5 posts tagged “interface”

    How many times have you suddenly "discovered" a feature about a certain software that could of possibly saved you hours of time had you known that feature before? It's all too typical to find hidden features in software these days. The problem isn't that designers intend to keep you from using such a feature, it's that the design limits them from "trying to put everything in front of the user". There's the first mistake - don't.

    There are some products that will put everything in front of the user while other products will only put a few things while hiding the rest from perspective. Users will either find themselves searching and searching for something that they need to get to or slow down the confusion and filter through all the unnecessary, even still - distracting - garbage in front of them.

    To avoid this scenario, designers can equip themselves with learning about what tasks are important to their users in addition to creating workflows. Most users can only get one thing done at a time. It's usually best to follow this idea of presenting things one at a time - wherever appropriate. For instance, instead of providing the textbox to post a new blog post, there is a Create button at the top of the page. I can see that when I need to accomplish that task, it's right there in front of me to get to it - without distractions.

    As a user we can be prone to wanting everything in front of us at every possible moment, but what we tend to forget is that we don't always need to get everything - everywhere - done at the same time. So, in supplement we complete tasks according to the context or point of focus we are in. At the same time, with respect to the designer, we need to understand that users need to be able to get out of context quickly - without seeking it out, which can lead to frustration. Simple things like - "I'm done", "Save", "Ready", "Back", "Previous" help users understand that they can navigate to other points of focus not only fast but very simply.

    There is an age-old saying that everything that can be thought of has already been created in some form or another. The problem that differs from every single scenario is not necessarily the practice that implements the solution but the entire product that shows itself through its main and completed interface. While the importance of lean and efficient code is and always will be there, there is of much greater importance to a product that can market itself. But let's take a step back at what great products entail in their user interfaces.

    There are a load of toolkits available to create graphical user interfaces today for the web, desktop and mobile but what most of these toolkits tend to do is supplement a key component in creating a product - showcasing originality. In fact, the greatest part about creating a new product is that you have full control over how your users are going to interact with it - you can choose to make task completion inherently difficult or inexplicably easy. In all of interaction design this is quite possibly the most important - work hardest on it over any other.

    The only successful product out of that market will be one that can differ itself in great interaction experience. Of course, creating that will not be easy and should not be taken lightly. Efficient code takes much thought into building algorithms that you can depend on. The same goes for interfaces in that successful products take much more thought, time and emotional presence into designing interfaces that you can depend on.

    After watching a great presentation about the technology and interaction concepts that the people at Humanized try to represent, I decided to check out their site and their philosophy. Some of the points in their philosophy overlapped with the presentation that was given by Aza Raskin. One such item in the presentation that I thought was a great rule of three to follow compares itself with Asimov's Three Laws of Robots in Raskin's Three Laws of Interfaces.

I think I'll frame these :)

    As well, their philosophy is based on several principles of interaction design, well actually all are based on interaction design and the focus on content. You can read the full details of their philosophy on their site.

1. It's not your fault.

If you're having trouble using some tool, it's not because your "not good with the technology", it's because the people in charge of the technology didn't do a good job designing the interface. Though interaction design is a hard and heavily responsible task, what should be blamed on poor design is instead blamed on incompetency.

The analog watch is very simple to set the time. Just turn the knob. Digital watches make this task difficult.

Ensure that your users are getting the practical solution over the configurable, extensible, impractical choice.

When a machine can ensure that it will never lose your data it makes interfaces much simpler to work with. No need for confirmation dialogs because anything they've done can be undone.

There is a multitasking myth that comes up with the way we perform tasks. In short, what we think is multitasked is actually a focused task while the other is automated in some way. Like typing while composing sentences - typing is automatic. Or driving while talking to someone - the driving is automatic. It becomes automatic as soon as it becomes a habit. One thing at a time.

Just like writing, typing or driving the tools and interfaces that we've used allow us to create good habits that benefit the goals we would like to accomplish. Bad habits can form from bad interfaces such as in a typical saving a document scenario - like hitting don't save when we meant to save it.

When you build habits while you use good interfaces, having a mode change can break those habits or prevent them from ever building up in the first place. Good interfaces will typically have as few modes as possible.

As users are accomplishing one task to the next in an application, it is important that they only have to retain a small amount of information to complete those tasks. This ensures habits to form and it maintains the sanctity of every our train of thought. The task to learn a task should be progressive in nature as it is to learn to speak.