Category — Real Time Collaboration

Wireframing is an essential part of successful interface design processes. A great interface design does not just appear in one fell swoop. It comes about iteratively through constant refinement. It is about evolution and not revolution! This is where wireframing comes in handy through the traditional Graphical User Interface Design separation of “church and state”. This separation is the differentiation between an interface design’s content and its features, commands and other factors. With the latter, we are talking about layout, navigation, and other processes such as login and checkout. The idea behind wireframing is to test wireframes to ensure usability first, and only then worry about fleshing out the final aesthetics and content. Available to this end are various wireframing tools and the rest of this blog shall be dedicated to comparing a few of them.

The most rudimentary (and cheapest) way of creating wireframes is through the use of pen and paper. Some interface designers are also creating “paper wireframes” through PowerPoint, Fireworks, or Illustrator. Paper prototypes are cheap to create, and software allows you to easily add text, symbols, stencils, and the like as well as employing templates for even more rapid iteration. However, interactive wireframing tools possess the added advantage of interactivity, which opens doors for collaboration between team members and even clients. Furthermore, they engender feedback from all stakeholders and can even go as far as mimicking website functionality (such as clickable links etc.). Interactive wireframing tools usually allow for simple interface design by employing drag-and-drop of pre-fabricated UI components. This means that interface design can be done by virtually anyone without having to know coding. Wireframing tools can be web-based Software-as-a-Software or a native client that you install.
Examples of interactive wireframing tools include Axure, pidoco, Balsamiq and iRise. The wireframes can then be used in usability testing in order to be improved. Usability testing can be done with paper prototypes or digital prototypes.  Digital prototypes often require expensive specialized usability testing software such, but in rare cases (such as pidoco) does a wireframing tool also have the capability to conduct usability testing without the need for additional software.

Color plays an integral role in our lives. Literally everything we see and do is painted in color.  Thus, the vitality and importance of color should not be forgotten when you are designing a user interface; in fact, the use of color can help distinguish your user interface from all the rest.  Using color in the right way can brighten up a drab interface design, increase its popularity with users and improve usability.  In order to use color, it is best to categorize how and why to use it.

Natural vs. Unnatural Colors

When thinking about your interface design’s color palette, it is a good idea to decide whether or not you want it to be inspired by natural colors or unnatural colors.  Natural colors are colors that occur in nature: browns, blues, greens etc.  Unnatural colors are colors that could appear in nature (most likely in a tropical rain forest) but are probably man-made or synthetic: fuchsia, hot purple, neon yellow, etc.  Put simply, earthen tones vs. bright, bold tones.

One of the major problems that social networking sites have come up against relative to their interface designs is that of privacy and security. The Facebook hegemon recently took a brutal hit when users began complaining en masse that the security feartures user interface design was not only ambiguous, but also deceiving. If Google is developing a social networking website of their own, it would behoove them to make privacy and security the vanguard of their user interface design. In a cutthroat world, preying on the weaknesses of your competitors is often a good strategy, and Google can continue to assert their internet dominance by designing their site to be the antithesis to Facebook’s equivocal and complex privacy user interface. While many have criticized Google for not being able to crack the social networking egg, their late entrance to the party may just allow them to become the belle of the ball.

The bad interface design features…

The following features may trigger Vista flashbacks:

1.    Confusing names:  Some of the feature names are misleading or do not describe their functions properly.  For example, “User Account Control” doesn’t actually control the user account etc.
2.    Windows Update: The Windows update feature does not always follow your commands—if you tell it to download and install everything as Microsoft suggest, it still might reboot without your permission.  Thus it is inconsistent with what the interface design suggests.

The strange interface design features…

Microsoft may have gone through a minimalistic metamorphosis with Windows 7, but that doesn’t mean they have taken out all the fun.  Just take a look at one of their pre-installed background options. These will certainly enliven your desktop in unexpected ways… Apparently, Microsoft couldn’t resist giving us something to scratch our heads about. Literally.

Since interface designers are usually creating websites or applications with the end users in mind, it is only natural for designers to want to offer users the opportunity to customize.  In theory, it should make interface designs more attractive to users if they can infuse them with their own flair, a bit of their personality.  Google offers users the ability to customize their homepage, and many other websites (Yahoo, Pageflakes) offer customization options, too.  But is this really good for usability? The answer is a definite “maybe”. It really depends on the circumstances.  User interface customization can benefit both businesses and users if it is feasible and implemented properly.  But user interface customization can also be disastrous if a lot of time, money, and resources are invested on it only to find that users are rarely, if ever, using it.  Disastrous is not meant to imply that users will abandon the web site altogether —the disaster is the amount of time and resources wasted in creating and implementing something that is not used.

Customization versus Personalization: High risk and low risk

If you plan to use user interface customization there are two main ways of doing so:

•    Customization: Customization means the user actively tells the computer what features it wants to customize.  The user chooses the settings. An example of this is when a user chooses to have the weather of their hometown displayed on a new website each time they visit that site. Or setting a persona on the user’s browser window.

•    Personalization: Personalization means that the computer customizes the interface design based on its predictions about the current user’s interests and behaviors.  An example of this is when an eCommerce site suggests products a user might be interested in based on the user’s previous purchases or adjusts certain contents within the interface design based on the user’s profile or actions.

Froyo also boasts Flash 10.1 support and a revamped Android Marketplace that will allow users to send apps to a phone directly over the air. In addition, Froyo has a new wizard that helps you refine your interface design in terms of home screens, widgets and shortcuts. The latest iteration also allows you to tether your phone, effectively turning into a modem for your other computers.  All these new features and more open new avenues for interface designers and developers to make more innovative and user friendly tools and solutions for mobile devices. And considering the fact that Android is making its way on to tablets, ginormous HD TVs, automobile dashboards, microwaves and more, the future does look bright for the OS.

In order to successfully market a product it must be usable, and to be usable it must be easy to understand. In a nutshell, this platitude is why usability and simplicity are often synonymous in the world of interface design. Usability is the driving force behind any really successful interface design. So how can you integrate usability and simplicity into your interface design? Let’s take a look at the strategies Google and Apple use to optimize their interface designs.

The facade of simplicity: Interface design as key to Google’s popularity
If only interface design were a simple task. It is not. You as a designer must employ great skill and imagination to create the illusion of simplicity for your users, no matter how complicated the technology or semantics behind the application may be. For example, the Google search engine is efficient and very user-friendly. Simply type in a word or phrase and Google takes you to all of the relevant links and categories you need to obtain the information you seek. Not only is Google easy to use, it is also easy to view. Take a look at the start page interface design. There is nothing more simple than the Google graphic hovering over the search engine field. One text input field, one button – there can hardly be any misunderstanding about how to use this application. Google masterfully presents a facade of simplicity for its users. Behind the scenes, things are quite different. The Google search engine must within a fraction of a second solve a million variable equation to rank 8 billion web pages by importance to suit your search needs. This means that Google is in truth quite complex at the technical level, but at the user interface level it is effortlessly accessible. So this suggests that simplicity in relation to interface design does not necessarily apply to its creation (although you can make your design process easier by prototyping, for example if you use wireframing software). Simplicity and usability are important for users, and the better the illusion of simplicity, the more successful the product can be.

The new Hotmail also integrates MS’s new Office Web Apps allowing you to view and edit Word, or PowerPoint or other files within Hotmail’s new interface design. Documents retain their formatting and are updated on SkyDrive. These documents can be accessed through any web browser and users can easily invite others to collaborate on them. YouTube videos and the like sent to you via email can also be viewed within Hotmail as can Flickr photo albums. And users can even manage social network invitations. Emails can also be arranged by threaded conversations. In addition to enterprise class SmartScan spam filtering, the new interface design update and increased functionality has made Hotmail a truly attractive proposition for today’s emailers, me included.

As the saying goes ‘if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it’. When Microsoft released Office 2007 to succeed Office 2003, users were treated to a revolution in the popular office productivity suite’s interface design as some of the core handling patterns learned by using previous iterations of the Office no longer applied. The menu buttons and toolbars on the interface design of Office 2007 were a radical and unexpected departure. MS implemented its new Fluent User Interface design ‘Ribbon’ to replace the previous system of layered menus, toolbars, and task panes with a new system “optimized for efficiency and discoverability”. In many ways Office 2007 in comparison to its previous iteration was like Vista to Windows XP. Some users that had gained mastery of XP found themselves unable to do things on Vista they could easily do on XP. Even power users were stumped by Office 2007’s learning (or should I say re-learning) curve leading many to simply stick to their guns much in the same way many never felt compelled to upgrade to Vista. Some who upgraded to the 2007 iteration even used add-ons that simulated the classical menu user interface design.

Interestingly enough, Zuckerberg’s statements retain the much abhorred ambiguity that started his troubles in the first place.  Zuckerberg has only confirmed that Facebook will address the interface design issues in the coming week, but he did not specify how.  As users trust in Facebook continues to erode, it is paramount that Zuckerberg and his organization find a way to redeem themselves by enacting quick and clear measures that will simplify the user experience of the privacy options including changes to the interface design. If they are unable to do so in a timely manner, the future of the social networking giant may hang in the balance.