Category — Remote Usability Tests

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.

While Google has been at the forefront of nearly every internet market imaginable since its inception in 1997, one area in which the internet giant has been notably absent is the social media world. However, if the rumors are to be believed, then the social networking market might be in for a shock as Google is purportedly developing a social platform of their own: Google Me. While there is no concrete release date of the pending web application, former Facebook executive and Quora founder Adam D’Angelo confirms that Google Me „is not a rumor. There are a large number of people working on it.“

Google’s clandestine approach to cultivating its first social networking website is definitely a good marketing strategy, sure to make it enticing to those looking for something fresh and new in the world of social media. We can only speculate as to how the site will look and function and whether it will feature the familiar Google interface design, but one thing that is worth mentioning is how Google can use the faux pas of previous sites as a kind of massive social platform usability test, possibly helping them to avoid pitfalls of their own.

After the disaster that was Vista (in the sense that so many seemed to find it less usable than desired) Microsoft needed to take a new approach when designing their new operating system.  Windows 7 is a clear back to the basics statement by Microsoft, cutting down on frivolous features and glitzy interface design, all of which made Vista so annoying to users.  Instead, Windows 7 has put its focus on utility and usability over flashiness, a concept that is not new to usability experts.  With Windows 7, Microsoft streamlines processes related to apps and tasks and has tried to create an operating system based on compatibility and integration with external and internal features. Windows 7 features a user interface design that barely wants you to recognize its presence, let alone have to think about it, only when you need to. Of course, just because Windows 7 is minimalist and the antithesis to Vista, doesn’t mean it is perfect.  Let’s look at the pros and cons of the new Microsoft user interface design.

The good interface design features…

The following are a few of the features that provide Vista haters with some relief:

1.    Cleaner Taskbar: The Windows 7 taskbar is less cluttered and users can switch between apps with more ease.
2.    Action Center Alerts: Windows alerts are now relegated to the “Action Center” which places the alerts in a queue rather than interrupting (as Vista did) you mid-internet search or any other action.  You can respond to alerts on your own schedule.
3.    New System Tray controls: The controls on the system tray disallow the overflow of unwanted apps that interrupt you with messages and updates.
4.    Jump Lists: These are context sensitive taskbar menus that allows you to work in apps before you even open them.

Both ways of user interface customization can be successful, but if you are thinking about implementing modification options, the personalization method is the lowest risk tactic in terms of complexity.  This approach does not require users to perform the customization act itself. That means that the site is easier to use because users have less to think about.  The less users have to think and the easier the site is to use, the more successful it will tend to be.  Although the personalization strategy provides lower risk in terms of ease of use, it does not mean the actual interface design will be easier to construct. It just means that it will require less effort on the part of the user.

Conversely, the customization method requires more effort on the part of the user.  This can be advantageous if enough users find this a beneficial feature and change their use or buying decisions based on it. Yet, if that is not the case, your effort will have been wasted, and, what is worse, the additional complexity may have adverse effects on user adoption, which is why this is a higher risk strategy.

Ultimately it is up to you whether or not you want to incorporate customization setting into your interface design.  Factors that need to be considered is the projected rate of use (the value you create) and the impact on usability of the user interface design through additional customization options (the usability barriers you may create) when deciding whether or how much effort you can risk to invest in customization. If you think the personal settings you have created will be popular and usable then take the risk of giving the user full autonomy to customize the interface design.  Otherwise, play it safe and let your system be in control.

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.

Office 2010 on the other hand is to 2007 what Windows 7 is to Vista, more evolution than revolution but executed better. 2010 offers a refinement of Office’s graphical user interface design in a number of ways. For starters the Ribbon is now present across the entire Office suite and it, along with the inner content of its tabs, can be customized with the trusty right-click to the point where users can even add custom tabs tailored to suit their needs. The Office button (big and round on the top left of the user interface design) now has been given new options and extended to OneNote and Outlook. PowerPoint, Word and Excel now have added picture-editing effects and formatting à la Photoshop. One of the cool new features of Excel is Sparklines, which allows you to created data charts within a single cell. Emails in Outlook can now be viewed as threaded conversations and if it ever were to get too long it can be compressed. It is also now easier to organize, categorize, and clean up mails with a few clicks. Outlook can also now customize tasks into single-click commands.

Documents created on the desktop version can now work in tandem with smartphones and web browsers via MS Office Web Apps allowing you to have easy access to your work and to invite others to collaborate and work on them from all corners of the globe no matter what the screen. Two people can now work simultaneously on a document with their changes visible like in Google Wave (provided you’re both online). All these features, interface design tweaks and more work to make Office 2010 a compelling new product that looks like maintaining Microsoft’s dominance of the office productivity market.