 Last year, Motorola received a patent for a "Smellphone" interface. I am sure there must be researchers at Universities that have been looking into using scent for computer-human interactions, but this is the first I have heard of this type of interface. We have used sight, hearing and touch for computer interactions for years. Why not scent? On seeing this story, my first reaction is that I would not want someone, for example a Web site, controlling what I smell. However, others controlling what I smell happens all the time. Scent has been used to market products for years. Who has not been overwhelmed by the smell of fresh baked cookies when walking past a Mrs. Fields at the mall? Marketers have quietly created scents meant to evoke targeted feelings in customers who enter their stores. So again, why not a smelling based UI for computers? As with stores, scent could be used by Web sites to market their goods. Starbucks.com and Peets.com could have the powerful smell of their blend of coffee when you visited their pages. Scent could also be used in communication. When a girlfriend calls, the user could receive a whiff of her perfume. Or perhaps, emoticons could be embedded with scents meant to evoke feelings of love, anger, joy, etc. It seems like scents would primarily be used as low level instead of primary feedback. It would take quite a while for a smell emanating from your pocket [insert chuckle here] to alert you that you had a phone call. It seems more likely that a scent could be used to enhance an experience or provide ongoing feedback about the state of the system. Certainly there is plenty of room for jokes about how smells could be used, but there is real promise for accessibility interfaces and computer interactions when sight, sound and touch may not be available or appropriate. Labels: alternative ui, mobile, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Tuesday, January 13, 2009
 Scenterfaces
 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. Labels: conference, customer feedback, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Friday, April 25, 2008
Bryce Glass on Reputation Systems
 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. Labels: games, quotes, ue design, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Monday, April 14, 2008
Halo 3 and Usability
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.. Labels: lightweight, ue design, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Friday, March 02, 2007
Lightweight Site Registration
 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. Labels: customer feedback, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Thursday, February 15, 2007
Yahoo! Suggestion Board
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 Labels: ue design, ue research
posted by Shawn Elson on Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Welcome to Elson UE Blog
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