At least that’s the impression Vivian Schiller, head of news at Twitter, gave addressing the crowd two days ago at the Newspaper Association of America’s mediaXchange conference in Denver. During her talk, Schiller called at-replies and hashtags “arcane” and hinted that Twitter might soon move them into the background of the service. "Streamlined" isn't the same as "phased out". But to the average person, the grammar of Twitter is arcane.]]>
My new Nokia telephone model is called the E 51. Unfortunately the phone has not been designed in so that just anybody could learn to use it easily.
On the contrary, I think that it has been designed as if its most important mission would be to advertise itself to people who are interested in telephone technology. All kinds of amazing functions are offered on the display, but as I do not understand what they mean, I guess that I will never use them. But keep reading to find out about the Nokia executive who visited the author of the letter, and what he said.]]>
But the desktop isn’t my gripe.
It is the mobile implementation on iOS that is making Gmail less efficient to use for me.
Updates to the tabs that aren’t your primary inbox are signalled by something that looks like an email, but actually isn’t. Which is a bit confusing as a metaphor.]]>
At first glance, live tiles may seem like a no-brainer in any operating system. Tiles that provide you information from within an app… How could this go wrong?
Here’s the problems that I have with live tiles in Windows 8, and why I think they wouldn’t make sense on iOS (either): ]]>
My homescreen has 10: Facebook, Twitter, Phone, Skype, Google Voice, WhatsApp, Messages, LINE, Lync, and Mail (and I have other, lesser-used channels on other screens). The vast majority of these channels didn’t exist in 2007, or weren’t widely used. Since then, social interaction has both exploded in use and fragmented in type, but iOS simply wasn’t designed to support multiple channels intelligently. So a redesign is needed...]]>
LiveView had more limited features and was hobbled by kinks.As the article points out, Sony has had - and missed - plenty of other first-mover advantages.]]>The newer model [released in 2012] is more stylish, but users can’t enter messages and it sometimes requires daily recharging and a stable connection just to tell time reliably. “Sony was ahead of its rivals to release a watch, but it takes more than an idea to create a hit product,” says Mito Securities analyst Keita Wakabayashi.
QR Codes – Designed to check the simplicity boxes of speed, ubiquity, and small number of steps, QR codes really dropped the ball on cognitive overhead. “So it’s a barcode? No? It’s a website? Ok. But I open websites with my web browser, not my camera. So I take a picture of it? No, I take a picture of it with an app? Which app?”
iCloud / PhotoStream – When we heard Steve Jobs preach the utopian future where all of our photos and data would be seamlessly synchronized among all our devices, we smelled the Apple simplicity we’d all grown to love. But in practice, iCloud is rife with cognitive overhead — it only backs up your most recent photos, it works on certain select apps but not others, you have to create an icloud.com email account for it to sync your mail and notes but not everything else. Oh, and it works on new iPhone and iPads and Macs running OS X v10.7.4 or later, but not your PC or Android tablet. Try explaining that to your mother. There's quite a long list you could add to that. The "how to do it right" examples are great too.]]>
The problem, of course, lies with the users, who seem to have trouble either finding the Charms or comprehending how they work. One could argue that this is a design flaw and that the Charms aren’t discoverable enough, but what about Windows Phone’s dedicated search button? It’s always right there in front of you at the bottom of the screen, yet it still proved to be too confusing for people.]]>
Due to the location of the remote’s 2.4in display, some key buttons are placed out of easy reach. Those who like physical buttons might also take issue with the remote’s reliance on the touchscreen for things like entering channel numbers.
But the biggest hurdle may be its expensive $250 price tag. At this point, the touchscreen is a nice-to-have feature, not a must-have, so it’s not worth the extra cost. If you ever needed proof of the ocean between hardware companies - which solve problems by adding more buttons (or touch screens) - and software companies, which solve problems by repurposing features and adapting to the user, here it is. Also: $250??]]>
This antipattern seems to be going away more and more as companies are beginning to figure out the following simple UX equation:
Long sign-up form before you can use the app = Delete app
However, a fair number of apps still force customers to sign up, sign in, or perform some other useless action before they can use the app. The case study he then cites is priceless.]]>
It arrived, but I forgot about it for a couple of months until he had a problem whereupon I popped round to fix it. I asked him how he found Windows 8. His reply was: "I hate it." This in and of itself was not entirely unexpected. But what happened next left me feeling profoundly guilty. I watched him try and do simple tasks and saw him again and again just floored by Windows 8's odd usability modes. It's not just parents; people who have been used to Windows XP and Windows Vista and Windows 7 - hundreds of millions of people who just want a computer they can use - are discovering whether they're in the 10%, or 90%. Don't miss the followup article, which examines his mailbag. There are plenty of 90%ers in there. (And in the comments, of which there are more than 600.)]]>
Regular readers may have noticed that I quite like Doctor Who, and so of course Santa brought me the latest DVD box set for Christmas. It includes the new UltraViolet™ feature of making digital copies available to owners of the physical product.
The instructions come in a leaflet in the box, and I was eager to try it out. Anyone had a good experience with Ultraviolet?]]>
I criticize because I care - that goes for Sense, TouchWiz, and MotoBlur too. I want the Android user experience to be good, and this is a big component in making it better - open, honest discussion of what sucks (and, hopefully, receptive developers). If you always think everything is awesome all the time, and that polish, "nit picking," and user experience don't matter, then you turn into desktop Linux. No one wants that. A really thoughtful, user-experience-led piece. Matias Duarte, head of Android's design, consistency and UI team, responds (briefly) at the end.]]>
The charms panel includes features like Search, Share (including email), and Settings that apply to whatever content the user is currently viewing. In principle, it's great to have these commands universally available in a single, uniform design that's always accessed the same way.
In practice, the charms work poorly — at least for new users. The old saying, out of sight, out of mind, turned out to be accurate. Because the charms are hidden, our users often forgot to summon them, even when they needed them. In applications such as Epicurious, which included a visible reminder of the search feature, users turned to search much more frequently.
Hiding commands and other GUI chrome makes sense on small mobile phones. It makes less sense on bigger tablet screens. And it makes no sense at all on huge PC screens.]]>
The original iPhone succeeded not because of apps. No, it succeeded because it was a better, more usable phone than almost anything else on the market. It just worked. It had voicemails we could see before listening, contacts we could easily edit on the phone, and a Web browser that was better than any mobile browser we’d ever seen before.
But the OS is showing its age. Little nuances like the somewhat functional search screen, Favorites in Contacts, and VIPs in Mail show that iOS is under structural pressure to deal with the volume of data it tries to display in a viable way. Notifications and the Settings app seem fragmented and are starting to become as disorganized as the Windows Control Panel (that’s bad!). Photo Stream sharing is a joke. It’s unusable. The edges are showing.]]>
Opening up an external link in a new window basically shouts out “Darling, don’t leave me!”, with your site sobbing in the background like a jilted lover. There are other pertinent accessibility reasons too.]]>