Category — website usability

Another aspect of the UI design that users were attached to was the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. According to TNW’s Alex Wilhelm the new up/down arrows are simply not endearing enough. Worse still, Digg’s less popular competitor Reddit uses arrows, which gives Digg even less reason to incorporate such icons into its new user interface design. Another complaint was the lack of the ‘Upcoming’ news section which lowers “the ability of Digg users to craft the editorial line of the website, in effect neutering the people who tend Digg and give it its character”.

Although the navigation is easier, the default homepage has been changed from ‘Top News’ to ‘My News’. As of writing there is still no way to change that setting. Perhaps with a little time users will come to love the new ‘My News’ page. From a usability perspective, the switch to the Cassandra database management system has been fraught with bugs following massive uptime and reliability problems.  Despite all the protestations Digg’s future, it would seem, is still intact. They have had a number of revolts in the past already. When version 3 of Digg’s user interface design was released they also received a number of complaints from users but over time a lot of the issues were resolved. It will be interesting to see how Digg will react to appease users.

These apps are a quick and efficient communication method, and definitely lend themselves well to the objectives of social networking, not least due to their intuitive user interface designs, but naturally they engender questions about user privacy.  Making your location available to people seems intrusive and it is for this reason that these apps – a few notable exceptions aside – have seen more difficulties attracting conservative users than developers have hoped.  However, the fact that these apps have smartly coupled location information with other social desires—friendship, dating, discourse etc—makes them enticing and will likely lead to greater popularity.  Questions about security and intrusion should diminish given that users have a considerable amount of autonomy over the apps.  Users can choose who they disclose their information to and can control when they do it.  As long as users maintain a sense of jurisdiction over their information, then check-in apps are a harmless way for people to socialize and connect.

•    Natural Colors: Natural colors can provide comfort and familiarity for users.  They can also be used to underscore the theme of your user interface.  For example, if you are designing a travel website that has pages that profile different destinations, you can use natural colors that users will associate with each place: Greens for Ireland, browns for Arizona or the Grand Canyon, etc.  Using these color palettes in tandem with images and written content will engage your users and leave your website more memorable.

•    Unnatural Colors: Using bold and bright colors is also a good strategy for distinguishing your user interface from the rest, but be judicious about it.  Too much bold can turn users off or detract their attention from important content.  Bold colors are best used when you are trying to shock users or grab their attention.  For example, if you are designing a new website you may want to have the “breaking news” section in a neon color. Or you may be creating an avant garde art website that uses all vibrant colors because you know that your users will generally be people who are interested in being challenged aesthetically.  But be careful. Unlike natural colors, unnatural colors can affect your user interface as dramatically as their hues—for good and bad.  So tread the unnatural color spectrum carefully.

Understanding how and why to use natural or unnatural colors is an important part of designing a successful user interface.   Colors enable you to craft a pleasant experience and envelope users in your interface’s ambrosial essence—design is, after all, an art form.

This is part two of my blog post on the new iTunes’ Ping service.

After having taken a look at the pros and cons of Ping and how it may fare in the music market, let’s see what the application itself is like.

Setting up Ping, for those with an account already, is a pretty straightforward process. A click on the Ping button in the sidebar to the left of the interface design invites users to activate their account. For a service that aims to be about music I was surprised to be limited to a choice of maximum three genres. As more and more artists take to Ping the service should become more worthwhile. One of the biggest usability gripes I have with Ping is that the only way to change the language used is to change to an iTunes store from a country that speaks the desired language. This entails creating a new account, which incidentally is a breach of the fine print in Apple’s legal terms. Considering that the most popular social networks allow users to change language at will and in one step (usually via a drop-down menu) Ping appears a bit too rigid and, dare I say, a tad patronizing.

Visually Ping is not much to look at. The interface design comes across as a bit bland. It looks like a medium-fidelity wireframe that still awaits a paint job. I feel as though Apple is reaching an impasse with how far they can keep a walled garden. Finding friends on Ping is a nightmare. The use of APIs to source contacts for friends from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail etc. would go a long way in rectifying that. What is the point of a social network if you can’t network with those you wish to? At least the security settings are very simple, occurring in one step offering from three levels. Exporting is also impossible so one can’t, for example, share a recommendation over Twitter! Personally I believe Ping is more potential than finished product and I can see the social aspect spreading to the rest of the iTunes Store.

However considering that there were a million signups in two days and the inclination of users to spend using the iTunes, Ping will certainly be profitable for Apple. I fear that a lot of people will find other services more convenient to use. With Ping Apple is clearly going against the convention of opening up social networks more.

In case you are not familiar with the children’s story Goldilocks and the Three Bears it goes something like this: Goldilocks finds the three bears’ home abandoned and decides to go in and try out their beds and porridge.  There are three beds and three bowls of porridge and when she tries them they are either too hard or too cold, too soft or too hot, or just right.  So the whole message of the story is finding balance within polar extremes, finding what is “just right”.  Well this silly little story has engendered a scientific theory, the Goldilocks Principle, which can also be applied to user interface design according to John Sorflaten of Human Factors International (humanfactors.com).

The Goldilocks Principle

The Goldilocks Principle (also known as the Goldilocks Enigma) has its roots in science, specifically astrophysics.  Paul Davies, professor of physics at Arizona State University, coined the concept in his 2007 book “The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?”  In the book, Davies claims that certain universal fundamental physical constants are exactly in sync to make life on planet Earth possible. Thus, we have won a “cosmic jackpot,”— as Goldilocks would say, the conditions are “just right” for life.   This idea has spawned the Goldilocks Principle, which means “that something must fall within certain margins, as opposed to reaching extremes” (Wikipedia.com).  It is all about finding an equilibrium that avoids extremes.