Archive for the 'Usability and HCI' Category

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MobileOSX

Published on March 3, 2008 in Design, Technology and Usability and HCI. 0 Comments

Early in February my wife and I picked up shiny new iPod Touches. It was our V-Day/Tax Return/Finally-got-rid-of-that-old-futon-on-craigslist-for-200-bucks gift to each other. Now let me start off by letting you know that I love the device. It’s a fun toy and a decent (basic) PDA. That said however I have one huge UI question for the folks in Cupertino.

Why don’t all apps rotate to landscape mode?

You make this gorgeous widescreen device, in a world where the widescreen format is becoming the defacto standard. I can rotate my music, and Ohhhh and Ahhh over how slick coverflow is. But I can’t for my videos? Ok, so thumbnails of videos aren’t nearly as cool as cover art. I get it. But what about my Photos.

HA! You say. You can rotate photos and flick between them, zooming in with careless ease. Ok. Pick a landscape photo. Tap once to bring up the controls. Tell me, which orientation are those controls in? Why can’t I turn the damn thing sideways flick through a few pics and then go back to selected another Event/Folder without having to flip back to portrait mode?

Or better yet, there’s this great mobile email client on my iPod. Pretty spiffy yes? But I can’t turn the damn thing sideways to take advantage of the larger keypad layout. WTF. I understand each app has a separate purpose but that doesn’t give the developers carte blanch with regards to usability and UI design. Some apps have an alphabetical listing you can jump to by scrolling down the right side of the screen. Other apps do not. Tapping the top of a page in MobileSafari takes you to the top of the page, not so much in Notes & Mail.

Ok, I know now I sound like a total party pooper. You’re never going to look at your iPhone/Touch the same again, right? Right?

The most frustrating thing is I believe Apple will improve the UI over the course of the platforms life, which is great, but you know I’ll be paying for that new interface; not loading a new update via iTunes for free.

*And for Mac users has been for a few years now. I believe the last Mac sold with a 4:3 ratio monitor was either the iBook or eMac.

RSS OMG WTFBBQ!!!!!!111

Published on October 12, 2006 in General, Technology and Usability and HCI. 0 Comments

I’ve been an avid user of ~~Ranchero~~ NewsGator’s NetNewsWire RSS (Lite) reader. It’s a great app and it has a huge user base. However, as of this evening that has all changed. I’ve found a kick butt replacement that’s a million times better. It’s called Vienna.

Vienna is an open source aggregator that has some cool features.

First, it allows me to archive feeds. This was one of the features lacking in NNW Lite. Feeds would fall off into the void way too quickly. Now I can horde my information FOREVER.

Second, I like the UI more so than NNW. It looks like an iApp. NNW looked very ancient, in a 10.2 vs 10.4 Finder kinda way.

Smart Folders. Holy Cow. I can now create folders with keywords like “silly string” and “brown toed shoes” and any articles that contain those phrases will instantly appear in my silly string and brown toed shoes folder*
Pretty sweet deal.

If you’re a Mac user and you’re looking for a robust and well put together RSS reader, look no further than Vienna. It’s open source (ergo free), has a great feature set, well thought out UI and is capable of importing your subscriptions from NNW. Highly recommended!

*I had to think of something I’d want to filter. Silly string and brown toed shoes were the first things to come to my mind. Kids, don’t blog late.

2nd Best Widget

Published on September 19, 2006 in Uncategorized and Usability and HCI. 0 Comments

Many thanks goes out to TUAW for introducing me to the App Update widget. This little guy will check all your non-Apple Applications and report back if there is an update available. How neat is that? As they put it, it’s like Software Update for all your Apps!

I love to be on top of the technical news and latest happenings. I have RSS feeds from around the net and I’m constantly checking them for updates. This widget now allows me to do the same for all my Applications. Muhahahhahah. It’s super easy to use, and has a super clean UI.

Check out the TUAW post above and download this widget. It’s the best!

Enhanced for your Pleasure

Published on March 23, 2006 in Technology and Usability and HCI. 0 Comments

Wil Shipely has a great post up about the disheartining UI present in Microsoft Enhanced PVR’s.

Software Update

Published on March 10, 2006 in Technology and Usability and HCI. 0 Comments

Why can’t 3rd party developers tap into Software update? Right now you can only update software from Apple directly. I would love to be able to run Software Update and see Adium, NetNewsWire, Google Earth, and the like ready for me to update. I can’t see how hard it would be.

With my limited understanding of how Software Update works I’ve devised this idea:
1. Software update is initiated, checks the .pkg’s in the Recipt folder
2. Then it connects to Apple to ask for updates, while now checking similar settings on the 3rd party websites. Developers would create a directory that hosts the updates. Software Update would pull the new .pkg from the directory listed in the Recipt folder. (Which would be created when the program was first installed.
3. Software Update lists the updates available.
4. Select the updates, read the EULA, enter your password and viola!

A receipt would have to be written, and the developers would have to have a page setup on their site in order to get this to work, but I would think it wouldn’t be that hard to actually do. There could even be a distinguishing mark next to 3rd party updates, to keep them visually seperate from Apple’s own updates.