A contributor to the IxDA discussion list posted about the availability on iTunes of Stanford University lectures in human-computer interaction.

I just browsed the list of lectures. Looks like real good stuff. Some lectures I’m particularly interested in hearing:

• The Design of Implicit Interactions, Wendy Ju, Stanford, Spring 2007
• Designing Interactions, Bill Moggride, IDEO, Winter 2007
• Innovation on User Research Methods During the Development of Windows Vista, Gayna Williams, Microsoft, Fall 2006

You can point your browser to this link to get to the class listings within iTunes.

Here’s a mini-rant about the usability of Apple’s Mac OS X:

I use Spaces, the multiple desktop feature found in OS X 10.5. It’s a nice feature for us Windows-on-VMWare-Fusion (or Parallels) people. I assign Fusion’s window to a separate space, and cmd+arrow down or over to get to my Windows window. I’ve assigned the Finder to be present in all spaces. (I only use the default four spaces.)

The problem I run into is the stupid no-op that sometimes occurs when I’m in Space 1, the Finder is in Space 2, 3, or 4, and I click on the Finder icon in the dock. Sometimes - but infuriatingly, not all the time and with no predictability - a click on the dock’s Finder icon does absolutely nothing. It doesn’t bring the Finder to my current space, nor does it pop me over the the space where the Finder window currently resides.

What I have to do then is cmd+arrow all over tarnation trying to find my frakking Finder window. Lame.

Interestingly, I just tried to reproduce the problem, and I couldn’t. So I don’t know whether it’s a strange interaction between the behavior of several OS X features, or an actual bug. One thing it definitely is is annoying.

I saw this article mentioned on Digg. A techie guy decided to set his semi-tech-savvy girlfriend loose on Ubuntu’s new 8.04 release. What ensued was fascinating. Read the guy’s account here.

I should mention that although he’s not a user experience professional, he does a darn good job of defining the right tasks. The twelve tasks he set out for his s.o:

• Tell me what the capital of Bosnia is.
• Watch a video on YouTube.
• Download a Spice Girls Album. [Note: I hope this was ironic...]
• Draw me a little picture and save it in three formats.
• Burn an album from my music collection.
• Change the speed of the mouse.
• Change the theme of the computer.
• Find a picture on the Intenet and set it as the desktop background.
• Change screen resolution.
• Photoshop a picture of her face onto my body. [Note: He's using "photoshop" as a generic verb...]
• Log onto MSN. [Note: As in the IM client MSN Messenger]
• Install Skype.

These are very appropriate core tasks for someone who’s transitioning to a new computer. I couldn’t pick a better set of tasks if I were the Ubuntu user experience team.

Judging from his descriptions of her behavior, he seemed to take the right approach to facilitation - i.e., he let his participant/girlfriend struggle, didn’t interfere or teach the interface, etc. Hard to be sure though.

So how did Ubuntu’s newest do? The girlfriend succeeded on seven of the twelve tasks. From the article:

Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do. Erin’s intelligent, quick to learn and is reasonably well-acquainted with modern technology. If she had as much trouble as she did, what chance to the elderly or at least the middle-aged stand?

Definitely an interesting read. Be sure to check out my posts about my Linux experiences if you’re interested in more Linux ‘n user experience discussions.

The Great Ubuntu Girlfriend Test - Content Consumer

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This is what you see in Outlook if someone has (rudely, in my opinion) sent an email with a read receipt requested. (It’s none of your damn business if/when I read your email, thank you.)

The problem is in the confusion engendered by the check box text, and the potential irrevocability of the action associated with checking it.

If I check the box, does that mean:

• Don’t ask me about receipts again and ALWAYS send one when requested,
• Don’t ask me about receipts again and NEVER send one, or
• Something else entirely.

I have no idea. But I’m frankly scared that checking the box will mean that I will always and forevermore be sending read receipts to all who request one.

If you read my epic rant about EULA’s from last year, you’ll remember I made the point that the legal dept’s who copy/paste these monstrosities assume that people never read them.

Well someone took the trouble to read the EULA for Apple’s new Windows browser, Safari 3.1. They found that legal couldn’t even be bothered to review their own work for accuracy. Seems that the EULA accompanying Safari for Windows prohibits the user from installing the application on a non-Apple computer. Oops.

Read the Register article, and the comments too, for a little shadenfreude at Apple’s expense.

Apple Forbids Windows Users From Installing Safari For Windows | The Register

A few days ago in this post I mentioned that I was writing my UXmatters Magazine column on the drawbacks of the file/folder metaphor. I just completed that article and you can find it at this URL. Or click the title below.

Where’s My Stuff? Beyond the Nested Folder Metaphor :: UXmatters

Blogged with Flock

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This is a picture of the desktop of an individual who has given up organizing their files and folders, and instead relies completely on Spotlight to access their files. I’ve said in the past that I think the desktop metaphor is insufficient for managing the stuff we now store on our computing devices. (Thanks to Flickr user danpatmore for the pic.)

I’m currently writing an article on this for UXmatters. (And I’m very late, my profuse apologies Pabini…). I’ll follow up on this line of thinking here when I cap that article.

Blogged with Flock

(Click picture to see full-sized)

I know, it’s not nice to point at somebody’s work and say snarky things. And once you look at this site, it becomes clear that it provides a ton of functionality. But the design seriously detracts from the overall perceived quality of the site. The visual design just doesn’t scan, if you know what I mean. And that hurts discoverability.

If I was ready to put my money where my mouth is, I’d mock up a redesign. It’s easy to point out problems, harder to provide solutions.

Man, it’s a busy week. But I’ll try to put something together this weekend.

Blogged with Flock

I got an email from a reader saying he had a usability issue to rant about, and could he do a guest post. I said sure thing. So without further ado, here’s a post from Andreas Bossard, proprietor of NewsOfTheFuture.net. I’ve got a Sony Ericsson phone too, and I’ve been annoyed by this little feature as well. I hope you enjoy UsabilityBlog’s first guest post, and a big thanks to Andreas for putting it together. -Paul

Every time I connect my Sony Ericsson phone to my Windows PC, I am reminded of an annoying feature of Sony Ericsson’s PC Suite: The time checker that checks if the time of the cell phone is the same as the time of the PC (see picture below).

Every time I connect it pops up and asks me if I want to change the time of my cell phone. The program assumes that the time of the PC is always correct. But the opposite is the case: The cell phone time is correct, but the Windows time is wrong. So I always have to select “No”. The funny thing is that “Yes” has the option “Every time I connect. Do not show this message again”, but “No” doesn’t ‘t have such an option.

Only about 30 seconds difference, but PC Suite sees immediate need for action…

What designers can learn from this mistake:

1. Make the right assumptions. Here it is assumed that Windows time is always correct, which may not always be the case.
2. Give the user the possibility to disable an unwanted feature. Especially if it is an annoying pop-up window.

Note: The current version of PC Suite is version 3. This time-checker-feature was present in version 2. Nevertheless, it’s a good example of bad usability.

From my old friend Pete, via IM this morning:

Why does Firefox make me hit “Continue” every time it updates a plugin? What other options do I have???

Good point Pete.

Ars Technica is reporting that several patent reform advocacy groups have banded together to collaborate on the effort to abolish software patents.

Says Ars:

Supported by the Free Software Foundation, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center, the End Software Patents (ESP) project aims to challenge the legal validity of patents that do not specify a physically innovative step. In addition to helping companies challenge software patents in the courts and in the patent office, the ESP project will also work to educate the public and encourage grass-roots patent reform activism in order to promote effective legislative solutions to the software patent problem.

This is an important effort, and one that UX professionals should support. As I described in my article a few months back in UXmatters, software patents do more harm than good. They stifle innovation rather than protect and nurture it. As I wrote in UXmatters:

The sad fact is that companies often file for and the US government actually grants patents for user interface and interaction design “innovations” that are either strikingly obvious or have appeared before in other systems—that is, when prior art exists, as someone in the field of intellectual property would say. This means, as user experience practitioners, we are at risk of litigation every time we design an application. Each time we fire up Visio or Photoshop, create a new design, then put it out into the world, there’s a good chance we’re infringing on someone’s patent.

I hope that those of you who are active in the user experience field will learn more about this issue and choose to stand with the ESP project. Even if you don’t agree with me (and them), it behooves you to learn more about the issue. It’s quite easy to ignore - until you find yourself staring down the barrel of an injunction or subpoena.

Patent Reform Coalition Aims to Abolish Software Patents

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Tags: patents, open source, law

While setting up my newest install of Flock (the Mozilla-based social web browser), I ran across a blog posting that brought it all back home for me. A guy named Darren Barefoot wrote about the trouble his stepmother had posting pictures to Flickr.

His stepmother had some family pics she wanted to post and share with friends and family. No one could see the pictures. Turns out his stepmom had quite naturally selected “Visible to friends and family” when uploading the pics. Of course, none of the friends and family had been tagged as such in her account.

What a great example of the gulf between design and user intent and mental model.

A Parable About User Experience

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As a member of Usability Professionals’ Association Board of Directors (and now President), I have been fortunate to be involved in the UPA’s user experience salary survey project. I actually wrote the 2005 report and just finished the 2007 report, the full version of which is now available to UPA members at this URL. (A free version is available to the entire UX community here.)

One thing we noticed back in 2005 was the marked difference in salaries between men and women in the UX field. In 2005 we found that the gender gap was about $8,500 USD: the median salary for men in the UX field was a bit more than 80K; for women, 72K. This finding got a bit of attention in the part of the blogosphere concerned with user experience.

We also found upon further analysis that the gender gap seemed to have narrowed slightly between 2000 (when UPA last did a salary survey) and 2005. But the gap narrowed by only $1,000 USD in those five years.

With the 2007 report in the can I am happy to announce two findings: One is that average and median salaries in the UX field increased since 2005. The average salary in 2005 was $78,466 (median = $75,000); in 2007 the average salary was $83,297 (median = $80,643), representing an increase of $4,831. (The median salary increased $5,643.)

The second finding is that the difference in average and median salaries between men and women has narrowed. The average salary for men increased $2,878 from late 2005 to late 2007; women’s average salary rose more than twice this amount, or $6,384. (Median salary for men increased $5,000; for women, $7,000.)

I am of course happy about this from the social justice perspective. And I have more personal reasons to be happy: my wife also works in the user experience field.