we could have split the prize.

I'm not sure I'm judging material. That all said, MSFT put on a great event, everyone had fun.

2007-11-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

My slides on Designing within the Outsourcing Business model

| View | Upload your own

2007-11-06T03:53:00.000-08:00

When is a prototype not a prototype

for me..
'Prototype': Created when rendering ideation in to more solid forms that can be peer reviewed to produce a single candidate.
'Mockup': The presentation of the single candidate to stakeholders, used to gain consensus and sign-off in to implementation.

Every process is different.

2007-10-02T13:46:00.000-07:00

I know how this man feels

I just wish I had his skills in dealing with multiple tasks

2007-09-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Wireframe annotation

2007-09-22T05:18:00.000-07:00

The Uncanny Valley: Music

(aka: why machines arent ready to be our overlords)

Machine

Human

2007-09-15T05:27:00.000-07:00

Stupid Dialog Boxes

2007-09-14T09:59:00.001-07:00

Simplicity isnt simple

Mark Twain once received this telegram from a publisher:

NEED 2-PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS.

He responded:

NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES.

via

2007-09-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

The future of kiosks?

Here's a quick video of a Teleportec machine in operation...

Instead of a real person at the other end of the line, how about a computer generated 3d persona helping you with your flight or hotel checkin, tourist information etc.

Technology cant be too far away from enabling it. I suspect it will open up a new field of interaction design.

2007-07-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

Iterative small scale design processes

Two quotes from this short clip on a couple of inventors building their own mini-blimp.
(Paraphrasing) 'History is littered with these grandiose designs, real work doesn't get done like that, real work is accomplished in these small iterative design steps.'

Agile blimp building...

And more intriguingly "no one has done this before so we have to train ourselves as pilots ('users') as well as do the work of engineering."
Given that I'm a design team of one in my current position I've been forced to take a couple of shortcuts in regards to user testing. I practice something I call 'be the user'... I ought to write that methodology up some day (o;

2007-07-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Parallels between setting typography and paper-prototyping

'Computers make for sloppy thinking, thinking allows you to delete the non-essential.'

I like the analogy David Dabner makes with music... 'When playing Jazz, you've got to learn the instrument first, otherwise its going to sound bloody aweful'

2007-07-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

One day software will be designed like this

Christopher Deam talks about how he went about redesigning the interior of an Airtstream by addressing the disconnect with the promise of the sleek exterior.

Link to video

2007-07-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

What a wicked web we weave

I was going through a little benchmarking exercise with a competitor's product recently. Had a major deja vu moment. My screen on top, someone else's on bottom. The table contents are almost identical.

It would appear that an OEM vendor I'm working with is putting some my designs in to their shelf library and in turn, those designs are finding their way on to some competitors who are sourcing from the same OEM.

It's a small world (o;

2007-06-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Design Equation (no.1)

2007-05-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Challenge: Designing for flow within one application across two user bases and two interfaces.

Wikipedia: Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

In the diagram above, users are either hindered by the UI, in flow, or frustrated when trying to complete a task.

My main users can be generalized in to two types. The mid level network admins with a moderate level of protocol and architecture knowledge. Best sumarised as needing a little 'hand holding' during setup and configuration. I've tailored the web based GUI to them. Then there are the 'cisco certified' power users who prefer the speed of the CLI. They spend more time planning their complex network designs, usualy in advance of working with the interface. The former tends to spend more time exploring the available options, the latter needs to simply get their tasks completed.

With user's needs roughly defined, designing the interfaces has clear constraining boundaries. The interface workflow must present features & options in a way that is neither too dumbed down nor too convoluted based on the user and their prefered interface. For the mid level admins, research is showing that they're happy with the gui. Predictably the power users spend their time in the CLI.

The issue is in the nature of the application, configuring networks. Some of the features transcend the upper & lower flow boundaries of a particular interface.

Going forward I need to understand the areas that are common. That is, the high end features in the low end interface and visa versa for the basic features in the CLI. Explore possibility of web-cli interface cross pollination, launching a CLI within a web ui, and pulling up a gui when appropriate for a CLI user which presents the feature in a more configurable light. As always, in progress.

2007-05-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

I don't love/hate* you anymore (*delete as appropriate)

Been evolving my thoughts on the uncanny valley since the post about mimic design in March

Leisa Reichelt ponders on her observation that machine interactions seem to contain less anthropomorphism these days. She asked if it was due to the rise in social interactions diminishing the amount of human qualities we're willing to apply to the machine. Bill Higgins had a different take at an application level with the uncanny valley human/machine comparison at a desktop/web level.

I believe Mr. Higgins is right at a macro level. It ties in with what I noted in my widget design and emphasizes my notion that the uncanny valley phenomenon is not the sole domain of robotics.

Ms. Reichelts observations are very insightful but I feel she arrives at the wrong conclusion. I believe the median state of interfaces has progressed to the point where they are not so quirky anymore. They’re more functional, they’re starting to do what they promise.
When we’re past the lull in the valley, when we’re running intelligent agents on our machines. Then I think we’ll see a full blown revival of anthropomorphism.

2007-05-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Learn from history or repeat its mistakes

The philosopher John Loche's (1632-1704) take on the events that led to the recent Digg community revolt

He believed that we create a social contract when we form a community/society, whereby we cede certain natural rights to an authority in return for security and other gaurantees. Locke's argument is that any fair social contract must have certain qualities: It must respect its citizens rigths to life, liberty, and property. If these rights are violated, we are entiled to rebel against the authority

Lifted from The Intellectual Devotional

2007-05-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

The singularity will be savant... In progress

There follows a snippet from an email thread with another body, just capturing it here for now and will tie it in to a more formal essay on the subject soon.

"My bet is we will create the singularity. I do not think it will be apocalyptic, nor an immediate massive watershed, more of a major milestone in computer development. I believe the singularity will be much like a savant. An autistic personality, tremendous archival capabilities and able to view/process the collective knowledge on the net in new ways. The first queen bee of the hive mind. A step towards a true human colony transcending race, gender & national differences. Helping us solve some of the issues we face such as climate change, energy efficiency - possibly.

The second thing to come from the singularity, as I see it, is its ability to copy itself. A fundamental of computer science. These copies will solve the biggest issue in computer interaction - personal AIs (or agents). The agents, nothing as sinister as the matrix, will be our personal assistants. Remembering preferences so we dont have to check the same godam box to not remember a password for the nytimes, recognising faces in photographs and tagging according when it uploads to flickr. That sort of stuff.

I think the negative views of HAL 9000/Terminator/Electric sheep are based on the premise that computers will have some form of personality. I'm my dealings with computers and people in the autistic spectrum, I just dont think the singuraity, the net-savant, will have one. Therefor it wont go psychotic, it might not care that it gets switched off, as it might know it will inevitably be switched back on in the normal pace of progress."

2007-04-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Truth

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the man, "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The man below responded, "You must be in Management."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

2007-04-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

Jury still out on killer mobile app...

From Arstechnica
"Users: I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muf^h^h^h mobile internet!

There is still a fair amount of interest in mobile broadband access, but much of that comes from corporate users, those who need high-speed Internet access at their fingertips no matter where they are. But most Internet users are content with having broadband at home and at the office; they don't need it on the go."

Large telco's have invested in 3G without similar input in to application innovation. It would seem that users in the US do not see mobile internet solving tasks for them.

Build an effing huge themepark without any rides, you wont sell tickets.

Article noted cultural difference with UK. Curious about this, I wonder has population density got anything to do with it?

2007-04-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Attention & Context

If a great musician plays great music but no one hears it, is it any good?

The Washington Post ran a little experiment in which they took the world top most violin player on the world most expensive (and best) violin, put him in the role of a busker to see if anyone would notice.

They didnt.

If a good designer follows the theoretical rule book, runs all the tests and produces a great design, but puts in the wrong context. Did they waste their time: yes.

2007-04-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Multitouch wonders (part n

I think the pandora's box of multitouch interfaces opened a little further with this device. Its not hard to see this being applied to industrial process control, or even product development process management.

Lets say I'm a ui designer with X amount of available cycles that I feed in to the managment system. I could then be placed on to a react-table by mangement along with other project resources, the system would then interact my bandwidth and adjust the overall output. Would make a nice front end to a MS Project style app.

More information:
http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable

2007-04-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

Simplicity = Cleanliness

I believe the concept of simplicity is very much an engineering centric thought. It combines both the presentation layer and the underlying schema, whereas non-technical users evaluate the 'skin' alone.

I've concluded that a design, esp device design, with a low cognitive load is perceived as clean. You can bury a tonne of features in a clean design. So, I think a goal of 'simplicity' is a big red herring for designers.

This essentially boils everything back down to 'dont make me think'

As Bill DeRouchey of History of the Button responded on the IxDA list

" In insider terms, it's reducing cognitive load. In everyday terms, it's don't make me think.

Simplicity is clarity. "

2007-04-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Familiarization v. innovation

Dan Saffer posted to the IxDA list about a site redesign

It would seem that the first rev of the site was design-engineering centric. That is, in the wild-west attitude of web2.0, there was an assumption made that their users were constantly leaning forward open to any new pattern that makes functional sense. That users were in a constant mode of explore, investigate, willingness to experiment. This is very much a design/engineering mindset.

Its all about the content, the news changes from day to day, the layout of your deadtree paper does not. Purely reading content is not a goal in itself, passing the time away is.

I would redress Mr Saffer's original subject line "Don't Be Too Innovative with Your UI..." with: dont be too unfamiliar with users who come to your site with no clear
goals, they'll move on.

Innovation and familiarity are not mutually exclusive.

2007-03-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Uncanny valley of mimic design

Was at a presentation on robotics by the clever folks at iRobot, makers of the iRoomba, in which they discussed the uncanny valley as well as an improved interface for a military search robot.

The original interface was put together in a weekend for a critical mission in Afghanistan, while an amazing job, it was engineering centric. The new interface had a 3d model of the robot indicating position, bearing, pan/tilt etc. It was a fully rendered 3d image, very nice, but a little hard to make out some details as the rendering wasn't 100%, it had some polygon artifacts.

Thats when I made the connection between the uncanny valley and my own research on displaying complex information through mimics. If you reduce the detail in a mimic you reduce the cognitive load, in addition, with the mimic 'cleaned up' you can introduce additional data-points