In My Experience: User Experience

Google doesn't deal with transient content blobs.

2004-01-13T14:13:13-05:00

One problem with the Communiblog section on the right side of the page here is that text in there is transient, but still gets indexed by Google. So words in there will match this page, but when the Communiblog is actively being pinged, those terms eventually disappear from the page, and searchers land here for no good reason.

One example of that is people looking for "qttask" in Google, who find this page which doesn't mention that term. but when Google indexed that page last, the was a Communiblog entry with that term in it, so people land here. That's not a great user experience, so I'm going to mention qttask here, so it gets indexed in this page (and for the record, the home page here has a "no index" rule, and tells robots to follow links to individual archives and index them) and people can follow this link to directions on how to remove/disable qttask.

I need a PDA.

2003-11-13T15:17:27-05:00

This is the acceptable form factor I have been waiting for when it comes to cell-phone/PDA combo units. I hate to say it, but holding a N-Gage, Sidekick or a Treo 300 to your head just looks dumb, and for some pathetic reason, that matters to me.

Just recently I have discovered the need/utility of a PDA and how it can help me out at work. This is a pretty big jump for me, because i have always considered an electronic note pad and phone book to be pretty useless, but there's certainly more to it than that, right? These days I have the need to know many more phone numbers, who they are attached to, and what tasks those people are currently working on, and what's coming up next. that screams out for a PDA.

Unfortunately, I have few limbs left with thumbs that can carry and manipulate devices. They are currently juggling an iPod, a cell phone, a Gameboy Advance and a digital camera (all of which I carry with me to work every day in what my mother-in law-calls my "carry all"). Adding a PDA to that mix is unattractive, especially when going to meetings, which is why I have some pretty severe techno lust going on over the Samsung SPH-i500. One of the big reasons is that it combines two devices I need (want?) into one device that doesn't make me look like a dork when I use it (I don't need any help on looking dorky, thank you).

Too bad the unit costs $600! The un-dorky form factor is probably worth an extra $75 to me, and the PDA is worth $150 to me, all over the typical $150 I usually pay when I do a handset upgrade. That's only $375.

Taking control.

2003-09-24T09:58:24-05:00

This idea of going wireless with the iPod and removing the hard drive is the least consumer oriented music idea I have seen so far (outside of lawsuits). What follows is a totally knee jerk reaction to a manufactured business model that seems to me to be an effort to take control away from consumers and place it in the hands of of industry.

Riddle me this: What would you get if you crossed a BlackBerry with an iPod? The answer: The future of the music business. Let me explain. Imagine, if you will, an iPod as a wireless digital ladle. It would dip into a nearly bottomless stream of continual music, scooping up any song you wanted, when you wanted, where you wanted. There would be no need for CDs, hard drives, or any other storage device. And trying to capture such music would be about as easy as trapping mist in a jar. Every song would contain a digital expiration date, so, over time, they would evaporate.

Riddle me this buddy, what happens when people see that there is a subscription model (no ownership) and the music is transient (again, no ownership, and this time no control) and no one buys into the business model? What then? Oh yeah, the Invisible Hands bitch slap you.

What happens when programming your digital, wireless only music device needs to be done in the field. Well, we can deal with by making a nice iTunes like interface that makes playlist editing easy beyond compare.... but.... this is a wireless only device, right? Oh yeah, indeed it is, and thus we'll need a nice QWERTY keyboard to edit our playlists, and demand new music when we want it... oh wait, I'm out of the service area? I downloaded that track yesterday, and I want to listen to it again, and I can't? Why can't I just store the music I bought on this thing and listen to it when ever I want?

Good luck answering those questions Mr Recording Industry. In the meantime, my iPod and I will do exactly what we want, when we want to do it, and wherever we please to be.

Not so simple remote TiVo scheduling.

2003-09-22T15:30:46-05:00

As noted last week, I've got a network going at home, and have probably radiated my family into sterility by now, but it's worth the benefits. Namely, the TiVo can be remotely scheduled from my AOL account now.

First, I bought one of the Linksys USB/Ethernet adapters and gingerly put the cat-5 cable into the port which uses a pretty flimsy piece of plastic as the backing. The adapter went into the USB port, and the other end of the CAT5 went into the switch, which connects to a wireless bridge, which talks to a wireless router, which talks to a wireless access point, which talks to some crazy/expensive looking wireless gear two miles away, which talks to the internet somehow.

Instantly, the TiVo grabbed an IP, told me what the MAC address is (I filter by MAC address at the router) and was completely configured. Two minutes later, the TiVo was hapily telling me it connected to the mothership, and I turned off phone line based access. I pretty much have no use for the land-line now.

AOL subscribers can remotely schedule their Series 2 TiVo's for free, assuming they have the unit online thru a network, such as the one mentioned above. I like free, but the interface and user interactions for doing the scheduling need to be fixed.

Searching AOL for TiVo scheduling doesn't help out, but if you go to AOL Keyword: "tv" and then look for the TiVo link on the right (who knows how long that will be there) and then tell it where you are, and who your cable operator is, and what service you have, you can get listings. Click on a listing, and then click the 'Record on my TiVo DVR' link, then log into the TiVo service, agree to the Terms of Service, and then submit the scheduling request. Whew.

The next time your TiVo pings the mother ship it will try to schedule the show you scheduled. Yes, that's right, the remote scheduling doesn't push the data to the TiVo, the TiVo has to ask for it, and then be told there's a scheduling request, and then it tries to figure it out.

Looking back on everything I have in place to make this possible, I wonder how many people actually use this feature...

Does convenience trump quality?

2003-09-02T09:47:21-05:00

In what seems like a desperate attempt to get some press, Forrester has declared that "The end of physical media is nearing." When I read statements like that, I think back to the wired Magazine cover from several years ago that declared that the further is 'Push' technologies. Both statements, were and are utter crap.

I have always understood generational transitions of media technology will (hopefully) achieve the two following goals; increase data density and increase quality (the former usually supports the latter)...

Cassettes did indeed increase density by making music more portable, but the quality wasn't that much of a leap forward, if it was a forward movement at all (I'd argue it wasn't).
Compact disks achieved both goals, with the added benefit of perfect reproduction at each iteration. 74 minutes of portable music, with no tape hiss and no degradation of the signal after each play. Sweet.
DVD's offer us even more data density allowing us to enjoy everything a CD can offer, but with even higher quality and more quantity of material, such as full length movies (with multiple audio tracks for the international crowd).

Streaming data does NOT offer us any advances in quality, but doesn't help out with data density. Streaming is a transient experience, with no ownership after the fact. For many of us, the delivery mechanism for this streaming media is transient, which means that external forces may interrupt the experience as it is happening. When that becomes a cognizant fact, the experience degrades.

Downloading MP3's and dumping them onto CD-R's or iPods is a good way to cram tons of media into a very small physical space. But Forrester is talking about streaming and downloading. The streaming part will indeed make money, but it isn't going to kill physical media. My car doesn't stream.

Downloading will likely enforce and expand the physical media market by forcing consumers to offload their music and movie files to CD-Rs and DVD-Rs so their hard drives don't get packed full. Also, hard drives in computers aren't very portable, and in a way, represent lower data density (due the fact that large box with data in it essentially lowers the density of the data load within it).

If we think forward for a minute, we might see the following occur. The convenience of media downloads offsets the lower levels of quality, and people buy the content. I'm not sure that convenience does indeed trump quality, but let's pretend it does. People download lots of music and movies, and quickly realize that the downloaded movies don't look so great on their computer monitors. So they try to move it to their TV, and realize that their 34 inch Sony Vega's makes it look even worse, and they go back to buying DVD's like "A Bug's Life" which is a pure 100% digital transfer, and is utterly gorgeous in progressive scan.

Do you get my point? Downloading has its place, but so does portable, static, high quality, extremely dense, media formats.

[Note: I was at the beach last week. It was great.]

One device to rule them all, please.

2003-05-22T13:12:53-05:00

I bought a new iPod the night they were released, and I think I was the first one to complete a sale at the Tyson's Corner Apple Store that night. Some tall Apple nerd with a camera saw fit to document the event on a silver substrate, so I'm guessing the guy next to me at the other register came in second.

Regardless of who won (me) a new personal habit has formed as a result of iPod ownership. I actively try to wear shirts that have a breast pocket. This is of course for the iPod to have a place to perch while I walk around the office with my headphones blaring Phasmid. Unfortunately, the iPod really is just another gadget that I carry around with me every day, and it's getting ridiculous...

Things in my bag that I carry around...

iPod
Nikon 4300 digital camera
Motorola Two Way pager
Samsung N400 cell phone
550 mhz tiBook
various and sundry cables and adapters for connecting stuff to other stuff

Eventually, my daughter will laugh at me for carrying around so much mass and matter to achieve acceptable results in the things these devices do. Hopefully that future date is closer than I think, because carrying around all this stuff is just stupid. for what it's worth, I think I want most of this uber device to be centered around my iPod.

Choosier geeks choose Adium.

2003-03-24T22:23:01-05:00

O'Reilly has a short article about the instant massaging competition between Adium and iChat, and much of it has to do with usability. The conclusion of the article is ...

Adium seems to be the power user's choice seemingly for being unobtrusive and handling many chat sessions at once. iChat integrates with other iApps and handles the wireless and power settings for which Apple's portables are known for.

In particular though, this is the most important aspect...

Its interface is clean and simple, and I find the tabbed conversations to be immensely easier to manage than separate windows.

I can't overstate the importance and utility of a clean, targeted, non-shovelware application. The mere fact that Adium makes Instant Messages less annoying is a good thing (I get MANY instant messages every day, all day, and it adds up) and this is something iChat has been unable to do. iChat just feels like it is gobbling up my transient work mindshare.

"transient work mindshare" - What I mean is, that as I work, interruptions are costly because they divert, and STOP the progress I might be making in a UI design, or a JavaScript function (or whatever). New IMs in Adium are non obtrusive (partially because I replaced the sounds with less obtrusive sounds) whereas in iChat, the scrolling, and bubbles, and the generally more kinetic interface make the interruption more powerful than what I experience with Adium.

[via macslash]

Dishonest links must die.

2003-02-27T09:10:15-05:00

Like most web surfers with more than day or two of experience under their belt, I hover over links all the time, and look at the status bar to gain a clue about what's on the other side of that link. Such was the case when I was at this page yesterday and hovered over a link that says "Viewtiful Joe Video Preview, 400x300 QuickTime, 30MBs".

The URL that showed up in the status bar ended with ".mov" so I thought a click would result in some delicious full motion video. Instead, I got a new page with a registration form asking me for money. Not delicious.

Now, I'm not against capitalism, or paying for original content in the form of huge Quicktime video downloads, but when a link lies to me, it annoys me. The last time I checked, annoying your users wasn't the best way to get more subscriptions, even if the content behind the annoyance barrier is a video preview of Viewtiful Joe (a game I anticipate with much drooling).

So screw it, I used Google to get what I want.

A Monkey in a Ball.

2003-02-06T10:25:08-05:00

Super Monkey Ball 2 for the Gamecube is one of the better games I've played recently, and most of that is due to the fact that it involves monkeys. Also, the controls in the game are perfect, easy to learn, and tough to master, making it a classic game. The cross marketing [see inset picture] is brilliant, even if the price was cut by 75%, and someone else bought the game figure and gave to me. She kept MiMi though. Heh.

Nintendo understands franchises. Sega does to, and so should all of you bloggers out there. There are too many blogs out there with the same basic UI that does nothing to differentiate the site in my mind. And with the volume of blog content pouring forth, differentiation is more important than ever. But don't take my word for it, I'm just very sensitive to branding and logos (being an Apple, Nikon and Nintendo fetishist).

A 'good basis for a positive customer experience' helps the deal get made.

2002-12-30T08:58:47-05:00

I'm sure Carmax is soon going to make some good money off of me, but it's worth it. I sold my dependable little Honda Civic to them yesterday after 6 good years of service and 95k miles. The part of the process was the speed at which a price came back from appraisal. It's wasn't a great price, but it was fair, and the ease and speed at which the offer was made makes the good price feel better than it is.

Carmax apparently has people who do nothing more than buy cars all day, so that's the first 'good basis for a positive customer experience,' preparedness. I walked in the door and the sales guy, who I expected would pass me to a buying agent, helped me thru the process. No pass off! That was 'good basis for a positive customer experience' number two, consistency. 20 minutes later the offer price for the car was handed to me including the appraiser's comments on the car. This is our third 'good basis', speed.

No price would have been good enough, because no amount of money is ever enough. But the offer was within range of what I was expecting. After giving me the offer, they left me alone to make a decision, telling me to go to the business desk if I wanted to accept the offer. This is 'good basis for a positive customer experience' number four, customer control (and no pressure).

Too bad paper work can't be done away with, because that part of the process was endless and annoying. Fortunately, I walked out of the door with a check in my hands, and this constitutes the last 'good basis for a positive customer experience,' full delivery at request time.

How many failed dotcoms can you name that had none of these points going for them?

Self evaluations suck.

2002-12-20T12:01:36-05:00

In terms of the experience of completing a self evaluation for you work performance, I have to say it's not much better than gall bladder removal surgery. In fact, my experience with that exact surgery has taken less time and about as much pain. Too bad I can't take a few Vicodin to make the evaluation from go away.

Bleh.

Is this site credible? You make the call.

2002-12-11T09:46:38-05:00

While perusing a backlog of WebDesign List messages, I came across one post about a report on website credibility and what effects it. I particularly like how they define the notion of credibility...

In this paper we adhere to the definition of credibility outlined by Fogg and Tseng (1999), with the following discussion drawing largely from this work. In their view, credibility can be defined as believability. Credible information is believable information. It's important to note that credibility is a perceived quality. It is not a property of a Web site, such as how many words the site contains or how many links are on the page. Instead, when one discusses credibility, it is always from the perspective of the observer's perception.

The part where the perspective of the observer is especially important in any user interface design or user experience modeling. Thom Haller talks about the 'disease of familiarity' in terms of the developer of a given web site and how their familiarity of the product/connect clouds their ability to take on the perspective of the intended audience. This paper gives us (ie, web developers) a chance to reset our perceptions.

Tough market conditions make way for less-than-perfect user experiences.

2002-12-10T10:09:34-05:00

AOL is now playing Time Warner music artists on the customer help line, and in related news, people are saying things like the following...

How can other companies turn today's interactive platforms to their advertising advantage? First, a company should map all of its interactions with customers through advertising, call centers and retail outlets.

In terms of the user experience, when looking for help, sales pitches aren't considered to be helpful (by me anyway). I like the idea of using downtime in a productive way, but is this the solution? Does a sales pitch meet the user's needs? If they were playing up-to-date ambient and IDM music, I'd be all for it, but they'd need to have that profile info, and be able to act on it. That can't be easy.

HCI: Human Car Interaction

2002-11-08T20:43:22-05:00

Lest we forget that Humans interact with things other than computers, here's an example of HCI pulling double time, the BMW iDrive... uh... thing.

The driver slides the dial to choose between multiple control menus displayed on an in-dash LCD screen. The driver rotates the dial to move through lists and pushes the dial axially to select a list item.

After reading that I didn't feel like I had any sort of idea what 'axially' meant, but I suppose this video helps. What concerns me about this is the interaction with this little nubbly device requires the driver, hurtling down the road, to look at a screen. They say there is force feedback that indicates the menu, but that's only half the equation, because there are things in the menus. So, I'm guessing the driver needs to memorize the menus, which are sure to be short, so think about the mental modeling here.

To really keep your eyes on the road, you have to be able to do everything by feel and pattern. Is this easier than hot-cold air sliders, vent selection buttons and radio dials? If I drove a BMW 7 Series, I might be able to tell ya.

Shopping cart patent.

2002-10-18T13:28:23-05:00

Is the experience and process of using a shopping cart like mechanism on a web patentable? Well, yes it is, and has been, and is discussed in this C|Net Perspectives article. It's worth a read.