Blog – Page 12 – Boon Yew Chew

YouTube interface redesigned

After the changes in Gmail a few days ago, I noticed a similar ad hoc behavior with YouTube today. And I meant ad hoc as in while I was using the website it was still using the old interface, and then after I clicked on a few pages, the layout changed instantly.

Witnessing an interface change before your eyes

The change is pretty evident – videos are now shown in wide-screen format and are noticably larger than before. It’s confirmed on the YouTube blog, and it may be that they are slowly rolling it out to certain people at a time since I only noticed the change a few minutes ago. I recall someone saying that Gmail themes had a same effect – some people noticed the new themes feature while others didn’t, and it was because Google was rolling them out to users in phases (presumably).

A more ‘immersive’ YouTube?

I actually like the wide-screen format and the larger view, because the videos do look and feel bigger. Despite its popularity and ubiquity, YouTube’s overall experience isn’t all that ‘immersive’ (Vimeo comes to mind). I think with the new format, it’s a step closer in that direction.

Judging from the comments from the blog post, not all users are happy with it, though. Some users prefer the screen to adapt to the original video size – which means some pages may look different than others. It’s important to note that YouTube doesn’t stretch uploaded videos, but pads the borders with black. This means that the majority of videos that use the 4:3 format will have black rectangles on the left and right.

Interestingly, though – the thumbnails are cropped to fit the whole area. So 4:3 videos will have the top and bottom parts clipped in the thumbnail (which sort of makes sense, since keeping the black rectangles might make it look ugly).

The clipping thing wasn’t very obvious to me as I was in the middle of trying to look for cooking videos. If my goal ultimately is to watch videos, a larger view of the video gives me more of what I want. I could care less about videos being cropped or ratios, unless it negatively impacted my viewing.

Introducing interface changes as a usability topic

This brings me back to the usability aspect of websites – this kind of change is a fairly straightforward one. Not much else has changed, but even then – having a wider, larger player has a dramatic impact on the way users experience the site.

Also, I don’t know if there were any formal studies done on the design of the new layout and screen. It almost seems as if this was a simple case of understanding what users want and trying to give users the kind of experience they prefer.

And often times, this is the case with websites, especially ones with any element of social networking. Users grow with the site. As initial users, who were novices at first, turn into regular/intermediate users – their goals also ‘evolve’. And thus, the site has to adapt to the changing needs of the community.

This is particularly difficult for any site that needs to appeal to a wide spectrum of users. Recent interfaces changes in Flickr (video in Flickr) and Facebook (major facelift) drew a lot of criticism as much as it did praise.

Who’s responsible?

Does this fall under the responsibility of interaction designers and usability practitioners, whose goal is to place users before all things, to address the often conflicting reactions of real users when faced with upgraded layouts and new features?

It would be interesting to see find out how the industry deals with this sort of ‘user politics’ when it comes to the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology.

iPhone usability

Create with Context did a study on iphone usability by “regular” users, new users, and non-users. There were some interesting things I observed from the presentation:

touchscreen interfaces really benefit from good feedback and good button placement
visual trims like shadows, bevels, icon quality and transparency can help communicate affordance
smartphones can get overly complicated due to inconsistencies like modes
iphones use good metaphors (natural-feel scrolling) but it can be implemented in a way that confuses people
you just can’t assume anything about users, sometimes

Take a look at the presentation below:

How people really use the iPhone

Google Mail offers THEMES

I am overjoyed that Gmail now offers Themes, not just to spruce up my mailbox, but that it also provides some kind of look and feel variation that adds to the experience of an already great email service – different, but great. Like iGoogle, some of the themes offer a “dark/day” background to denote the time of day – a nice reminder, definitely adds to the experience, doesn’t get in the way.

I’m using it to process all my mail, and I’m glad I made the decision to do so. Google’s commitment to the service has been excellent, and I added the Calendar tab to my sidebar a week ago and I like it. Not all of the lab features are what I need, but I think if the teams are listening to users, that’s a really good way to go.

Not every function, interface change, feature, design has to be usable. It can be enjoyable too. Remember Emotional Design – Why we love (or hate) everyday things. Gmail is my everyday thing, and I want to love it, and I do.

That’s what it’s all about, really.

The Ergonomics Society website is not ergonomic

Why?

Because they send your passwords to your email address, when you register on the site. This is despite the fact that if you forget your password, they can reset them and send you a new one to your email.

For a website to send passwords to your email upon registration is a dangerous thing because people typically re-use old passwords for website registration, so copies of their passwords on emails can be found in inboxes – and they typically only get there because of registration sites. I can’t think of any other way in which a password would get sent to an email, but you can help me here.

This is a good thing for identity thieves, bad for most other people.

I also don’t understand why new members to the Ergonomics Society aren’t automatically registered to the website and are sent an introductory email. I’ve had to register on the website separately. That’s just dumb.

World Usability Day, talks at LBi

Today is World Usability Day. I attended an event hosted by UPA at LBi, on Baker Street. The usual light refreshments were served, and the talks were interesting – on the topic on transportation. There was another event going on at System Concepts where talks addressed the topic of Global Positioning Systems, which had a more ergonomic slant.

In conjunction with the UPA event, Aquent launched a directory for User Experience practitioners. I picked up a copy and there were a lot of interesting articles contributed by UPA professionals and other practitioners. The topics seemed to be cover a lot of trends that have been impacting the usability industry lately, such as the poor economic situation, advancing mobile devices, and employable skills. There’s a lot of subjectivity with a lot of usability topics, but the articles are mostly relevant and useful, if not timely. You might be able to get a copy from Human Factors International, UPA, or Aquent as they were the main sponsors.

I couldn’t remember all the names of the speakers featured today. Scott Weiss from Human Factors International opened up the session with a brief introduction to the transportation topic by sharing his own gripes about the TfL website and how challenging it was from a usability perspective for him to get from his home to the UPA event. He made an interesting point that the exemplar bus service routes displayed prominently on bus stands should be reproduced on their online variants for the same visual clarity. It was meant to be lighthearted, but it caused a bit of stir in the crowd as it was only scratching at the surface of both the merits and the pitfalls of the complex government-linked organization and its services.

Nevertheless, it got us thinking about transportation.

The next speaker then got us thinking about online airline ticketing websites, and how that has fundamentally changed the way people travel. A bit of historical backdrop reveals how the early ticketing websites were a far cry from the large computers that were used in traditional ticketing systems – surfacing from three months’ worth of three guys hacking away at computers in a garage, and ended up being sold for millions of dollars. There were references to EasyJet’s online ticketing system, which led to the next talk about a prototype future ticketing system, presented by Peter Otto from Flow Interactive.

The exciting part about this “EasyJet 2.0” system was about how it also deals with users’ questions of “I want to go somewhere but I’m not sure when” and “I’m not sure where I want to go” – rather than the buyer’s method of dealing with flight tickets. EasyJet 2.0 identifies pricing options for tickets on various dates in the year, giving users some idea of planning for a trip.

Also, for the case where users wasn’t sure where they wanted to go – they could browse major destinations from their home starting point, based on a specific budget. This was produced on a slick visual interface using charts and maps, that showed immediately which slots in the month were most cost-effective, and which places were best to visit at a certain price.

There’s an interactive page that shows how the whole thing works.

I’ll be attending the last UPA event for the year in a few weeks, hopefully.

Usability vs. Innovation? Stop already.

I was attending a UPA talk yesterday, and although I came in toward the end of the session, managed to catch a glimpse of what was about to turn into a flame war about how companies aren’t really innovating to their fullest potential. The speaker also apparently implied that usability is becoming less effective a tool in making great innovation happen, to which some people clearly disagreed.

It’s interesting to note that Martyn Perks has mentioned these things before, in a similar way a few years ago, also at another UPA event, so it seems he’s making a name for himself on this.

I’m setting aside the obvious flame baits here, because innovation and usability can too often be defined in ways that mean lots of things depending on what you’re talking about. Maybe what Perks was referring to reads something along the lines of this research article, which evaluates how (occasionally rigorous or ‘standardized’) usability work can hinder the creative progression that may be essential to produce effective innovation (whatever that innovation means).

I feel this comparison is partly pointless already, but I am summarizing my reasons as to why I feel this is so.

1. inevitably, all solutions are aimed at the long term and the wider good

Cast the net, aim for the greater good – let’s make both the usability and innovation folks happy. Let’s make them celebrate why they believe usability and innovation are so deeply connected to one another, it would be ridiculous to separate them – even if there are differences between the two.

2. don’t be afraid to use the P word

Politics are an obvious reason why we often do any innovating or usabilit-izing(?), or not. It may not have to be the case of the-bad-boss, since even small groups at peer level suffer from organizational behaviour influences. One case study I learnt this week revealed how a information architecture project failed because some people were afraid they would lose their jobs to an effectively redesigned website. This is one reason why I don’t think we’ll be seeing robots more than we’ll be seeing secretaries over the next 100 years (secretaries always do a better job).

3. many different people are good. many different people are bad.

Information architects. Brand strategists. Marketers. Usability testers. Users. Organizational psychologists. How many terms do we need for people who get paid to solve “new” problems for old and clueless people who can’t understand it anyway? And it seems that everyone has a specific trait, formed quite commonly by a shared interest in being really creative, solving real problems, and making real users happy. So why is there such an internal confusion? Let’s be nice to one another, since the future is inevitably ours since old people die anyway, and the clueless move on.

4. So what if the word usability and innovation has been overused?

Everyone knows what it sort of means, just work around it. We’ve beaten this to death.

I’ll do my best to attend the next and final UPA talk in London before 2009 comes around. Hopefully with less flame baits.

My 2 hours at Serco Usability

We had a field trip to Serco Usability Labs today. We were hosted by Andrew Swartz, who was very friendly and helpful in talking to us about the company and giving us a brief overview of the lab and even getting us involved in some usability activities.

It was great that they brought out a whole table full of snacks – grapes, corn chips, mini pretzels, twinkies,… the works. We were sheepishly holding ourselves back while Andrew was talking us through the slides, but we had our fill during the minute break though.

We didn’t get to visit the offices, which were located upstairs. We hung around the reception area and were brought to one of the testing labs, which is quite a comfy room with a large TV screen and a computer inside. The place was set up well for observation, with a huge glass window-mirror to the observation room.

This lab was a lot more customer-facing than the BT lab I visited a few years back. I just remember walking through a series of store rooms in a building in Adastral Park, before I got to the nicely decorated BT usability labs. The Serco one was conveniently located just after the reception room past a set of doors.

Although we were there for over 2 hours, it didn’t feel all that long. I was surprised at how fast time passed, and it could’ve been the fault of the snacks but Andrew did a really good job of grabbing our interest and creating some good interactions in the room.

We got a feel of how it’s like to do a usability test when a few of us tried walking through introductions for users who come into the labs. I volunteered to facilitate one of the sessions with a ‘fake’ user, who was one of the Serco staff, and it went really well and we had good things to talk about. My classmates heard me say “this sucks” from the observation room, which is really funny. I felt like I was being observed more than playing the part of the observer (of the user).

One key thing that was repeated a lot was to avoid our tendency to help the user during the think-aloud process, which I thought was a valid point to make, because the user does seem like they need help a lot sometimes. But facilitation requires a kind of real-time observation and curiousity, and sort of being in two places at once – an observer as well as a host.

If this is a taste of what the usability industry is like, then I am sold. I absolutely love interacting with users and learning how they make use of systems, and being part of the process of providing solutions that can help both companies and users build better products.

Web Without Words – the danger of using wireframes

UX Magazine posted a short note about Web Without Words, a site that strips down popular websites like Yahoo.com and CNN.com to its wireframes. Everyone in the IxD community knows what wireframes are used for, and this approach is sort of the reverse-engineering attempt of that.

My question is – does anyone really rely on wireframing to determine the quality of information architecture? When I compare CNN and its wireframe, I get the sense that typography makes a lot of difference here, as well as text colour.

While wireframes are useful in providing structure to an initial layout, but is hardly ever used again to evaluate the quality/usefulness of a site unless there’s something really wrong with it.

In terms of human perception, color tends to dominate shape. And in this case, I feel that wireframes should only be represented in grayscale instead of having multiple colors to influence a design decision.

Take for example the following experiment, which I grabbed from this site:

The “Stroop Test” is a good example of how color dominates shape. The test works by taking a color term, such as “Blue,” and showing it printed in either blue or red ink:

Blue Blue

When asked to read the word, people take longer to read the word “Blue” in red ink than in blue ink. Color perception is fast and automatic.

This is a good example of how color can greatly influence a decision, and while wireframing seeks to inform how users evaluate priorities of information according to shape, the dominant influencer here is not shape but color.

Hence, I feel that you can probably treat wireframes in various levels:

1. layout areas

Have separate containers marked completely in grayscale, with specific parts in color if they are indeed going to be in that color (for the purpose of prioritizing that area).

2. layout areas with blocked out text

Blocked out text should be indicated with its intended colors, to communicate how specific colors are used for communication (blue for links? red for errors?).

3. layout areas with subtle design trims (with or without text)

This is based on another human perception observation that shape dominates texture. Design cues such as color gradients, drop shadows, tiled backgrounds, and the like – can be present in a wireframe to observe the balance of shape vs color vs texture.

Obviously you don’t want to overdo this. The whole purpose of color vs shape and shape vs texture is to use it as a design tool to help users navigate your content or to communicate your content effectively.

Design is a holistic process. Which is why I feel sometimes a part of it gets a lot of attention while others doesn’t. But that’s what design is all about – making something clear, specific, focussed, articulate. In this sense, it’s hard to realize that design elements that are unpronounced in a particular subject could be there for a very good reason.

Blogs on Interaction Design, Usability, and User Experience

Here is a list of some blogs and podcasts that I subscribe to and read regularly for insights into interaction design, usability and user experience. I usually go for breadth, and there’s no “one blog to rule them all”, since all of these different fields (IxD, UxD, usability, ergonomics, HCI) intersects in ways I cannot even begin to imagine.

http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/ (rss)

UIE (User Interface Engineering) is a “leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in web site and product usability”, according to the website. It was founded by Jared Spool, a heavyweight in the usability industry. He has a podcast called SpoolCast, which I also listen to. UIE features articles and blogs from its employees and other folks, not just Jared. The podcast often features interviews with noted experts in their various fields related to IxD.

http://bokardo.com (rss)

Bokardo is a blog by Joshua Porter, author of “Designing for the Social Web”. He writes on interface design for social websites and applications. His articles are very insightful, and are very applicable in the field of IxD.

http://www.bplusd.org (rss)

BplusD is a blog by Jess McMullin, from nForm and co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute. He often writes about innovation, creativity and design from a business perspective.

http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/ (rss)

Metacool is a blog by Diego Rodriguez, a partner at IDEO. Great stuff on the intersection of innovation, design, creativity and business.

http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/ (rss)

Jason is a graphic designer and creative director at Happy Cog Studios. He writes on photography and design (and occasional random stuff).

http://www.findability.org (rss)

Peter Morville has a huge list of credentials, being the author of two books, founding several organizations and leading established companies, any post from him is worth a read.

http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/ (rss)

Adaptive Path was founded by Jesse James Garrett, who is credited to have coined the term, AJAX. The company focusses on user experience solutions, and the blog features a lot of articles from its well-established team. I don’t know why but the Web 2.0 community think very highly of Adaptive Path.

http://experiencecurve.com (rss)

Karl Long is a product manager by trade, but blogs on innovation and social media (amongst other useful things). Not purely IxD stuff, but worth a read.

http://www.subtraction.com (rss)

Khoi Vinh is a graphic designer, and now Design Director of NYTimes.com. Good posts on design, web innovation, social media.

http://www.uxmag.com (rss)

An online magazine dedicated solely to user experience, featuring articles contributed by a community of designers, usability practitioners, marketers, business gurus, technologists. Contains good “news” content.

http://www.netmag.co.uk (rss)

Netmag is a magazine for web developers and web designers. I find that sometimes these two fields intersect. The articles often deal with the technical nitty gritty of web interaction design. Good to have if you’re constantly coding CSS, HTML, Javascript and the like.

Other IxD related sites which I read:

http://www.uxmatters.com

http://www.disambiguity.com

http://www.graphpaper.com

http://www.usabilitypost.com

http://www.ixda.org

The UCLIC Experience

I’m only about a month into the UCLIC program, but I thought I’d pen (key?) down my overall impressions about it first, and come back later to fill in the blanks. The whole point is that postgraduate education is quite often a very personal choice, and that students often choose based on very different factors.

How I got here

So, I’ll explain a bit about how I got here. When I started off half a year ago, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to do this. My plan was to get some UK exposure, more specifically in London. I had been applying to a few British companies to see if they would sponsor my relocation, but it became increasingly difficult. I was also presently working with a large British company, but hopes of getting relocated within the company was bleak.

I started thinking about doing a Masters when I went to a UK education fair organized by the British council. Not many universities were offering programs related to usability, human-computer interaction, interaction design or innovation. The few who did were Middlesex and City University, and I do not know why UCL was not represented on that day. I knew very little of UK universities.

My initial research on City’s program got me excited, but upon further research I found out that UCL was offering a very similar program, albeit at almost twice the price. This was when it started becoming hazy for me. How different was City’s program compared to the offered at UCLIC?

Up till now, this is one question I cannot answer completely. There is great lack of information regarding this field in the UK, and I suppose the US fares a little better but I didn’t want to go back to the States.

City University HCI vs UCLIC HCI-E

On the surface, City U’s HCI program focusses more on the working man’s objectives. It offers a whole set of modules focussed on very professional objectives such as requirements gathering, systems specification, multimedia, with less focus on theoretical or analytical parts of the subject (design theory, cognition, etc.)

UCLIC’s HCI-E program offers more breadth – allowing you to evaluate a variety of different aspects in order to draw good conclusions on a particular HCI or E (for Ergonomics) related problem. The inclusion of Ergonomics implies that UCLIC is not just about web usability. In fact, this year they’ve introduced a module on Affective Computing, which takes a look at computing from the aspect of emotion.

I chose UCL because I needed more from the analytical and reflective parts than I did from the practical and professional parts. At the same time, UCL being ranked 9th in the world meant I had some bragging rights, if at all.

The UCLIC Way

UCLIC takes a very pragmatic approach in getting you bridge the gap between theory and practice, and students are assessed on how well they fare on this. I’m required to do about as much self-study as class time, and class time is divided into 50% teaching time and 50% practicals. The self-directed reading encourages investment in topics of interest, maturity, reflection, and creativity.

I don’t get the sense that I’m being isolated from what’s happening in the “real world”. Every Thursday evening, a member from the HCI or Ergonomics industry will spend an hour with us talking about their work and get the class involved with small industry-related activities, which help to give us a flavor of what it’s like.

2 weeks ago, Gigi Demming (ex-UCLIC) from Amberlight made us work out a usability consulting proposal based on a budget and some price indicators (how much it costs for a consultant, test users, etc.). I felt it was useful, even though I was dead tired by the end of the day.

The folks here

UCLIC is made up of strong academics and practitioners who teach. Some of the lecturers are quite established in their respective fields both academically and professionally, so it’s good to be able to draw from those experiences. The class is also made up of a very diverse crowd (gender, practice, background, nationality), and it makes things more well-rounded. It’s fun when we go out for a pint or two.

We get to do field trips like visits to the Serco usability centre and attend the Ergonomics Society Conference for Students. They made us volunteer for class representation, so some of us help plan social activities like visits to museums and so on. It feels like a good place to be.

ex-UCLIC

I must thank my friend, Alex Baxevanis, who helped answer a lot of the questions I had before coming here. UCLIC is quite well represented in the HCI industry here in the UK, and that gives me a bit of confidence that the program is quite well established. Even my ex-employer sung praises for it.

Quite a few UCLIC-ers set up blogs (e.g. http://www.usabilitytank.com) and are quite active on Facebook. It’s quite a community, really.