Mint Usability

Note: Also includes a reply to PC Magazine’s article “The Google vs. Apple War Begins“

It’s always sad how the big players don’t seem to realize that user experience and usability matters. Specially when you want to have user created content on your website. I just spent some minutes reading an article from PC Magazine and decided to comment about the speculations in the post. After scrolling some time downwards I eventually found the (quite easy to miss) “Add Your Comment” box:

Like the picture above would lead you to believe that you don’t actually need to register to post a comment, like in any clever web platform (there are other, better, ways of getting rid of the spam), so I happily typed down my reply and pressed post, only to bounce back from this:

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?! I still need to register, even though the form clearly said “Post”. So I let out a deep sigh, let my shoulders slump a bit and press “Create an Account”, here we go. And what do I find? A form long & complex enough (PC Magazine – Member Registration), and full of Dreaded Red Dots *, that it could be a registration form for a bank loan. Needless to say that all it took was few quick glances up and down the form, decide it’s not worth the effort and then just forget the whole thing.

One can only wonder how much more content and discussions there would be if the posting wouldn’t require a process equal to launching a nuclear missile (… Note to self: I hope that it’s not THAT easy, or rather more complicated than that), thus bringing more traffic and revenue for the magazine. Take heed PC Magazine. Take heed.

* Dreaded Red Dot means a field that is required for the registration. Usually not a good thing if you want to have a fluid user experience.

To those who still are interested, here is the reply I wanted to post

“I personally don’t think that this whole FCC commotion is specifically about the Google Voice app being pulled, rather than the fact that Apple just yanked a “random app” from the store and is making the developer to pay all of the refunds for the app, even the 30% part that they are taking from the transactions. In my books, FCC just wants to make clear what are the rules of the app store, so that developers might defend themselves when next time Apple decides to pull apps from the App Store and make the developer pay the refunds.

-Mikko Tikkanen”

Some months ago I was questioning if Apple was becoming evil (Is Apple becoming evil?), and at least with some parts, it seems to me it’s steadily steaming towards that direction. In the end I quoted a somewhat famous movie:

“You either die as a hero or live long enough to see yourself to become the villain“

In case you’ve been living in a barrel (on under a rock, respectively) the last few weeks, here’s a brief collection of what’s going on at the moment

Chapter One: App refund policy

If you remember the road, that Apple has been going down with OS X, where they kept taking features from most popular OS X utilities and integrating them into their OS (good example would be dashboard widgets), making the original app obsolete. So, against this road taken, it’s not hard to imagine a situation where Apple is taking some popular apps and integrating their functionality to their iPhone OS. However, the behavior itself is quite everyday business in software world but the situation changes when you look at Apples contribution back to the community. Practically zero. Then you look how insanely aggressively the silver apple has been defending any of it’s IP against anyone, the situation gets bad to worse. Practically this would mean that they just keep taking IP from small developers, not giving anything back to the community and, in worst case scenario, going after the same small developer. Though, this is just nitpicking, and rather just a minor sidetrack.

Couple of days ago, this all took a step towards the dark side: Apple is expecting the developers to pay full refunds in the case any app is removed from the App Store (as Gizmodo reports). This would mean that even if magically you would end up saving all the money that you got from your app sales, you would still end up owing money. How? Remember how Apple takes 30% off from the transactions? That would be the part you’d end up owing since they are expecting you to cough up the full refund, while Apple is keeping it’s part of the sales. Sound like a bad deal yet?

So, imagine yourself as an iPhone developer who got new app out there and it’s making money. Some months later Apple comes up with iPhone OS update which has the exact same functionality, which in Apples books would be a reason enough (not like they need one, see next chapter) to remove your app from the store. Boomf! Within less than a second you went from having a successful career in iPhone development, to a guy who clearly doesn’t have enough money if the refunds start rolling in.

Continue reading “Apple taking steps towards the dark side, hatred, anger”

Welcome to the small things, covering the small things in the area of user interfaces that without no apparent reason (at least usually), one way or another hinder the user experience.

Todays receipe: Google Chrome + lots of open tabs + missing title bar

I’m a power user of tabs (like everyone who has seen any of my browser windows open knows), which means that many times in a day, all of my tabs are so small that only the first letter of the page title is shown, like so:

Now, you would get the same kind problem with any browser, but that is not the problem I’m referring to. The problem becomes evident when you are say, reading a longer article and you want to check what was the title of the article, or have lots of pages open from the same site and have to distinguish the difference between them. Normally (Firefox, IE and whatnot) you would just glance the title bar of the window and be done with it, this method however doesn’t work with Google Chrome since it’s lacking the title bar. What you have to do in Chrome is you either look around the page, to find a clue about the title of the page or hover the mouse pointer over the tab for few seconds, until the title appears as a tooltip.

Continue reading “Small things: Google Chrome page titles”

For some time now people (analysts?) have been predicting the death of a computer mouse, by touchscreen and lately by multi-touch. I’m, however, going to claim that both of those technologies are absolutely outgunned by a simple Logitech. And as a cherry on the top, I’m going to give my take on the computer mouse killer.

Why touch-technology has lost already

The statement that simple touch technology is going to be replacing the mouse is just simply dimwitted. Why? Simply because they are used in two completely different context: Whereas touch-screen rock the handheld world, computer mouse reigns as the sole emperor of the desktop computing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love touchscreens and even multi-touch, however, neither of them have the power or the ergonomics of even the simplest 5€ mouse, when it comes to desktop computing. Just think of the time you use your computer daily; 2 hours? 4 hours? For me it would be something like 8-10 hours. Now, keep your hand pointed to the screen, as you would be clicking a button on it, and see how long you can go. Now, do the same test with the mouse. See the difference? On continuous use, mouse wins hands down. Sure, touchscreens are intuitive but when it comes to desktop use, they just suck. Unless. And this is big if, unless the whole paradigm of desktop computing changes to something drastically different.

Then what?

Continue reading “Killing the mouse. And no, it’s not touchscreens.”

Today I stumbled upon an article (Apple vs. Palm) in Engadget, where they analyze the rather blunt patent infringement threat that Apple made towards Palm (and Android) when asked what do they think of ‘em. Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of software related patents, just because you basically seem to be able to patent anything, be it simple or complicated. However, now I’ve got new pet peeve: user interface patents. (I try to keep this short, as I have tendency to rant…)

Patents, bad!

Patents started as a way to protect something that was basically expensive and time consuming invention to develop, and could be copied by competitors thus earning unfair edge; gaining new tech without the resources spent for actual research. In those golden ages patents were good, in fact, in many cases they were essential for upstarts and thus healthy market. The problem comes when they are applied directly to the fuzzy world of IT; they just don’t work. In fact, they start to work against the market, restricting the possibilities of upstarts and fortifying the big companies. Basically, patents have become a stick that you keep beating your competitors with, by patenting everything and all you absolutely can. *wham* *bam*

Continue reading “Is Apple becoming evil?”

The video itself is quite old, circa 2007 (old in internet time and/or in multi-touch time), but I wanted still to post it since it illustrates nicely the way how at the moment multi-touch seems to be more of an evolutionary hit and miss than actually a step forward. The video in question is quite nice project, from couple of students from India, their aim is to create whole new Operating System based on multi-touch. Now, that’s quite a goal, and all the respect for that, but it seems that in the same time it’s also the downfall of the project. At least when looking it from the perspective of usability .

Head on forward for video and more analysis

Continue reading “State of the Union – Multi-touch, Independence Day (the movie) of usability”

I’ve been throwing this concept back and forth for about 6 months now, thinking if I should just publish it or try to develop it further before publishing. Well, since I don’t have the proper resources nor the time to develop it further at this point, maybe it’s just easier to publish it. So here we go, natural zooming for digital displays:

You know how you look n picture and there is n detail you want to see, like the subjects face? You squint your eyes and maybe look closer to the picture. How about harnessing this natural habit to user interface? And why hasn’t no-one done that yet?

Here is the basic idea in rough scetch:

Read on.

Continue reading “Enhancing natural behaviour – Natural zooming, anyone?”