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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.

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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

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I bought a TomTom GPS device. The application that comes with it seems pretty usable overall, but there’s a funny interaction design on the “create an account” page. It displays the scolds in advance, before the user enters anything in those fields. I’m not sure what I think of it; I found it jarring when I first saw it. It does make the requirement obvious, but it’s kinda scoldy.

Just thought I’d point to my latest UXmatters article. My idea for this article is that people get stuck at a certain point of understanding a system, and fail to progress beyond a few areas of a rich application.

 After initially becoming somewhat familiar with a system, people often continue using the same inefficient, time-consuming styles of interaction they first learned. For example, they fail to discover shortcuts and accelerators in the applications they use. Other people learn only a small portion of a product’s capabilities and, as a result, don’t realize the full benefits the product offers. Why? What can operating systems, applications, Web sites, and devices do to better facilitate a person’s progression from novice to expert usage?

It’s an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while. Since I owed UXmatters a column, I thought I’d explore it a bit. I’m still working it out.