Mint Usability

Good news everybody! Apple’s iPhone OS is (some would say finally) getting into the multitasking game. Well, they are about to get into the game, the new OS was just announced today.

I was following the event via Engadget and saw something that caught my eye. Here’s a quote from the QA session in the iPhone OS 4 event (from Engadget):

“Q: How do you close applications when multitasking? A: (Scott Forstall) You don’t have to. The user just uses things and doesn’t ever have to worry about it. A: (Steve Jobs) It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.”

Now, this is why I have a serious love-hate relationship with open source as a whole: It just seems to be unable (as a process) to provide good UX or usability. Lately I’ve been following the Android camp a lot, and I’ve even became quite giddy about the new HTC Desire: The way it (Android 2.1) handles multitasking, notifications etc. is just amazing. Same couldn’t be said about iPhone, at least so far, until the Android-like multitasking arrives.

However, the problem with Android is that it’s open source, which inherently means that anyone can pitch in, even if they have no experience in the matter. Good example is that some Android developers even keep saying that Android needs a task manager, because it’s a multitasking platform. Which, no matter what way you look at it, is just the wrong way to look at the problem. Or, one could even say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem… Meanwhile, UX/usability experts are trying to tell people that if the most downloaded program in Android Market is a task manager, something is inherently off. When it comes to good UX, the user shouldn’t be worrying about these things, rather than just use the damn thing.

This, is something that open source process has, so far, been unable to deliver. However, commercial projects realize this, just because they do focus group testing, they do UX/usability evaluations etc. I’ve talked this lot before and I will say it again – Open source, as in it’s current form, is just not capable of providing products that deliver good UX. Good UX (like good usability) needs designers and testing, neither of which are present in open source projects. Or, if they are, their voices can’t be heard from all the other opinions making themselves heard.

So tip of my hat to Apple. This might actually be enough to get me into the iPad game, since for me the no. 1 problem, hands down, was the lack of multitasking. If I can’t run for example IM messaging, Spotify and a browser at the same time, the device is as good as dead weight for me. “It has the best browsing experience, ever! Boom!” – Well, it doesn’t matter to me if that’s ALL you are going to do with the device. Besides, my main browsing experience is not going anywhere from my desktop and full size real keyboard (and hopefully soon new big screen). But now, with multitasking, the device just got a whole lot interesting!

Now, if they would just let me use it properly without iTunes, I would be a happy camper. But, knowing S. Jobs, that is never going to happen. Which just makes me a sad panda.

PS. I have to say that, I think Steve was wrong saying “stylus is just making it wrong“, as I have bunch of designer/artist friends who would just looove this thing with pressure sensitive stylus.

Welcome to another installment of the Small Things series. This time the tale is about news aggregation giant, Digg.com, who for some reason seems to be shooting itself to the leg by introducing CAPTCHA to the login process.

The sole reason of existence for CATPCHA is to shoot down non-human users, since the computer supposedly can’t figure out the actual letters/words in CAPTCHA field, thus it’s usually used in user registration forms. Though, I’m not sure how long this feature has been in the login form since I really haven’t logged in to Digg for a while.

Now, while I’m sure there is some sort of reason to this kind of use (one being bot(s) using “fake” accounts to login and digg up certain stories) I’m not so sure if the end result is right on this occasion. The immediate effect on myself was that after several attempts to trying to remember my password I eventually gave up and moved on without ever logging in. Why? One of the reasons was clearly the habit of logging in generally includes entering your username and password and pressing enter, first I didn’t even see the whole field completely. When I noticed the CATPCHA test I practically gave up after trying two times. Why? Because even though the process of trying couple of different mutations of the password is not that complicated and tedious, the CATPCHA instantly morphed the whole task into something that really demands my immediate attention to get through the simplest of tasks in online world.

Could this be avoided? Why not just use the massive statistics that is the backend of Digg and just start forming patterns? At some scale this is already done, confirmed by Kevin Rose at Diggnation (in some random episode), then apply that data and try to force diggers who always end up digging the same stories to do the CATPCHA before digging. If they fail repeatedly that would identify them as bot accounts, which could lead to suspension. It’s hardly a perfect solution but it’s something that wouldn’t punish the regular users.

Rule of Mint: If you have to start complicating the user experience because of a small group of users, and thus penalizing the larger part of the audience, there’s inherent problems within the system itself.

The statistics nowadays seems to tell us that the PC gamers are a dying breed. As the next generation consoles takes over, PC just whimpers and dies. Why? And is this the reality we, PC gamers, are facing?

Since this is an usability blog, rather than gaming one, at this point one should have creeping feeling that, in my mind, this has something to do with usability and user interfaces. Well, if you came to that conclusion, I salute thee, thus thy are correct.

Continue reading “The dying breed and how PC gaming needs to adapt”