Usability week ending June 12th

Saturday, 11th June, 10:56 AM
How to find iPad or iPhone device ID (UDID) when stuck on iOS 5 beta update: http://j.mp/lOAF21 #ipad #iphone #guid #udid #beta #ios #tip

Friday, 10th June, 11:17 PM
Why the new task UI in Taskrabbit has great behavioral design: http://j.mp/kH8LO7 #ux #ui #ia

Thursday, 9th June, 6:46 PM
Try "persuasive design" to change attitudes or behaviors of users through #persuasion and social influence: http://j.mp/kV1641 #design #ux

Thursday, 9th June, 5:58 PM
Google adds indexing support for rel="author" HTML tag property, to track and rank content creators: http://j.mp/kMHpuF #google #seo #ia

Wednesday, 8th June, 8:17 PM
You can’t convince a smoker to quit smoking. They need to just decide they’ll do it. It's the same for UX: http://j.mp/lmKhbU #ux

Wednesday, 8th June, 6:55 AM
UI testing suggests ways for #iPad app-makers to make their #apps more intuitive and ergonomic for users: http://j.mp/jPZVoX #ui #ux

Tuesday, 7th June, 5:59 PM
Forget #social... Build a tool which people find useful immediately: http://j.mp/lgZDIc #ux #startup #mvp

Tuesday, 7th June, 8:37 AM
On 1 Aug 2011, #Google will discontinue support for Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3: http://j.mp/l5cY8D #ux #browser

Tuesday, 7th June, 12:05 AM
#Apple has taken a better approach to #cloud #sync by focusing on its fundamental benefit to users--simplicity: http://j.mp/mfeRcW #ux

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending June 5th

Friday, 3rd June, 10:37 PM
Using dominance, influence, steadiness, conscientiousness (DISC) to create #usability #personas from the Smurfs: http://j.mp/lPJwiO #ux #ia

Thursday, 2nd June, 11:08 PM
#iPad succeeds because it has eliminated #complexity, not because it covered up complexity with a touch-based shell: http://j.mp/lrEqI1 #ux

Tuesday, 31st May, 11:54 PM
#Personalization channels people into echo chamber feedback loops, or “filter bubbles”, of their own predilections: http://j.mp/iLBUmV #ux

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending April 24th

Friday, 22nd April, 3:05 PM
Two clear reasons why services get user attention: happiness (enchantment) and utility (solving a problem): http://j.mp/fDvw67 #ux

Friday, 22nd April, 12:27 PM
The dividing line -- #Amazon has moved digital goods to the top of its 'Shop All Departments' list: http://j.mp/hL4iY2

Wednesday, 20th April, 12:13 PM
What becomes possible when one is able to store entire documents in URLs?: http://j.mp/dXYxGU

Tuesday, 19th April, 12:27 PM
The right mentality is a user-centric mentality: http://j.mp/eZnETQ #ux #ia

Monday, 18th April, 3:49 PM
For a #mobile #app to be lovable, it must be useful, usable and desirable: http://j.mp/i7Srvo #ux #iphone #ipad #android

Monday, 18th April, 2:17 PM
#LibreOffice escape from #Oracle shows how open source forking can protect community autonomy from exploitation: http://j.mp/hACStj

via twitter.com/terretta

Apple founder Steve Wozniak says tablets are PCs for 'normal people', Steve Job's goal from day one

"The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room," Wozniak told the audience of enterprise storage engineers. "It's for the normal people in the world," Wozniak said.

"I think Steve Jobs had that intention from the day we started Apple, but it was just hard to get there, because we had to go through a lot of steps where you connected to things, and (eventually) computers grew up to where they could do ... normal consumer appliance things," Wozniak said.

A "personal computer" can take a lot of forms — the term need not be stuck referencing the Wintel duopoly beige box days. The iPad is arguably the most personal of PCs yet.

Usability week ending March 13th

Saturday, 12th March, 5:14 PM
The exceptional home page is not a bulletin board, it's a demo-showroom: http://j.mp/gNwUj9 #ia

Saturday, 12th March, 12:02 PM
A well-designed #UX is consistent, forgiving, rewarding; #Nokia's user experience was inconsistent, unforgiving, hostile: http://j.mp/fZCygF

Thursday, 10th March, 9:17 PM
@kiwi_app Can I set my own j.mp key yet in a Kiwi app I pay for?

Thursday, 10th March, 9:16 PM
@sugarsock Haven't tried Sword and Soldiers. Liked Fieldrunners, also Spirits, Trainyard, and World of Goo. Angry Birds felt tedious!

Thursday, 10th March, 10:39 AM
Why hover menus are a #usability disaster -- and not just because users can't hover on an iPad: http://j.mp/eWA40n #ux #ui

Thursday, 10th March, 8:59 AM
Reserve your connect.me username: http://cxt.me/am5w3A #connectme

Wednesday, 9th March, 1:46 PM
World's shortest guide to #SEO: http://j.mp/h5JMBj

Wednesday, 9th March, 8:19 AM
FTC puts patent trolls -- sorry, patent assertion entities -- on notice: http://j.mp/f4vUry #patent #patents

Tuesday, 8th March, 3:55 PM
Why is Angry Birds' interface so engaging that users cannot stop interacting with it? A cognitive teardown of #UX: http://j.mp/f68z1Q

Tuesday, 8th March, 10:35 AM
Five key principles to fostering better conversations in your site's #comments section: http://j.mp/fUsBKr #ia #ux

Monday, 7th March, 4:16 PM
Deciding on a tablet by comparing specs? You've missed the point: http://j.mp/dJB8Tf #ipad #xoom #ux #ipad2

Monday, 7th March, 1:34 PM
The first step towards real “unbundling” is to put the viewer at the center of audience building: http://j.mp/eXD4w0 #vod #ux

Monday, 7th March, 1:32 PM
Where are the app experiences befitting the iPad and its hardware capabilities?: http://j.mp/eSC4Dv #ux

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending February 20th

Friday, 18th February, 12:42 PM
The Experience Economy -- it a focus on good experiences causing America to generate less material wealth?: http://j.mp/h5bBZp #ux

Thursday, 17th February, 2:18 PM
Less I in UI makes users adopt plan-based behavior, smarter solution paths, and better declarative knowledge: http://j.mp/gTeaMe #ui #ia

Wednesday, 16th February, 10:22 AM
I have seen the future and I am opposed — Don Norman http://post.ly/1d5vM

Monday, 14th February, 4:31 PM
The trend away from “hard-edged science” to systems “where predictability is tempered by a heavy dose of randomness”: http://j.mp/dNhZlA

Monday, 14th February, 4:23 PM
To make sure you meet user expectations: do user research, review competitor sites, follow usability guidelines: http://j.mp/hBhRgp #ux

Monday, 14th February, 4:22 PM
Embrace #iPad virtual physicality--an invisible spine defined its edges, signaling content just a swipe away: http://j.mp/gTxHHl #ui

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending February 6th

Friday, 4th February, 9:40 AM
Force yourself outside your zone for unbiased external perspectives to explain their world, hold a mirror to yours: http://j.mp/hjIQaG

Thursday, 3rd February, 11:07 PM
Reviewing #wireframe mockup applications Balsamiq, Mockingbird, and MockFlow: http://j.mp/gntyv2 #ia

Thursday, 3rd February, 11:01 PM
You don't need to build features requested by your customers to make them happy: http://j.mp/gjV2gI

Wednesday, 2nd February, 5:08 PM
TUAW's first impressions of iPad newspaper "The Daily" UI and navigation: http://j.mp/g7oQ74 #ux #ui #ipad #tuaw

Wednesday, 2nd February, 5:05 PM
"Today marks the day that a content company made a significant change to embrace truly new ways to deliver the news": http://j.mp/gt3y9t

Monday, 31st January, 12:05 PM
How Steve Jobs and #Apple managed to beat the tech titans of Japan by playing their game, only better: http://j.mp/h30Jro #simplicity #zen

via twitter.com/terretta

How Star Trek artists imagined usability 23 years ago

“Complexity should be abstracted, synthesized down to the simplest possible interface for instant gratification, with the shortest possible learning curve—that is the wave of the future.”

Michael Okuda's and Gene Roddenberry's emphasis on ease of use as driving factor behind technology made their devices seem prescient. I enjoyed this Ars Technica discussion of Star Trek's PADD versus today's iPad, and what happens when the software defines how the device can be used.

Interestingly, Okuda notes part of his emphasis on simplicity originally came from budget constraints. This is another example of my theory that price vs performance need not be a trade off. By aiming for simplicity and elegance instead, technologists can achieve higher performance at a lower cost.

The disappearing PC

The article below is a couple months old but interesting to look back on now the iPad has sold close to 4 million units, supporting Job's point of view.

Ballmer commented yesterday that Apple's sold more iPads than he would like. He was surprised by the iPhone, and is surprised by the iPad. After all, Microsoft was already selling phones, and tablets, and if so many people wanted them, they'd have bought them ... right?

You see the problem in Ballmer's iPad interview below. He thinks everything is a PC, just evolving form factors. The hardware shape changes like a fashion fad, but it's still a PC, and people are going to do the same things on it.

On the contrary, it's not the hardware form factor people are excited about. Joe Wilcox didn't repurchase an iPad because it was fashionable. It's the shape of the software — the usability. The iOS multi-touch platform pushes the OS into the background, putting goal-oriented apps front and center.

Everyday people (tech geeks call these people "normals") can poke a button for the thing they want to do, and the device becomes a tool to accomplish that thing. Your goal, in a sleek metal frame.

It's not a personal computer riddled with OS anxiety between you and your goal. Turn it on and it's a personal radio, Facebook, magazine, navigator, or photo album. It's whatever you need it to be at the time, and nothing else.

Steve Jobs' and Steve Ballmer's starkly different visions of the future

"PCs are like trucks," Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg Tuesday night at the Wall Street Journal's D8 conference. When America stopped being an agrarian society, people started buying cars. Devices like the iPhone and the iPad, in Jobs' analogy, are the cars of computing as society transitions into what he calls the "post PC world."

"And this transformation is going to make some people uneasy," he predicted. "People from the PC world."

Enter Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft (MSFT), who was, in his D8 turn two days later, the embodiment of the uneasy PC guy, whether attacking Google's (GOOG) "incoherent" operating system strategy, damning Research in Motion (RIMM) with faint praise, or dissing Apple as living in "the bubble of Terranea" -- a reference to the swanky resort where the conference was held and whose participants could afford to own "five devices per person."

All Things D has posted excerpts of Ballmer's interview (along with Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect) on its D8 site. We've pasted several below the fold, along with the Steve Jobs video that includes his vision of the post-PC world. It begins at the 3:30 mark in the first clip. Ballmer's response is in the video about the iPad.

 

Steve Jobs on the iPad and the post-PC world:

Steve Ballmer on the iPad:

Ballmer and Ozzie on cloud computing:

Ballmer on the battle for control of the mobile phone business:

Usability week ending June 20th

Friday, 18th June, 2:25 PM
What can print designers do to embrace the web? http://j.mp/a10vTv

Thursday, 17th June, 8:13 AM
Do you really want part of my sign-up experience to be that you tell me that my name is invalid?: http://j.mp/9hEfW0 #ux #ia #dba

Wednesday, 16th June, 11:44 AM
"All design is human-centered. If it's not human-centered, then it's not design...": http://j.mp/9ufhBS #design #usability #ux

Wednesday, 16th June, 11:28 AM
@Memeo_Inc Fix http://www.memeoconnect.com/beta_signup.php to support + sign in email address--it's a GMail feature, after all.

Tuesday, 15th June, 6:13 PM
iPad so inviting that customers are drawn to interacting with (or at least observing) payment transactions: http://j.mp/cdvdLT #ux #ipad

Monday, 14th June, 5:25 PM
Huge success of iPhone, Craigslist, Google, Twitter shows importance of #simplicity vs a large feature set: http://j.mp/cf0gFU #ux

via twitter.com/terretta