enterFrame: Navneet Nair on interaction design

Smooth JavaScript Zoom

2008-02-08T09:45:00.000+05:30

Nice JavaScipt Zoom script. According to the site:

Designed to view full-size photos and images inline without requiring a separate web page load, FancyZoom's raison d’être (French for "raisin-determination") is providing a smooth, clean, truly Mac-like effect, almost like it's a function of Safari itself. Since I originally wrote this script, there are now a lot of image zoomers to choose from (including a similar effect now on Apple's own site!), such as the popular (and inspiring) Lightbox.

Orkut Diwali theme

2007-11-13T15:17:00.000+05:30

Out for a while, and not for long is the Orkut Diwali theme. Take a look and let me know what you think...

World Usability Day follow up

2007-11-07T19:44:00.000+05:30

As you can imagine from the lack of posts for the last couple of weeks, it has been a busy time for me both in terms of work and all the arrangements behind WUD. The event went of quite well and I don't want to repeat what has already been said, so I will just present three perspectives on the event.

Sarit Arora, one of the organizers
MP Ranjan, one of the speakers
Saurabh one of the attendees

I had a great time being part of the organizing of the event, I must say...

World Usability Day

2007-10-15T15:21:00.000+05:30

World Usability Day was founded to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. WUD focuses on raising awareness and visibility of usability and user centered design and is organized every year by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world.

Whether usability professionals or just enthusiastic (or frustrated) users, each participant makes a contribution to "making life easy".

Usability and its Impact in Making Better Public Services– Bangalore, November 05, 2007

On Nov 5, 2007, World Usability Day will be hosted at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The event is being organized and supported by UPA Bangalore, CHI Bangalore, leading usability companies, IISC Bangalore and usability enthusiasts. The event will include designers, technologists, business professionals, students and is open to public.

WUD Bangalore 2007 will focus on applying ‘usability’ and ‘design’ thinking to making life easier and more usable for the common man (us!) in India. Among other areas the event will focus on Healthcare, Education, and Government Services and other public services and utilities that touch our lives everyday. It will include how Information and Communication Technologies and services can make this happen.

When and Where?
Date: Monday, 05 November, 2007, Time: 4.00 pm to 7.30 pm
Venue: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

How to register and participate
Register directly here

( Wiki Password: usability )

Maa Ki Tongue

2007-10-12T10:33:00.001+05:30

Nice promo for Transliteration on Yahoo! Messenger

Meanwhile Orkut too has allowed transliterated scrapping in Hindi. Check this post

Microsoft redesigns the iPod packaging

2007-10-10T09:03:00.000+05:30

Too many web apps?

2007-10-08T14:43:00.000+05:30

Don't believe it yet, take a look at Simple Spark

dCamp Bangalore

2007-09-16T18:20:00.000+05:30

dCamp Bangalore just got over and it was great to see 75 participants take part in the first ever design un-conference in this parts of the world. I gave a short presentation which is up on slideshare, here:

What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?

2007-09-09T19:42:00.000+05:30

Believe it or not, Google Calculator one box knows the answer. As also it does for mundane answers like what is the current exchange rate for the dollar in India

Official Google Blog: Google Labs India

2007-08-20T22:32:00.000+05:30

Google Labs India has launched two products, namely the Indic On-screen Keyboard and Indic Transliteration. Google would like to know what you think of this early stage products, so drop a note here. Personally I would also like to know what you think, do leave a comment with your thoughts :)

Orkut celebrates India Independence day

2007-08-15T22:04:00.000+05:30

http://en.blog.orkut.com/2007/08/happy-independence-day-india.html

16 data visualization tools

2007-08-14T21:29:00.000+05:30

From navigating the Web in entirely new ways to seeing where in the world twitters are coming from, data visualization tools are changing the way we view content. Mashable found the following 16 apps both visually stunning and delightfully useful.

Bloomberg Re-design

2007-08-14T20:21:00.000+05:30

What if the sacred Bloomberg Terminals underwent a re-design? This portfolio.com article explores the possibility, along with three re-design exercises by some top design companies.

NY Times class us 'Technology's Untanglers'

2007-07-08T13:40:00.000+05:30

According to this article (requires signup):

"Sometimes there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make equipment that inadvertently increases the likelihood of repetitive stress injuries. Enter the usability professional, whose work has recently developed into a solid career track, driven mostly by advancements in technology."

Evolution of apple product design

2007-07-05T12:30:00.000+05:30

A chart showing all of Apple products right from Apple 1 to the iPhone...

http://tofslie.com/work/apple_evolution.jpg

Tufte on Jaegerman

2007-07-05T12:16:00.000+05:30

Here's what Tufte has to say:

Megan Jaegerman produced some of the best news graphics ever while working at The New York Times from 1990 to 1998. Her work is smart, finely detailed, elegant, witty, inventive, informative. A fierce researcher and reporter, she writes gracefully and precisely. Megan has the soul of a news reporter, who happens to use graphs, tables, and illustrations--as well as words--to explain the news. Her best work is the best work in news graphics.

Tog on iPhone

2007-07-02T14:01:00.000+05:30

Tog seems to like the iPhone going by this review...

Pioneering a User Experience Process

2007-07-02T13:52:00.000+05:30

A good post by Amy Hillman on B&A:

"Creating a User Experience (UX) process can be a very rewarding journey; it can also be a nightmare if approached from the wrong angle. Initiating a culture-shift, overhauling existing processes, evangelizing, strategizing, and educating is an enormous undertaking. Often it’s a lonely path the UX advocate walks, especially if you are the only one who is driving that change from within the company. But that path is ripe with opportunities to improve your company’s product creation process, as well as the product itself."

Human-to-Human design

2007-06-27T09:33:00.000+05:30

Help your audience fall in love with you by moving beyond human-to-computer interfaces and embracing human-to-human design says Sharon Lee at A List Apart...

Picasa on the phone and Geo Coded Photos

2007-06-27T09:07:00.000+05:30

Sure Flickr already had it, but it is good to see Picasa also do geo-coded photos and it's quite simple drag and drop on to the map. I also liked the mobile feature... here's the full deal on the official blog...

The other side of surface computing.

2007-06-21T08:08:00.000+05:30

This youtube video shows the part of your life that will be affected by the Surface computer, that the demo did not address. Quite funny...

What do do when a VC says 'no'

2007-06-20T15:06:00.000+05:30

Marc Andreessen has some good advise on his bolg on what to do at a stage in your startup when you have been denied funding...

Also check the first part of the series on why 'not' to do a startup...

My ISPis blocking blogspot...

2007-06-19T22:42:00.000+05:30

I'm not sure why Reliance in Bangalore is blocking access to blogspot.com and all sub-domains. Anybody else in Bangalore experienced this?

Interviews from the LA IA Summit

2007-06-13T14:32:00.000+05:30

Christina Wodtke traveled with microphone to the IA Summit in Las Vegas this year and sat down with some of the most interesting and accomplished information archictects and designers in all the land. Here is the podcast...

A framework for designers

2007-06-12T11:37:00.000+05:30

Jeff Croft write at ALA:

These days, “framework” is quite a buzzword in web development. With JavaScript frameworks like the Yahoo User Interface library, jQuery, and Prototype getting a lot of attention and web application frameworks like Rails and Django getting even more, it seems like everyone is using some kind of framework to build their sites. But what exactly is a framework? And are they only useful to programmers, or can we web designers benefit from the concept, as well?

Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos

2007-06-12T10:41:00.000+05:30

Last night, after eight years, 86 episodes, and untold quantities of gobbagool, The Sopranos finished its run on HBO. And this is what Michael Bierut has learnt from it... about design :)

How Photoshop was born

2007-06-12T10:38:00.000+05:30

Silicon User has the dope on that here...

omg look who is on facebook...

2007-06-07T13:58:00.000+05:30

Michelle Slatalla writes about what it means to be an adult parent 'sneaking' up on their teenage children on Facebook.

"I have reached a curious point in life. Although I feel like the same precocious know-it-all cynic I always was, I suddenly am surrounded by younger precocious know-it-all cynics whose main purpose appears to be to remind me that I’ve lost my edge."

I've heard similar anecdotes from people I know.

A time-line of acquisitions by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft

2007-06-07T10:34:00.000+05:30

Very interesting time-line of all acquisitions by Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft in the past few years. Quite evidently the pace has picked up in the last couple of years. It would have been interesting to see the size of the acquisition as well, maybe each of the bubbles could vary in size based on the $s paid for it... None the less, this is quite interesting in itself...

Google for recipes

2007-06-05T12:33:00.000+05:30

Well here are some Google Recipes straight of the blog. I'm going to try that hummus recipe, it looks really cool...

Interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

2007-06-04T14:33:00.000+05:30

Here's the link to the interview (split into smaller clips) with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from the 'D: All Things Digital' conference.

Gears

2007-06-01T12:28:00.000+05:30

So Google announced Gears and how Google Reader is using the technology to make you blog feeds available offline...

In related posts JD talks about how Gears will integrate with Appolo, and Nicholas Carr compares Google to the Reuters of the early 1800s...

Bill Buxton interview podcast

2007-06-01T10:39:00.000+05:30

Jon Udell has a podcast of his interview with Bill Buxton, where Bill talks about his new book, Sketching User Experience. There is a blog post on his blog about this as well...

Microsoft introduces Surface.

2007-05-30T11:54:00.000+05:30

With Bill Buxton at Microsoft, you had to expect a Multi-touch computing platform to be announced soon. Well, here it is MS Milan, AKA Surface. Here are some press around the release:

Larry Larsen has a first look
USA Today article
USA Today Flash Presentation

IXDA.Beta

2007-05-29T22:14:00.000+05:30

The Interaction Design Association has launched a beta version of its new site and it does look quite nice. The new site will allow a significantly better experience for the community, including tagging of content, customized RSS feeds, browsing by topics and the ability to share information about yourself with the community...

How popular web applications handle scaling

2007-05-29T10:48:00.000+05:30

Peter Van Dijck has a collection of presentations on how some of the popular web applications handle scaling...

Attach videos, large format photos, anything... email... and it works...

2007-05-25T10:29:00.000+05:30

From the Google blog...

It can be frustrating to find out that the photos you're trying to share, or the presentations you're trying to send at the last minute, are too large for your email's attachment limit. Some of you have pointed out that we recently increased the allowable attachment size in Gmail from 10MB to 20MB. We think the higher limit will help make the storage in your Gmail account a little more useful. So the next time you've got to send a PDF that's a bit on the larger side, relax. You've got some more room to spare.

I just got an 18 MB attachment today, and that was cool...

The final days of Google

2007-05-25T10:27:00.000+05:30

Robert X. Cringley has an interesting essay on what could spell Google's demise...

Back in the 1990s Bill Gates said the company that would eventually beat Microsoft probably had yet to be founded, by which he meant that Microsoft was in such a strong position that only something truly disruptive -- a whole new business -- would have a chance to unseat Redmond. Some people think the company Bill was describing back then might be Google. I don't know if that's the case or not, but it leads me to ask this question: If Google, itself, is to be eventually beaten by some other company, does THAT company yet exist? I don't think so. But unlike the scenario envisioned by Gates, I have a pretty good idea where we'll find the founders of that Google-beating start-up. I think they are working right now at Google.

Riya Bangalore closes shop

2007-05-24T17:56:00.000+05:30

Munjal posts about his decision to shut down the Bangalore office in favor of moving all development to the Bay Area...

Do you think Bangalore is getting that expensive?

This was insane

2007-05-24T13:14:00.000+05:30

This video features the Pelican track 'GW' from Australasia as its soundtrack. The images in the video are a collage of footage from 1960 about Joseph Kittinger, a man who in that year took a giant helium balloon up to 102,800 feet and then jumped, setting records for highest ascent, highest jump, longest freefall and fastest fall.

What if he had missed the earth? :)

MS Popfly

2007-05-21T11:18:00.000+05:30

Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications. Popfly consists of two parts:

1. Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups.

2. Space is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.

You need to register for this right now, and though I have not been able to access it yet, this seems to be a way that MS hopes to popularize SilverLight

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards '07

2007-05-18T09:49:00.000+05:30

The C-H National Design Awards '07 were announced and not surprisingly, Jonathan Ive was on the list of winners. And so was Adobe.

Picasa Flash Slide Shows

2007-05-18T09:36:00.000+05:30

Picasa has introduced a new photo sharing feature that allows you to embed a slide-show on your site. Here's one from my collection...

Design Helps H.P. Profit More on PCs

2007-05-17T16:02:00.000+05:30

NY Times:

HP's effort to transform its personal computers from low-margin commodities into more stylish devices has started to pay off. As shown by the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings, announced Wednesday afternoon, a new PC strategy has become a major driver of growth. Revenue increased 12.7 percent from the period a year earlier, to $25.5 billion, and the PC division was an important factor...

Amazon to sell DRM free music

2007-05-17T14:05:00.000+05:30

As per this NY Times article, Amazon.com, the biggest online seller of CDs, is joining the movement against copy-protection software for digital music. It plans to sell songs that can be freely copied to any computer, cellphone or music player, including the iPod from Apple.

This is a great move and coming from Amazon, we should see some good competition to the Apple.

Of purple cows and cherry red washers

2007-05-16T09:53:00.000+05:30

Jakie Huba has an interesting post about LG's new cherry red washing machines, and how they stand out. This seems to be the case of a purple cow at work...

The Secret of Apple Design

2007-05-10T12:33:00.000+05:30

Here is the inside story of why Apple's industrial-design machine has been so successful.

Quote:

"To whatever degree Apple can be said to make products with a distinctive genetic code, they can also be said to have inherited most of their traits from a single parent: founder Steve Jobs..."

Testing mail to blog.

2007-05-04T22:02:00.000+05:30

Been a while since I have written a post, so thought I might as well try something new today. Just checking to are how the mail to blog feature works.

अब ब्लॉगर हिंदी में।

2007-04-13T13:29:00.000+05:30

अब ब्लॉगर हिंदी में। Blogger has introduced Hindi Transliteration. The only problem here is that if you do not have complex script rendering installed, Firefox is unable to display the Hindi characters properly. But this is so cool now I can type in Hindi, but hey can I read? :)

अलविदा।

Do the dabbawalla know their customers?

2007-04-10T17:53:00.000+05:30

Seth says the dabbawallas know their customer well, I'm not sure if they know the customers of if they know the locality they operate in. That is one of the reasons they do not have a rotation policy. Need to check this out, will find out and get back...

Driving directions from New York to Dublin

2007-03-30T22:11:00.000+05:30

It takes only 29 days and 19 hours according to this map... (includes a real cold swim...)

Stanford magazine on Tufte

2007-03-23T10:24:00.000+05:30

This Stanford Magazine article on Edward Tufte makes interesting read...

Jolt awards 2007

2007-03-23T10:22:00.000+05:30

Here are a list of finalists and winners...

Are these awards really the Oscars of the Software industry?

:)

Eric Schmidt's interview

2007-03-20T16:33:00.000+05:30

A couple of Stanford students have an interview of Eric Schmidt up here...

Cricket scores on Google

2007-03-17T11:10:00.000+05:30

If you're part of the Cricket playing nations and wish to find out what the latest Worldcup scores are, just search on Google...

Krish Blogs

2007-03-16T21:04:00.000+05:30

Krish Srikkanth has his cricket blog up at http://www.worldcupwithkrish.blogspot.com/ which makes a good read, also check out this promo below...

Microsoft buys TellMe

2007-03-15T08:46:00.000+05:30

Here's the deal...

According to the article:

Analysts predicted people would eventually use voice-driven searches on the internet, rather than typing into search engines. Mobile phone based internet search would be an obvious application they added. Software such as Microsoft Office does have basic voice recognition facilities but the deal would "bolster" the firm's capabilities said Microsoft business division president Jeff Raikes.

This is a very interesting acquisition, and a sign of things to come...

Google talk gadget in Flash

2007-03-15T08:35:00.000+05:30


The Carrs have been working on this for a while and they have finally released it. Here's the blog post that gives you the details. Also if you're logged in you'll see the embedded version of the gadget below...

Nice presenation on Web Typography

2007-03-14T09:35:00.000+05:30

Ever asked yourself why web typography sucks? Here's the answer…

By the way, that is the first time I used a real ellipsis.

Cricket fever

2007-03-13T12:31:00.000+05:30

So over the last few weeks, we've been down with Cricket fever, and that was one of the other reason for sparseness of posts here. But there is something to show for the time that we were down with fever, check out:

http://www.google.co.in/cricket

EyePoint

2007-03-12T10:23:00.000+05:30

Now that was a a rather long absence from blogging and after my trip I got a bit caught up in work...

Now, this is something interesting that caught my eye, rather literally. EyePoint is a project by Manu Kumar, Andreas Paepcke and Terry Winograd at Stanford which uses the user's gaze to augment mouse based interactions. This is something I have found wanting especially when working with design tools on a multi-monitor setup. I usually have the screen set on one screen and the tools on the other and having to move from screen to other does take a long time, if the system were to use my gaze to make predictive cursor movement.

You can check out the website which has a YouTube video on it, and also read the paper on it...

Low frequency

2007-02-04T18:20:00.000+05:30

I'm traveling for the next few weeks, and posting frequency might be low...

Dinner with Bill Buxton

2007-01-27T09:22:00.000+05:30

Bill Buxton was here in Bangalore as part of Techvista 2007, and the kind folks at MSR Bangalore had arranged for a dinner meeting with him for the design community in Bangalore. It was an interesting set of discussions that ranged from music to iPhone and everything in between. A very nice event and it was a pleasure to hear Bill talk on a wide variety of subjects including his collection of pens both digital and otherwise. Ken Perlin was at the dinner as well and for those of you are not aware of his work on procedural animation, it may make sense to check out this site (apparently this is based on his research on a former girlfriend).

By the way, Bill his releasing his book (mostly to be unveiled at SIG-CHI) and Dave has some notes up here...

PS: Muthu has an post on his blog about the event...

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

2007-01-23T18:06:00.000+05:30

Great list of CSS techniques... Now all you need is a combined cheat sheet...

MS Firefox 2007

2007-01-19T09:14:00.000+05:30

It's better now... like seriously...

Somebody is having a lot of fun here, and not sure how long the prank will last before the site gets taken off... enjoy it while you can...

Tog on iPhone

2007-01-17T10:32:00.000+05:30

Tog analyzes the iPhone.

Kawasaki's promoting Linkedin

2007-01-17T09:48:00.000+05:30

Or should I say evangelizing, as that is the what Guy Kawasaki is best at. The last two posts (1 & 2) have been about using Linkedin. By the way, Linkedin added a new feature where you can look for answers to your questions, it's pretty neat...

Wikiseek Open Beta Is Live

2007-01-16T16:32:00.000+05:30

Wikiseek is a search engine that indexes only Wikipedia links. Created by SearchMe, and it is an interesting (if limited) alternative to Google. According to the schpeel:

1. Wikiseek searches Wikipedia, and the "external links" of Wikipedia
articles. These are considered authoritative Internet sources. This means
that the search results are only as comprehensive as Wikipedia. Wikiseek is
NOT a search engine of the entire World Wide Web.

2. The current index is not dynamically updated. Extremely new content at
Wikipedia will not be reflected in our index.

3. We are testing an 8-bit character set version of the software. This means
that extended international characters will not be displayed. Ultimately,
Wikiseek will support international character sets.

Techcrunch has some update on it as well...

What does it take to be a design manager?

2007-01-16T09:39:00.000+05:30

Erin Malone has a great post on design management and what it takes to be one. These are more practical points that she brings to the fore, and gives pointers to people aspiring to be one, maybe a follow up on some of the nuances of design management would be nice...

PS: You should also read Christina Wodtke on the possible choices you have...

A periodic table of visualization methods

2007-01-10T11:25:00.000+05:30

A rather interesting visualization of the various visualization techniques. Makes a good reference page...

Apple introduces iPhone, Apple TV

2007-01-10T10:28:00.000+05:30

The whole blogosphere is abuzz with the Macworld Keynote (video here) where Steve Jobs announced the much awaited iPhone (name still debated) and Apple TV (or is it iTV?)

Microsoft is using a fairy tale to promote office

2007-01-07T12:38:00.000+05:30

This comic fairy tale takes you through the improvements in Microsoft's new Office interface.

Your reading trends

2007-01-07T12:32:00.000+05:30

If you use Google Reader for reading your blog feeds, then this is a nifty addition to the already cool set of features...

Easy7 Bangalore

2007-01-06T11:32:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I was at Easy 7, India's 7th Annual National Conference on Advanced User Interface Practices, at The Leela Palace in Bangalore. A nice, compact conference that featured four speakers speaking on six topics. Surya Vanka from Microsoft was speaking on Design innovation and innovation culture, Sarah Bloomer, touched up on UI tools and about converting research into design, Bill Scott of Yahoo! touched upon AJAX UI patterns, while Jeremy Ashley spoke on selling design within the organization. The topics were interesting but somehow there was a feeling the speakers had to hurry things up as the time alloted for each presentation seemed limited. But the effort on CHI South India's part was quite good, and here's looking forwared to Easy8.

PS: Bill Scott has an update on the event and also a link to his talk presentations

One laptop per blogger

2007-01-04T12:47:00.000+05:30

On the lines of the One Laptop Per Child project, Microsoft has instituted the One Laptop Per Blogger project. :) Old news, I know, but still worth posting...

The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year

2006-12-29T12:48:00.000+05:30

PC World lists its "20 Most Innovative Products of the Year". It's quite an interesting list, and here are my favorite:

Which ones are yours?

Flash support for Wii

2006-12-27T21:40:00.000+05:30

Been a long time since I have any Flash related posts, but here's something interesting. Aral points to the Wii Browser (Opera) which has support for the Flash 7 player. So potentially you can write games in Flash that will run on Wii. Cool...

Polar Rose is out of stealth

2006-12-27T18:18:00.000+05:30

Polar Rose claims it can do what Riya pretty much admitted it failed at; face recognition. Check them out on their blog and flickr stream. It really remains to be seen how good their claims are though.

Wikia to launch search

2006-12-27T15:04:00.000+05:30

Wikia is embarking on a new project that it claims is "A project to create the search engine that changes everything"

From the project page:

"Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.

Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency. Here, we will change all that."

Nobody believed that community powered encyclopedia would work, but it did. But will a community powered search engine work?

Google maps India

2006-12-22T18:16:00.000+05:30

Google now has maps for some major Indian cities. I'm blogging from somewhere here

Making compact forms accessible. But why?

2006-12-19T14:18:00.000+05:30

Mike Brittain in his ALA article talks about making compact forms accessible. Before reading his article I was not aware of a UI pattern of using 'compact forms' (pardon my ignorance) but apparently it is an oft used technique, which actually worries me a lot. I've seen forms where there are sample inputs provided and those too are something I believe is a bit of a nuisance. But in this case, the field label itself appears as the form field value. This must be mighty confusing to the user. Anybody has any experience designing these kinds of forms?

Big screens improve productivity

2006-12-17T07:23:00.000+05:30

According to this post by Martin Fowler:

"Why is this important? If I have a small screen I can't see as much at once, so to see different things I have to keep popping windows to the front. With my two screens I can put a whole bunch of stuff on the screen at once and all I have to do is move my head. My eyes can flick between the text I'm typing now in Emacs and the rendered result in firefox. I can keep open an IDE with lots of subwindows and have documentation in a browser right there. I don't have look around on the task bar to see where I put that terminal window, I just mouse and type. It's often hard to imagine the improvement before you try, but I can really feel the difference since I doubled my screen."

Josh Porter on Iterative Design

2006-12-16T22:06:00.000+05:30

Josh Porter talks about how iterative design has worked for Netflix:

"The designers of Netflix.com have a smashing success on their hands, but we didn't find them resting on their laurels. They want to get even better, and for them that means iterate, iterate, iterate."

Google Web Toolkit is now opensource

2006-12-13T12:20:00.000+05:30

The Google Web Toolkit is now available with full source code under Apache 2.0...

Wikia launches openserving

2006-12-12T15:31:00.000+05:30

According to this article, Jimmy Wales, the founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia is launching a service offering free tools for people who want to build community websites. The site, openserving.com allows you to create collaborative blogs. From the looks of it, this comes from its recent acquisition of armchairgm.com

Book Review: The design of sites

2006-12-12T09:19:00.000+05:30

The design of sites: Patterns, principles and process for crafting customer-centered web experience is a great book on web site design patterns. It starts of with some of the basics of user-centered design (customer-centered as the authors prefer to call it) and goes on to describe some of the common web patterns. Since this is pre-Web 2.0 book there is nothing describing AJAX interaction patterns, however the core set of patterns ranging from navigational patterns to layout and error handling patterns hold good even in the web 2.0 era. It may have less of a value for experienced professionals but it is an invaluable asset to people starting out in web based interaction design. Also for people not familiar with design, can get a good primer into good design practices. Also, if you are designer, working for a manager who does not understand design, this book makes a great gift...

The Theory of User Motivation: Applying Maslow’s Principles to Build Better Software Products (Part 1)

2006-12-10T22:07:00.000+05:30

Ever been part of a software project where you have had to choose between time to market (read ‘schedule’) and the right thing to do (usually translated as ‘content’)? I’m sure you have. It’s a tough decision, and most people just follow their gut (also known as ‘top management’) and go one way or the other.

How else does one go about in a situation like this? Can any tools be used? How can one arrive at the right course of action?

In this article I would be proposing the use of ‘User Motivation’ as tool to evaluate a situation such as this.

What is ‘User Motivation’: Motivation generally refers to the desire or willingness to get tasks accomplished. It is generally identified by initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior that will lead to the completion of the desired task.

Similarly, user motivation can be referred to the desire or willingness to use a particular piece of software in order to complete a specified task.

Readers familiar with the theories of human motivation would be familiar with Maslow and McGregor’s theories of ‘Human Motivation’. The theory is based upon the ‘Hierarchy of needs’, and it argues that as humans meet their basic needs, they go on to seek and fulfill higher needs one after another. The human needs as per Maslow’s hierarchy start with physiological needs, safety needs, enjoyment needs and going up to esteems and actualization needs. This hierarchy is usually denoted in the form of a pyramid as shown in the diagram.

For the sake of defining ‘User Motivation’ we can use Maslow’s hierarchy as a basis for defining the progressive set of needs user look to when it comes to a software product as well. This ‘Hierarchy of user needs’ is what forms the basis of evaluating ‘User Motivation’. For each level in Maslow’s Hierarchy, there is a corresponding set of software requirement. Let’s start at the very bottom.

Physiological Needs (Functionality): This is the most basic of human needs and takes the utmost priority as far as humans are concerned. Generally this consists of the need to breathe, eat and anything else that is almost important for us to survive. The corresponding category of needs in ‘User Motivation’ would refer to the basic software functionality. Without meeting this need every other need takes a lesser priority. Let us take the example of a user who wishes to use a word-processing document to write an article. Suppose instead of being provided a word processor, the user is provided with a best of breed image editing software with one piece of functionality lack: The ability to set text. This would be a case where the user has been deprived of the most basic functionality; that is word processing. Note here that the user would hypothetically be able to use tools from the image editing software to draw text, but it would require an inordinate amount of time, that would not justify the use of computer for the purpose. Hence the basis for satisfying user needs has to be that the goal that the user wants to accomplish should be easier to accomplish than it would be without the use of computer system.

Identifying Physiological needs: There are a number of methods and processes that can be followed to identify these needs for the particular software. The most common one is to do a competitive analysis of other software that are available in the market. However this is not often a reliable method as most people tend to over-design and it does not give an idea as to what is the bare minimum feature set the user is looking for. A far more effective tool would be to conduct a contextual enquiry and arrive at the bare minimum feature set that the user would require to complete the task. This would need to be updated frequently using either surveys or other voice of the customer techniques.

Safety Needs (Trust): The Human need for safety corresponds to the user's need to be able to trust the system. Generally trust is built by having a stable software product that is free of defects and does not crash inordinately. If the nature of the software involves the privacy of the user's data, then security also plays at this level. Taking the same example of the word-processing need, a user would only be compelled to work at this level if the software satisfies the functionality need of being able to type words and is also stable and defect free. Given the choice between a bug free product and one which is still alpha code, the user will choose a bug free product. Apart from traditional functional defects, at this level, users would like the software to be free of usability defects as well, though they would not lay an emphasis on ease of use.

Along with a stable product, documented and live customer support also works at this level, providing users with a sense of security that they have help available. But there is an exception that can be made for the early adopters who can be made to use the software with minimal support or documentation.

Checking for the level of safety: A formal QA process along with a Beta testing process will ensure that most of the safety needs for the software are met prior to release. Apart from this, including usability techniques like card sorting and usability testing into the development process ensures that no blaring usability flaws are present in the system which might cause the user to perceive the software as being possibly defect prone.

Belonging Needs (Social/Responsiveness): Software that satisfies the first two levels of needs, now has to vie for the next level which is that of social acceptance. A software that is used by a number of highly visible people in the community makes it more acceptable for the user. Thus building a user community and a way for users to share experiences and learn from experiences of others plays an important role at this point. If the software tool is aimed at technology savvy community, exposing APIs is also a good way of building up the community.

Apart from this need to be part of a community, at this level, the user expects the software to be responsiveness as well. The is where qualities like performance and slickness of the design in terms of handling user errors comes into play. Software scalability also works at this level.

Easy ways to fulfill this need: Today engaging the user community is an important part of any software, and a simple effort like having a corporate blog that communicates and receives inputs from the users goes a long way in building this kind of a relationship with the user.

Esteem Needs (Experience): Most software available today, do well with the earlier three sets of needs and it is at the next level that they tend to falter. At this level the user expects the software to provide them with an end to end experience, right from the point of purchase up the point where they are ready to go up to the next level.

How to get there and measure the experience: Developer and user conferences are a a good way of engaging the user community at this level. If the software is in the enterprise space, then customer relationship management plays an important role and customer satisfaction surveys play an important role in measuring the effectiveness of efforts put into meeting this level of user needs.

Self Actualization (Pride): The last and final level is the holy grail of software development, where the user no longer needs any more motivation to use the software, but with each use, there is an actual sense of pride that is associated with the use. At this level, the users will come back and give feedback on the software without the developer actually having to make an effort.

Having understood these levels of user needs it would be easy to prioritize the software requirements so that depending upon the urgency of the time to market, one can actually analyze and decide upon which pieces of functionality can be taken up. In the next part of this article we will take a look at how we can take those decisions.

Firebug

2006-12-09T19:50:00.000+05:30

Firebug is an interesting web development extension on Firefox. Reminds me of the tidy validation extension and Aardvark

Of Vista, Xbox and the lot...

2006-12-09T10:07:00.000+05:30

In this week's Pulpit, Bob Cringely talks about Microsoft's Vista, and that one of the reasons it cannot fail is that it will be forced upon the market. The article also talks about xBox being the winner of the 'war of the consoles'. But isn't it a bit to early to make that prediction. I really see the dark horse (Nintendo Wii) taking down two Goliaths down with one stroke of the remote...

Jon Udell to join Microsoft

2006-12-08T19:37:00.000+05:30

Looks like he is joining the evangelist gang at Microsoft. He's someone well known in the blogosphere who can well replace Scoble... Though he says he'll do things differently :)

Why it would be easy to switch away from Google search

2006-12-07T08:37:00.000+05:30

onStartups has a few points on why it would be potentially easy for users to switch away from Google Search. The main points he makes are:

1. Low Training Investment
2. Low Customization Investment
3. Easy Experimentation
4. Better Results

These are precisely the reasons most users moved to Google in the first place. In any case, general search on the net is a commodity that can no longer be leveraged on its own. The future trend will be towards integration of search into other interactions on the desktop, the enterprise and the net. And do these points hold good in those scenarios as well?

User proofing AJAX

2006-12-05T11:17:00.000+05:30

Nice article on A List Apart about handling errors in AJAX applications. From the article:

Ajax is handy because it avoids needless browser behavior such as page reloads, but it can also be dangerous because it avoids useful browser behavior like error handling. Gone are the “Server not found” error messages and that familiar escape hatch, the Back button. When Ajax circumvents useful behavior, we have to make sure we replace it as well as we can.

Microsoft vs Adobe

2006-12-05T09:38:00.000+05:30

JD is keeping a tab of what the blogosphere has to say about Microsoft's Expression Suite launch.

I played around a bit with the Community Technology Preview of the expression suite which I'd downloaded a few months ago and used it to create a few designs. The Graphic Designer module was interesting while the Web Designer module seemed very similar to Dreamweaver and quite good. But the interactive designer/blend/sparkle was the odd boy of the lot. It borrowed a lot from Flash, but you had to do things differently to get it working. And although I have been using Flash for over 10 years, using MS Blend/Sparkle/ID was not quite straight forward as Mano would make you believe in his presentations. As a result I never got around the learning curve, and since my job as an interaction designer is not tied to the tool, I don't think I would really invest much time in it. At least, not now.

If there is a following in the future, it would possibly go up the same curve that Flash did in its early days, but maybe a bit slower as there is not that much of a 'disruptiveness' associated with the product.

Interestingly of the three, Blend is the only product that was designed and developed in-house, the other two were acquired. One more observation I had about the Expression Suite (at least the CTP) was that it did not gel together as one suite of applications, but more like a hotch-potch.

I'm sure things will improve in the future, and it is always good to have more than one option when it comes to tools to work with...

More about digital identities

2006-12-05T09:32:00.000+05:30

I'd just recently posted about information overload resulting from too many passwords, when I ran into the 'Digital Identities' icon in my Control Panel. A small search revealed this post on Andy Harjanto's blog. Guess I'm a bit late on this, but thought this was worth blogmarking...

AskCity

2006-12-04T21:27:00.000+05:30

AskCity was in the news today, however when I had some time on hand, and decided to try out the interface, it threw up a login screen saying the service was still available only to limited users. Guess the news came in early Eastern time, and AskCity was slated for a Pacific time launch? BTW, I was still on Indian time so much ahead of both. In any case I tried playing with it again, but only after reading Scoble's post on the same, and that has tainted my view on it a bit. The site does not live up to the press it has got, at least...

Too many passwords...

2006-12-04T20:36:00.000+05:30

According to this BBC report:

Growing use of the web is stripping people of their personal privacy. The number of passwords and logins web users need makes it inevitable they will re-use phrases, and Re-using these identifiers puts people at serious risk of falling victim to identity theft.

Biometric Authorization still has a long way to go, but it may be a necessity in the future...

Don't play around with simple, says Jeremy...

2006-12-04T08:54:00.000+05:30

"I'm tired of AJAX being used as a replacement for quality design." This seems to be the message that is coming out of the disastrous re-design exercise of Yahoo!TV. New Yahoo! designs seems to be forsaking usability for the sake of visual design and AJAX coolness. Somehow I feel we are going to see more such user outbreaks in the coming months...

OLPC: What can we learn from it?

2006-11-30T14:51:00.000+05:30

I think one of the biggest innovations on this project has to be the display technology developed by Mary Lou Jepsen. It is a a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. And to top it all it uses only 2 w of power and costs only $40 to manufacture. That apart from the sheer audacity that the team displayed in its vision, has to be applauded.

Five countries have so far pledged its support for this project, though it's a pity that the Indian government decided not to (because of a fair amount of lobbying by the Wintel camp, I heard.) Even if the project fails to have much of an impact on third world education, as most of its detractors have voiced, once the technology gets into the commercial realm, it will have a large impact laptop prices overall. Unfortunately, I believe, this laptop itself cannot be made commercial...

Here's a link to a talk by Michail Bletsas, the Chief Connectivity Officer for the project.

Google to answer no more...

2006-11-29T12:50:00.000+05:30

Google is bidding a quiet adieu to Google Answers.

No explanations have been provided to the reason behind this move, but wonder if Yahoo! will follows suit or is this a shot in their arm? Interestingly Rashmi Sinha had posted an entry on her blog about Yahoo! looking for a lead designer for their Answers team, and one of the comments was about potential experience issues with the concept itself. Might be something worth pondering about...

The history of Human Computer Interaction

2006-11-23T09:46:00.001+05:30

I need to bookmark this paper for later reference...