Bet you didn’t know that showers had operating systems.

(Click to see picture full-sized)

Originally uploaded by Dan Szuc of Apogee Hong Kong.

Say what you will about Wil Wright’s Spore. One thing he and the team got right: the creator interaction. Ever since I downloaded Creature Creator, my 5- and 9-year old have been building ships, buildings, and creatures endlessly. And more importantly, they’ve discovered how to do this with minimal intervention from me.

Video of Hattie’s creature is here. His name is “Spino Jerry.” Not sure where she got that, exactly.

I have kept politics off the table during my 3+ years of running this blog. I just think it’s a private thing, and not germaine to the topics I cover here. Suffice it to say I’m a something like a rabidly capitalistic social-liberal-fiscal-conservative-with-a-libertarian-streak. Or a Second Amendment-supporting Democrat (befitting my Texas residency) who believes in states’ rights and a limited Federal government. (In other words, there really is *no* real party for me in the US…but that’s another story and another blog…)

But today I thought I’d point to a really top-notch user experience, and in the process reveal that I am a contributor to the Obama-Biden campaign. After reading about how Sarah Palin’s RNC convention speech raised 1M for the Replicans and 10M for the Democrats, I was reminded that I wanted to contribute. Rather than browse to barackobama.com, I decided to go to www.mybarackobama.com, the social networking site run by the campaign.

I was impressed with how easy it was to not only contribute (it darn well better be), but to quickly and easily increase your level of commitment to the cause. Obviously there’s been some research behind this. They hooked me with the drop-dead simple way to register, and the ease with which they asked me to contribute time, money, or my personal network. They also offered registrants the ability to harness network effects by setting up a personal donations page, where you can ping your friends for donations in your name. Check out my page at http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/pjsherman. The page took no time to set up. My only nit with the site? Why oh why did they make the username/login fields the same color as the background?!? Amateurish mistake, that.

Now I’m sure that the McCain campaign has made it easy to contribute as well, but from my forays onto the McCain site I don’t see the same social networking aspect. And I have to say, I don’t like having a video start up automatically when I visit a site. It’d my choice whether I’d like to watch video content, thank you very much.

File this post under “more signs of the USPTO apocalypse.” In a story reminiscent of The Onion’s parody news article “Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeros“, iTWire reports on Microsoft’s patent “Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments“… which is a fancy way of describing the Page Up and Page Down buttons.

The iTWire article isn’t bad, though like most news outlets it doesn’t provide sufficient background on why the patent system is in such a sorry state. (I did explain this in some detail in my UXmatters article; follow this link to read “Your Design Is Infringing On My Patent.”)

I don’t blame the Microsoft employees who put their name on this patent; they’re just playing the game that they were hired to play. (Though I do wonder whether they look at that patent plaque in their offices and feel a slight twinge of embarrassment.) It’s not Microsoft’s fault either. They’re playing the game too. The fault lies squarely with the USPTO, and with a Congress that is too deep in the pockets of large incumbent businesses from many domains.

I hate to keep ringing this bell over and over, but the fact of the matter is that patents stifle innovation and provide a means for lazy and litigious people to live off the work of others. And by patenting something so (pardon the pun) “patently obvious” as Page Up / Page Down buttons, Microsoft degrades the user experience for us all. Think about it: every time Microsoft (or some other software company) patents a commonly-used interaction pattern or UI design, they make it less likely that other product producers will want to pay a licensing fee to use the pattern or design. Which means that the producer will have to skirt the patent by creating a new interaction or design, even though a common and perfectly reasonable one already exists.

This isn’t just an academic problem, folks. If this is allowed to continue, we’re headed even farther down the slippery slope. What’s next? Will Microsoft or Apple or IBM patent the “OK” button? Will we have to label it “Affirmed” to skirt the patent? How many other patent landmines are sitting out there waiting to be stepped on?

If you’re interested in patent reform but don’t know what you can do or where to start, check out these organizations. You might find a way you can contribute to the elimination of obvious and overly broad patents. (These are taken from my UXmatters article.)

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation — The EFF is a nonprofit organization that advocates for free speech and individual rights in the digital domain. Its Patent Busting Project is an initiative “to protect innovation and free expression” by fighting against vague, obvious, or overly broad patents.
• Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure—Based in Europe, this organization currently runs the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which has as its aim stopping enaction of a US-like patent system in the European Union.
• The Free Software Foundation — Founded by Richard Stallman, the FSF promotes and supports the free software movement. The FSF supports a less restrictive approach to patenting intellectual property. Founded as a US-based organization, FSF branches have opened in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
• Another advocacy group is the Software Freedom Law Center, which Eben Moglen founded in 2005.

Microsoft Granted Page Up Page Down Patent  ::  iTWire

Tags: patentreform, user experience

This article has been making the rounds today. Thought I’d do my part to keep the meme alive. OK, this isn’t really a meme. But it’s an interesting little compilation of UI concepts. Of course the author cites Adaptive Path’s Mozilla Labs effort called Aurora.

My last article for UXmatters also touched on the topic of this article.  I was focusing on 3D virtual spaces and navigation. Still, I would suggest reading that article of mine if you’re interested in uncommon user interfaces.

10 Futuristic User Interfaces  ::  Monday Inspiration  ::  Smashing Magazine

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

Hopefully this won’t read too much like a Twitter post…I’m on my way to Beijing China to speak at and attend User Friendly 2007, the annual conference put on by the China chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association.

The title of my talk is “Changing Processes and Cultures: Setbacks and Successes On The Road To Building Customer-Centric Product Teams.” I’ve posted a slightly longer version of the talk to UsabilityBlog at this URL, if you’re interested in looking at it. (The longer version is what I presented last week at the Atlanta chapter meeting of the IASA, the association for software architects.)

The talk is a three-year retrospective on the process of incorporating user-centered design at Sage Software in North America. Here’s the blurb from the conference site, if you want more information about the talk:

We in the user experience field know that user-centered design and usability activities have the most positive impact when they’re carried out early in the product/service ideation, design, and development cycle. And our stakeholders - those colleagues in neighboring disciplines such as product management and product development - are often eager to become more customer-centric, and would like UX practitioners to help achieve this. However, our colleagues, and more importantly our executives, don’t always know just how disruptive it can be to successfully integrate UX processes and people into the organizational culture.

This presentation will describe the setbacks and successes experienced by the UX group at Sage Software as we drove the adoption of user-centered design and user research processes across multiple product teams in North America over the last three years.

Enjoy. -Paul

Drop what you’re doing right now and go look at the screenshots of Android, Google’s open-source smartphone OS.

It’s…it’s…beautiful.

I want one. Now. Not now. Yesterday.

I know it’s not even a real phone yet, it’s just a reference design. But I want my next phone to run this platform. That’s how neat it looks.

A Visual Tour of Android’s UI - Engadget

I just stumbled upon Consumerist’s mildly entertaining discussion about the usability of an infographic at an IKEA store.

The sign attempts to explain to the viewer when their busiest shopping times are. Seems straightforward at first…but the more you look at it, the more confusing it gets.

This IKEA Infographic Is Extremely Easy To Understand - Consumerist

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Tags: commerce, signage

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Yesterday a co-worker showed me this system function diagram for an in-dash navigation system. I just had to take a picture of it.

It’s from the owner’s manual for his new Honda Ridgeline SUV. It’s darn interesting, I’ll say that. I’ve never encountered system documentation like this.

I’m on the fence as to its usefulness. But I could stare at it all day; it’s just hypnotic. What do y’all think of it? (Be sure to click on the picture to see it full-sized.)

Lest anyone think I was too negative toward Todd the Adaptive Pathite the other day, I wanted to point to a fantastic article by Adaptive Path’s leader Jesse James Garrett.

It’s about peripherals manufacturer Kensington’s decision to focus on the total user experience as a means to differentiate themselves from their much larger competitors. Quoting Jesse:

Kensington has chosen to opt out of the technology arms race and turned to product experience as a competitive advantage. The result is Kensington’s Ci Lifestyle Collection, a new line of mice and keyboards for home and mobile users designed with extensive field research on customer experience in mind.

Jesse interviewed the product manager responsible for the line as well. Definitely worth a read.

Link to article is here.