Category Archives: User Interface

Facebook Update – September 2011

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There has been a large up cry about the new Facebook updates, and I’m a little surprised at it this time.

First off, this has happened a half dozen times in the past, and Facebook has yet to take something back that the users didn’t like.

Secondly, I didn’t think the changes were really that big.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but I get the impression that the main complaints are partially due to a misunderstanding in how Facebook functions.

Facebook now gives users the chance to choose how much of a certain person they wish to see. You can use the subscribe button to see all of someone’s posts or only the “important” ones or none at all. This is entirely up to the friend, and not the owner of the account. I think this is nice, because I can go in and subscribe to friend who I care about, and possibly block some people I don’t need to follow. (Though, maybe it’s time to unfriend them…)

If you don’t want the whole of the Facebook world to see your posts, you have to limit your post to a list. (This is the way Google+ works, and to be fair Facebook has always had this functionality, but it has never been so easy until now.) If you don’t want all your friends on Facebook to see what you said to family members, you need to have your Family members in a group and when you post, choose to share it with them. No one else should be able to see the post, or the comments on that post.

Now, you don’t have control over who sees your comments on a post, (say, for example if you comment on a public posting) but Facebook has never allowed this as an option that I can remember.

I also see a lot of complaints about the new Top News section. I have never been a fan of the top news, I always want to see the recent news, and apparently Facebook tweaked the algorithm and isn’t doing a very good job right now. I don’t think it has ever done a good job. I just went through and unclicked all the “top stories” it suggested and I currently only see recent stories… not sure how long that will last, but it is a start.

I think the live feed is scary to some people, mostly because it’s live. The live feed doesn’t show anything that I couldn’t see by browsing my old news feed or glancing over someone’s profile. The fact that it is in real time and allows for quick and easy commenting only makes the site more like an instant messenger program than anything else.

Ultimately, everything that gets put on the internet should be treated as public knowledge. There is no safety or privacy out here.

That said, if you have Facebook friends who you’d rather not be sharing things with, you maybe should consider unfriending them.

Your Facebook account is FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT. You don’t need to friend people if you don’t want to. You don’t need to share things if you don’t want to. You don’t need to use it if you don’t want to.

Facebook has been testing and tweaking their new code for months. This isn’t something they threw together overnight and they will probably continue to tweak it over the following months. I’m willing to predict that in 2 weeks most people will have gotten use to the change, or stopped complaining, or stopped using Facebook. All of these are acceptable options, but I will also predict that most of these changes will not be undone by Facebook.

The people working at Facebook have a vision of a sharing and happy utopia, something many of the users don’t share with them. As users we find a way to use our sites and we make due. When Facebook comes along and tells us we should use their site differently, we ultimately must fall in line or drop out. Facebook is a privately held company. You don’t own the site. You don’t own your profile. Facebook claims you own all your information, but you are putting it in their hands. You are putting it on their site. You have to play by their rules.

I’m not happy with all the changes they have made, but I’m doing my best to understand them so I can use the site how they would like me to do so. (That said, nearly everything I put online is considered public.) Feedback to the Facebook team is much appreciated, but telling them to “put it back how it was” is not an option they will be willing to consider. They live in a world of technology, and technology never moves backwards.

And look at the bright side. In 8 months they’ll change everything again and we can complain about that too.

Krikkiters and the 5 Star Rating System

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It’ll have to go.

Netflix does an amazing job of categorizing and filtering movies in an effort to suggest movies you might like and hide movies you probably are not interested in. The metrics it uses are quite interesting, typically breaking things down by genre and categories over the course of several pages where you can set your “taste preferences”.

This is all fine and wonderful, but Netflix also employs a rating system for viewers to rate movies. It’s a 5 star rating system where 1 star means “I hated it,” 2 – “I didn’t like it,” 3 – “I liked it,” 4 – “I really liked it,” and 5 – “I loved it.”

This results in me giving almost all movies 3 stars, except for the occasional few that strike me and get a 4 star rating with the coveted 5 star rating reserved for movies by Edgar Wright and Peter Jackson.

More often then not, I find this rating system to be relatively unhelpful. Since most my movies are rated 3 stars Netflix has a hard time finding movies for me that it thinks I will rate more than 4 stars. To be fair, they are mostly accurate with their guesses, but whenever I say “I liked it” I usually like to follow with a “but this was wrong” clause. Very rarely do I like everything in a movie. But if I liked the acting but not the plot, how does it rate? If I loved the concept but nothing else, how many stars is that? What if I thought the book was better?

I think it would be more helpful if Netflix offered more rating options after viewing a movie. For example:

“I like the concept, but horribly executed.”

“Really bad dialogue. But otherwise passable.”

“Failed to hold my attention.”

“Special effects look like the work of a teenage dog. Acting was surprisingly good.”

“I cannot believe someone got paid to make this.”

Now, arguably, this is where the user reviews come in, you can write whatever you want about the movie. But free text data tends to be very hard to parse. Especially when compared to other possible rating systems.

What if Netflix gave “advanced users” an options for “advanced ratings” for movies. Rather than rating the movie as a whole an enthusiastic movie reviewer would have the option to rate the movie on several characteristics. For example: Plot, Acting, Concept, Storytelling, Suspension of Disbelief, Writing, Action, Humor, Production Quality, etc.

It might even be possible to allow the user to choose a standard subset of criteria from a vast selection of possible theatrical aspects. Maybe the user could even rate the individual actors performances for each movie.

Would anyone actually use this? I think if only a small percentage of Netflix users began using more advanced ratings there would be potential for a large wealth of data, data from consumers.

No really, would anyone use this? Probably not. But I still think a 5 point rating system for movies is a silly concept.

What I would really like to see from Netflix, more than anything, is an IMDB style actor network database. Or perhaps, a means to integrate the two sites.

Whenever I find a movie, I grab my iPad or iPod or Cell Phone or Laptop or Desktop computer and go to IMDB. Pretty much immediately. (Occasionally I use a close friend, but it’s a lot harder to follow an audible stream of names you don’t recognize.) As I peruse IMDB I usually find myself looking at movies and thinking “I wonder if those are on Netflix…” I then need to go to Netflix and search the movie out. And if I’m on my iPad I can’t add DVDs to my queue, only instant streaming movies. But if IMDB had a button which read “Add to Netflix queue if available” I could easily add all kinds of movies without having to hunt and search them out.

Basically, I want IMDB ease of hunting and cross referencing with the ease of streaming Netflix provides.

Would anyone actually use this? Oh yeah.

Filenames

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Filenames are like passwords. They cause a user to panic and usually, make a mistake.

Some applications are better than others. Take Microsoft Word for example, or perhaps some other word document application. A user opens up a blank page and begins typing. Once they are done typing they click save and then need to name the file. By the point a user is usually ready to save, they have a good idea of what the document is going to be called. The name comes easily.

Compare that to Garage Band by Apple. A user opens up Garage Band and is immediately asked to name the file for the song they are going to create. A typical user just wants to play around, or maybe start work on a project. They don’t want to name the song, they just want to start playing. (At least, that’s how I feel when I open Garage Band.) Thus, the user panics and chooses something like “Test Play Something Whatever” rather than something more substantial.

Move on to a higher level of application and things get much worse. Final Cut Pro is like Word, you can open a project and start working with video before you need to save your project. This is nice, since you can get a feel for what project you are working on before you name it. It only becomes a problem when you try to export your file.

In most academic situations that I have experienced, students will be exporting multiple versions of their project. The first version will be a draft to show to their students. They will typically name the file “Something Project”. Professors and other students will suggest improvements and the student will update the file, and export it again with the name “Something Project Final”. This will not be the final, though, because they will find something else they want to improve or something else that went wrong. It will be exported again as “Something Project Final Final” and then again as “FINAL PROJECT I MEAN IT THIS TIME” which gives no indication about what project it is for, or who made it.

File naming policies can be as important as personal password policies. If you decide ahead of time that all your files (or exports) will follow the same pattern (LastNameFirstInitial – Project Name – Version Number) then you will not be worried when it comes time to save your file. You’ll save everything correctly and be able to find the latest version of your video every time.

The same goes for passwords. When most users encounter as password box they panic and choose a password they used somewhere else. Or maybe they choose the first thing that comes to mind. If they had a pre defined algorithm for choosing a password they would be much better off.

Unfortunately, most people don’t do this on their own and need to be taught or guided on the correct path. All it takes is a few temporary files that need to be saved and the habit can quickly fall to the wayside.

In the future, applications will function like Apple’s iOS, and every app will save their own files to a special place and the user won’t need to worry about where they are saved. They might not even need to worry about file names. But until then make your life easier. So do yourself a favor, and come up with a few naming policies. Then you don’t have to panic when the scary save box shows up.

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?

iTunes Burning

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Today I needed to make an MP3 CD to backup some music. So I fired up iTunes and opened up the preferences to change my burn settings to MP3 CD. Much to my surprise, I couldn’t find that setting anywhere. I looked around for a few minutes and finally decided it must be gone.

I knew that all the MP3s would not fit on an audio CD, so I figured I would just tell it to burn and it would give me an option then. Much to my astonishment, and with a great swell in UI happiness, I discovered this dialog:

iTunes Burn Dialog

This really makes me happy. This is right where these preferences should be. The user can now just click burn a disk and then choose, rather than making the choice ahead of time in an obscure preference tab. I don’t know when this got changed, I don’t burn many disks so I am probably late in noticing. This is a great example of making software user friendly.

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.

Seasonal No Parking

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Seasonal No Parking This sign bugs me. Allow me to explain:

The sign obviously is trying to communicate that there is no parking on this street between December 1 to April 1. (For snow removal purposes.) Here’s my issue:

“Seasonal” usually has a positive connotation, it’s a time set aside for something special. For example, deer season, hunting season, holiday season, Christmas Season, etc. Seasonal is a time for allowing something that is not usually allowed.

“No Parking,” on the other hand is a negative connotation. It says that parking is something that is not allowed.

So the basic premise of this sign is that “We have set aside a segment of the year to allow you to not park here.”

It’s not normal to tell people they are allowed to NOT do something. It’s harder to understand.

Take out the “Seasonal” and simply saying “NO PARKING, DECEMBER 1 TO APRIL 1″ would be much more effiecient and easier to read.