UI – ɔimoɈɒ

It’s not the product, it’s you

Oliver Reichenstein writes: When people say the UI of Android is so intuitive/unfamiliar, it’s because Android doesn’t educate us through marketing Which is shorthand for “It’s not the product, it’s you”. Andy Rubin whined last week about how the consumer wasn’t educated and that’s why they weren’t buying. “The educated consumer realizes it now that … Continue reading “It’s not the product, it’s you”

Oliver Reichenstein writes:

When people say the UI of Android is so intuitive/unfamiliar, it’s because Android doesn’t educate us through marketing

Which is shorthand for “It’s not the product, it’s you”.

Andy Rubin whined last week about how the consumer wasn’t educated and that’s why they weren’t buying.

“The educated consumer realizes it now that they’re either picking the Apple ecosystem or the Microsoft ecosystem or the Google ecosystem… we’re going to do a better job at making people understand what ecosystem they’re buying into.”

It sounds to me that they believe the problem with Android tablets is all about marketing. It couldn’t possibly be that the product needs polish. Expect adverts, lots of adverts.

Tablets have always sucked…

Tom’s Hardware gives five reasons why Tablets suck: Let’s admit it: tablets suck. They’ve been around for at least a decade and many are faster and offer more capabilities than Apple’s iPad. But why haven’t you bought one yet? Tablets Are Niche Devices Full OSes Were Always There, Yet Those Who Complained That The iPad … Continue reading “Tablets have always sucked…”

Tom’s Hardware gives five reasons why Tablets suck:

Let’s admit it: tablets suck. They’ve been around for at least a decade and many are faster and offer more capabilities than Apple’s iPad. But why haven’t you bought one yet?

Tablets Are Niche Devices

Full OSes Were Always There, Yet Those Who Complained That The iPad Doesn’t Have One Still Never Bought One

High-End Hardware Specs Sometimes Don’t Matter

Interface, Interface, Interface

Lack Of Tablet Apps

They are right. Thousands of people who didn’t give a fuck about Tablets are now telling us not only that the iPad sucks but that the next Tablet from whomever is going to kick ass.

It’s not going to matter which operating system they run but I have much more hope for Android based tablets rather than Windows 7 based tablets and this is because Android is at least designed for ‘touch’. Windows 7 on a low end Atom processor will not give anyone a satisfactory experience. From scroll bars to a lack of applications which are ‘touch-optimised’, a lot of people are going to be terribly disappointed with the experience of Windows 7 with a touch interface.

Folk think that Flash will make a difference. HP even reckons mentioning Flash will help their new Slate sell. You have to remember how many online Flash apps rely on ‘hover’ in the user interface – they need the mouse to be there, to hover over controls and they act on ‘click’. You don’t get this ‘hover’ with a touch interface and that means you can’t play them.

Seriously guys, read the Tom’s Hardware article and do what they suggest – spend a bit of time thinking what makes the iPhone so popular and how it’s going to make the iPad popular. It’s not about the OS itself, it’s about the apps. You can make the best tablet in the world but if your tablet apps are uniformly shit (because, for instance, they require a mouse, keyboard, stylus) then you’ll get the initial sales because “it’s not Apple, it’s not an iPad” but you’re breaking more trust with the consumer.

Tablets have always sucked. What makes these new models different?

The Third Generation of Personal Computers

Only a small percentage of people think of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace when they think of computers. Babbage conceived of a mechanical computer and Lovelace became the first programmer. Both were extraordinarily gifted mathematicians and their work underlies the modern world of computing. (In their time, a computer was actually the “operator of the … Continue reading “The Third Generation of Personal Computers”

Of course, the first difference engine was composed of around 25,000 parts, weighed fifteen tons (13,600 kg), and stood 8 ft (2.4 m) high. (Reference: Wikipedia). The march of progress would quickly change computers from being massive mechanical machines into massive electronic machines; they’d still fill rooms and no-one would really want one for the home.

A few decades later and computers were still heavy, complex, static machines and no-one would really want one in their home. It took a serendipitous meeting in an equally serendipitous place to create the first personal computers. This generation had screens, keyboards and it would be possible (and even desirable) to have one at home.

But computers were still complex, still businessy and still a little stuffy. There were limits to what could be achieved with that generation and no-one seemed to be up to the challenge of making computers even better. We were stuck in the Bronze Age of computing. It took another set of serendipitous circumstances. A decade later and there was another breakthrough, another generation was born.

Now computers were ‘friendlier’, a new paradigm had been invented and everyone copied it. The only problem was that as everyone copied they neglected to innovate and computers didn’t change. We were stuck again as the variations seemed to be more about adding different varieties of eye candy. One thing became certain – the newer graphic user interfaces made computers easier to understand, made it easier for non-technical individuals to grasp computing concepts. However – we were stuck in this Silver Age for twenty five years. Whether you used a Mac, the derivative Windows or Linux (which modelled almost all of it’s user interface elements on Windows or the Mac), you were using an interface which was first released to the public in 1984.

So, I’m obviously angling that the iPad is the third generation of Personal Computer, that it ushers in a new Golden Age of computing. And I really believe this. Apple tried it back in the 90s with the Newton – and if you don’t think the Newton was insanely great then you obviously never used one.

It’s true the iPad removes most of the OS from the end user. But is this a bad thing?

If you’re like me you spend a lot of time with the operating system of a computer. I can always find something to fiddle with, something to pay attention to with just the basic OS. With the iPhone (and by extension, the iPad), I can’t do too much other than flick between screens. This is not a bad thing. It’s going to be all about the software.

While there’s a lot of attention on the iPhone towards apps like WeightBot – apps which do one simple thing really well – we’re going to see a whole plethora of new apps which do one complex thing really well on the iPad. We have seen Pages, Numbers, Keynote on iPad and it’s only a matter of time before we see apps like Soulver, Coda, OmniGraffle and even iMovie.

We’ll only see one thing at a time on the screen and again, that’s no bad thing. We can concentrate on the task at hand. (Yes, I believe Apple is going to give us the ability to run certain AppStore-authorised third-party background processes soon so we can run location apps, Spotify and other ‘essentials’) but it will be a task oriented computer. And if Apple released a version of Xcode for iPad, would there be the same debate?

I can’t wait.

(Inspired by Mike Cane’s post regarding Jef Raskin being the father of the iPad)

And even back then in 1979, Raskin saw very far ahead:

The third generation personal computers will be self-contained, complete, and essentially un-expandable.

Android 2.0: Still ‘Linuxy’

I may have mentioned before that I’m really quite impressed by the new Android-powered phone available in the UK on Vodafone, the HTC Magic. The UI is still a little ‘Linuxy’, the touch response isn’t bad but without the sort of visual feedback you expect from something designed to rival the iPhone. The camera, although … Continue reading “Android 2.0: Still ‘Linuxy’”

I may have mentioned before that I’m really quite impressed by the new Android-powered phone available in the UK on Vodafone, the HTC Magic. The UI is still a little ‘Linuxy’, the touch response isn’t bad but without the sort of visual feedback you expect from something designed to rival the iPhone. The camera, although small and without flash, does have an optical zoom and photos taken look crisp and text is readable. It’s not a bad phone.

UnWiredBlog has an article on Android 2.0 and new devices from Samsung which will work with the new OS. They’re not unattractive and apart from the lack of onboard storage space for the most part, they’re not bad in the specifications department.

But. Here’s (two) screenshots from the device, unhelpfully stitched together.

It’s my opinion that somewhere between Android and Samsung, they need to hire some designers.

Usability Rant #UXFAIL #ROFL #ZOMG

When User Experience experts have a “UXFAIL” event on their website, it gives me a little smile. Reading Christian Lindholm’s blog about Mobile User Experiences, I felt urged to comment. Quick tap, hit Post and … So, what’s wrong with my data? Is it because I’m Irish? Related posts: ERP! Pardon me! Wherein I ridicule … Continue reading “Usability Rant #UXFAIL #ROFL #ZOMG”

When User Experience experts have a “UXFAIL” event on their website, it gives me a little smile.

Reading Christian Lindholm’s blog about Mobile User Experiences, I felt urged to comment. Quick tap, hit Post and …

So, what’s wrong with my data?

Is it because I’m Irish?

HTC Touch Diamond

Earlier this week I promised a bake-off between the HTC Touch Diamond and the iPhone 3G but I’m sorry to say that I’m going to have to cry defeat. The Diamond is a lovely piece of hardware. It’s a ‘candy bar’ phone, very compact, sold-feeling, well put-together and with a gorgeous high resolution screen. The … Continue reading “HTC Touch Diamond”

Earlier this week I promised a bake-off between the HTC Touch Diamond and the iPhone 3G but I’m sorry to say that I’m going to have to cry defeat.

The Diamond is a lovely piece of hardware. It’s a ‘candy bar’ phone, very compact, sold-feeling, well put-together and with a gorgeous high resolution screen.

The TouchFLO software is very nice. It’s beautiful. It’s high-contrast, it’s touch-enhanced and the text ad email reading applications really make use of the screen. Others had said it was slow but the version we had was quite fluid. It was later that things bogged down.

It becomes apparent that the TouchFLO interface is just a veneer on the Windows Mobile software below which, if it had some sort of consistency wouldn’t be so bad.

HerIndoors was getting rid of her First Generation iPhone and getting into a Diamond because she wanted the best phone and it’s certainly the best looking phone out there. Phones, much like shoes and bags, are a fashion accessory. But after using it for 24 hours, she tearfully admitted that she hated it and wanted to go back to using the iPhone. Her reasons:

So slow when launching applications.
Not pretty once you get past TouchFLO
It needed the stylus because the menus were so small.
You needed to read a manual to use it.

Some things worked really well. As I mentioned, TouchFLO is really nice. And the camera in the Diamond really is very good, providing decent enough resolution, great autofocus and, in the end, some pretty great shots.

Muddling through and using MarkSpace’s MissingSync software we managed to get contacts and photos synchronised (though Music was a problem) and she set about using it. The browser in TouchFLO is not as fast and responsible as MobileSafari so that when you’re actually using the device, sure, it’s a 3G phone and downloading the information fine, but it’s too slow to navigate around.

Setting the date and time as well was a chore. Scrolling through a huge list to get to the United Kingdom just got us to another list. And if your ‘scroll swipes’ hit it wrong then you’d end up selecting another country at random and the process had to start again. There was no way to skip to ‘U’ which there might have been on a phone with a keypad. This isn’t a condemnation of ‘touch’ phones but of an underlying operating system that is designed for keypads.

The speed issue was considerable. Every application took a lot longer than the iPhone equivalent to load and you quickly got glimpses beyond the sleek TouchFLO interface and into the murky world of Windows Mobile. With every tap on the screen you could expect a pregnant pause as the tap was translated to the underlying hardware and the results computed. We’re talking about maybe the difference between half a second and 1.5 seconds but in a device like a phone, a sluggish interface is very noticeable.

Also, the inconsistency between hitting the TouchFLO OK buttons at the bottom of the screen and the Windows Mobile OK button at the top left of the screen made it all more confusing as I was scanning my eyes around trying to figure out where the next OK needed tapping. And, it uses a resistance based screen (not capacitance) which, as I understand it, means it works with a stylus and fingernail but not too well with fingers. That would explain some of the scrolling issues.

These may seem to be relatively minor things but when they add up, it was simply too much. As I mentioned, the hardware is beautiful and we can hope that HTC does something similar with an Android phone later this year. On paper, this phone is a lot better than the iPhone. In execution it is incredibly flawed. This may, on the other hand, suit someone who has low expectations on the usability of a phone, who is used to Windows Mobile (though TouchFLO isn’t anything like Windows Mobile and draws the ire of HTC critics who claim the company is breaking the standard interface.).

So, when she sat down and I suggested we do the bake-off between the Diamond and my new iPhone 3G, she refused and asked me to reformat the device to remove all of her details because it was going back. Boom, that’s that. I don’t blame her because, frankly, I found the whole experience to be a chore and it may be a real shame that I’m now spoiled and expect a UI for my phone that’s simple enough to use without a manual and is responsive to my touch. The HTC Touch Diamond is now repacked back in the box to be exiled back to the supplier.

Simplicity and the Brand

I love this. It’s a very simple and concise way of showing how bad user interface design can be and it draws on our experiences with media darlings Apple and Google. While the implementation details may differ (entering a search term is very different to submitting taxes), there have to be ways that we can … Continue reading “Simplicity and the Brand”

I love this. It’s a very simple and concise way of showing how bad user interface design can be and it draws on our experiences with media darlings Apple and Google.

While the implementation details may differ (entering a search term is very different to submitting taxes), there have to be ways that we can streamline things. Cookies for example, reduce the need for me to keep entering usernames and passwords, as does Apple’s Keychain.

User Interface Design is something that is harder than it sounds and really involved removing assumptions. There’s been a lot of hubbub about how Google is the master of advertising and yet doesn’t get clicks on advertising from their front page. Their front page has a minimalist aesthetic but is arguably one of the most visited pages in the world. Or is it? Consider the deals they have struck with Apple? Firefox? Their front page is for them alone to advertise and it’s an incredibly potent branding message.

Is there any amount of money that could get you placement on their front page? I don’t think so.

So, really Google looks more like this.

and when you get past that, it’s advertising in your face, coating your eyeballs and dribbling off the front of your desk (which is one reason that I’m not really relishing Google’s Android). I think there’s a time and a place for advertising supported content and I’m not really wanting it in my face like that, on my mobile phone. We will have to wait and see how Android is positioned and exploited.