Category Archives: Software

User Experiences on XBox Live

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[Begin Rant]

My Brother once had an xBox live account but let it slide due to budget restraints and wanting to buy some totally awesome things that may or may not include a seven foot long sword.

Anyway, over the holidays our foreign exchange student suggested that he, my brother, my cousin, and myself play some Halo. So we try to start up a firefight match. All of us log in and after getting everything set up, we are informed that we have too many people to play firefight. So we play some multiplayer instead. But this isn’t good enough for four gamer buddies on vacation.

Now my cousin does have xBox live, and he also happens to have a promo code for two free days of xBox live Gold. So he brings his xbox and sets it up in one room while my brother signs into his account, enters the promo code and then downloads a whole years worth of updates for his system.

Some time later we are ready to begin. My cousin sets up a match, I join as a guest on his box while my brother and exchange student try on my brother’s box. The second a guest a logged in on my brothers trial account they get kicked out of the game. For some stupid reason a two day xBox Live Gold trial doesn’t provide 100% of the functionality of a Live Gold account. (Great way to test it out and see if it’s worth your money, right?)

Having no choice but to get an actual account, the foreign exchange student offers to pay and heads upstairs to get an xBox Live account for my brother. Since he was paying he decided to add it to his profile, and after putting in all his information, he realizes that he doesn’t have a postal zip code and xBox Live won’t let him sign up.

Again denied from our gaming ambition, I offer to put my credit card in. So I put in my credentials, unknowingly, into the foreign exchange students account. Upon finishing all the entry I am told by Microsoft that his account is not eligible for xBox Live. (I’m not sure why, they didn’t say. It might have been his age.) Also, Microsoft won’t let me take my credit card info out of his account via the xBox.

You’d think. You just might think that they could have told the account wasn’t eligible before they had me enter ALL MY DATA IN. You’d think.

By this time my brother has finally grabbed a USB keyboard to help with data entry and after logging into his account I am able to put all my info into Microsofts system again and purchase three months of xBox Live for $9.99.

Overall this was one of the most time consuming and painful consumer experiences I have had in quite some time. Not to mention that I now have to get two people to log in to the Microsoft xBox Live account and remove my credit card info. (Sorry, Microsoft, it’s not that I don’t trust you (though I don’t, [You can thank Sony for that]), it’s that I don’t need my younger brother and a Chinese exchange kid to have my credit card on file.)

Would it kill these companies to make this process any less painful? It’s killing me.

File Systems and Normal Users

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What is a file system?
In simple computer terms we can consider the file system to be a hierarchal listing of the contents of a computer. For example, you might consider how your computer has specific folder for you documents, photos, movies, etc. It’s an organizational system.

The problem is that people don’t understand file systems. This is a very interesting problem, because we use them all the time in our day to day lives.

File systems in life are vastly more abstract, practically to the point of transparency. For example: the package is in my car. Or the key is in the top drawer or my desk, in my office, down the hall. We use this system to file away locations of objects all the time. It’s perfectly natural.

It only makes sense that we would use this natural mapping in the world of computer files as well right? Well, no.

In the world of software, a folder is a folder is a folder is a folder. What differentiates one folder from another? The name? Occasionally the color or the icon? That’s not enough.

When a user goes to save a file they are presented with a box of choices. They often have to navigate a series of identical folders to find the correct location to save a file. Sometimes the computer tries to help by guessing the correct location. Sometimes, such as in Mac OS, the folder structure is hidden from view.

Mac OS X save box, hides the folder structure.

Here the folders can be seen and selected.

I can’t tell you how many times a student (a younger students, supposedly of this tech-y generation) will save a file and immediately have no idea where to go to find the file.

Now, applications are getting smarter and often have options to view the most recent documents, but this does not solve the problem. In fact, one might argue that it makes things worse, since it can be so heavily relied upon.

Sometimes it’s not really a problem, when a Word document is saved, it’s saved somewhere to the drive, probably in the documents folder. You know what you are saving and you know the general location of where it is.

Other applications are less clear. We have a sound capturing application which saves a folder rather than a file. This way all the sound files are saved as separate .wav files in one location. But this is not clear to the user who casually wants to use the program. If and when the user saves the recording document, they are not saving the sound itself, but a file which contains a reference to all the sounds. If they copy this file to a different computer, they don’t have access to any of the sounds.

Some applications, such as Final Cut Pro, are even more confusing. Final Cut requires that a “scratch disk” be set. This is a location where Final Cut can store the video files and other things that it might need. This concept is not a normal for computer users and teaching it provides a certain level of difficulty. If a user doesn’t understand what a “scratch disk” does, they will be less likely to remember it or think that it is important. Even an experienced user can forget to correctly set the scratch disk and will soon find that they have lost some very valuable files.

Of course, this becomes even more complex when moving into a system where multiple computers are being accessed and files are saved to a central server. To computer geeks like myself, it’s perfectly obvious that a server connection should be listed under “Volumes” at the root level of the Mac OS. The geeks know why there are two folders with different icons. (No one knows why Apple hasn’t fixed the sidebar so that it shows connected servers and doesn’t say “connection failed” every time you try to click on it.)

What does life look like without file systems?
The iPad (and Apple’s iOS) is a perfect example of providing a transparent (more life-like) file system.

Typing apps, such as Notes give you a list of all your documents, and allow you to send notes as emails. Documents are automatically saved when you close the app. The user doesn’t have to think at all.

Photos from the camera are saved to the “Camera Roll” there is no other option. From the viewing gallery you can email the photo, print it or copy it to use somewhere else. Other image applications can access those images and save their images to it as well.

If you are searching for something the search is “look for the app” rather than “hunt for the file.”

For what it’s worth, Apple’s iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie operate in a similar fashion, although they sometimes require the user to set up an initial “Library” where these things are kept.

Web apps and websites work the same way. On Facebook I know to go to “Photos” or “Videos” to find what I am looking for. It’s still a file structure, but it’s more visual and it feels more like “real life”. It feels more location based rather than folder based, go to flickr for photos, go to YouTube for videos.

I think this is where the future is headed, or at very least, should be headed. We need a system where the all the file management is handled by the application, rather than the use.

Difficulties
That said, there are many difficulties associated with this system.

The iPhoto database can be fragile. I have more than once been in a situation where the iPhoto library is corrupted, or the hard drive it resides on is unreadable. In these instances, photos can still be accessed inside the library, but changes and modifications are not saved.

If files are stored in a “secret” location, how can they be backed up? Can it be saved to a flash drive for transfer or for sharing? Can I access the file from different devices?

What if I need to use several apps to complete my work flow? Can each app see the file I need it to see?

As more cloud syncing services (such as DropBox) become available, I think some of these issues will solve themselves.

Overall, the file system will never go away. There are certain features and options we will always need to have access to. In the end, though, it’s something that normal users shouldn’t have to think about. And honestly, it’s something I wish I didn’t really have to think about.

Do you think we’ll ever see file systems become completely transparent? How would you solve these problems?

Obnoxious Windows

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I don’t get this:

Windows ALERTS YOU THAT THERE ARE UPDATES FOR YOUR COMPUTER AND YOU SHOULD INSTALL THEM NOW!

Then, after you finally choose to install the updates, Windows immediately HIDES the update window so you don’t have to look at it.

And finally, after the updates are installed you get a popup box that wants to tell you what it was installing when it hid the window from you.

I don’t get it. First Windows alerts me that it needs my attention, then immediately tells me to go away, and upon finishing it’s task it pops up and wants to tell me what it did. I didn’t care about what you were doing before, Windows, why do I care now?

Timing and a Killer App

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In 2008 I bought the Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth Anthology. I paid $22.48 with shipping. Here’s my receipt from Amazon:
Original Purchase

About a year later, I wanted to play multiplayer mode with my family and friends, but I only have one copy of the game. I figured $20 would be well worth it for the fun that it would generate. I headed off to Amazon only to find this:
Year Later

After 12 months the game had jumped from under $20 to almost $200. If I wasn’t so attached to the game I would have thrown my copy up for sale to see what kind of cash I could rake in. I didn’t though, because it’s a good game and I still have to beat it.

Out of curiosity, I went back again on September 8th to check the price. The price had dropped tremendously, but was still more than I was willing to spend.
Weeks later

It’s really amazing how games change prices over time. There needs to be an app or service which you can use to track the changes in price. How about a piece of software that tracks the current price of an item on a number of different sites and offers the option to auto-buy an item if it drops below a target price? (Provided you have an account on that site, of course.) Now I think that sounds like a killer app!

Price Check:Battle for Middle Earth Anthology on Amazon

Duplicate Functionality

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“Your application duplicates the functionality of the built in Iphone application…”

You know what? Apple has a really good point here. If you already have one means of doing something, why would you need another one?

I mean, Safari comes with my Mac OSX, so why would anyone want to use Firefox? Or Camino? Or Opera? That would just be silly.

Mail.app can check all my email, which means there isn’t a reason in the world for anyone to make, let alone use a different app for this.

TextEdit comes free with my computer, and there really isn’t any difference between it and Pages, or for that matter, Microsoft Office, so there isn’t much point in keeping those development teams around much longer.

It’s really ironic that a company whose most famous motto was ‘Think Different’ has decided that eveyone who uses their product will use it in the same way for the same thing.

DeChaos 5

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For the past month I have been working on thee next version of DeChaos. I have re-engineered the interface to what I hope is a better method of selecting the folders. I hope it is more intuitive now. I am also looking into some other neat options and possibly ways to integrate it with iPhoto.

I have been using DeChaos 5 to sort my photos all day today and I think it’s working well.

Rolling Down the Hill

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Technology has reached a point where consumers are literally afraid of their electronics. They are not afraid that the electronics will attack or hurt them, but rather afraid that if they touch something, they will break it. This has several implications, which are rather discouraging for the more tech minded individuals.

To begin, allow me to illustrate the problem.

Let’s say that you develop the concept of a car. You design a car, you engineer a car and you are finally able to build a car. After finishing this tremendous project, you take it out and show it to people. You say, “Look at this! It’s a car! Isn’t it neat? You can have it! Go ahead and use it!”

After leaving the car in their hands, you leave, only to return several hours later to find twenty or thirty people pushing the car to the top of a hill, climbing onto the roof, and riding the car down the hill. You look on in horror as the car smashes into a tree, at which point everyone picks themselves up off the ground, brushes themselves off, and begins to push the car up the hill again.

This is not at all what you expected, so you try to explain: “Wait! Look, see? You can open the door and go inside! There’s a steering wheel! You can make it turn! There is a radio, you can listen to music! There are breaks, so you don’t hit trees! Why are you pushing it up the hill?! You could drive it up the hill, in fact, you could drive it down the hill, or anywhere you want! You can use it for so much more? Don’t you see!?!?”

The problem that we face is the result of many issues. The first being:

Features are not immediately obvious.

The people building the technology take their work for granted. They added or designed features that made sense and they understand it perfectly. It’s completely obvious to the builder that a car should have a steering wheel. Isn’t that common sense? You should be able to set the home page on your web browser, right? Doesn’t everyone know that? In short, no. It’s an additional feature, not a requirement, and as such many people will not even think about it.

Users don’t always understand the language used.

???????? ????? ????????Why do you go to “Preferences” to change the settings? How is someone suppose to know that? Take a look at the screenshot to the right. Check out the keyboard shortcut for “Paste and Match Style.” What on earth is that symbol? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any keys on my keyboard which even remotely match that first symbol. What’s with the up arrow? Is that the up arrow key? (No, it’s the shift key.) How do we expect people to know this? Now take a look at “Complete.” First off, even I don’t even know what “Complete” does and secondly, what on earth is that circle with that arrow? How is this not confusing?

If users don’t understand what a feature does, it doesn’t matter if they can find it or not. Granted, helping them to find the feature is the first step, but they are not going to go out looking for the feature unless they either know that it should be somewhere or they just want to dabble around. The users are more than happy to ride the car down the hill. It’s fun and exciting, it does what they want. Why do they need more?

Users are afraid of breaking things.

If a user has something that works for their needs, they have no reason to go and change anything. It might break something, and if it does break something, they may not be able to put it back to how it is now.

This ties in greatly with the last issue. If users don’t understand what is being said, they won’t use the feature because they don’t know what it does. But they are afraid to try new things because they fear that doing something they don’t understand will completely break what they have.

In some respects, this is a good fear to have. Users shouldn’t go around deleting random files from their system folder. (Or for that matter, any files from their system folder.) When it comes to learning more about their computer and features that they have, it is counter productive.

I don’t really know why I should put this smelly liquid in my car. What if that means I can’t ride it down the hill? What if that breaks it? What if that’s not suppose to go in there? I’m fine how I am, I won’t touch anything.

What can we do about it?

The solution is not a simple project. The good news is that the younger children today are becoming much more adept at working with the newer technology. The learn quickly and are more willing to try new things. It’s the older generation of users that will need more help in learning their way around things.

For the consumers we need to find a way of explaining the features, the language and how to explore the program. Once the users begin to understand, they will be much more capable of handling issues on their own.

While educating people about technology, though, it is important to also educate the technology creators and designers so that they understand how to view their design as if they are a first time user.

Before I end, let me give one example of a cool new feature which I think is really a great step in the right direction.

Apple has done a really neat thing with the Help menu in Leopard. The Help menu contains a search box which not only searches thee help documents, but also searches the menus for options. This is a great feature to help explore the program and to find features. We need more things like this.

Web Design Toolkit

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On my Mac I have a set of tools I use in conjunction for all my website design. For most of my graphic design I use Photoshop, I’m very fortunate to have such a powerful tool at my disposal. For coding and file transfer, I have a small little set of tools which has become indispensable.

Transmit: Transmit is my favorite FTP client. I have used it for a few years now. It’s reliable and robust. One of my favorite features is that it allows me to edit files on the server using the program of my choice. Which are usually:

TextMate: I got TextMate from the original MacHeist bundle. If it wouldn’t have been included, I probably wouldn’t have ever justified TextMate’s steep price tag. After using it for a year and a half, I don’t think I could live without it. It’s definitely worth every penny.

CSSEdit: I love CSSEdit. It’s an amazingly powerful tool for working with CSS. It allows me to type in my CSS when I know what I want, but also choose options from menus if I don’t remember the syntax. I can’t imaging designing without it.

All of these tools work wonderfully, but also they are very pretty applications. They are designed well. I don’t think I would call them perfect, but are usually very intuitive.

What’s in your toolkit?

Finding the right todo list

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UPDATE: I changed the title of this post to something more appropriate. A future post will talk more about my general complaints with web apps.

The last week in February I went out and finally bought myself an iPod Touch. I had been wishing I had one since January 1st when a good friend showed me his. The original idea I had, although now seen as rather naive, was that I would get an iPod Touch, Apple would shortly after announce the SDK and within a week or so I could have some sweet calendar and to-do apps running on my iPod.

For over a year I have been working with a Palm Zire 31, and have been very pleased with it, but when I got my iPod, the Zire went to ebay. I was really hoping that the iPod could fully replace my Palm Pilot. Well, Apple made their announcement and it wasn’t what I expected. They told me I had to wait until June, or more likely, early to mid July, before I could use my iPod like I wanted too.

I figured I could live with this and that I would simply have to run off Web Apps until June, which wouldn’t be entirely hard because most of my time is spent on a well wireless campus. I already had a preconceived idea of how a to-do list should work and I was hoping someone had made a really wicked awesome web app that would fulfill all my needs, hopefully making things easier and more user friendly than my Palm.

I was first recommended towards Ta-da Lists, which I was really hopefully about, coming from 37 Signals. It was a neat app, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I really wanted something with due dates, so I can put every assignment for the rest of the semester into it, as well as a long list of things I want to try to accomplish in my free time. I quickly decided that Ta-da Lists was not what I was looking for and moved. (I really like the idea behind it and I love the simple to use interface, but it’s just not what I needed.)

I did some searching via Google and came across a site called, Just Another Mobile Monday, which had a list of several good applications for online to-do lists. A site called Toodledo caught my attention and seemed to have everything I needed. I like Toodledo, it did pretty much everything I wanted to do. It has priorities and allows for grouping in folders, and maintained a “Hotlist” of all tasks that were overdue or coming up soon. For anyone looking for a good to-do web app, I would put Toodledo on my list of “web apps you should try.” For some reason though, I wasn’t satisfied. I had used Toodledo for a few weeks and I really liked it, but I decided I needed to try something else, to see if it fit things better.

The next web app I decided to try out was Listingly. The interface looked neat and method of breaking things down into lists looked promising. After trying it out for a bit though, I was not very impressed with the site. The images wouldn’t always load and the text never sat right in the buttons. I played around with it for a day, but by then I knew I needed something else.

I heard Leo Laporte mention that Remember the Milk was a really good to-do list for the iPhone. I had seen it before when searching for a to-do list, so I thought I should try it out. Remember the Milk looks really promising, but unfortunately, it’s not as nice as I would like yet. After playing around on my Laptop I decided to give it a try on my iPod. I finally found the iPod optimized version of the site and discovered that it was for “pro” users. This means that there is a $25 yearly fee to use the service. Fortunately, they have a 15 day trial period for the software, and I was quickly up and running.

Remember the Milk has a very nice interface, although there are some things that take some getting use too. I have used it for 15 days now and don’t fully understand how location and tags fully work, but I really liked the rest of their set up. The little side graphics looked wonderful and they color scheme was nice too. There were a few more options in adding a task than I really needed, but it worked how I expected for the most part and worked well.

Today, however, my trial is up. Ideally, I want to use a iPod based app, rather than a web based app to store my to-do lists. Over the summer I won’t always be in a location that has wireless connection, in fact, after another year of college I can’t guarantee I’ll have wireless connection anywhere. I’m really hoping to find a great to-do list app for the iPod in June or July. One that will sync with iCalendar and everything. As much as I like Remember the Milk, I don’t feel that $25 is worth 3 months of usage, especially if $25 is suppose to give me $12. Personally, I can’t justify the spending of that money. I can work with the “non-optimized” mobile version of the site, but it really isn’t the same if you know how it could be.

Surfing the Apple website, after my trial had ended, I stumbled across Noter, a simple little to-do list on the web. It took me about 2 minutes to decide that it had no chance of serving my needs and again I needed to move on.

Which actually brings me up until now. I decided to write up my experience, and actually in the process have discovered two things. The first is that there is a site called Vitalist, which like Toodledo and Remember the Milk, look promising. The iPhone interface is free, and it appears to have a good feature set. I have signed up for an account and will probably spend the next day or two playing around with it and seeing how well it works.

The other thing I realized while writing this up was that I really did like Toodledo, and if Vitalist doesn’t live up to my expectations I can always fall back onto it for a few months until I am finally able to run apps on my iPod.

In Conclusion

There are a lot of web apps out there for staying on top of your to-do lists. I think my favorite has to be Remember the Milk, but I don’t agree with their policy of charging for an iPod interface. I understand it makes sense financially for them, but I just wish it was free.

Toodledo is probably my overall favorite because I have used it the longest, but I’m curious to see how well Vitalist works in comparison. After I spend more time with it I’ll have to post up my experience, but I’m hoping it’s going to be a good one.