Flickr Has The Hiccups…
Similar to my earlier screengrab off of Overstock.com, here’s another error message that makes me feel like I’m dealing with humans, not robots.Thanks to Dan Szuc for pointing this one out.
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From the monthly archives:
April 2007
Flickr Has The Hiccups…
No Contrast In Nero
C’mon Ahead guys and gals. Couldn’t you increase the contrast just a teeny bit in those navigation boxes on the left?
I can’t read that text at all. And when I mouse over them, all I get is a bold face version of that same dark lettering.
Guess they just don’t want me to use the text-based navigation…
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If you have to say it, then you haven’t designed it well enough for people to figure it out on their own…
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There’s a good article on information architecture in the enterprise over at Boxes and Arrows. Written by James Robertson, it talks about how an IA has to work at different levels of analysis to be effective in an enterprise setting.
Quoting James:
However, within the enterprise space, the problem to be solved is often not well understood. For example, information architects may be approached with ill-defined “problems� such as:
In a typical web or design project, the information architect is given a task…the problem is known, and the challenge is to work out the best way to design the solution.
The first task for the information architect in this context is to better understand the problem. Only then can an overall approach be defined, and the normal user-centered design process initiated.
In all, a good read. Full article at “Enterprise IA Methodologies.”
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The nice folks at UXmatters offered me the opportunity to write a column, and I said yes. My first article just got posted. Follow this link to see it, or just look on the front page. It should be there for the next few days.
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In a post somewhat related to my “the desktop metaphor is dead” diatribes, my favorite open-source pinko commie has written about how and why the desktop OS is inching its way to irrelevance.
I think I agree. Google and a few other web-based productivity tool vendor are either furiously working on or already releasing beta versions of their software that allow the user to work in offline mode.
The day is coming when you will start your computer thusly:
- You turn on your machine.
- A very lightweight OS is loaded; it could be GNU/Linux, Open BSD, whatevah. It doesn’t even necessarily have to have a significant amount of GUI itself; it only needs to be able to display a browser via a GUI.
- The OS loads a TCP/IP communications stack, device drivers, and searches for a (wired or wireless) connection, authenticating itself as appropriate.
- An (open-source of course) browser opens, and presents some or all of the projects, documents, spreadsheets, etc. the user is working with.
- The user works. Through the magick of AJAX all the user’s content is implicitly saved.
- If for some reason the user’s PC goes offline, the applications automatically go into offline mode, saving up the changes the user has made, and adding them into the document when a connection is reestablished.
I truly believe it’s that simple. Of course this is basically the idea behind the network appliance that was touted by many a guru at the turn of the century. It didn’t pan out then for now-obvious reasons: the online productivity apps weren’t mature enough. Well, now they are.
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I’m sure you’re all just *dying* to know that the family has decided to name the Roomba by committee. It is now known by the moniker “Fred Spot Max Power.” It’s almost but not quite a grammatically correct sentence…
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CNET’s What’s Hot Grid
I honestly don’t know, and I’d like your opinions. (All 30 of you – I checked my Google Analytics yesterday…that’s how many visitors I’m averaging over the past week…)
Is this useful? If yes, is it usable?
Here’s a little more about this tool, quoting CNET:
What’s Hot gives a visual snapshot of which stories are most important on CNET News.com right now. What’s Hot is updated every time a story is published, or at least once an hour…
The bigger the block, the hotter the story. The brighter the block, the newer the story. Bright yellow means the story was just published.
I definitely appreciate their attempt to innovate in this space. And I’m not trying to damn it with faint praise. I really do think it’s kinda neat. But I’m wondering about a few things as I look at it…
- Scan: From the gestalt p.o.v., is the image as a whole conducive to quick scanning and accurate parsing?
- Use of font, position on grid, and color for encoding importance: I’m all about multi-encoding to impart information, but are these encoders working together, or interfering with one another? Maybe they’re not doing either. There’s just something that’s not hanging together for me, and I can’t put my finger on it.
- Color: Warning, snarky tone approaching…this thing’s color scheme is what my wife always accuses me of doing when I dress myself: thinking that putting on nearly-identical colors is a good thing. When I go to work with a medium-blue shirt and jeans, she tells me I look like a plumber. CNET’s What’s Hot looks like, well, a Burger King employee. Plus, the palette as a whole is way too saturated.
There’s a lot more I could say about this, but I encourage you to check it out and provide your feedback. It has a couple of other neat features that you may want to play with.
You can check it out in context by following this link. Look on the right side, about halfway down the page.
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Turns out there *is* a real article, not just a sidebar, about browser-based desktops on CNET. Here’s the link to the story.
You might also want to check out the comment left on my previous post from a goowy.com guy named Alex (they’re the folks who bring you yourminis.com). He makes some pretty interesting points. Thanks for commenting, Alex!
I still get mildly freaked out when I get comments, especially from people who are somehow related to the topic of the post. It’s the “holy crap, people actually read this?!?” kind of freaked out.
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Browsing my Google IG homepage this morning (man, I *have* to switch over to Netvibes; my Google homepage is sooo lame…), I found an interesting article on CNET about browser-based desktops.
The article itself is very short – it’s more of a sidebar, really – but the pics are worth a gander.
I haven’t played with any of these applications so I won’t make specific comments on any of them. (OK, I lied, I really like the widgety look of YourMinis.) But I’m still convinced that the desktop metaphor is broken, whether delivered on your OS “desktop” or inside a browser. It’s just not sufficient for the large majority of peoples’ needs. See this previous post for some reasons why.
I also recommend checking out Central Desktop. It’s somewhat similar to these “webtop” apps, but appears to be much stronger on collaboration features.
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And with good reason. Anyone who buys a new Windows PC is subjected to the kind of poor treatment Uncle Walt describes in his article: crippleware and for-pay services vying for your attention, wasted hard disk space, etc.
No more craplets. Please.
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Gerry Gaffney of UXPod fame posted a great interview with Karen Loasby of the BBC. The interview is from November; but I’m so scandalously behind in my reading/listening I’m just now getting around to it.
It’s worth a listen; it provides her unique perspective on what it’s like managing the information architecture for a major media web property. You can get the podcast here: UXpod – User Experience Podcast – Interview with Karen Loasby.
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