Usability implications of ocular-kinesthetic dissonance

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The Simpsons

Starting a web site redesign? After all of the flowery talk about brands and colors and what-ifs, make sure the creative lead understands this basic fact.

Alan sent me this link to Engadget's review of Jobs' Macworld keynote. Nothing new here for Macolytes, but I thought the email UI was very interesting.

To save space, they only display sender name and timestamp in the main message list; the message subject is bumped into the detail pane. This is a great example of feature prioritization, in terms of the UI and the audience. Apple is making great strides by targeting casual (non-business) users across their product line, rethinking commonly-accepted features that were originally designed to meet business users' needs. Subject lines are very important in email-heavy business environments, but many personal emails are little more than Facebook-esque nudges, where subject lines are really only useful for identifying spam. A spam warning icon, though, might be useful...

Just a brain fart while reading The Design of Everyday Things:

Increased complexity leads to an increased likelihood of what Donald Norman describes as "slips". Thinking about this, I realized that it's not only due to the obvious math of "more options equals more wrong options"; if we think of actions stemming from a neural model of patterned relationships, increased interface complexity increases the sum of patterns and mental relationships, therefore decreasing pattern comprehension (or pattern matching, a critical component of task completion).

While doing some research I discovered this delightfully straightforward COPPA homepage. Reminiscent of the similarly clear Hay Net homepage, these kinds of pages make me feel a lot better about my taxes.

Jeff recently forwarded me an article about Yahoo's recent drop in page impressions as a result of implementing Ajax across their site. While this makes perfect sense to a technologist (Ajax is getting hype precisely because it allows users to access functions and content without full page loads), it spells a conundrum for less forward-thinking decision makers, like say, comScore.

Here's the business thinker's dilemma: when used appropriately, Ajax improves user experiences by speeding information retrieval and facilitating sophisticated interfaces. At the same time, it's bad for Accounts Receivable if the company generates revenues from advertising, which is typical measured and invoiced based on page impressions (which are currently defined as full page loads). In a recent conversation with a prospective client, this same question came up: you're not using too much Ajax are you? The fear wasn't that we were going to scare away users with pointlessly advanced features but that we were going to provide a world of functionality in a single page impression.

I am always saddened to see plywood wheelchair access ramps retrofitted to multimillion dollar edifices. They're ugly and incongruous, and shout "whoops, we forgot about you," to a valuable minority of users. It leaves me hoping that the building owners sued the architects. Unless the building was designed before 1670.

During the course of my recent search for a Junior Product Manager, I met some people who were interested in learning more about what it means to be a product manager.

Here's a recommended reading list - these books got me through the early stages of my prodman career, and now live on my nightstand or workbench. They're heavily skewed towards Internet product design (less low-tech, less marketing stuff, more design and usability). In my future "funnest job" rant I'll talk about all of the disciplines that product management intersects, so all of my avid reader can better understand just how biased this list really is.

Catching up on Jakob Neilsen's articles, I came across this piece on users' reading patterns. This is a good one to bookmark, so you can easily explain to someone why "clever" section headings aren't generally a good idea. If a heading doesn't clearly explain the content's value, the user moves on pretty quickly.

It also raises questions about the trend towards placing site navigation along the right side of a page. I think it's a good idea in blogs, where we can expect that a user is really only interested in the current article - don't distract their eyes with a left-side list of links.

A hole would be something. No, it was nothing.
Rock Biter, The NeverEnding Story

After countless hours, days, months, or even years of work, your social-networking-slash-content-management application is complete. It’s scalable, it’s rich, it flashes pretty lights and makes every comment sound witty. You throw the launch party, break the bottle across the bow, and send the final check to the offshore development firm. You open the doors to eager users who pour into your site and fill it with …nothing.

Welcome to reality: most users are mostly lazy.