RIApalooza 3: A Look at the Future of RIAs
July 24, 2010
Every time I get a glimpse of the future of web and app development, I can’t help but believe the best has yet to come. I got that feeling again yesterday at RIApalooza 3 in Chicago, an insightful yearly conference that aims to advance the development of Rich Internet Applications.
Speakers included the always engaging Chris Bernard, a Microsoft User Experience Evangelist, who delivered the keynote on the future of RIAs. The big take away for me, besides Chris’ great “7 things I learned from John Hughes” segment, was the idea that to better understand and grow in the RIA space you have “go where you are uncomfortable”. His message was essentially this: if you are a Flash developer, explorer HTML5; if you are an Flex developer, explore Silverlight. Chris urged designers and developers to not let our focus on an particular development platform define us as technologists, lest we become the buggy whip makers in the next web technology revolution.
Other speakers included consultant Michael Labriola, who spoke on the major striations of internationalizing and localizing a product. Micheal’s examples were in Adobe Flex, but his lessons apply to whatever development platform you use. He examined several layers in terms of effort and return on investment to demonstrate what can be accomplished quickly, what takes up-front planning, and what fine-tuning work truly makes an application localized. If you are building for a global audience, the tips he provided were golden.
Another great talk came from Adobe’s Renaun Erickson, who demonstrated how Flex 4 could be used to build mobile apps that scale across many devices with different Pixel Per Inch screen densities without having to code device-specific apps. This is valuable if you developed an Android app with the Droid X in mind and want it display correctly in another handset with a different PPI density. This flexible development approach is also useful when handsets from the same manufacturer have different PPI densities, such as iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. But he advised that when you think about porting an iPhone app to the iPad, it may be time to look at a separate app that takes advantages of the iPad’s much larger surface.
All in all a great day of insightful talks from some really smart people. Not a bad way to end the week.
The Tangible Future of UX
July 15, 2010
John Underkoffler, inventor of the data interface used in the Minority Report, talks about the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment and the future of user interfaces in a recent TED talk. Watching this makes it hard to ignore the fact that the best has yet to come. And it’s a great example of why TED matters.
App Store Flow on iPhone Could Be Streamlined
July 13, 2010
Normally I love the iTunes App Store, but not so much today. I was trying to add Kayak’s travel app to my new iPhone and found the experience to be full of unnecessary and redundant tapping.
This was my screen flow:
- Launched the App Store
- Clicked Search
- Typed “kayak” and clicked the Search button
- Tapped Kayak’s app on the list screen
- Clicked the Free button
- Clicked the Install button
- Received a prompt for my password
- Entered my password and click the OK button
- Received a message asking me to confirm I wanted to download the app since Apple had detected this was a new device
- Clicked the Continue button
- Received a prompt for my password
- Entered my password and click the OK button
- Got directed to billing page with a request to confirm all information (since this was the first time using this device)
- Entered credit card security code without making any other changes and clicked the Done button
- Returned to the Kayak screen
- Clicked the Free button
- Clicked the Install button
- Done
Did I really need to enter my password twice? The App Store should be smart enough to know I just entered a password when sending me to the billing information page. Normally I don’t mind having to authenticate when accessing billing information, but not when I just did it a moment ago and am finger tapping an iPhone.
Another redundant step was requiring me to tap the Free and Install buttons a second time after going through the setup screens. At that point I had gone through 36 taps, so I think I clearly expressed my desire to download the app (“Really, I do want it!”, I thought). The App Store should have just started the download.
A last unneeded step was asking me to update my payment information to download a free app. My guess is that was done to get my iPhone ready for seamless purchasing in the future, but that’s a business goal of Apple’s, not a user goal of mine. I just wanted to download a free app. Ask me to confirm my billing information when it’s really needed.
My entire Kayak download took 38 taps. Eliminating the second password prompt and the last two buttons would have cut it to 26, a 31% reduction in taps. That’s a lot in a mobile experience. Dropping the credit card setup for a free app would have removed four more taps. Luke Wroblewski stated it best in Web Form Design, don’t ask for data you don’t need to complete the user’s task at hand.
As I said before, I love the App Store. But its download flow needs some streamlining, especially in the mobile context. I’m surprised Apple missed this aspect of the store’s design given its usual laser-focus on all the small details. As Charles Eames said: “The details are not the details. They make the design.”
A Walk Through Google’s News Test
June 12, 2010
Although it’s well known Google is always testing as many as 200 changes to its user interface, it wasn’t until today that I had the chance to step into one of those tests.
When going to the Google News page I saw a new layout and a link at the top that read “Why is News different?”. Clicking the link took me to a page that explained I was taking part in a test and asked me to complete a short survey. The survey page also contained a link to a 2006 post on the Official Google Blog that explained how Google uses its live sites for testing.
The changes being tested included offering people the choice of displaying stories in topical sections or as one long list. When shown in the list view, stories seemed to by ranked by how new they were, with newer stories at the top.
Each story summary had three icons at the top right. A star icon was used to mark the story as “Starred” (a favorite). This is on Google News already. A downward pointing arrow opened a layer that allowed a story to be shared via email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and Google Reader. And an X icon was used to “Hide this story for 6 hours”. I’m not sure the significance of the six hours or whether the story would ever appear again, but I would think people would just want to remove the story altogether. This could be one of the things Google is testing.
I noticed a few other odd things on the News page:
- To expand a story summary to see a bit more detail you have to click the white space around it, but there’s no visible call to action and no change to the mouse pointer. You just have to discover this feature. This also may be something being tested.
- When my news preferences were first presented there were three columns of radio buttons in which I could mark each section as being used Rarely, Sometimes, or Always. But the setup progress indicator only showed setup as complete when no category was left set to Sometimes. So even though I sometimes read Entertainment stories, I had to set that category to Rarely or Always.
- A news section’s name changed from black to gray when I choose Rarely, which made me wonder if stories in those categories will ever show (gray being indicative of a disabled state in web apps).
So like a good community member I gave Google my feedback. Of course I’m curious what other variations of the news UI were being tested and with how many people. I assume at some point some of these changes will make it into the site (or maybe not).
Test page for changes to Google News.
When the Section view is used stories are grouped by topic.
Summaries expand to show more details when the white space around a story area is clicked.
A view of all your Starred stories.
Setup is only complete when all news Sections are marked as being used Rarely or Always.
Setup is not complete if a Section is marked as used Sometimes.
Google asked test users to complete this short survey. I did.
Axure: Mac to Windows and Back
June 5, 2010
I’ve recently been testing how well Axure RP handles project files that are moving back and forth between Mac and Windows.
The initial results have been pretty exciting. All the interactions and conditional layers added on one platform are preserved when editing the project file on the other platform.
Since Axure released version 5.6 for Mac in April this popular prototyping tool can now be used by teams that are split between Mac and Windows users — perfect for a team in which the visual designers use Macs while the UX folks and developers use Windows. Shared projects can be accessed by both platforms for file versioning and page check-in/check-out.
Below are screen grabs from Mac OS X 10.5 and Windows 7. These are from the Movable Web reference project I’m building that will attempt to implement as many of Axure’s features as possible on a fictitious website/blog focused on mobile applications. More on that later this summer.
Axure’s license is user based and allows two installs, which is how I use it on Mac and Windows 7. And the license includes a 30-day free trial so you can test drive it before committing to a purchase. If you are a student with at least a 3.0 GPA you can get a free license through Axure’s Good Student Program and UPA members also can get a discount.
Axure RP 5.6 for Mac
Axure RP 5.6 for Windows
Do Your Reviewers Have a Sense of Humor?
May 8, 2010
Be wary of what you let your customers say, they may just have a real sense of humor. If your site allows consumer reviews — and what credible site doesn’t these days — you may just have to be prepared for people armed with a odd sense of creativity and a little too much free time on their hands.
Case in point: one very funny review for fresh whole rabbit in the Amazon.com grocery section.
I’m not sure if P. Breakfield IV of Greenville, SC, actually thought he was ordering a cute fuzzy bunny from Amazon, but his review was even funnier than Amazon using their site to push food items like fresh rabbit meat and wild boar tenderloin. Amazon has collected some funny reviews from the site, but their content team missed one of the funniest I’ve ever read.
Fresh Whole Rabbit Review on Amazon.com
A Fun UX Quotes Site
May 2, 2010
I came across this little gem the other day — UXQuotes.com.
There’s nothing like a clean, concise quote from a noted designer or thinker when you need a short and sweet line to explain why we do what we do. Of course we all hope to work for an organization that already “gets it”, but whether you do or don’t it never hurts to have a little ammo in the back pocket for when someone challenges the need for dedicated UX resources. Another good quote source is the Pithy Design Quotes on the Society for Technical Communication’s website.
Enjoy…
UXQuotes.com
Design Tools for iPad
April 23, 2010
Apple’s iPad has been out only a few weeks and already clever software developers are building design tools for this amazing new platform.
The Omni Group, makes of the popular OmniGraffle wireframing tool, have released OmniGraphSketcher for iPad. Priced at $14.99 in the iTunes App Store, OmniGraphSketcher allows you to create attractive charts, graphs, and other data visualizations on the iPad.
And Endloop, a Canadian iPhone/iPad development company, has released iMockups, a wireframing and diagramming tool for the iPad. Available on iTunes for $9.99, the app allows designers to create Balsamiq-like wireframes using their fingers.
I haven’t used iMockups but Endloop says in its blog that upcoming features include snap-to grid lines, a border and background color picker for UI controls, improved customization of UI controls, additional UI controls, more icons, and the ability to export to email, XML, or PDF. iMockups gets a 3-and-half-star rating from users in the iTunes store and the few reviews there comment about the app not being 100% ready yet.
It will be interesting to see how OmniGraphSketcher, iMockups, and other diagramming apps for the iPad add to the collaborative design process. For now I’m still keeping my sketchbook handy, but this could be the first wave of exciting new additions to the interaction design toolbox.
Google’s 3D View of NYC
April 16, 2010
Google is once again using its technology to allow us to explore our world in new and exciting ways, this time helping New York City tourism promoters create 3D tours of selected parts of the city. In a marriage of high-resolution 3D streetview photography and digital maps of New York, Google’s partnership with NYC & Company gives us a glimpse into the future of immersive, exploratory experiences.
Using the Google Earth API and the new hi-res images, NYC & Company has added the 3D tours to the interactive wall and table displays at its information center. The 3D fly-throughs also are available on your desktop in Google Earth.
For more information, see Google’s case study.
Status Messages Don’t Have to Be Dull
April 12, 2010
Amazon iPhone App Cart
It’s a cardinal usability heuristic that status messages on your website need to be clear in communicating the current state of whatever task the user is engaged with and tell them where they can go from there. But that doesn’t mean they need to be dry and dull as if Mr. Spock was doing your copy writing.
Amazon’s iPhone app offers a playful take on the standard “you have 0 items in your cart” message seen on many ecommerce websites. Since it’s obvious the cart is empty (because there’s nothing in it), Amazon uses the occasion to suggest you give your cart a “purpose” by filling it with books or CDs. It adds an element of personality at a point in the experience in which it’s OK to be playful.
You wouldn’t use this tone if a customer’s order was canceled 10 days before Christmas because the product they purchased is out of stock and cannot be back-ordered. Nor would you use it if a consumer is in a dire situation they need to recover from, like not being able to find their previously made hotel reservation when trying to confirm it online. But in no-stress situations like the obviously empty cart more websites and mobile apps could use a little bit of personality.
