2011-05-19
post/5621116304
Every morning, I push the STOP button on the handrail of a number 63 bus. It tells the driver I want to get off at the next stop.
I’m very fond of the button. It immediately radiates robustness: chunky yellow plastic on the red handrail. The command, STOP, is written in white capitals on red. There’s a depression to place my thumb into, with the raised pips of a Braille letter “S” to emphasize its intent for the partially sighted. When pushed, the button gives a quarter-inch of travel before stopping, with no trace of springiness; a dull mechanical ting rings out, and the driver pulls over at the next stop. […]
It’s immediately clear what to do with this button, and what the outcome of pushing it will be. It makes its usage and intent obvious.
This is a good button.
”Tom Armitage on Buttons - The Game Design of Everyday Things at Kill Screen.
This was particularly resonant given the truly atrocious way that Muni handles the same problem. A few buses have the same STOP button, but a majority of them (and all of the modern streetcars, along with most of the vintage ones) have pull-cords along the windows. The cords usually have a two to five second lag before the alarm sounds letting you know it’s actually been acknowledged, so often they ping repeatedly.
Meanwhile, unlike London’s simple “the doors are opened by the driver”, when you go to get off the bus, there are at least three different door-opening mechanisms.
Some buses have you pushing the door, others stepping down, and streetcars ask you to push a bar next to the door. Because each is different, each needs labels (often multiple labels, in inconsistent typefaces). Occasionally the door won’t open until the driver switches something, leading to cries of “Back door!” from frustrated passengers (or, more commonly, those watching someone who’s so tied up in being confused they don’t think to call).
You wouldn’t think you could get homesick for a simple button. You’d be wrong.
2011-03-31
post/4236917992
iCal in 10.7’s beta 2 has suffered an attack from the ugly stick, it appears. (via Second Lion developer preview includes iCal, About this Mac tweaks at Ars Technica.)
2010-07-19
Flickr Catchup: A Technique
I’ve been on holiday for a fortnight, so I haven’t had a chance to check Flickr. How to catch up?
Well, the search box on the “photos from your contacts” page has a handy filter: “from your contacts”. Put in space, press return, and you get… an error. Then go to advanced search, change “date taken” to “posted”, and put in the date you went on holiday, and you’ll end up at a page like this.
(Note the date in the URL; you can change that if you want to skip the navigation outlined above.)
That’s sorted by “interestingness”, so you’d hope the better / more noticed photos would come to the top. If you’re more egalitarian, you could always go for “recent”, and then start at the end of the list and work forward.
If I was away from a computer more often, I might use the API to turn this into a service, but I’m not, so I won’t. Also, as I’ve noted before, it’s a shame more sites don’t offer filtered search to your contacts. I kept up with Twitter pretty well, but I have no idea what I’ve missed on delicious, for example. Hurrah, then, for Flickr.
2010-06-20
post/717944826
Russell Beattie: The end of WIMP and the rise of Touch
You could argue this is stating the obvious, but this is still a worthwhile article, since the obvious is often easy to miss.
2010-03-25
GMail, Fitt’s Law, Engineers
Coding Horror: The Opposite of Fitts’ Law
Every few days I accidentally click Report Spam when I really meant to click Archive. Now, to Google’s credit, they do offer a simple, obvious undo path for these accidental clicks. But I can’t help wondering why it is, exactly, that these two buttons with such radically different functionality just have to be right next to each other.I think it’s worth mentioning that the keyboard shortcuts for “archive” and “Report spam” are extremely different from each other. In fact, the destructive ones (report spam, delete) require me to be holding shift down at the time to use them. So that’s nice. (insert US-centric keyboard shortcut rant here, of course.)
Google are the engineer’s engineers; it’s hardly surprising they seem to think more about keyboard shortcuts than visual UI elements.
2010-02-11
A short list of Chrome issues (beta 2)
An update on the issues listed in December:
- You can’t invert open behind - on Safari command shift click opens in a new window behind the current one with command click opening in a new window in front/focus, whereas Chrome is hard-wired to do the opposite (and with tabs to boot)
- Tab moves between all link and form elements, not just form elements (Gmail does this on Safari now too. Boo!)
- There are no command key shortcuts to open bookmarks in the toolbar
- The combined text/title/URL completion in the “Omnibox” means you have to go too far into a URL to easily work around the lack of command key shortcuts
You can’t set a default font size, so sites that honour relative fonts (like delicious, and (in places) Twitter) now have Huge Idiot Typefaces- fixed, in Preferences > Under the Hood
While Chrome sensibly uses the keychain (so, like Camino, it can share usernames and passwords set up in Safari) it doesn’t offer to complete the username part, meaning more typing- this seems to be fixed too
- Crashes on pasting a rich text post from Tumblr back into Tumblr
- Crashes on importing my (admittedly huge) Safari history
On the other hand, I am pleased to see that a request for the zoom button to instead maximise has been rejected as “Invalid”.
RWW vs Facebook; users vs devs
Yesterday, ReadWriteWeb posted a vaguely interesting story about Facebook integrating with AIM, and were then shocked to find the comments overrun with people complaining about how the design had changed and they couldn’t log in. After two and a half pages of comments, Jolie O’Dell, a site admin posted this comment:
We’ve determined by looking at our traffic stats that people are doing Google searches for “facebook login” and coming upon RWW. They see the FB Connect button and assume that RWW is the “new Facebook.”
Sigh.
The Internet Is Hard.
It’s tempting just to post this with a “hah, look at the lusers” comment, but to their credit, the same admin started a reflective open thread:
How can we balance making the Web simple enough for all users while still creating tech cool enough to satisfy geeks like us? And who says either group - nerds or users - is “normal,” anyway?
Rather than answering that directly, I’d like to pull apart some of the differences between “user” and “dev” thinking that led to this happening.
Search vs bookmarks
Devs will usually have access to URLs, whether it be from their memory, from autocomplete (either of history (possibly via a Top Sites / Speed Dial page) or bookmarks). Users seem more likely to search, especially since browsers interpret things in the location bar as searches unless you’re careful.
Search engine sectioning
Most devs would skip the “news” section of the search results unless they were looking for news. Some users seem to click the first link, regardless of sectioning. After all, the link at the top worked before, and does again now. (I wonder if that applies even to ads?)
Doors vs walls
In my experience, devs are more likely to just try to access a page; if it then asks them to log in, they will. If there’s a site they use frequently, they’ll make sure they find and check the “remember me” box, ignoring the “shared computer” warnings; who’d use a computer someone else has?
In contrast, it seems that at least some users explicitly want to find the login page, rather than just waiting for the prompt. Perhaps that’s because they do regularly use shared computers; perhaps it’s because they switch accounts regularly (to see friends photos, perhaps?)
Want more evidence? Look at this list of Google autocomplete suggestions.
Reading site design
As mentioned in the RWW follow-up, ”Users don’t read your copy or look at your branding”. Devs might, but even then, RWW don’t have their site name in the <title>. However, they do have a Facebook-branded “connect” button, which is what the users were looking for (and, evidently found).
Numbers
As a comment on RWW by “a Facebook user” noted, “50% of Facebook users log in to the site daily. There are 450 million Facebook users total. 200 or so people Googled ’Facebook login,’ managed to click on a a news story, landed on this blog, and found the Facebook connect button and posted a comment”. For RWW, and for most dev-focussed sites, that amounts to a huge burst of traffic. For Facebook, it’s almost insignificant overspill.
In Summary
It’s easy to be cynical or dismissive; “look at those fools leaving comments”. Stepping back and considering how much difference there can be in how others view the web might be worthwhile, though.
2009-12-08
A short list of Chrome issues (beta 1)
… most of which are actually due to me being stuck liking the way Safari does things, or a consequence of it being a beta.
- You can’t invert open behind - on Safari command shift click opens in a new window behind the current one with command click opening in a new window in front/focus, whereas Chrome is hard-wired to do the opposite (and with tabs to boot)
- Tab moves between all link and form elements, not just form elements. (I can’t remember if Safari picks this up from the system-level preferences or not, but it does what I want, and Chrome doesn’t.)
- There are no command key shortcuts to open bookmarks in the toolbar¹
- The combined text/title/URL completion in the “Omnibox” means you have to go too far into a URL to easily work around the lack of command key shortcuts
- You can’t set a default font size, so sites that honour relative fonts (like delicious, and (in places) Twitter) now have Huge Idiot Typefaces
- While Chrome sensibly uses the keychain (so, like Camino, it can share usernames and passwords set up in Safari) it doesn’t offer to complete the username part, meaning more typing.²
It’s been a nice evening, but despite being rock solid, Chrome goes back in the “for emergency use” box for a while. Sadly, given the team’s approach to customisation, it might be quite a long while indeed.
¹ Camino also gets this wrong, in a very odd (yet explicable) way: if the bookmark bar is visible, it works, but if it’s not, it doesn’t. The developers seem to believe that an invisible option is confusing. I believe that twenty vertical pixels on a laptop display are more precious than feedback. Sorry.
² Probably this is sensible from a security point of view but it’s annoying me, so I’m listing it anyway. I’m sure you’re sensible enough to make your own decision.
2009-12-07
post/273545102
Dean Allen, creator of the just-closed favrd, in a comment on The Stars Look Down on Jeffrey Zeldman’s site. +1. (previously.)
(On the other hand, now favourites have been “private”, or at least obscure, for so long, I’ve heard people saying that making them more visible would stop them using them. Sigh.)
2009-09-15
Wireless
Going on the reaction to the staff post announcing Tumblr Wire, I’m the only person who took an instant dislike to it. It’s the worst of Radar, back. Where’s Recent / Popular / Upcoming gone? Bah. I demand a refund. (Yes, I know Tumblr’s free. That’s called irony. Or sarcasm. Or something.)
Having spent a little more time with it: I still hate it. That scrolling box has zero refindability. Good luck if you want to actually capture anything from it. You thought Twitter had the memory span of a goldfish? Man, that’s like writing in stone compared to this.
On the other hand, maybe I’m just not Tumblr’s desired audience. I write posts of more than two paragraphs; perhaps I should just give up and shuffle off to Posterous. Or ignore all the social crap beyond the Dashboard. At least then I’d only have one source of pseudo-meaningful bollocks.
Edit: Oh dear, it’s even worse. Links from the Wire go through the Digg-bar style tumblupon UI, which has nasty framesets stopping you from easily sharing stuff. Nasty.
