The Interaction Design Blog presents a classic mapping problem: what control goes with what burner? I know this example from my first year ergonomics course at IDE, and Donald Norman pointed out the issue in his classic Design of Everyday Things, but still, a very clear example of the problems you run into when mapping controls. Although I don't think the paragraph on 'selling usability' at the end of the post - arguing that better usability will result in more customer loyalty - is completely applicable to kitchen equipment with its low repurchasing rate.

In the Interactive Technology Design course (ITD) at IDE students design and prototype tangible interaction concepts. The challenge is to make an interactive product without resorting to traditional solutions such as screens and buttons. This year's subjects were for example an interactive playground for girls (Nelson), a fitness coach for bike training, visual reminder products (i.e., rotary reminder), and interactive portals. There is a ITD YouTube channel providing an overview of the results of the last few years, including my personal favorite from last year: Forelorn's Fortress (see movie above), but Invisiball seems like a cool game too. Or you can go for Heist if you're more of a Mission:Impossible kind of person.

There was a short while when people had already discovered (and were offered) the possibilities of text messaging, but mobile phones did not feature an easy way to type text messages (around let's say 1999). Except for Nokia phones, that were the first to (for a while exclusively) feature the T9 predictive text input algorithm. So other companies, like Ericsson, had to figure something out to make texting easier. They came up with the chatboard. I've actually used it a number of times on an Ericsson T10 phone. It's actually quite comfortable to use, but not very practical to carry around and attach it to your phone any time you want to send a text message. In time T9 became the standard, and the physical product solution chatboard, was replaced with the software product T9. The chatboard did came with a nice protective case though. It was almost as cool as those folding palm keyboards.

Usability problems are prone to surface more often in a product with a lot functionality, wrapped up in a small package; mobile stuff, like portable music players and mobile phones. Operating a 'smart' phone can feel like trying to eat a 12 course meal through a straw. On his website Small Surfaces, Frog Design's Gabriel White, tracks articles about interaction design, user interface design, user experience, usability and social trends related to mobile devices.

The title of his website reminded me of an article called Baby Faces: user interface design for small displays. It's written by - amongst others - by Erik Sparre, who was responsible for the design and usability testing of the UI of Ericsson's T28 mobile phone. And that phone had what I call a small surface. Which makes the achievement of Sparre and his team on that phone even more remarkable.

Ever wondered why there are no swearwords in the T9 predictive text input? Because the predictive text input committee is a bunch of tight-ass, out-of-touch-with-the-world desk-jockeys. Or at least, that's what I learned from this movie. Oh and another thing, why is it called T9? Because you can write Text using 9 buttons (see the link). That's almost too mundane for me; gone is the mystery...

At the CES this year, Motorola introduced the Rokr E8, which features a novel type of user interface. The front of the phone is fully covered by a glass panel, behind which there are two displays. One serves as a conventional screen, and the other one lies beneath the lower, touch-sensitive surface of the phone. Thus the text labels and icons of the touch-sensitive surface - which has tactile orientation points on them - can be changed. If you put the phone into music player mode, the keypad disappears, and you see the icons for controlling the music player. Effectively, Motorola has made a product on which they can change the button labels on a whim; a phone with just soft keys, but without the downside of soft keys (see also phonescoop definition) that the text labels are on the screen and not on the button itself.

Click the movie below to see the Rokr E8 in action.

Though not as extensively as in the Rokr, the SonyEricsson W850 walkman phone also has a UI that changes appearance if you switch to another 'mode' of use: if you switch to walkman mode, certain keys on the front panel are lit. Also the Philips HDD6330 GoGear mp3 player featured a sort of adaptable or 'feed forward' user interface. This device has icons in the touchpad that could be lit to indicate that the function was available. So if the 'play' button was not available, it was not lit.

These two products differ from the Rokr E8 in the sense that the E8 is even more flexible in what icons to present. A step further down the line from the Rokr we find the smart phones that are fully covered with a touch screen, such as the iPhone. However, the Rokr, with its tactile elements (little knobs) and a separation between the control and display area seems an interesting new addition to the spectrum.

(Via: Small Surfaces)

The programs of political parties are extensive, and the number of speeches that candidates give is enormous. As a consequence it's hard to keep track of which candidate's program is best reflecting your personal ideas. This is the reason that a number of years ago in the Netherlands, the website stemwijzer (vote-wiser/pointer, pun intended I guess...) was started. By answering a number of position statements, you could determine the party that best reflected your ideas.
The idea has been refined and copied by several institutes, and now there is also an electoral compass for the US presidential elections, initiated by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and the Wall Street Journal. In it's first month it attracted over a million visitors, and I'm guessing those are not solely from The Netherlands.
In terms of usability, the system allows you to effectively and efficiently determine your position in the political landscape. Although, it should be said none of the position statements is about whether you 'like the guy'. Or girl. So I guess they left out the satisfaction component of the usability definition.

PS just discovered that stemwijzer also developed a US version: votematch USA.

The law of similarity (illustration: wikipedia)

Measuring usability, identifying usage problems, making improvements. All very interesting, but it's a 'correctional' activity at best. The true improvements in usability are made in the design phase. But how do you design a usable interface?

An important element of designing the UI is designing the lay-out of the controls. One of the design strategies for doing this is the Gestalt principle. The central notion behind Gestalt theory is the idea (or assumption, as some would have it) that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric, and simple. Simply put: we are looking for patterns. This is reflected in a number of laws that should help in assuring a UI layout in which controls or function that 'belong together' (i.e., perform similar functions) are perceived as a group by the user.

• Law of Closure — The mind may experience elements it does not perceive through sensation, in order to complete a regular figure (i.e., to increase regularity).
• Law of Similarity — The mind groups similar elements into collective entities or totalities. This similarity might depend on relationships of form, color, size, or brightness.
• Law of Proximity — Spatial or temporal proximity of elements may induce the mind to perceive a collective or totality.
• Law of Symmetry — Symmetrical images are perceived collectively, even in spite of distance.
• Law of Continuity — The mind continues visual, auditory, and kinetic patterns.
• Law of Common Fate — Elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a collective or unit.

Read more:
Gestalt Psychology (wikipedia)
Gestalt Principles of Form Perception (interaction-design.org)
John Maeda playing with Gestalt (Maeda's laws of simplicity blog)

A list apart has an article on how to write user-interaction dialogues: Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo.

...software should “know” that we form habits. Software should know that after clicking “Okay” countless times in response to the question, we’ll probably click “Okay” this time too, even if we don’t mean to. Software should know that we won’t have a chance to think before accidentally throwing our work away.

This alarm clock/nintendo gun assembly is the best expression I have ever seen of how I feel about alarm clocks and waking up. Buzzz Buzzz Kapoww! See this one and more at www.selfmadeobjects.net.

As a bonus on the innovative alarm clocks post: another top-10 of 'coolest' alarm clocks, including one that measures your sleep cycle and determines the appropriate moment to wake you, and the Kuku Alarm Clock, which - and I quote - "at your set time, begins laying its little eggs and starts chirping away. Unless you return all the eggs into the basket, it won’t stop buzzing!"

Technorati Tags: consumer product usability, interaction design, usability, user interface design

Smashing Magazine provides an overview of 30 usability issues to be aware of. Though, as usual, the stuff is mostly web- and software-related (there's not a whole lot of eye-tracking studies being done on consumer electronics...), most if it applies to consumer electronics or other categories of consumer products. Anyway, it seems like a useful reminder, with 30 items across categories like: Rules and Principles, Psychology Behind Usability, Glossary: Terms and Concepts.
And oh yes, there's an awful lot of discussions to be had about the 7±2 rule, but to me the list just seems like a useful list of reminders or rules of thumb while designing and developing new products, and... there's a lot of cool terminology in there with terms like 'banner blindness', 'hotspots', 'gloss' or 'Baby-Duck-Syndrome'. Wouldn't it make you sound extremely cool if you could use those words in the next design meeting? By the way, 'Baby-Duck-Syndrome' refers to the following:

Baby Duck Syndrome describes the tendency for visitors to stick to the first design they learn and judge other designs by their similarity to that first design. The result is that users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems. This results in the usability problems most re-designs have: users, get used with previous designs, feel uncomfortable with new site structure they have to find their way through.

By the way, I love the irony of starting a list of '30 usability issues that are often forgotten' by mentioning the 7±2 rule.

Technorati Tags: consumer product usability, usability, user interface design, user-centred design

On the weblog No Ideas But in Things, Dan Saffer (the author of Designing for Interaction) publishes a 'library of controls, animations, layouts, and displays that might be a source of inspiration for interaction designers.' One thing I learned: old aircraft controls rule! I got to get me a car fitted with switches like that.
(thnx to Little Jakob for the tip)

Technorati Tags: interaction design, usability, user interface design

(The Tivo remote control, with the clearly visible yellow pause button)

A somewhat older (2004), but insightful story in the NY Times on the development of the Tivo remote control. We all know the omnipresent, but disaster-like remotes, that have an overload of functions neatly arranged in a 7 by 14 matrix of small buttons with even smaller text labels.

A typical remote may have some 40 buttons, with functions that are hard to divine. Often the labels -- ''toggle,'' ''planner'' and the like -- are no help. The device can feel like an afterthought, thrown together without any planning at all.

The TiVo remote control, however, is a device that is so easy to use, it even has the blessing of Mr. Nielsen (no first name needed I presume):

''They did a really good job,'' said Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, a technology consulting firm in Fremont, Calif. Mr. Nielsen called the oversize yellow pause button in the middle of the remote ''the most beautiful pause button I've ever seen.''

A very interesting accomplishment of the design team was to be able to keep the number of buttons on the device as low as possible. 'Less is more' is a slogan that many designers use, but that is not always reflected in the designs these designers make. However, the design team of the Tivo remote managed to hold the fort:

''Buttons proliferate on remotes like rabbits,'' Mr. Newby said, adding that he and his designers, who ranged in age from 25 to 45, had ''bloody battles'' over which ones to include. They managed to hold the number at 30, a considerable achievement given how many functions the TiVo receiver performs.

I think that the remote control is more and more getting the attention it deserves. If I walk into a audio-video store these days, finally they don't just display the tv sets, but in most stores they also show the remote. For one this allows you to touch the part of the TV set you will be actually using to control the box on the wall (I presumer were talking flatscreens here...). Secondly, if the remote is provided in the store, you can actually see what the UI of your TV is like, instead of just trusting the salesman that "this one is real easy to use, because all models of this brand are..."

On a side note: this Worth-1000 entry shows a solution for never losing your remote again.

Technorati Tags: consumer electronics, consumer product usability, user interface design

In the Academic Hospital in Maastricht (the Netherlands) a flame erupted in the abdominal cavity of a woman who was on the operating table for a viewing operation. The cause for the eruption of the flame was that, by accident, instead of inflating the abdominal cavity with CO2 (carbon-dioxide), oxygen was used. A spark erupted from the electrical system that's used to close up arteries, causing the flame in the woman's abdomen. It turned out the carbon-dioxide tube was mistakingly connected to the oxygen outlet in the wall. After having heard the woman did not sustain permanent injuries, I was just left with one question: why does the CO2 tube fit to the O2 outlet?

Source: De Volkskrant (in Dutch)

UPDATE
The Dutch Healthcare Inspection was also amazed by this incident. In De Volkskrant (August 10, 2007) a spokesman comments on the incident, saying: "From 2001 onwards it is required that O2 and CO2 tubes have different colors." And (more importantly in my opinion, ed.): "Manufacturers are required to take care that the CO2 tube does not fit the oxygen outlet and vice versa." It's nice to see they do some thinking at the inspection. As all to often, the idea is there, but it's implementation, getting that idea into the real world, that's the bottle neck.

Technorati Tags: interaction design, usability

Today is D-Day. Or maybe we should say iDay: the launch of the iPhone. Only a few select people have been allowed to use it up to now, so it's kind of early to form an opinion about it. But one concern that I must say I share is: how smudge proof is that wonderful glass touch-screen? Will my iPhone (when I get it with a discount in 5 years...) look like this?

A well, who cares. I just need to have it anyway. I'll bring baby wipes or something.

via Bright

Technorati Tags: consumer product usability, design, interaction design, mobile phones, usability, user interface design

This is my TV remote control and I love it. It's not that often that I hear someone mention his or her remote in positive terms, so I figured I'd explain myself. The thing is a generic remote control for low and mid-end TV sets. What I like about it is that it is not a black box with 46 similar buttons in a matrix. With this remote someone actually thought about where to put what, and how it should look. At the top, and clearly separated from the rest in a circular shape, there's the most used buttons: volume, channel, on/off and mute. These functions are right under your thumb if you hold the remote in a neutral position (see picture below). Below those primary keys there's the numbered keys to access a specific channel, or punch in a teletext page. Below hat there's a line (as if to say "watch out it gets complicated down here..."), and then you get the teletext controls. Good hierarchy, but the icons of the teletext buttons are a bit hard to understand (some room for improvement there). And at ultimate lower part of the remote you'll find the controls to program the TV set.

All in all I think it's a great design, mostly because of the hierarchy, grouping and difference in form factor between the function sets. Also the remote fits the hand better than most square boxes. Needless to say it's not shipping anymore...

(click images to enlarge)

See also:
> One Person Per Household Understands the Remote
> More Than 4 Remotes in 75% of Dutch Homes
> Fruit-Sticker Fixes Unusable Universal Remote
> How to Design a Usable Remote Control