Elson User Experience Research and Design Blog

Usable First Aid Kit

2008-06-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

I have been around a few medical emergency situations and thoughI think it is common for these situations to be stressful, I am always surprised at just how incredibly stressful they end up being. The last thing a would-be helper needs at these moments is confusion around how to help the person in need. As a result, I am a big fan of the design efforts many health care product companies put into their user experiences.

A great example of usable design in the medical space is the IntelligentFirstAid Talking Kit. I think most everyone has opened a big first aid kit and spent a minute hunting for the item they needed. The designers of this kit, however, have obviously paid attention to the user's task flow.

With the IntelligentFirstAid Kit, the supplies are divided by type of injury, e.g. there are burn, bleeding, and bone packs. Each pack contains appropriate supplies and instructions for handling the specified type of injury. In addition, there are color and icon codings that identify pressable buttons which play audio instructions for treating an injury. This seems like a great idea for emergency situations since reading instructions may be difficult while the helper is distracted by the injury. In fact, other emergency medical products use this interaction as well [see the Philips HeartStart Defibrillator].

I also like how the instructional cards "show instead of tell" the user how to treat an injury. This is a typical usability heuristic, or rule of thumb. The system should not overload the user with text to read when instructions can be explained through a simple visual. No one has time to read a paragraph of text from a medical journal in the middle of a stressful situation.

If any readers have examples of interesting, usable, or even unusable designs in the medical field, I would love to hear about it.

[via Cool Hunting]

Google's Android UI

2008-06-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

We have been researching Google's forthcoming mobile phone OS for a potential client. So far, the Android demos have been pretty impressive from a 3D/visual standpoint.

This type of flowing interface looks very interesting for a demo. From a usability perspective, flowing ui's can cause navigation issues with the user having difficulty understanding where they are in the interface and how they can move forward/back to specific content. If they ship this application, it will be interesting to see how they address the navigation issue.

Here is Google's promotional video demo:

The ui shown in this video looks like they have borrowed heavily from Apple's iPhone user experience. Still, it's exciting to see a potential challenger to the iPhone being worked on. Android is actually an operating system for mobile devices based on Linux, so we could end up with many different hardware manufacturers developing unique devices for the Android platform.

Bryce Glass on Reputation Systems

2008-04-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Bryce Glass, smart guy and former Netscape colleague, gave an interesting and informative talk on reputation systems at this year's IA Summit in Miami. The slides can be viewed here.

Bryce lays out the entire spectrum of how reputations are created and scored on social networks and explains how the use of reputations on a site may or may not align to one's business goals.

Halo 3 and Usability

2008-04-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

Wired Magazine had a great article a few months back about Usability Testing during the development of Halo 3 for the Xbox . I kept it around and have thought about it many times because it discusses the use of usability methodologies in the most immersive of all user experiences, video games.

For the most part, when we provide usability services, our goal is to make an interface more efficient or easier to use. For example, we focus on making it easier to buy an item on a shopping site or quicker to send an email from an email application. During the development of Halo 3, Microsoft and Bungie employed standard usability techniques to make their game more fun.

Some of the usability heuristics, or rules of thumb, they focussed on were:

Discoverability - Can the player find the weapons and ammunition required to progress in the game?
Feedback - Were the players able to determine when an enemy was too far away to shoot at?
Interactivity - Was there a good balance of action and time in between action to keep the interaction with the game flowing and the player immersed in the activity of the game?
System Guidance - One of the levelswas so big and sprawling, players were getting off task and becoming lost. How could the designers strike a balance between leading the player forward without overly diminishing the challenge of the game.

I particularly liked this quote: "Gamemakers have to devise a system of rules and equipment that gives players a few basic goals and then allows them to find their own ways of achieving those goals. The flow comes from constantly discovering innovative ways to solve these open-ended problems." As opposed to traditional interfaces where the goal is to offer the user one or a few simple ways to complete a task, the game designers intend for the players to solve the game problems in unique ways.

Best ATM Interface Yet

2008-03-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

I recently used a Wells Fargo ATM and I have to say it was the best ATM user experience I have ever encountered.

As with most people in the user experience business, I tend to be irritated by poor interfaces more than the average person. My observation of ATM's goes back a long time because they are some of the worst high usage consumer applications out there.

Features that top the list of ATM design annoyances include:

Using hardware based buttons for input on the side of the screen. Often the hard buttons do not align well with the screen option they represent. The user ends up bending over or stepping back because they are having difficulty targeting their chosen option.
Displaying static and active advertisements while the user is attempting to perform a task such as withdrawing money. This is a situation where marketing activity disrupts a user's primary task, withdrawing money, and interferes with a key benefit of using an ATM which is that it should be faster than going into the bank and using a teller.
Poor feedback that does not clearly indicate when a banking session is complete. This leads to people waiting in front of the ATM until they are positive their account cannot be accessed by the next customer.

The Wells Fargo ATM I used recently did a nice job in avoiding these problems and provided a clean and quick user experience.

The welcome screen provided clear feedback about the system state and instructed me on how to initiate a session.

After inserting your card, the task of entering your PIN was made very simple. The "OK" and "Clear" buttons were large, easily targeted by the user's finger, and color coded for emphasis.

I also appreciated the "Change Language" option being available but not intrusive.The color palette for this page was attractive and professional. The Wells Fargo stage coach branding across the bottom was clear and did not interfere with the user's task.

On this screen, the user selects an account to access. The targets were large and clear.

This page provided a simple, clean display of the account balance. The path forward was labeled "Continue," and was positioned in the middle of the screen and highlighted in green.

The primary tasks were displayed in the middle of the screen with shortcuts on the left.

Selecting a withdrawal amount. I liked that the amounts were displayed in the upper left corner of their respective buttons. As a result, the numbers were not obscured by the customer's finger.

I also received feedback about my selected account and transaction on the left.

On this sceen the user chooses whether to receive a receipt.

The system does a good job providing the user with feedback about the system state.

The system instructed the user to remove their card to receive their cash and the interaction ends.

The whole experience was expedient and error free. Kudos Wells Fargo Design Team.

On a related note, I happened to chat with a senior UE designer from Bank of America last nite. I suggested that there was little financial incentive for a bank to improve their ATM user experience. I do not think people are choosing a bank based on the user experience of the bank's ATM's. He pointed out that banks actually were incented to improve their ATM UE because a good ATM experience could reduce the number of customers that go inside the bank and require a teller's assistance.

Amazon Kindle and Challenging Established Technologies

2008-01-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com recently released an electronic book reader, the "Kindle." The concept of the E-book has tempted consumer electronic makers for years. The benefits of the E-book are substantial: a limitless library of downloadable books, all the advantages of HTML including hyperlinks, bookmarks, version control, commentary options, etc.

The manufacturers' efforts have stumbled repeatedly as their products were unable to match the plain old book in price, visual clarity, weight, size, and ease of use. The interesting thing about the E-book failures are how they expose the overlooked strengths of paper books. In the case of the Kindle, this blogger notes his wife's disappointment in losing a sense of place from holding a book.

When we hold and read a book, we receive many types of feedback. The reader can tell how far into the book they are and essentially how much of the story remains. I assume the Kindle interface identifies current page number and pages left, however, I doubt these cues match the subconscious feeling one gets from holding a book and feeling that there are fewer pages left than those that have been read.

When confronted with anecdotes of new technologies not matching the older technologies they intend to replace, I sometimes wonder whether a younger user of the product would have different feelings on the matter. For example, my father and many from his generation strongly prefer to read their news in a newspaper rather than on the screen. I strongly prefer to read my news from the screen. I prefer speaking on the phone while younger friends prefer SMS'ing. Certainly preferences change based on past experiences and powerful new features may be unable to tempt people away from comfortable, old technologies.

Brush & Rinse Toothbrush

2007-08-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

I just came across a clever design for a toothbrush. The back of the brush can be used to redirect water like a water fountain so there is no need for a cup to rinse your mouth after brushing. It's a nice solution when a cup is not available. No more bending over to put your face under the tap or cupping your hand trying to get enough water.

[via Uncrate]

Shawn @ TechCrunch 9

2007-07-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

I attended TechCrunch 9 at August Capital last Friday. There were a lot of VC's and startups there doing the Silicon Valley dance. The startups had plenty of interesting concepts however, I was disappointed that there was not much in the way of new or exciting user interfaces.

Perhaps the most interesting user experience on display was from a startup called AdaptiveBlue. They have a recommendation plugin for FireFox. The concept is not particularly novel - while you are on a product page, you can tag an item and share your tags across sites with others. The thing I liked about it was that they use a popover layer to interact with the user. When the user visits a product page that they want to tag, they click the AdaptiveBlue toolbar button and their dialog appears. This is the use of lightweight interactions made possible by DHTML that we are seeing appear across many sites. AdaptiveBlue's implementation of their service does not take the user away from their primary focus, the product page. They let the user stay in context and as a result smoothly fit their tagging process into the user's shopping activity.

Quotes, quotes, quotes...

2007-07-29T17:22:00.001-07:00

I try to save quotes related to design that I find intriguing, controversial, or just plain good advice. Here are a few that I keep coming back to.

I'm sure everyone can associate the frustration that occurs when trying to implement new and revolutionary designs inside of large organizations. Shigeru Miyamoto is the Nintendo designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, the Nintendo 64, and now the Nintendo Wii. Even a visionary and revered game designer encounters resistance. Here he discusses the struggles he faced when he decided to throw out 25 years of game controller evolution:

"We had to overcome the hurdle of how to convince users and game designers who had grown accustomed to traditional interfaces. This was an incredibly difficult hurdle. So, to put it in a rather extreme way, I teamed up with ID people to fight against the people creating the current market, or to challenge them - it was kind of like a battle, in a sense. It's not as though we were trying to pick a fight, but whenever you attempt something new, conservatism will always rear its head amongst those who have grown accustomed to the way things are now." [Taking Control Back to the Drawing Board]

Brian Eno is a highly respected record producer and is considered the father of ambient music. He was asked by Microsoft to create the startup sound for Windows 95. Here he speaks about how an outlandish constraint allowed him to break out of a personal design rut:

"The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a specific problem -- solve it.' The thing from the agency said, 'We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said 'and it must be 3 and 1/4 seconds long.' I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel. In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time." [Music Thing]

Lastly, this is a paraphrased quote from the English historian, Sir Michael Howard. I believe he was speaking about managing the aftermath of World War II when he noted that nobody ever gets things right the first time. The question is how you can make sure you are not so wrong that you cannot make up for your mistakes. This quote goes a long way towards understanding the true pressures when creating new and revolutionary designs.

NYT: Technology's Untanglers

2007-07-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

There was a nice article about the usability profession in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It's quite broad and general and perfect for people who have no idea about what we do.

[via NYT]

Extending Recommendation Systems to the Real World

2007-06-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

This little project suggests big things. Some folks built a little box to be a Digg counter. It lets you know how many Diggs an item has received without needing to access your computer. It reminds me of other ambient devices like The Orb which displays dynamic information feeds in an interesting way outside of the virtual world.

I am fascinated by recommendation systems. I think they harness the power of the Net and communities in a powerful and useful way. So when I see a device like this, it makes me think about how recommendation systems can be extended beyond the computer.

This type of device suggests things like a live, updating Yelp or Zagat sign in the front of restaurants. The sign could continually update with the latest votes from community members. It suggests ideas like using your phone to scan a barcode or RFID on a shirt at a store to see if other people like the product. Why shouldn't the power of the community be available to me whether I am on or offline?

[via ubergizmo]

TiVo Swivel Search

2007-05-15T09:38:00.000-07:00

TiVo has released a nice search feature called "Swivel Search." This style of search allows the user to look at a TV show and directly search for other programs based on attributes of that show. For example, if I am looking at the page for the TV show "Heroes," I could see that Malcolm McDowell is one of the actors. From there, I could search for other programs in which McDowell stars.

This type of interaction is different and interesting because typical search interfaces allow the user to search for an object, in TiVo's case the object is a show, without consideration for how objects in the system share attributes. With the previous TiVo UI, the user could search for "Heroes" and see that McDowell acted in it, but could not directly search on the actor. A separate search was required to see the programs containing McDowell. In a way, the swivel search allows the user to search based on the interrelatedness of objects.

The swivel search style interaction would be very useful for the iPod. Songs, like TV shows, have a strong degree of interrelatedness, however the iPod interface does little to expose these relationships. For example, I have many songs and I like to play them randomly. Random play helps me rediscover songs I have not heard in a long time. Unfortunately, when I hear an old song and think of other songs from the same artist, I have to navigate out of the song list and into the artist list. This interaction is so clunky, I rarely do it. If there was a swivel search on the iPod, it would be easy to switch from a randomly played song to all of the songs by the same artist or all of the songs from the same album.

[via Gizmodo]

Convenience Widget: Map This

2007-04-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Map This is a FireFox add-on that allows the user to quickly send an address from a Web page to Google Maps. After being installed, Map This adds a menu item to the FireFox context menu. When the user selects an address then right clicks and selects "Map This," the feature passes the address to Google Maps and opens a new window.

This is a pretty simple little feature, but because of it's narrow focus it is able to do something quite powerful. It is acknowledges a specific type of data on a Web page, an address, and allows the user to perform an action on that data in a way that intelligently matches matches the data type. Actually, I give the widget too much credit. It cannot tell the difference between an address and any other selected string of text. However, the concept of the widget is moving in the right direction.

I wrote about a similar convenience widget, the Skype Toolbar, that detects phone numbers on a Web page and allows the user to initiate Skype calls from the context menu. Again, the feature understands the context of the text string and provides actions that suit the data type.

From a conceptual view, very compelling interactions could be created if the browser understood different types of data and was able to provide actions to match the context. For example the browser might recognize a string of selected text as an address, a person's name, or a song title and allow the user to act on that data in context. If the user highlighted a classified ad, the browser could understand that the user might want to save the ad, respond to it, print it, compare it to similar ads, etc.

There are many identifiers used by the browser to create awareness of data type, but none, to the best of my knowledge, are used to identify how textual data could be employed in a useful way. Web 2.0 style tags offer a classification system which is useful for searching and grouping similar types of data. However, tags do not have an awareness of the user's context. The HTML OBJECT tag allows the browser to acknowledge data types like movie or audio files but not the semantics of a string of text.

To get at the user's context and offer functionality to match, the meaning of text strings will have to be understood on a programmatic level by the browser, an add-on, or the Web site which contains the text.

5 Great OminGraffle Stencils For Wireframing

2007-03-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Several designers I respect have convinced me to switch to OmniGraffle for wireframing. I do my day to day work on a Win XP machine, but OmniGraffle is Mac only, so I will use it on my laptop.

It looks like a very promising tool and it seems much faster to use than Visio. Like Visio, OmniGraffle supports user made stencils and there are some fantastic ones out there for IA/UE designers.

Web Flowchart
This attractive stencil is great for Web site flow diagrams. All the boxes a designer needs... just add the arrows yourself.

Web Forms
Nice selection of Web form elements. They are in the Mac style.

Windows GUI
Several standard Windows UI elements. They do not precisely match the real Windows look, but they are close enough.

Mobile Wireframes
Slick stencil that includes the 5 way and soft key buttons.

Web Wireframe
A good assortment of Web UI elements. I love the use of yellow for notes and to call out design elements.

The best resource for stencils is Graffletopia.com. You will see most of the stencils I mention here. OmniGroup also links to a broad range of stencils.

If you would like to recommend other stencils or wireframing applications, please leave a comment.

IA Summit 2007 Redux

2007-03-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of interesting presentations at the IA Summit. Here are a few of the the ones I thought were particularly useful:

Using search analytics to diagnose what's ailing your IA
Nice intro to analyzing Web site stats/logs and using that data to improve the site's information architecture and usability.

Mobile Information Architecture
Great introduction to challenges associated with designing for the mobile screen. It had a nice point about context. People are not performing general Web activities on their mobile phones. They are looking for specific information that applies to their current time, location and task. They want directions or movie times or restaurant addresses. Streamline your interface to just support the user's context.

DotMobi Mobile Web Developer's Guide
A practical guide for designing Web sites to be viewed on mobile devices. A very thorough and useful introduction to this type of design. Well worth checking out. This was not a presentation at IA Summit, but was mentioned.

IA Methodology Cut Sheet
I thought this was a great idea. The author has put together a style guide for explaining UE methodologies and practices to internal and external customers. It lets them know how the process works in a short one page description. I would like to see deliverables/outcomes explained in this format as well. Customers who are learning about the UE process need to know what they will receive from the UE work they commission.

Shawn @ IA Summit

2007-03-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

I will be at the IA Summit Conference in Las Vegas March 22-26. Please look me up if you would like to chat or are interested in Elson UE. I will be posting contract job listings for interaction designers, usability specialists, and visual designers on the job board.

Here are a few of the interesting sounding talks:

The brave new world: Usability challenges of Web 2.0

IA in Second Life

Finding Innovation in the five hundred pound gorilla

Architectures of participation: what Communities of Practice can mean for IA

Good Use of AJAX: Type Ahead

2007-03-11T12:18:00.001-07:00

With the recent spread of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) on the Web, designers are exploring different ways to use this technology. At the most basic level, AJAX allows the browser to have quick and small interactions with the server without reloading an entire page. Sometimes AJAX comes in the form of caching, or preloading information. This is seen in Google Maps when the user clicks and holds on the map. By mousing down and then moving the mouse, the user is able to drag different portions of the map into view. Rather than having to reload the entire page each time a new piece of map is shown, or precache the entire map of the world, AJAX allows the browser to download small squares of map as they are needed. The result is a seamless, flowing experience for the user. Very efficient.

One of the best uses of AJAX so far is the type ahead feature. Type ahead occurs when the user enters text into a field and the system displays fully formed guesses based on the letters the user has already entered. A classic example of this is in Microsoft Outlook when the user types in the "To" field as they compose a message. Outlook suggests email addresses based on the letters the user has already entered. This interaction places very little demand on the system because the list of email addresses Outlook has observed being used is relatively small. What happens when the list becomes enormous?

Lala, a terrific CD trading service, has an excellent example of type ahead in their search field. The user can enter any CD artist, album, or song name. The list of all possible artists, albums, or songs is far too long to precache for every browser hitting the homepage. Besides, fully caching the list would be an inefficient design that could lead to bogging down Lala's servers. Instead, Lala uses AJAX to quickly query the server and provide type ahead suggestions. There are no page reloads and very little lag time. It works beautifully.

Lightweight Site Registration

2007-03-02T15:53:00.000-08:00

Ning, the Web 2.0 social networking community site, has a terrific lightweight registration interaction. When the "Signup" link is clicked on most sites, a registration page is loaded. It can be a dramatic mode change for users. The user's primary tasks rarely include registering for a site... the registration process is simply an extra step they are forced to perform on the way to the content they want.

When "Signup" is clicked on the Ning toolbar, instead of having a registration page load, Ning has a DHTML layer appear on top of the currently loaded page. The layer allows the user to fill out the registration form without leaving the primary context of the page they were previously viewing. I think this is a great, low intrusive method for site registration.

I recently performed a usability study on a Web shop design prototype for a major apparel brand. One of the clear takeaways was that customers do not like being taken out of their task of browsing products. The study participants were using a hub and spoke model of browsing for products. When the customers clicked on a product link, a full product detail page was not loaded. Instead, a product detail layer appeared on top of the list of products being browsed. This made seeing product details less intrusive and allowed customers to quickly browse deeply into products and broadly across products. The response to this interaction from the participants was very positive.

I will be working with a startup next week to hone and polish the interactions of their yet to be launched site. I will definitely be recommending lightweight layered interactions..

Yahoo! Suggestion Board

2007-02-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Yahoo! for launching the Digg style Yahoo! Suggestion Board. I think it is a terrific tool for collecting user experience issues directly from the customers. Users can add a suggestion for any Yahoo! property to the board and fellow users can vote for the suggestion if they agree with it. Suggestions with the most votes are listed at the top.

I think this is an excellent and innovative way to find out where customers are having problems and the types of solutions they would like to see implemented. What better way to flush out bugs and new features than to have the customer let you know what they want changed.

This is a type of interaction with the customer that I have discussed with many companies. The benefits of this type of feedback are obvious, but the risks are quite substantial. For instance, now that Yahoo! has built this tool and it is being populated by their loyal customers, the customers have a right to expect that Yahoo! will act on the highest rated requests. However, the customers' primary goal is usefulness where the product managers' goals are often revenue. At many high tech companies, these goals, and subsequent feature requests, sadly are not in alignment.

Next, this type of service requires moderation. Disgruntled customers who have no customer service outlet (especially for the free services Yahoo! provides) can poison a public feedback forum with their anger. I see in the Help section that Yahoo! reserves the right to remove posts if they are not "respectful." Moderating this type of service requires substantial customer service resources which most companies are not willing to spend. Dell comes to mind as an amazing exception with their Dell Community forums where customers answer each others' support questions.

Lastly, from a strategic standpoint, a service like Yahoo! Suggestion Board exposes user experience issues and feature requests to the internal development team and also to any competitors. For large companies like Yahoo! this may not be a concern. For smaller and medium sized companies struggling for market share, allowing the world to see your dirty laundry is a scary proposition.

Because of the concerns listed above, I have not worked with a company who was willing to try a suggestion board. I give a lot of credit to Yahoo! for taking this approach. Now the rest of us will sit back and see if there are any results.

Convenience Widget: Skype Toolbar

2007-02-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

There are several small browser widgets I have been using recently that have made my life seem so much easier. I call them "convenience widgets" because they are small, lightweight, and make very specific cumbersome tasks much simpler.

I have started using Skype Out quite a bit this last year. This is a service from Skype that allows the customer to call any landline or cellphone from a computer. I paid $15 for a year of unlimited calls (seems like a great deal to me).

When making calls to businesses using Skype Out, my typical task flow is this:

1. search for a company's Web site on Google
2. open the site
3. click their "Contact" link
4. highlight the phone number
5. right click to copy the phone number
6. open Skype
7. paste in the phone number
8. initiate the call

It's a lot of steps for a pretty simple task. In particular, switching from the browser to Skype is a mode shift I do not like because it takes me away from the browser.

Last week I installed the Skype Web Toolbar. This toolbar highlights every phone number on a Web page. In addition, it adds a context menu to each phone number from which the user can quickly initiate a Skype Out call. This tool reduces the task flow to:

1. search for a company's Web site on Google
2. open the site
3. click their "Contact" link
4. initiate a call from the context menu

This is a big time saver and also it keeps the user from having to interact directly with the Skype application.

One problem with this design is that by highlighting phone numbers, the Skype toolbar alters the visual look of Web pages. An alternative would be to not highlight the phone numbers but add the Skype commands to the browser's context menu when a phone number is right clicked. The benefit would be that the page's visual design would not be interfered with. The tradeoff would be that this interaction would be less discoverable for users.

Taking the concept further, wireless companies could offer the same kind of interaction. When a phone number is seen on a Web page on the computer, the computer could initiate a call on the cellphone via Bluetooth. Any form of information could be added to the cellphone from the Web browser with a simple contextual menu: maps, calendar items, pictures, etc. This type of data sharing functionality would make for a pretty useful application.

Watching Sports in Live 3D

2007-02-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a fun day of watching the Superbowl. The technology applied to telecasting games over the last few years has really improved the viewing experience.

There is an overhead camera that gives the viewer a 3rd person video game style perspective. There is also the clever use of chroma colors to superimpose a yellow first down line on the field. Most football fans I have spoken with think of the chroma first down line as an indispensable feature after just a few years. It makes the game so much more dramatic as you see the players fighting to reach or defend the yellow line.

Another new Internet technology is the GameCast. This is an application that converts live game summaries to a visual display of the action. For example in baseball, a live representation of a diamond is shown. Instead of simply reading a game summary feed, a graphical display of the game action is presented on the GameCast diamond. It is not a very engrossing way to watch a baseball game, but it is better than a simple text feed. A key benefit is that it allows for viewer interaction, particularly with statistics. For example, the viewer may want to look up statistics about the pitcher for a specific situation. These types of stats can be quickly accessed through hyperlinks and predefined searches. This is a real asset for the devoted sports fan and it is a features that is not possible when watching sports on TV.

The next step in sports viewing technology is in the works. A cricket site called Cricinfo
is experimenting with broadcasting 3D animated versions of cricket matches. The description of the service is limited, but I am guessing it will be like a GameCast in that it will use game summaries to select pre-rendered 3D clips. For example, when the ball is bowled and hit to a specific fielder, the system will show a generic animation of that event. The precise spin of the ball, the running path of the fielder, the speed of the runners, etc. will not mirror the actual events - they will only be a high level representation of the real life play.

Using precanned animations will be a more engrossing experience than the GameCast and it also will take us one step closer to the next big thing: live 3D sports where the nuances and details of the game are presented to the viewer. While the development of a live 3D system is not trivial, the technology required to broadcast sports in 3D is already available. Were the players and ball equipped with wireless motion tracking devices and linked to 3D models like those seen in sports video games, the viewing experience could become very compelling and interactive. I can foresee a day when viewers could zoom in on the action or watch a play happen from a player's first person perspective. People could even watch from the ball's perspective. The ability to pause the action and access any statistic will bring fans even further into the game. This will be an exciting experience, indeed.

Google Tags and Labels

2007-01-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting post at Techcrunch about Google's inconsistent use of the terms "tags" and "labels" across their products. For those not familiar with these terms, tags and labels are used in blogs to create groups of topics. For example, this post is labeled "consistency" and can be viewed with other posts that use that label. Google's Gmail and Blogger (which hosts this blog) use the term "label" while Picasa and Google Video use the term "tags" for the same feature.

I see this sort of thing happening often, especially in large companies that have a lot of acquisitions. The acquired company has their own user experience style for terms, interactions, etc. that may or may not be the same as their new parent company. Most of the time, there is no ue designer to update the newly acquired products with the parent's design guidelines until several versions after the acquisition. Even if someone does point out this type of inconsistency, it can be a very big project to change one term in the user interface. All of the front end code (usually HTML), the back end code, and the help documentation have to be revised. Then everything has to go through internationalization and QA. Even if a term change is piggybacked on other product updates, you will often find this type of work at the bottom of the priority list.

I am often asked what should be done about high level ue inconsistencies across products. First, products must be consistent within. For example, Blogger uses the term "label" throughout their ui and help docs. Next, they should be consistent with the other products offered by the company. In this case, the use of terms is inconsistent across products. Last, terminology should be consistent with the industry standards. "Tags" is the term widely accepted term throughout the Web.

Were I making recommendations to Google, I would suggest they begin the process of switching all products to the term "tags." Though the terms "tags" and "labels" are nearly interchangeable and pose few usability issues for users AND a term change will create no revenue returns, Google must consider their appearance. As an Internet leader, Google should adhere to the industry standards and appear to offer a consistent suite of products and services. Sometimes, having pride in appearances leads us in the right direction.

Toyota Prius Dashboard

2007-01-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

I drove a Toyota Prius today for the first time. I had read a lot about the innovation and design that went into the Prius, so I was excited to check out the car's usability.

I was surprised at how new the user experience felt. Instead of turning a key to start the car, I inserted a plastic device into a slot and pressed a large "Start" button while my foot was on the brake. This process was not obvious to me at first, but it was learnable after a few times. I felt like Toyota was trying to make an experience statement that I was not in a car, but a new type of transportation. Unfortunately, the experience was tainted by the fact that I still had to do old fashioned things like disengaging the clunky parking brake with my foot and putting the car into drive.

From a usability perspective, I am concerned with the dashboard control system. It operates everything from the climate controls to the trip computer and stereo. Below is a picture where the radio interface is active.

Note the hard keys lining the screen. These are used for high level navigation of the features. They work well enough, however they are coupled with a touch screen which has multiple levels of navigation and various widgets for controls. On the screen above, I count 10 buttons and a couple more things that look like controls. I would be irritated if this jumble was thrown at me on a Web site, much less in a car traveling 70 mph that requires my attention. This user interface is far too demanding for someone whose primary task must be to operate a car.

The touch screen is also a poor choice by Toyota. How many times have you kept your eyes on the road while you reached for the temperature controls? You can do this because of the tactile feedback you receive from touching the buttons. Eyes are not required. However, with the Prius touch screen, both fingers and eyes are required to operate the radio. A decidedly poor safety choice by the designers.

The Prius was an interesting experience. I am excited about eco-friendly hybrid cars, but Toyota needs to spend some time rethinking the control system and ways to optimize the experience for ease of use and driver safety.

Welcome to Elson UE Blog

2007-01-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

For a long time now, Elson User Experience has been researching and designing interactions with software, Web sites, devices and just about anything else with which a person can have an interaction. This blog will be a place to share the insights collected during our projects and personal observations about user experiences with things we have encountered.

As I have always said, ue design is not rocket science. At its most basic level, design is about using common sense and always considering the user. It's my hope that the thoughts I share in this blog will provide a useful perspective for people as I write about both good and bad designs. I will also be writing about interesting challenges we have faced in our recent projects. Last, I look forward to your comments and I encourage you to turn these posts into discussions.

Thanks for reading,

-Shawn Elson