DesignAday

The Extra Step

Beware of the extra step. If it is part of a procedure that the user carries out within a software application, chances are that it is an action that will be repeated many times over.

When creating diagrams, a common action is to center a connecting line with the object it connects to. In Freehand, this could be accomplished in three clicks: 1 each to select the objects to be aligned, and one to press the align button. The default behavior in Freehand dictates that if one object is narrower than the other and is within the bounds of the wider object, it will center to the current position of the wider object without the wider object moving. 99.9% of the time, this is the desired behavior.

In Illustrator, this is not the default behavior. Instead, both objects will move an equal amount of distance toward each other to center on the space between their previous positions. To achieve the aforementioned behavior, you must select an option to center on a key selected object from a menu. Then, if the wider object isn’t already selected as the “key”, you must click on the object that you want to be the key. This takes twice as many clicks to accomplish in Illustrator, and I’ll likely do it over a hundred times while creating a diagram.

Let the Griping Commence

May 18th, 2007, I made a post titled “R.I.P. Freehand”. Today, I finally laid Freehand to rest. I’ve upgraded to Adobe CS4 Design Standard, and have begun working in Illustrator. For the most part, I’m able to function just fine. However, I keep running into speed bumps.

Keyboard shortcuts are one source of problems. For example, in Freehand, “group” was command+g and “ungroup” was command+u. In Illustrator, it is command+g and command+shift+g. Every time I hit command+u, I turn off the smart guides—one of the new features that I very much appreciate. Freehand’s shortcuts are so ingrained, it will take a long time to relearn them.

Another cause of annoyance, and I knew it would be, is Illustrator’s reliance on separate cursors for selecting objects and points. This is going to take a lot of getting used to. In Freehand, clicking on an object selected the object. Clicking on a point selected the point. In Illustrator, I have to think about what exactly I want to select, and then pick the cursor that will allow me to select it. And heaven forbid that I would want to select one entire object and a few points from another object, say for purposes of alignment. Switching cursors switches what is already selected too.

The biggest befuddlement came when I couldn’t get my text to wrap. I’d drag the text box to resize, and it would scale the text, rather than causing it to reflow. After some research, I found that there are two types of text objects. If you just click on the page with the text tool, you get a single line of text that doesn’t wrap. If, however, you click and drag with the text tool, it will draw out a text box that behaves as I would expect it to, allowing text to reflow as the box is resized. I can’t find a way to switch text that has been created one way to the other kind. Nor can I find a way to get a resizable text box to automatically expand to fit its contents as I could in Freehand.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things that Illustrator does better, but the details are going to slow me down for awhile.

Map of the Design Landscape Through Recent History

I’d like to feature the work of one of my graduate students. I gave an assignment in which each student was to design a map of the design landscape depicting major disciplines, organizations, educational institutions, firms, luminaries, and methods. They didn’t necessarily have to include all of this information, nor were they limited to it. Forrest Conroy incorporated everything just mentioned, and then added conferences, related companies, and example products. He mapped everything over time, showing relationships between them. The resulting chart is a beautiful piece of work.

Forrest used three major categories: communications in yellow, which is equivalent to Graphic Design, interactions + activities in blue, which includes Interaction Design, Information Architecture, and Service Design, and products in red, which is basically Industrial Design. You can watch these intertwine as digital products like computers and mobile phones incorporate hardware and software design.

Lines track the careers of prominent designers along the horizontal axis of time, while vertical lines make connections between people, organizations, and methods.

Insets on the right-hand side list all NASAD approved design programs.

Design Pattern: Soft Keyboards

Efficient data entry is arguably the most difficult goal to achieve in a mobile UI. On-screen keyboards, while not as efficient as touch typing on a physical keyboard, can be useful for short amounts of text, such as filling out a form. Tablets have enough screen real estate to display full keyboards, and smaller devices can display specialized data entry pop-ups. Typically, the operating system installed on the device will provide a keyboard, which may be good enough in some instances, but custom designed keyboards that address the needs of specific user groups have the potential to be much more efficient.

• In a typical data entry form, there will be fields intended for specific types of data: dates, numeric values, time of day, locations, or “free” text entry. Rather than using a single, full-size keyboard to enter all of these, an efficient UI will provide data-specific pop-ups: a calendar pop-up for date selection, a pop-up specifically for entering the time of day, a numeric keypad, etc. These pop-ups can be smaller, obscuring less of the screen, and can make data entry quicker while also reducing errors.
• When data entry pop-ups open, they should try not to obscure the field in which the data is to be entered.
• Data entry pop-ups should be movable, so that if they do happen to obscure something that the user needs to see, they can be moved to another part of the screen.
• As data is entered, it should be displayed in the pop-up, as well as in the field it is being entered into.
• Buttons should be large enough to be very easily targeted by a stylus or finger. However, this should be balanced by the need to keep the pop-ups to as small a footprint as possible.
• Pop-up keyboards must include access to special characters needed by the users.
• Pop-ups should have a “clear” button. Keyboards should have a “backspace” button as well.

A litl More

After my brief post last week about the litl, I was contacted by James Gardner, litl’s VP of marketing. He pointed me to a post on Pentagram’s site and to a video on YouTube. As I was hoping, they painted a picture of very thoughtful design and filled in a lot more detail. In fact, as it turns out, they had an all-star cast working on this thing. Lisa Strausfeld lead Pentagram’s team in the design of the GUI, and Pentagram was also responsible for the visual identity, designed by Abbott Miller. The logo, business cards, and packaging are all exquisite.

The UI has the polish one would expect from Apple. Animated transitions bring a natural flow to state changes. The dial that is used for serial navigation in “easel” mode is repeated on the remote. They designed several channels that deliver specific information from the internet, like the weather, as well as a number of “widgets” like a clock or a feed reader. Visual treatments clearly distinguish between widgets, channels, and standard webpages. Arrangement of these items is automated much like the rearranging of photographs in iPhoto. It hooks up to your hi-def television with an HDMI cable to play movies or show photos. And, if you have more than one in the house, they can be set up to share things with each other.

Also working on the project were Cooper, Fort Franklin, and Fuseproject, although I don’t know what their contributions were. Fuseproject was also behind the OLPC XO laptop, so I’m betting they worked on the industrial design.

The video is pretty awful—lot’s of “um-uh” and fumbling around, but the product shows off well. They should really put together a professional video demonstration of the UI. I think they have a lot to be proud of. This could be a very successful product, although I’m curious to see if they’ve hit a low-enough price point. At $699 or $1,398 for a two-pack, it seems a bit much for something without local storage.

Return

I feel compelled to apologize to my regular readers for the lack of posts last week. I was sick, and blogging was rather low on my list of priorities. Sleep was a fair bit higher. I’m better now, so we will now return to our regular program.

Like Magic

I started using Apple’s new Magic Mouse today, and I absolutely love it. I find it very comfortable, a perfect weight, and with just enough resistance as it slides across my desktop. Of course, the best feature of it is the swipe to scroll. I really liked the scroll ball on my old Mighty Mouse, but this is a vast improvement. The scroll ball worked well, but just like the wheels, it could only scroll as far as your finger tip is long. This required you to move your index finger repeatedly to scroll down a page. With the swipe, you have the entire length of the mouse. On top of that, they have added momentum scrolling, like on the iPhone, so that a good swipe can send your page scrolling quite a distance. Also, the scroll ball would collect gunk over time and stop working. Then you would have to turn the mouse upside down and rub it rapidly back and forth on a piece of paper to clean it. That will not be a problem with the Magic Mouse’s touch surface.

Apple has received a lot of criticism over the years for its mouse designs. This one is a winner—likely the best mouse ever. Of course, I’ve been partial to Apple’s mice, so make of my review what you will.

A Litl Something

A new netbook-type product has been released: the Litl. I find this one more interesting than the underpowered laptops we have seen thus far, however. It takes what I consider to be an Apple approach. The creators must have asked the question, “If we were to design a laptop that was strictly for web use only, what would it be?”

The Litl looks like a small laptop—it folds open revealing a screen in the top and a keyboard and trackpad on the bottom. However, the lid rotates around to an angle at which the device can stand like an easel. The hinge acts as a handle.

The biggest change is that they realized a typical desktop OS was unnecessary. Much as Apple did with the iPhone, they created a custom UI designed specifically for web use. It is truly a case of browser as operating system.

The one flaw, to my mind, is that it doesn’t have a touch-screen. Instead, they opted for a dial on the hinge that allows you to flip through selections. I haven’t yet seen a demonstration of the UI in action, but this is begging for touch input.

Incompetence

Dustin Curtis has a tale to tell about American Airlines, the design of their website, and the way they run their business. It isn’t pretty. This post is in response, so I encourage you to read it first.

Observation 1: Give the benefit of the doubt.
Dustin’s initial post was rather harsh, declaring that AA should fire their entire design team and hire outside contractors to redesign the website. He recommended this with no knowledge of the organization or the people that work there. He didn’t consider the constraints in which the design team works or the size of the company. It would be like me writing a post declaring that Microsoft should fire all their UI designers and hire somebody else to redesign Windows from scratch. It’s a ridiculous proposition, and disrespectful. When writing a critique, you should assume that you don’t have all of the facts and be careful of making hard-line declamations. Realize that there may be good reasons for things to be the way they are that you can’t discern, and don’t place blame unless you have proof. Consider it a low-foot diet.

Observation 2: Know your limits.
Mr. X obviously suspected that his letter may not be well-received, as he asked that Dustin not publish his name. I guess he thought that would prevent anyone from discovering his identity. Just as obviously, he was wrong. If you feel like you are doing something you could get in trouble for, don’t do it, unless you are willing to face the consequences. For the most part, I don’t post about the company I work for or the specifics of the work that I do there. If I wanted to respond to a post like Dustin’s, I would approach my manager about it first. The company is bigger than I am, and I wouldn’t take matters involving the company into my own hands.

Observation 3: Respect your employees.
Even if Mr. X did overstep his bounds a little, AA’s reaction was uncalled for. He was obviously defending the company in a friendly and intelligent manner. If they didn’t want him doing this, they should have reprimanded him. I doubt Mr. X would have done it again. Firing him within an hour after his letter was posted reeks of a knee-jerk reaction that wasn’t given proper consideration. Personally, I think they should have thanked him for trying to defuse a situation that would negatively impact the company’s image, asked him to please consult with them prior to making public responses in the future, and then asked that he head up a new effort to find a way to improve the website design and approval process.

Tales from the Field: Collaboration

In the past, collaboration was limited to collocated activities and voice communication via telephone or radio. The introduction of mobile computers has opened up numerous possibilities for remote collaboration.

When multiple mobile devices are connected via a wireless network supported by a server, participating technicians can share information and maintain awareness of overall status. I’ve designed software that helps Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) units track step-by-step procedure progress, as well as equipment status, and allows warfighters utilizing GPS to pinpoint each team member on a map of the area. Furthermore, team members are able to record locations of explosive devices and other hazards, information that is immediately shared with the rest of the team. The system included a “media board” where recorded audio and digital photographs could also be shared with all participants within seconds.