•    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.

Common usability illnesses that weaken your user interface

There are hundreds of ailments that can attack your interface design and paralyze its usability.  Below are a few common pitfalls to watch out for as you attempt to keep your user interface healthy and usable:

•    Content difficulty:  Websites that require users to read about products and services must have content that is not only easy to read but also easy to scan since users often scan websites for the information that they need.  If your user interface has convoluted or complex information, users are likely to get frustrated and abandon it.  So even if you think your user interface has a lot to say and all of it is worth reading, your users may not agree. And that is why you need to infuse your site with information that is simple, easy to scan, and to the point.  If you feel like there is a breadth of information that users need to read, then provide links to detailed information—but don’t make that the focal point of your user interface design.
•    Contact difficulty:  A great site layout is nullified when users don’t have an easy method of engaging with it.   One example of this is contact information.  Maybe your users want to get in touch with you for more information about site services or they want to sign up for something you offer.  Either way, if you do not make this process explicit and easy on your website, chances are that users will never reach their original goal and leave your site in desperation.
•    Link difficulty: Linking is a crucial function of every website but if your links are difficult to locate or are too small (thus requiring too much effort to click on) then you need to make changes because users aren’t going to stick around if you aren’t able to take them anywhere.
•    Search difficulty:  Search boxes are one of the main features of a modern user interface design. Users look for them when they open a page.  Searches provide users with an avenue of finding exactly what they want in the quickest possible way.  Some user interfaces provide no search option or provide search options that are difficult to use or find.  If you want your users to get where they need to get to sign up, make a purchase or find the information they require, then you had better focus on functioning search boxes.

If you are developing a user interface make sure you are fighting usability related illnesses with usability tests, a type of computer science medicine that allows you to eradicate usability problems and invigorate your website’s popularity and success.  There is no perfect interface design—all user interfaces can be continually improved and changed.  If you keep fighting usability pitfalls at the forefront of your development process then you will find it easier to build a healthy site that will contribute to overall success and satisfaction.

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.

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.

According to Webmonkey early builds of the new Firefox show that the latest iteration has picked up more than a trick or two from Google Chrome’s interface design. An example of this is through a new add-on manager that appears as an inline page rather than opening in a new panel or window. And just like with Chrome’s interface design tabs can be made to appear above the address bar. The similarities, however, end in aesthetics as Firefox 4.0 offers many unique technological selling points differentiating it from both Chrome and even earlier iterations of Firefox! With Microsoft already pulling out all the stops with the latest iteration of Internet Explorer, the announced IE 9, it will be interesting to watch how the next Chrome, Safari and Opera shape up in what continues to be a highly competitive, cutthroat market. The bigger winner here, of course, are the consumers.

Facebook and its dreaded partner sites

Facebook’s partner sites Yelp, Pandora, and Microsoft Docs all have access to your personal information unless you visit each site individually and opt out of information sharing. You can also by proxy share your friends’ information if they have not opted out on these websites.  So how do you opt out?  Well, Facebook makes that process very difficult according to the EFF.  The directions that Facebook provides users on its site about how to opt out of “intrawebsite” information sharing are vague and difficult to understand.  Facebook’s interface design is breaking one of the most important website usability rules: make everything easy and clear to your users!

The implication of Facebook’s interface design decisions

What is most troubling about Facebook’s interface design is that it could be a systemic problem plaguing thousands of websites and users. It begs the question: what exactly are the intentions of web designers and how safe is it to trust in the intuitiveness of any interface design?  This is a heated topic that will probably continue to keep internet users on their toes.  For now, it is important to remember that if you are creating a website, the interface design should be simple and usable!  Who knows what the ramifications of Facebook’s latest design changes will be.  Probably nothing.  They seem to own the internet already.

Rendering apps useless can have significant impact on user behavior
Rendering popular apps useless is a surefire usability and user experience annoyance that in today’s super fast real-time web environment could cause serious problems for an app. According to Pinch Media, just 30% of people who buy an iPhone app use it the day after it was purchased. After 20 days less than 5% are actively using it!

Is this quarrel about the usability of third party apps’ interface design?
One might speculate if this recent quarrel has anything to do with usability issues of third-party Facebook apps. It is obvious that especially in the mobile context, the usability of apps is paramount to enabling users to make the most of them. Was Facebook fearing for its reputation? After all, even after the most recent drastic interface design changes, Facebook can be considered an example of good usability and user interface design. Or is it a purely IP-related issue?

With Twitter buying Tweetie to create the first official Twitter app another question remains: could Facebook be hoping to wrest control of the Facebook app market? This would leave fickle users with no other choice than to turn to the official app.

Through prefab interface elements (e.g. radio buttons, links, navigation items, controls etc.) interface designers can create clickable and animated web or software interfaces just in seconds. Without any programming skills, interface designers can focus on the web concept and use cases, site structures and the overall layout of the site, instead of getting lost in details that only matter at a later stage of the project.