phonezilla

Dropbox and iCloud

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:00:05 -0500

News came out that Dropbox passed on an Apple acquisition, and naturally discussions came up on the web about iCloud versus Dropbox. These two products do similar things, sure, but from where I sit Dropbox needs to do some serious reinvention.

Consider this. Assuming one has a computer capable of working with both iCloud (or another, yet-to-be-created invisible cloud storage thing) and Dropbox and has never used one before, here are the steps to make a document in Pages sync everywhere.

Dropbox:

Create a Dropbox account.
Download Dropbox.
Install Dropbox.
Optional: 2 & 3 as above for each computer or device one wishes to access the document(s) on.
Open Pages.
Create an awesome document.
Save it to the Dropbox folder.

iCloud:

Open Pages.
Create an awesome document.
Save it.

Yeah, the steps are fewer and that’s a big part of it. The other key part? No file nor folder interaction. No file system interaction.

I definitely think Dropbox has a life ahead of it, but in time it’s going to have to be marketed towards people using older technologies. It puts the file system in one’s face, and I’d imagine that most people don’t care about file systems; they just want to access their stuff.

Dropbox could rework their software integration and make it lower-level as iCloud; in fact, I don’t think that’s a bad idea. Then they could even pitch themselves as a platform-agnostic alternative to iCloud.

Something to think about.

My Oven Gets Me Every Time

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:40:46 -0500

The oven in our house was terrible. Awful. So we bought a new one - a Kenmore Dual-Fuel. We love it.

But there’s one thing that still trips me up about the control panel to this very day, 3 years later: setting the timer.

This is the panel just to the right of the LCD. In order to set the timer, here’s what I usually do.

Press SET in the Timer area.
Enter a time using the hour/minute controls.
Press START.

Do you know what happens then? I come back 10 minutes later and find the timer still there, waiting to be started. Here is the correct process:

Press SET in the Timer area.
Enter a time using the hour/minute controls.
Press SET in the Timer area.

SET! Again! There are two very simple reasons why I always turn to START. First, it makes sense to me. I set a timer to indicate the length of time for it; then I start the timer. Second, the START (and STOP/CLEAR) buttons are the only two on the panel with any color. Green. Start. It stands out.

Coincidentally my microwave works this way. Even though there’s just one start button, when one is in timer mode it will in fact start the timer. START and STOP/CLEAR are specifically for the oven and nothing else. This makes sense conceptually of course, and to be fair, they are far from the timer’s buttons.

But at least for me, this could be resolved with a straightforward textual change. Make the SET button the SET/START button. That way, both of the functions are exposed to the user. They’re both still within the timer area, too, so the association becomes clearer.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to occasionally botch this.

A Couple of Thoughts on UX + UI Stories in Agile

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:02:10 -0500

My opinion is that UI and UX stories are the wrong vehicles for conveying the activities of user experience folks. Here’s why.

My interpretation of stories is that they should demonstrate value to end users or, as I like to call them, people. They might get divided into segments and different customers but, whatever. UX and UI stories I’ve encountered look something like this:

“Make the wireframe for the pages in the ‘add a new post’ workflow.”

Or, in more strict story fashion,

“As a UX designer, I will create pages for adding a post in the application in order to document the workflow.”

That’s a kind of harsh way of putting it, I’ll admit, and a BA more in tune with story writing could improve this. But that is essentially what a UX story says and, for the end user, it is totally without value nor meaning. Wireframes and sketches and the like are implementation details. They may be important to the team making the software, yes, but the end user does not and should not directly care about wireframes.

There are at least a couple of ways of rethinking this story. One way is to make it a slice of the broader story which actually is valuable.

With the above example, your epic speaks about adding content via the web interface and your stories are where the real deal is shown.

“As a content editor, I’d like to add a new post in order to get it reviewed by a peer or supervisor.”

“As a reviewer, I’d like to add a new post in order to publish it to the public website.”

Stuff like that. Then if sketches or wireframes need to be made, use tasks within the story itself - just like you would with (surprise?) development.

You probably wouldn’t have a story about a database. Stories I’ve seen tend to transcend the technology, so why do we make UX + UI ones at all?

It's 2011, and I will judge your business by your website.

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:47:41 -0500

If your website has “default footer text” in the footer, that says to me that you don’t take everything seriously.

If your website has your hours and directions in Flash, that says to me that you aren’t interested in ensuring your information is visible to all devices.

If your website is sloppy or unorganized, that says to me that your site is a secondary or tertiary thought and didn’t get your full attention.

If your website leans on clip art, that says to me that you chose not to spend money or time on photography.

If your website has typos, that says to me that content isn’t important to you.

This isn’t 1995. The web isn’t new, commercially, anymore. Your digital presence is a reflection of your business, your brand, and you. If you don’t care about it, you won’t get my business.

Windows 8: Inconsistency is a Feature

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:48:14 -0500

You have probably seen this floating about the web.

That’s been featured in a lovely piece from Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky, writing about some major design decisions around the new Explorer in Windows 8. It’s the new ribbon in Explorer’s default window view.

There’s a lot of good stuff in Sinofsky’s article. I truly appreciate and geek out a bit over the stats he starts with. Notably, the new ribbon includes the top 10 commands Explorer users use, which covers 81% of their use cases. Pretty nice accomplishment.

While it’s easy to look at this ribbon and make a judgment on it - MG Siegler does a bang-up job of it at TechCrunch - this is a static image and doesn’t account for actually using the thing. After all, it takes care of most of what people use Explorer for. From a pure usability perspective that’s good.

Who’s it for?

My biggest concern about this overhaul other than the questionable visual design is the statement from Sinofsky that the ribbon is not for power users. That’s stunning to me, particularly if I consider the visuals first and foremost. It seems to be overwhelming: commands, sometimes with buttons and groups and labels, and sometimes icons.

For power users, Sinofsky notes that Explorer can shrink the ribbon into - ready? - an old-school toolbar with tabs. They call it a minimized ribbon, but that’s semantics. Look at it. In this case, the File/Home/Share/View tabs look like menu items. Those are not menus!

Maybe the potential confusion over menu items v. tabs and toolbar icons v. ribbon icons relegates this to power user mode; ie, some people can deal with this inconsistency. In any event I’m curious about the usability of the power user mode versus everyone-else mode - toolbar versus ribbon. I guess Microsoft is too, since they’re including both in the product.

This dual interface approach appears to be an integral part of the Windows 8 strategy.

Repositioning Explorer and Metro

Consider this. If one positions Explorer solely for power users then this giant ribbon of commands makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, this isn’t the reality; at the outset of his article, Sinofsky calls Explorer “the most widely used desktop tool… in Windows.” People interact with files. People interact with interfaces which mimic Explorer to a degree, like the Control Panel. File management is a very-well established metaphor in desktop computing, but the web and mobile devices have forced changes.

Let’s zoom out a bit, and we’ll see the same toolbar v. ribbon opposition happening at a much riskier layer: the UI. As Siegler argues, Microsoft is hedging its bets with the Windows 8 UI by combining both the attractive Metro and the legacy Windows interface into one product. If not executed well, it could lead to some questionable and jarring interfaces. Like, say, a Metro Start Menu with a legacy taskbar.

You Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated

Let’s cut to the chase: the legacy Windows interface, including Explorer 8, is something which needs to be fully separated from the Metro interface. As soon as a user needs to jump into legacy Windows after working with brightly-colored, typographically-smart information panels - a very different metaphor - it’s all over. It’s akin to jumping down to the DOS prompt.

Users should be able to remain fully in Metro and never see a legacy Windows window. Think about the power of that: a new experience, shaped entirely by the new direction.

In order to make it into the future, Metro’s interactions need to be radically different than legacy Windows. Otherwise it’s just a skin, and skins usually don’t account for the way people interact with their computers and devices.

The Risk

By combining the two interfaces, Microsoft is trying to have it both ways: “Here is our way forward, but we’re not throwing anything out! In fact, we’re still developing the old stuff.” Should Metro fail, Microsoft can continue evolving the legacy Windows interface. But if Metro succeeds, Microsoft can continue to slowly deprecate the old interface. Unfortunately it needs to be slow because of the bazillions of apps which are designed for that old interface. Stuff that’s out of their control, stuff that still expects IE5 to be around, stuff that looks like Windows 95.

So from a strategic perspective, it isn’t inherently bad. It seems to mitigate the risk of having long-time Windows users drop off or rush to another platform/device because of it. It’s a conservative way to introduce change.

But the risk to the user experience is significant: with this dual interface world, Microsoft is nearly flaunting the concept of inconsistency as a feature.

Good design: Lands' End, OS X unmasked passwords

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:40:40 -0500

Something Jakob Nielsen suggested two years ago is starting to roll out: password masking is slowly starting to go away. Lands’ End, which gave their checkout process a stunning overhaul, is one example.

This has been a feature in OS X for a while; the wi-fi login prompt has a show/hide checkbox:

Until more people are comfortable with unmasked passwords, this is a nice way to handle the problem: offer an explicit show/hide toggle. Once users get past the initial surprise of having their password in plain sight, I believe they’ll see its advantages.

Good design: method's Laundry Detergent Bottle

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:19:00 -0500

method has already been lauded for their innovative laundry detergent bottle design. It uses a pump, unique to this market, which dramatically cuts down on the mess.

I was nearing the end of a bottle a week or so ago as I noticed the pump wasn’t doing much anymore. I had another bottle on hand but held the bottle upside-down to see that there was a fair amount of detergent left. Impressively, method thought of that too:

Not only is the pump tube angled gently to help get every last drop, but it’s also brightly-colored so it stands out against the translucent white plastic of the bottle!

A brilliant little design touch that addresses a common problem. Great!

Photo

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:19:15 -0500

One Use Case for a Home Screen Gesture on iOS

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:33:04 -0500

My son loves the iPad. He’s able to work just fine with kids’ apps and books, and it’s really amazing for me to think that my 18-month-old is using way more advanced technology than I did even 2 years ago.

That said, the kid is into buttons right now. He could press a button all day. And the iPad has one button on its front, of course. And of course, Jackson will press this button as much as he wants… which takes him out of his app to the home screen. Not good.

For a while I’ve wondered if iOS can and should incorporate a button lock feature for just this use. (It could also be useful for kiosk-like apps.) The natural dilemma arising from that is, of course, “How does one get back to the home screen?”

Then I recalled that iOS 5 is set to introduce a four-finger pinch to return to the home screen. Boom.

This plus a setting in the Restrictions section of General Settings would do the trick. And I, along with many parents, would breathe a sigh of relief.

In Lion, the System Preferences’ “Show All”...

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:02:00 -0500

In Lion, the System Preferences’ “Show All” button is actually a button menu although there is no visual indication that it is one.

Compare this to the PDF button menu in the Print sheet in any app.

Bonus: The gradient is different. In the Print sheet it’s flatter. Arguably, this is due to the System Prefs one being in the toolbar but that seems weak.

UX is exploding. Here's why, and how you can join in.

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:39:17 -0500

It’s safe to say that user experience, as a practice, is currently exploding. I’ve been amazed at the demand and it’s been absolutely encouraging for my colleagues who are looking to do great work. Here are a few notes on why I suspect this is happening now, and a bit about a big skill UXers will need to help.

Why now? Was there any one thing that clicked and pointed the way towards user-focused software? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. But there are two big factors which I think have had a very significant impact.

Apple

No matter what you think of them, Apple is absolutely on fire, selling every single iOS device they can make - and Mac sales have jumped nicely as well. Apple is known for being a company which invests heavily in industrial, aesthetic, and functional design. Other companies see this success, the buckets of money they’re printing every quarter, and say, “I want a piece of that action!” As well they should!

That’s not to say that design is Apple’s sole reason for success, but it’s arguably the most visible. (I can’t even imagine the infrastructure necessary to design and execute something like the Mac App Store to send petabytes of data on the wire. Or how they engineer curved glass so well. I mean, it boggles the mind.)

Constraints are falling away

Phones are powerful computers. Tablets exist now. E-readers are real. We’re collectively seeing new markets and new gadgets pop up on a very rapid basis.

One of my favorite things about devices like the Kindle, iPad and (hopefully someday?) Android tablets is that they throw away the baggage associated with the PC for the past 30-odd years. No file system, no blue screen of death, no discs, no turbo button, and so forth. People-focused, not technology-focused.

This is exciting because it’s becoming clearer that these shackles were sitting on the brakes while the right foot was pressing down the accelerator. Take them away, and you just go. And sure enough, we are going.

Risky moves? Yeah, but they’re paying off. We all win with simplification, and the potential to make technology even more straightforward is tantalizing.

Where UX fits in

User experience experts are definitely in an enviable position right now, but it’s vital for us to jump in intelligently.

The dilemma here is that some companies might think they can simply drop in one UX person and boom, their problems are solved. That’s really rare. In reality, they’ll be embracing a new and exciting set of problems centered around design as a whole.

Here’s what I’ve seen happen. One UX person joins a company and needs to not only do her work and do it well, but defend her work constantly - and, more importantly, educate people about her work. She has to do the research but also needs to talk about it; why she did it, what the business value is, and the like. Ultimately she needs to be an excellent salesperson for her own skills.

But if she’s good at it? Like, really good? Then she’s put herself in a great spot. She’s doing great work, making others aware of it, and just cranking. That’s a very good thing and can lead to bigger change - change which can support design-led activities, for example. Or even just hiring another person and starting to build out a practice.

The missing piece

So what I’m really getting at is: yes, it’s an exciting time to be in UX. Very much so! But it’s becoming quite important to know your skills and limitations, sure.

Moreso it’s essential to be able to tell your story. Your passion. Your experience. Your drive. Your love for what you do. Without it, you’re just filling a seat. Don’t be that person.

Gmail always allows you to switch your inbox type, but the...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:56:06 -0500

Gmail always allows you to switch your inbox type, but the messaging here is just spot on perfect. Reassuring.

My favorite, and only, journaling app for iOS keeps getting...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:04:31 -0500

My favorite, and only, journaling app for iOS keeps getting better. This is one of those purchases I don’t ever regret; an absolute essential for me. Check it out.

dayoneapp:

Happy to announce, Day One 1.3 adds Markdown support. For this initial release, Markdown rendering is toggled off by default, but easily enabled in Settings.

Update submitted to Apple today, look for it later this week for iPhone and iPad in the iTunes Store.

The UX of Creating UX

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:28:16 -0500

A short while back on Twitter, I stated my desire to see a wireframing tool from Panic. You know Panic, the people up in Portland who write amazing Mac software, right? Coda, arguably the best HTML editor on the Mac?

I thought I’d explain my tweet a bit. Here’s the deal. I use OmniGraffle nearly exclusively, and think Keynote is a reasonable alternative. Axure is a nice tool, but the UI is an uncomfortable hybrid of OS X conventions and Windows conventions and I’m hoping I’m not the only person working in UX who is sensitive to this.

It comes back to the tasks that I need to do when prototyping and wireframing, and unfortunately not any one tool excels at all of them.

For raw wireframes, OmniGraffle is very good but it occasionally feels like I’m just using a souped-up PDF editor. Keynote and Axure have way better placement tools, in my experience.
To annotate wireframes, OmniGraffle is a huge pain in the ass. There are some scripts and tools on the web to assist, but it’s not an automatic thing. It needs to be. Axure has the spirit of this down pat.
For interactions, OmniGraffle is super basic: one can show/hide layers and switch canvases, or run AppleScripts, but that’s it. It’s not sufficient for clickable prototypes. Axure wins big here.
If you (unfortunately) need to produce giant spec documents, OmniGraffle offers nothing. Axure can do this and do it relatively painlessly - that’s a huge bonus.

While UX isn’t a new discipline, we’re woefully behind in tools. Now, everyone figures out their own workflows and what’s best for them. What I’m saying is that my workflow - the user experience of creating a user experience - is not optimal.

Why did I call out Panic? As mentioned at the outset, they make beautiful software. The UIs are Mac through-and-through, and there’s obvious love and care put into their stuff. Sometimes it’s a subtle animation, sometimes it’s copy, but it always adds up to a great experience. And that’s what I want. I want my experience to be streamlined, simple, and straightforward so I can focus even better on my work.

Minor Thing: Outlook's Message Dragging Icon

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:16:00 -0500

When dragging multiple messages, Outlook for Mac shows 3 little envelopes even if you have just 2 items selected. 3 is not 2. (Note that the line here is not a part of the dragging icon.)

Update: In fairness, Mail.app does this too - but it’s less conspicuous. The fact that the background 2 envelopes are faded indicates that this could be a really big stack, or a really small one. Contrast that with Outlook above, which has three solid-looking envelopes.

iPad Website Anti-Patterns

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:07:21 -0500

The iPad’s been in that unique “not quite a laptop, not a phone” zone since day 1. While we collectively have decided that it’s a tablet and it’s something new, lots of website detection scripts haven’t gotten the memo.

In using the iPad I’ve come across a number of bothersome anti-patterns when simply browsing the web. These aren’t ranked in any way, but they’re sure annoying to me. Some of these apply to the iPhone as well. I’ll try not to rant much.

Not allowing access to your “full” site. It’s 2011; phones can handle things like CSS and JavaScript now. (Flash? Not so much, but your experience doesn’t hinge fully on Flash, does it?)
Serving your phone-oriented site to the iPad. While comical and still technically usable, it makes me feel dumb.
Breaking permalinks due to another anti-pattern. This is a good one. I go to a specific page via Google and somehow end up at your mobile homepage. I can’t get to the actual thing I want to see because you’ve decided, “Ah, this person’s coming in via mobile! Let’s give them the homepage.” No! The “perma” stands for “permanent.”
Showing an interstitial for your iPad app. If I wanted your iPad app, I would have gone to the App Store. I just want this one page. Your app might not even offer it.
Displaying a JavaScript prompt telling me you have an app every time I load your page. This, I believe, is a part of some popularly-used forum software. I go to a forum and am told via a modal (!) that an app is available. I tap Cancel and am on my merry way. Then I visit the page and it happens again. Bad! Bad. Bad.
Not offering the same content between your iPad-geared website and your website. You can (and should!) enhance the content, but what’s offered on your “regular” website should be available via the iPad. C’mon.
Offering a site in an app wrapper. This is, maybe, a little more controversial but websites aren’t apps. When sites try to do native app things they tend to end up in an uncanny valley. Interactions are off just a little (maybe less responsive?), spinners and things don’t look quite right, and so on.
An instructions screen. I’m with Khoi. But instructions on a website? Whew.

Examples

Netflix: The good? It’s Netflix. The bad? How am I supposed to know anything about any of these episodes? I can just play them and can’t access individual episode info. Whew.

Peapod: This is a pretty standard interstitial. Too bad it’s really for the iPhone (and they have an iPad app!)

Northwest Herald: My local newspaper offers up a completely different experience for tablets. This in and of itself isn’t bad but, to be honest with you, the first time I saw this I had no idea how to scroll anything. Turns out that it requires the usual scrolling gesture, but the question of what can be scrolled is also a big one. The answer: everything except the ad and top navigation!

Also, they do have a one-time intro/instructions screen that one can never return to.

Upshot: While I singled them out, this is pretty standard. It looks goofy and is goofy. Also: no way to get to the full site; for more information, text on the page instructs you to visit their full site on your computer! How 2006.

The iWork Document Manager

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:53:00 -0500

The latest version of the iWork suite for iOS includes a document manager. This serves as the springboard for file management within each app. It’s an enormous step up from the prior carousel of documents, but continues to underscore the sore spot that is organization of files in a hierarchy-free environment. There are a few nitpicks I have with the manager but first, a look back.

The Carousel

Bluntly, the carousel sucked for any serious usage of the tool. Did you make 5 documents? Maybe 10? Then you were fine. But 25, 50? You’re stuck with a single chronological thumbnail list which you can’t reorder in any way. This isn’t a problem specific to Pages et al - iA Writer has a similar, maybe worse implementation - but to me it was the most glaring instance of it.

The New Model

I’m glad Apple abandoned the carousel for the document manager. The presentation is nearly identical to Springboard (your home screens) and the Photos app.

The screen allows you to sort by date or name (scroll up from the top of the thumbnails) and group documents into folders. You still can’t organize these documents arbitrarily, as you can with your apps. Folders are single level only - no nested hierarchies. I think this is fine, honestly, and I’d guess it covers a majority of use cases.

The interactions for creating a folder are the same as Springboard: press and hold a document until it does the wiggle jiggle, and then drag it onto another document to create a folder. The folder gets the useless title of Folder (or Folder 1, 2, etc.) and if your display is sorted by name, the new folder immediately finds its way to the F’s. Next, you can rename it, add more stuff, or close it.

(Above, “Unnamed Stuff” is the folder. It looks and acts like a Springboard folder. Note the lack of easy distinction amongst documents unless there’s a radically different design.)

In contrast to Springboard, the document manager doesn’t try to give your folder a useful name out of the gate; it follows the Mac OS generic name model. It’s too bad. While Springboard’s names might not always be perfect the automatic naming is a nudge in the right direction. Let the computer assist you.

Multiple Selects

Unlike Springboard, the document manager allows for the selection of multiple items. Once you’re in jiggle mode, tapping another document makes it your selection and, annoyingly, your original selection becomes unselected. Boo. But now you’ve got a number of documents selected.

(This was difficult to capture, but here is a stack. Note the 4 slots where the documents in the stack used to be; these could serve as natural drop points… but they aren’t.)

My first thought with these selections was, “I can make these into a folder.” But I can’t. If you have multiple selections and then tap and hold any one of them, they all converge into a stack. The animation is beautiful and made me “oooh” out loud. But all you can do with this stack is drop it into a folder. You do this by dropping the stack onto yet another document which isn’t a part of the stack. Oddly, you can choose to duplicate or trash these documents when they’re individually selected but not when they’re a stack.

This is a weak spot in the interaction but, again, it does follow the OS X model. When you’ve selected multiple files in OS X you can create a ZIP of them but not create a new folder with all of them.

As with the naming convention, this leans too heavily on OS X in my opinion. Once I have a stack of documents, I have already grouped them. They are now one thing to me - and the app represents them that way! - so having to put them onto another thing is silly. A stack should be folder-able, period.

A Side Note on Consistency

Multiple selection within iOS isn’t consistent in Apple’s apps. Consider the Photos app: a user has to explicitly press the share button to enter multiple selection mode. Then, you tap the items you want to manipulate and press a button (copy, print, etc.) to do something with them. Holding down a photo - which really should enter wiggle jiggle mode - just pops up a Copy contextual menu. Note that the document manager includes an edit button, which is the equivalent of the share button in Photos; it enters jiggle mode for you.

In Photos, you can’t create a stack of photos nor a folder, which is a glaring oversight. The photo manager in Photos is woefully basic. I am half-expecting an update for this in iOS 5.

Visuals

One metaphor shines through all of these managers: Apple is pushing hard for thumbnails as the main way of interacting with documents. It’s true even in iTunes, where album art gets first class treatment.

That’s all well and good for visual documents like photos and presentations, but it falls down for word processing documents. Why? Well, look back at the image atop this piece. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

While I can make out the text on these documents, these thumbnails are substantially smaller than they were in the carousel and of diminishing use here, so I need to rely on the filename and metadata. Oh, but if you use long names like I do, then your names get truncated. Frustratingly there is no way to see a document’s full name until you’ve opened it.

The manager does allow you to rename a document by double-tapping its name, but then you have a tiny input area to work with.

(I’ve got this great giant screen, and this is the thanks I get? This document’s full title is, “Kindle and I Get Off on the Wrong Foot.” It’s like Writer’s focus mode gone awry.)

Thus, if you want the full name of the document you need to go all the way back to the Spotlight screen. But then you can only find the filename and not any of its contents, as iWork’s documents aren’t indexed at all by the system - still.

All is Not Lost

Once you’ve gone to a flat, non-hierarchical situation, ensuring easy access to stuff is difficult - as these very different interactions demonstrate. The fact that the carousel was retired is a good thing, a very good thing: Apple is still willing to scrap what doesn’t work.

The document manager is a step in the right direction. I have a few suggestions on how it could be improved.

First, for goodness sake, index the damn files. Even if the document manager becomes perfect, it’s a basic expectation that a search facility on a device will search everything on a device. Spotlight for OS X does this; here’s where you steal from OS X.
Let a stack of documents become a folder.
Give folders a useful name by default.
Allow arbitrary organization of documents.
Introduce some sort of interaction (maybe on press-and-hold?) which shows a document’s full name.
Full-on tags and labels would be overkill, but a simple favorite/starred item model could work here. One could then allow iWork to group items by favorites.

I’m really excited to see where all of this goes, in any case. Throwing away traditional files and folders was a bold move and I’m certain that as this new model matures, it’ll only improve. And if it can still make me say “oooh”, all the better.

Do Enough and No More

Mon, 30 May 2011 23:23:50 -0500

One of the things I believe in when it comes to experience design deliverables is the practice of doing enough and no more.

Lately I’ve found the best way for me to get an idea across isn’t to create multi-page clickable prototypes; rather, I draw the interaction on paper using Sharpies and/or my favorite Muji pen, take a photo of that, and then send it off to people for discussion. This is a bit different than the oft-expected high-fidelity prototype. So here’s why I do it:

Ultimately, tools and technology should not get in the way of explaining the model.

For getting an idea out, sketching is the way to go. I’m totally comfortable with OmniGraffle (and HTML/CSS, and… and…) but it adds a layer of complexity I might not want when I’m exploring ideas and defining overall interactions. The mental block for most people is seeing the sketch as the deliverable, and not taking it back to Axure, Visio, or OmniGraffle for solidification.

With every single thing you add to a sketch, wireframe, or mockup, you need to ask if it really is doing anything. Do you need to create all 58 variations of how an error message will look, or will 2-3 suffice? Do you need to identify every piece of text which will wrap on a page, determine the break point, and then document each one? And is there value in having a sketch, a wireframe, a mockup, a clickable prototype, and a mock data prototype in addition to the actual code?

What you need depends on your situation, corporate structure, client, and ability. But adding complexity can diffuse an idea. Remember that you should only do what is absolutely necessary and no more.

Gosh, Everyblock, if only there was some sort of standard for...

Wed, 25 May 2011 12:15:47 -0500

Gosh, Everyblock, if only there was some sort of standard for scrolling which could have been used in this place! Like some sort of “scrolling bar” or “scrollbar.”

Hover to scroll? This isn’t a touchscreen.

Groupon Now! is bigger than you think.

Wed, 11 May 2011 23:27:15 -0500

Maybe even bigger than I thought.

In case you aren’t familiar with Now!, check the great video created by Adam Lisagor.

Until this, Groupon hadn’t been doing anything terribly new from a conceptual level: it’s all moderately-targeted deals with a time-sensitive component. Open this checking account now and get a free toaster. Do this now and get a bonus. Stuff like that. This is part of the reason why there have been so many copies out there; it’s not hard to take this idea and do it in-house. (Groupon is arguably winning at branding within tech circles though, and obviously they’re enormous and getting bigger.)

That all said, Now! changes the playing field a bit and it’s something that wouldn’t have existed even 3 years ago. This first version is pretty straightforward, too. It says, “Here’s what I’ve got. It’s not going to last long. Buy it now.”

But let’s look down the road just a bit. Your smartphone knows where you are and knows who you are, right? Groupon and Facebook are amassing good knowledge about you based on purchases and activity. So it seems like a natural progression for Now! to blossom into a highly customized marketing platform. Eventually, those Groupon Now! offers will be just for me. That’ll be based on what it knows I like, and what I’ve bought, and also based on what it thinks I might want to try.

It also seems natural to tie this into some sort of rating system… say, Yelp. That way, Groupon Now! can say, “Ah! Paul! You and a friend went to that awesome biscuit place for lunch today. Did you know there’s another place you might like just a few miles away? And it’s got a $10 for $5 offer right now?”

Foursquare and its ilk are kind of there, but the interaction is slightly different in that it focuses on social instead of the transaction.

This type of cross-site intelligence isn’t hard to harness, technically, and it opens up a myriad possibilities. I’m really pleased that it’s looking like the future of super duper localized, personalized marketing isn’t going to be a bunch of text messages or annoying alerts as one walks by a business. Instead, it’s going to be more subtle and extremely effective. I’ll take that over ads in YouTube videos and OSes any day.