Every Click Counts!

I'm gonna be really picky on this one. Have you ever counted the number of clicks you make to turn off your computer? If not, I'm gonna count it for you in this post!<1>

Let's compare the number of clicks one has to make in Windows Vista, Mac OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Linux v7.10 to turn off the computer. I chose Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard as they are the latest versions of the operating systems Microsoft and Apple have introduced, and Ubuntu as it's supposed to be the most user friendly Linux in the market[1].

This scenario assumes there's only one user logged in and that the classic shut down menu is not enabled (which is the default setting for windows).

Windows Vista:

Click #1: You click on the Start Menu

Click #2: Click on the arrow next to Lock Button

Click #3: Click on the Shut Down in the pop-up menu

Windows Vista Start menu

Ubuntu Linux v7.10:
Click #1: Click on the System Menu
Click #2: Click on Quit... in the pop-up menu
Click #3: Click on Shut Down on the logout dialogue box

Ubuntu System menu

Ubuntu Logout dialogue box

Mac OS X Leopard:

Click #1: Click on the Apple Menu

Click #2: Click on Shut Down... in the pop-up menu

Apple Menu

I know in this context one click wont kill anybody or save up that much energy to help stop global warming for a greener Earth (it might actually do!<2>), but it's not just about that extra one click, it's about how one designs the software. So the message is: think usability, every click counts!

Notes:

<1> In this post I have counted only the necessary primary steps to shut down the computer and excluded any optional actions.

<2> If each click take 1 second, just multiply that into the number of computer users. That's like millions of seconds per shut down which saves millions of seconds of electrical power.

Refs:
[1] Ubuntu wins the Most User Friendly Linux Distribution Award: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/MostUserFriendlyAward

Interactive T.V.'s own version of MAC's Spaces?

Imagine having a split screen like this to view favourite channels, with the current channel you are viewing is in the centre. 

I'm still intrigued about ways of proving ways we interact with our T.V. Last time I was focused on the issue with information about channels, here I will attempt to innovate the way we can view our favourite channels. 

Currently: Well Sky+ allows you to save favorites my pre-determining them before in main menu. To view the favourite channels you select the blue button on the controller and you can view them at the bottom. See Below>>>

This approach is all good and very useful. But there are a few drawbacks such as only textual information is given to the user about what is on their favourite channels. This is all good but it seems very static and provides user with little feedback. 

Proposal: Adapting a few of MACs functionality such as Spaces function could be useful addition. It dawned on me that this function would be really useful to be adapted to interactive t.v. in particular favourite channels.

How it would work: Well imagine you have determined your favourite channels and when you click the blue button on the controller, the screen splits and you can view your favorite channels. Moving the left, light, up and down keys you can scroll through  the channels and it would give precedent to that channel.

Benefits:Provides more information to the user. They would be able to see visually what's on that channel and any other of their favourite channels. There would be the element of better interaction in the sense that users would be able to get more valuable information for there interaction.

Issues: There are issues that need to be understood such as this approach takes users away from the channel they are viewing. In some cases people do not like this, and they rather view what's on other channels whilst watching the one they are. So this would need to be overcome. A possible solution would have a screen in the middle that allowed you to view the channel you are viewing whilst the other channels would be shown in the other 4 screens. 

Further development: Its important to note this idea is already implemented effective in Sky Sports Champions League coverage: where you are able to watch multiple matches. There are other features that apply to computers that can be applied to T.V. This is just one of many. 

Sky+ has a - point!

Since the turn of the century Interactive TV as taken off, with an estimation that in 2005 almost 60% of UK households had some kind of interactive tv box[1]. By 2010 we would have left analogue behind and be firmly in a fully digital world.

 

Considering that Interactive T.V. is becoming more important in life its quite concerning that there has been little done in improving the services and how the users can interact with them. 

I personally have a Sky+ box at home, and there are times I feel like ripping it out and throwing it away. I have had it over 2 years, so one would think I would be comfortable with the way it works. However, I still always end up making the same mistake! You are probably wondering what this mistake is, so I am going to outline it in a scenario.

Scenario:You are currently watching BBC1 and feel the need to browse. So you use the controller - left and right arrow buttons - and move to channel five in the organizer mode (meaning channel information is visible at the bottom of the screen whilst still watching the channel currently viewing). When you come across channel five in the organizer, you use the up and down arrows keys to go through the organizer to see what is coming later on in the night. You come across an episode of CSI. You seem interested and you want to find out more information such as what season it is?, what episode it is ? etc. So you click on the i button = information. This button would normally display a screen with the program content of the program highlighted. However in this scenario it does not. Instead it shows the information of the program that was being shown on BBC1.  

It is annoying feature that can lead to you giving up wanting to see this program because you cant be bothered to go into the menu(which takes you out of the channel mode - as in you cant see the program you are watching). Or you could wait for the program to start, thus disturbing you when you could have been watching something you wanted. 

There are other ways to find the above information, for example, you could go to the menu where all the programs are listed and click for the information there or you record/set reminder and go to the planner. All viable solutions but they are long and time consuming. Call me lazy for not wanting to fiddle around with the controller for an extra few seconds but I believe this issue is not assisting users ability to browse channels effectively. Users should be given an opportunity to easily browse channels and make a choice on how they can do this. It is here why I believe restricting users ability to browse channels just hinders an other wise acceptable interactive T.V. box. 

I know Sky+ have there HD boxes available, I just hope they have attempted to solve this irritating problem and make my channel browsing experience much easier. One question I would be intrigued to know is that, when Sky+ designers are designed the box, which type of process were they following? Was it goal-directed[2] or thoughtful-directed[2]?.

[1] First UK homes to go digital TV only http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4390579.stm

[2] Sharp et.al, 2007, Interaction Design beyond human computer interaction, Untied States: J.Wiley, 2nd Edition.

Toshiba's Bubble Helmet

I stumbled upon this photo some days ago, later I found out that it's the Toshiba's 360 degree view bubble helmet which according to Toshiba "will give its wearer a 360-degree panorama when watching TV or playing games".

Now forget about its usability and user friendliness to it's end-users. Even if it's just a prototype do you really think that at the user trial tests the subjects would perform normally when trying the helmet?

Some times during user trials, performance of the subjects gets affected by the novelty of the product which is a normal phenomena. In this case however, I think the performance of the subjects must have been affected by the stupidity of the product rather than its novelty. No disrespects to Toshiba, but I'd like to ask the designers of this so-called bubble helmet to have a second look at what they've designed! 

UI design or Interaction Design?

You might have heard the term "interaction design" and wondered what's its difference with "UI design"!? Also if you already knew they are different you might have asked yourself why interaction design!? is it really important?

Well I know the two (UI and interaction design) overlap heavily. But believe it or not there's a difference! UI design deals more with the graphical elements of the interface whereas interaction design deals with designing the behavior of the system (I first heard this comment about interaction design on a podcast[1]). Interaction design involves enormous amounts of functional analysis, user analysis and task analysis in order to find out what the system must do, who the users of the system will be and how they are going to deal with the system. The designer then has to define the ways that users and the system will interact. This has to cater for user friendliness, provide good mental model of the system, be simple, effective and efficient.

Let's illustrate this with an example. Let's say iPod. Apple wants to enter the mp3 player market, they gather all the mp3s in the market and have a look at them. Their interaction designers think; Ok, with an mp3 player should list all the songs in different orders, play song, fast forward and backward, skip the song, change volume, etc. The next stage would be to identify the users, their age group, their behaviour, they mentality, their body attributes, etc. Next comes the task analysis, they'll have the users performing different tasks with the mp3 players, play songs, scan the list of songs, move forward in the menu, and everything else one can do with an mp3 player. Then they classify all these data and try to find the cons and pros of the current systems. For example they might say; something is wrong with going through the list, if someone is having hundreds of songs it takes a lot of time to scan forward and backward. Or random access to different parts of a song isn't intuitive, it's still a bit linear. They then will make prototypes of different ways to do all these tasks. Test these prototypes on users and the one that turns out to be the best (the wheely thing on iPod in this case), finds its way to the market.

Interaction with iPod is through the click wheel

I hope this gave you an idea of what interaction design is. You see there clearly is a difference between interaction design and user interface design.

Now that you know there's a difference let's talk about how important interaction design really is. Asking me I would say it should be on the top 3 priorities list. As I said earlier interaction design is designing the behaviour of the system, and to end users this means THE system. Because that's what they see of the system and deal with it. Believe it or not it makes them hate or love the system. The logic is so simple; exactly the way you hate or love someone for how they behave you hate or love something for how it behaves. Just take a look around you and count how many devices are fun to work with and how many aren't. That's exactly because of their behaviour and the way you interact with them.

For users the behaviour is THE system

So you see the interaction design is an important part of the product design which is usually overlooked by most of the companies who ask their graphical and industrial designers and their engineers to do it. When it's done properly, revolutionary products come into the market which drag the industry forward until the next revolutionary product is out. Examples of this are the iPod and iPhone. As Steve Jobs said[2] they reinvented the mp3 player and mobile phone thanks to interaction designers.

Refs:

[1] DC40 Interview with Kim Goodwin at User Interface 12, http://www.designcritique.net

[2] Stevenote, MacWorld Expo, 2007

Is User Interface Important?

Well we all know for a system (any system such as computer systems, softwares, etc) to function well, all the individual parts (sub-systems) of the system have to do their own little part well, so they are all important! User interface is a sub-system in any interactive system like other subsystems. But how important it really is?

To highlight it's importance I've decomposed a computer system into three main components.

The hardware, the software and the last but not the least, the user interface. One might think the user interface is a component of software (which generally is) but that's not true. The UI (User Interface) AKA Human Machine Interface means the controls, input and output units of a system. In other words everything that enables the interaction of the users with a system is a part of the UI of that system. This said, please note that the examples given in this article are based more on the software UI.


Hardware
Everyone knows that good hardware makes a big contribution to the performance of the system. A living example can be the current CPU's we are using in our computers these days. If you are reading this entry online with the inline images in full colours, etc. it's because the modern processors are capable of processing this information for you. (I still remember the time I had a 486DX computer with 4MB of RAM and a slow modem, reading articles on text-based BBS's!)

Software
Apart from the hardware no one - in their right mind - should underestimate the power of software. It's true that a good hardware is the basis for a good software but that doesn't make it more important than software. In fact from a usability point of view they are both equally important. In other words usability of the system depends on both of these factors. Without a good software the hardware would be of no use. (no offense to Mr. Gates, but imagine running Windows on Blue Gene!)

Interface
Or more specifically the UI (User Interface) is also as important as the other two factors. To be honest I think the UI is even a bit more important than the other two. (I'll get back to this shortly)

Let's take an analogy to make this clear. Say the system is like a garden (take the soil, sky, etc. as the hardwares and the trees, flowers, etc. as the software). Then imagine the UI as a window to this garden. If the window is dirty and unclear no matter how nice and green the garden is you wont be able to see it as nice and green. So you get the idea. Interface works the same way. Even if you have the most robust software on the best hardware in the world it is of no use if you can't understand the interface. Because if you don't understand the interface you wont be able to utilize all the features of the system.

Now let's get back to my opinion on the importance of the UI being a little bit more important than software and the hardware. I believe if one of these two factors lack in their performance you can cover it up with the UI so the users won't notice it. For instance let's say the users want to upload a video on a website, but the connection is slow. You can cover this problem by giving a fun-to-watch-feedback so the user won't notice the time the system is taking to upload the video.

Here's another example: your software generates errors that even you as the developer can't figure out what they mean! By having your error reporting mechanism sensible, consistent, user friendly and in general approved by a usability specialist (not trying to promote myself here!) you can avoid possible anger and frustration that the users might experience.


To summarize this, I'd like to provide you the following diagram.
It shows the system as a triangle in which each vertex represents one of the components discussed above and as you can see, the triangle would not be complete if one of the vertices were missing. So user interface is as important as the other components of the system.