A Mobile UI Innovation

Input and output on mobile hand held devices have been a challenge for years. Recent advances in these devices have dramatically increased the resolution of the output to the screen. Direct manipulation via multi-touch has also vastly improved the ability to interact with content on the screen. However, getting input into these devices has seen little improvement other than trying to get to parity with desktop and laptop devices. Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch introduced the software-based keyboard. Although this was novel in many ways, it didn't fundamentally address the problem of trying to type on a very small keyboard with fingers larger than the surface of the keyboard.

I recently came across a true innovation that cleverly addresses this problem. Shumin Zhai and his team at IBM Research have created WritingPad, a free app for the iPhone. The innovation here is that you don't simply tap out individual letters and correct each one as is the case with the default iPhone keyboard but, instead, you simply drag your finger across the WritingPad software keyboard contiguously and the system infers the words. Corrections are done at an individual word level rather than letters.

The other innovation here is how this research team is gathering user feedback on the design of the app. They provided it as a free app in the iTunes Store and with it's built in rating and commenting system, the team has been able to rapidly collect huge amounts of very valuable feedback. A quick read through the feedback indicates that this direction as a new method of providing input into a mobile hand-held device is a real hit and deserves more focus.

So, hats off to the IBM Research team for this design innovation and for an innovative way of collecting feedback on it. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and would like to try WritingPad for yourself, here's where to find it in the iTunes Store.

Designing the Perceptual Experience

I've been of the view for many years that visual design of software and industrial design of hardware have a much more powerful effect on us than virtually any other aspect of design. I've made that point in print and in presentations and workshops I've given at industry conferences over the years. However, this point of view has typically not been well-received by professionals who are not visual or industrial designers. In fact, some go to great pains to point out that ease of use is the most important attribute of design and that visual and industrial design are unnecessary or superfluous "eye candy" and others of course point out that function and speed are the most important attributes.

I believe that the experience of the past few years has reinforced the view that visual and industrial design trump virtually any other aspect of design. Our goal should be to optimize all aspects of design but never compromise visual and industrial design because these impact attributes of products and systems that directly effect our perception. Our perceptual experience with products and systems, in turn, drives satisfaction, purchase intent, and overall brand loyalty.

A great case study on this topic is Apple. While Apple does a reasonably good job in all aspects of design of it's products and systems, it really excels in visual and industrial design. It's market success is largely due to a maniacle focus on these attributes of design. I'd like to suggest that the halo effect that has been created for the company with it's focus on these aspects of design has made people much more forgiving of problems in other aspects of their products. Many of their products, for example, are not easier to use than those of competitors, people just perceive their products as easier to use. I regularly use a number of Apple products and, like most others, love using them. However, I've been more attentive recently to the ease of use problems I've been experiencing. There are many of these problems but, despite the fact that some are quite serious, I still on balance enjoy using these products. Interestingly, Apple products have recently experienced problems so serious as to make some products unoperational but the brand loyality they have built up still serves to keep customers coming back. The power and business value of designing the perceptual experience is amazingly strong.

I'd like to reiterate that our goal should be to optimize all aspects of design -- ease of learning, ease of use, usefulness, efficiency, user assistance, accessibility, globalization, etc. -- but we should never compromise visual and industrial design because these impact attributes of products and systems that directly effect our perception and color our perception of all of these other aspects of design.

Chrome: The Browser that Isn't

Earlier this week, Google entered the browser market with its shiny new offering called Chrome.  I don't know the derivation of the name but in design and engineering circles the non-content part of the browser is usually called the chrome.  If that is the derivation then they should have called it mini-Chrome because the design objective appears to have been to show as little chrome as possible.  I fully agree with this design objective and think that Google has accomplished it.

Interestingly, Google has also tried hard to make this browser a non-browser and it has met that objective too.  In application mode (which you get into by clicking on the page icon to the right of the address bar and selecting "Create Application Shortcuts") the browser really shines.  It has none of the browser elements (navigation buttons, address bar, etc.) but simply has a very small border around the web application display.  This makes web apps appear and behave like desktop apps.  That mode also creates a shortcut on the Windows desktop making the launch of any web apps the same as desktop apps.  Add to that the Google Gears replicating local data with the data in the cloud and you have desktop and web user experience parity along with all the advantages of having web apps with data available in the cloud.  Pretty cool.

Google has done some other cool enhancements to the user experience design.  Other browsers have a Google search bar (or two) together with the address bar.  Well, Google has combined these into a single entry field that acts like an address bar if a url is keyed in but acts as a Google search bar if non-urls are keyed in. Key in whatever you like and Google will deliver it to you. Pretty cool too.

In addition to these user experience enhancements, Chrome also delivers a number of additions under the covers including the isolation of web instances (tabs) so that when one site or app dies, it doesn't take down the entire set of browser instances.  There are also enhancements to the ways Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are handled optimizing their performance.

Google Chrome advances the state-of-the-art in user experience design.

Human-Human Computer Interaction

The term "Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)" has been used for years to describe the discipline concerned with improving computer technology for humans. All those years, the focus was on improving the ways in which humans could get information into and out of computer systems. Of course, that discipline is still going strong. However, with the advent of Web 2.0, I'd like to suggest that the term "Human-Human Computer Interaction" is more directly relevant.

I've written previously in this blog about various aspects of Web 2.0 and have made the point that much of so-called wisdom of crowds was really the wisdom of a few in the crowd. In other words, many of the Web 2.0 sites like Wikipedia, Flickr, and Digg have contributions of content from less than one percent of their users. However, such is not the case with Web 2.0 sites and services that truly involve Human-to-Human connections. These include MySpace, Facebook, and perhaps the best example Twitter.

Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon. When you describe Twitter to someone, they invariably respond with something like, "I can't imagine why anyone would use that". They're of that view until they first try it and then they're hooked. Twitter essentially involves keying in 140 characters of text (that's right, no graphics) and allowing others to read what you write (followers) and you being able to read what others write (following). That's it, full stop.

So, what's the appeal? Human-to-human contact. Its really easy to access the service. In addition to using the website, you can text in your updates using your cell phone (if you're in North America), you can use various desktop applications (Twirl is my favorite), and you can use various iPhone/iPod Touch apps (Twitterrific is my favorite). And, its really easy to follow other people and have them follow you. What about the content, you say. Well, I follow industry leaders, news services, and friends. Many of those as well as people who listen to my podcasts follow me. I can stay current with current events and news by the minute as they unfold, read about websites and blog posts that people whom I follow recommend, and I get a personal insight into the lives of people whom I follow and the same goes for people who follow me.

What's interesting from a design point of view is that Twitter has virtually no user interface to speak of - just 140 characters of content. The important insight to take away from the huge success of this application/service is that it is fundamentally a really easy way to connect human-to-human in a way that people find it powerful and valuable. Lots of Web 2.0 technologies and tools try to deliver on this promise but most fail. The reason why this one hasn't is its amazing simplicity and its support of what makes us human.

If you'd like to try it for yourself, just go to www.twitter.com and sign up (its free of course). And if you'd like to follow me, I'm karelvredenburg on Twitter.

Dawn of a New UI

Many years ago, designers at Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, and IBM each contributed to what became the user interface standard for personal computers. Back then, issues like whether individual windows should overlap were hotly debated. Of course, all of that is now behind us and the basic elements of the user interface of personal computers are amazingly consistent. Sure there are some differences between OSX, Windows, and Linux systems but there are vastly more similarities than differences. Enhancements to these systems are also not dramatic. Such should be the case so that users can have a mental model of how these systems work and that mental model shouldn't change very often. Of course, there are some basic problems with each of these systems that nobody is willing to fix at this point because the standard is so ubiquitous. A number of details could have been changed quite dramatically in those very early days because users hadn't yet built up a mental model.

We're witnessing another major wave of this type of phenomenon right now. The introduction of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch 2.0 represent the beginnings of a new user interface standard for multi-touch mobile devices, and likely, multi-touch devices of all sorts in the future. It is therefore wise for all designers to explore and experience this new user interface for themselves. I've spent significant time with the new user interface and am of the view, consistent with many others, that the design is exemplary. It should be pointed out that the design is appropriate for the device it was designed for - the iPhone/Touch. I'm less sure that the design will be appropriate for other non-mobile devices that it may well be used for in the future. And remember that Apple has had difficulty in the past with successfully adapting and evolving designs such as was the case with the iPod when it started to include content in addition to music. If the experience with personal computer user interfaces is any indication, flaws in the designs of this new mobile user interface standard may have already been introduced and we have to live with them for a couple of decades.

Designing in Collaboration with 100,000 Users

MySpace is widely recognized as a user interface design mess. Facebook started out life as the clean and simple design alternative. However, with the addition of its development platform that created numerous 3rd party apps, the Facebook profile user interface has become more cluttered, unwieldy, and disorganized. Interestingly, recent stats from Nielsen indicate that Facebook traffic to the site is declining too.

The User Experience and Design team at Facebook has launched a major redesign. They're considering organizing the profile content using tabs, adding a new publisher feature for more simply adding content, and making navigation to applications easier via a drop-down menu. They don't plan on changing the site's visual signature, color palette, or branding. The design changes aren't radical but the approach to getting user input is. The team created a Facebook group within which they've been previewing proposed designs and then, using the commenting feature of Facebook, getting user feedback on them. There are 104,629 users in that group as of this writing and lots of them are providing valuable feedback. I think its brilliant that the team is using their own site to design the site.

The Facebook organization appears to be maturing given the way they're approaching this redesign. Previous changes to the site apparently didn't involve iterative design with user input and the results were disastrous.

I look forward to seeing and experiencing their redesign as an observer of their design as well as a daily user of Facebook itself.

For an in-depth report on this project, checkout BusinessWeek's recent story on Facebook's Big Facelift.

The 8 Billion Dollar Design Challenge

It has been estimated that advertisers will spend $8 billion this year on search engines. The companies on which this money will be spent are attempting to enhance their designs in order to compete in this market while at the same time having to balance the interests of users completing the search and advertisers wanting them to consider their products. Add to this, the rather dramatic changes in the content mix on the web with a greater volume of video and image material.

Google entered the market in 1998 and succeeded due to 1) superior search accuracy, 2) simplicity of its user interface, and 3) its ability to make advertising relevant to the search and insert it non-obtrusively in the search results. This is really a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) success story. Providing users what they want in a way that they want and incorporating the business model for Google seamlessly into the user experience by making it relevant and minimalist. It is truly HCI brilliance!

However, the vastly increased importance of the online platform for advertising (as witnessed by the recent takeover bids of search companies) and the new media formats on the web have created a design challenge for companies in the search engine business. In a recent article entitled Gunning for Google, author Matt Vella summarizes the key design challenges and what the major companies are doing to address them.

The Wisdom of a Few in the Crowd

Much has been made of Web 2.0's wisdom of crowds and the notion that the new read-write web is the ultimate democratic everyone can contribute nirvana. When you run a Web 2.0 site, which I have, you quickly learn that things don't really work that way. Lots and lots of people may visit and use the site but very few actually contribute. You then spend some time pondering how your Web 2.0 site could be so different from all the other Web 2.0 sites out there but if you also do a bit of digging, you find out that they're all like that. Less than one percent of all visitors to Web 2.0 sites actually contribute anything! Turns out that that very small number of very dedicated people do a lot to contribute, hence the title above "the wisdom of a few in the crowd". What's even more interesting to learn, though, is how the big Web 2.0 sites like Digg and Wikipedia actually work. Slate Magazine recently ran a really interesting article, Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy that examines several different models of contribution and governance that are being used at the various sites.

Designing for the World

When we think of designing products for global markets, we often just think of translation, unicode, and other language-related issues. With the increasing importance of visual and interaction design, it is also becoming important to ensure the design of products is appropriate to various cultural preferences and sensibilities.

We've been aware of this opportunity at IBM for some years based especially on our experience with using our design centers around the world for the design of systems and websites for the Olympics. Each Olympics requires that the hosting country be responsible for a good chunk of developing systems for it. What we quickly discovered was that visual designs originating from certain countries were very different and sometimes differed significantly from North American preferences and sensibilities. It can therefore be quite a challenge to determine the best style to choose. Of course, that isn't any different from the other design decisions that need to be made based on user input. The point is though that this is another important factor to consider in design. It is also a great source of novel ideas to influence innovative design. A recent article in Fox Business reports Nokia Opens Satellite Design Studio in Rio de Janeiro and outlines Nokia's use of its world-wide design studios for the design of its future products.

Advances in User Interfaces

Many of us have been going to professional conferences like CHI for many years and seeing technology demos and other research into novel new advanced user interfaces. However, we typically go back to computers with their screens, keyboards, and mice. Although that environment is likely to be the optimal one for many people doing many of the things they do with computers now, it doesn't have to be the case for some edge type uses. I, like others, have been delighted to finally see some of that university research technology getting into products recently. The best examples are the Nintendo Wii and Apple's iPhone. Both use gesture as a primary input mechanism and do it really well. You know that a paradigm shift is happening when you can't just read about or watch someone else using one of these devices; you have to experience it for yourself. The first game you play on the Wii and the first time you flick your way through stuff on an iPhone, you've got it. Its a different experience entirely. I think this is an exciting development in the area of advanced user interfaces and one worthy of following - and one worth following first hand yourselves!

Read more in an interesting article Coming Soon: Nothing Between You and Your Machine in the New York Times.

Well-Designed UIs Critical in Enterprise Software Buying

An article on Wallstreet Online reports on a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting on the importance of user interface design on enterprise purchase decisions. The study found that 82 percent of those who make purchase decisions consider an enterprise software application's user interface a determining factor when deciding to replace their enterprise software and 90 percent indicated the user interface as a priority when purchasing additional new software. This corroborates recent conversations I've had with people in large enterprises as well. I think this indicates two things. First, that user interface design is becoming much more important and we're starting to see actual numeric validation of it.

I would argue that users have seen the importance of good user interface design for a long time and this has resulted in us seeing better and better designed products for the consumer market. Remember that the user and the purchase decision-maker are typically one and the same in the consumer market. However, that is not typically the case in the enterprise market where users are not normally the decision-makers too. It has therefore taken longer for the importance of good design to be realized by enterprise decision-makers. However, this study and recent experiences I've had indicate that the importance of good UI design is now not only realized by enterprise purchase decision-makers but it is also seen as critical to them in making their decisions.

The substantive findings here are important but also the fact that they exist at all. Studies like this that examine the importance of design to business have in the past been all too few. We need more applied research like this investigating and quantifying the business importance of design.

Introducing the UXDesignCast Podcast Series!

I've been doing webcasts for many years and also podcasts for the past year inside IBM. A number of colleagues from across the industry asked me to consider starting an external podcast series. I thought it was a great idea as it would give me a chance to broaden the user experience and design specialists I can include in the sessions and, of course, broaden the audience of listeners.

The series will includes interviews with user experience and design practitioners from a cross-section of the industry. I will also feature a monthly panel discussion during which a panel of specialists will survey and discuss recent news, technologies, and research in the field of user experience and design.

You can access and subscribe to the podcast directly from the iTunes Store by searching on "UXDesignCast" or you can go to my podcast blog at karelvredenburg.podbean.com. Of course, the podcast is free and will be published approximately once a week.

Demographic Design Targeting

Increasingly, concepts from other fields are turning out to be relevant to contemporary approaches to design. It used to be the case that target marketing meant choosing which magazine your company would advertise its products in. However, now with everyone online, targeting also affects design. What's really interesting about this trend is that it is perhaps the most conservative industry, banking, that is breaking new ground here.

A recent article in Bank Systems Technology outlines how several banks are including social computing Web 2.0 features in the design of their web presence. They're doing it to appeal to a younger demographic and also to provide those customers a user interface experience that they're familiar with - including AJAX-based responsive Rich Internet Application user interfaces as well as blogging and commenting. It is also interesting that this trend tends to be more advanced in Canada. I think all designers should take note that the demographics like age are important to factor into their design work. While some may have done that previously, the new trend suggests that demographic design targeting may be key to addressing core business objectives increasingly being articulated by business stakeholders.

Web 2.0's Built-in Customer Input & Collaboration

During Web 1.0 and before that, companies had to go out of their way to collect feedback from their customers and when they did, it was in the form of customers communicating directly with the company. Web 2.0 changes all of that. Now customer feedback is an integral component of most social computing sites. And, the feedback is public. This provides great benefits to companies by getting more direct and regular feedback but it also changes the nature of the feedback process in that customers can also use the feedback from other customers directly as well. An article by Vicky Burger on Web 2.0 transformation addresses this topic.

However, things are not quite the way you may think they are in the world of social computing. Very few people are aware of a recent study which shows that less than one percent of visitors to social computing sites contribute in any way including providing feedback whether comments or ratings. So, the challenge here is that companies are now able to get additional feedback directly from customers but they may run in to two problems. The first is that unless the site gets a huge number of hits, the amount of feedback the site may collect will likely be very small (remember less than 1% contribute). The second, and perhaps even more difficult to deal with, problem concerns the likelihood of the sample being unrepresentative in some way. I haven't seen any research on characteristics of users who tend to contribute to sites versus those who don't and without that type of information it is difficult to determine whether the feedback a company gets in this way is representative or biased in some way.

Companies that are serious about making strategic decisions on the bases of direct customer feedback coming from Web 2.0 sites would be wise to adopt the best practice from market research of directly testing the non-response bias. The way that's done is to solicit input on the same questions from people who didn't contribute the information unsolicited and then comparing the results to test for a systematic bias. Without a specific focus on this aspect of Web 2.0 user feedback, companies could find themselves honing the designs of their sites based on the feedback of the small group of people who contribute feedback and these changes may not be optimal for the entire population of users who the company is trying to satisfy.

Importance of UI Design to Business Software

Anyone can look at consumer electronics and end user software and see that design is incredibly important to the success of products in that space. Apple's iPod and iPhone are great examples. Stellar visual, interaction, and industrial design has transformed the mp3 player market and is in the process of doing so for the cell phone market as well. End user software is also going through a transformation with visual and interaction design at the top of the features list. Both Apple and Microsoft are trying to outdo each other in the visual rendering of their latest operating system offerings (see my previous blog entry on this). In my view, delight results from a product that has been designed to address cognitive, behavioral, and affective characteristics. Traditional user experience design tried to eliminate user error (behavior) and tried to address the user's mental model by predicting what they would expect should happen. However, traditional user experience design didn't focus on the visual design of a system which directly effects a user's emotional reaction or affect. Getting all three of these attributes right, in my view, is when delight happens and when you see successes like I summarized above.

All of this is equally applicable to enterprise software, in my view, but the demand for great design hasn't been as strong in that market. Dennis Howlett has blogged on this topic and summarized some really insightful perspectives on this. He makes the point that users aren't the decision-makers in this market and, as a result, their preference for great design doesn't have as much impact. However, users in that market still demand great design. The incorporation of Web 2.0 user feedback mechanisms (rating and commenting) into enterprise software may well serve to make enterprise users' views on design more visible.

Social Networking Design - Privacy Settings

Do you know what your privacy setting are in Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter? Most people just take the default settings which are not very private. But you say, of course their not private, it is a "social networking" site after all. Social networking in Web 2.0 doesn't mean showing your embarrassing pics from last night's party or in the bath pics of your 5-year old to absolutely everyone!

Most people who have spent a bit of time looking into the privacy settings on Facebook (my favorite), for example, have learned to restrict certain parts of their profile to only their friends and also changed the default access to at least their network (which by itself can be a couple of million users!). A recent article from heise online provides some additional information on this topic. It is an interesting challenge to find the right default design point regarding privacy when the essence of the site is social sharing. Web 2.0 introduces lots of interesting challenges like this to designers.

Raising the Bar on OS UIs

I've just been looking at the demo of the Leopard release of Apple's OSX and I'm struck by how many of the enhancements could be considered Apple catching up with enhancements that Microsoft put into its Vista UI. While there are really cool unique UI features being introduced by Apple, I'm struck, and somewhat surprised, to see so many similarities to recent Windows enhancements. This is probably healthy though in that it raises the level of visual and interaction design in software products that are pervasive across all industries. I think that bodes well for the importance of visual and interaction design in general. Its always nice to see customers voting with their pocketbooks reinforcing the importance of great design.

Have a go yourself with the Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Guided Tour. Now, if I could only have a right mouse button and a backspace key on my MacBook!

Facebook teams with RIM

It often takes vendors of amazingly successful products to get together to push into a new paradigm. That may well just be happening with the partnership between RIM and Facebook. Social computing just entered into a new phase on mobile devices with RIM's Facebook implementation. While this is a significant development, I'm a little worried that it may also be creating a bunch of monsters. I already see many people around me wedded to their Blackberries while mobile and then being wedded to their computers using Facebook when not mobile. Now, what will they do. We may never be able to talk to them again! Of course, Facebook accessibility has already been available on mobile devices but in a much more limited way (its available on my mobile phone but only for viewing and updating my status).

Facebook teams with RIM for Web 2.0 on-the-go | The Register

Mashup Privacy Concerns

Mashups increasingly make data which were heretofore not made available easy to deliver to users or it is the process of putting together disparate data sources which is now possible. An article in Computerworld makes the case for privacy concerns from mashups much like the Kobe Bryant incident involving text messaging data. Access the article for more information on this.

Microsoft: Watch out for Web 2.0's 'Kobe Bryant' moment

Visually Stunning Charts and Graphs

In my experience, visualization of data is the most promising application of computer technology and yet it is often the most disappointing. I've usually seen either really horrible graphic treatment or beautiful graphics which don't have anything to do with understanding the data. This article presents an overview of tools, applications and techniques for visualizing data in charts and graphs which look really promising. Among other things both free and commercial chart tools, services, desktop-applications and web-based solutions (Flash, JavaScript, CSS) — you can use them on your server are presented.

read more | digg story