July 2002 Archive
Save Internet Radio: Urgent Action Required
The Internet Radio Fairness Act has just been introduced to Congress. This act can effectively save internet radio and allow many independent broadcasters to return to the air. You can help by faxing your representatives (it only takes 30 seconds). Additionally, consider contacting your representatives at their offices and asking them to support the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
(via SomaFM)
Jef Raskin’s Humane Environment
Jef Raskin and Son recently started Jef Raskin’s Humane Environment over at SourceForge.
If you’ve read Jef Raskin’s book “The Humane Interface” and wanted to see how some of those ideas work in practice, or improve on them, join us here.
Very cool.
(via ia/)
Can Branding and Usability Mix?
There’s an interesting article over at Graphics IQ that examines the compatibility of branding and Web usability.
(via InfoDesign)
Molly Shows You How to Master the Web
I just learned of an upcoming book by influential web maker and writer, Molly Holzschlag. It’s called Integrated Design: Holistic Strategies for Mastering the Web and from Molly’s description, it looks like it’s going to contain some great stuff.
This unusual, four color book takes a look at the challenges that today’s Web professionals face and seeks to provide solutions by opening up new ways of thinking about design and browser technologies. Topics covered: human learning, the science of color, space, shape, and type; the art of markup, CSS, dynamic technologies and media.
If that sounds interesting to you, you would probably also enjoy The Art and Science of Web Design by Jeffrey Veen, another book covering holistic design topics. Web design needs more books like these two. Does anyone know of any additional holistic web design books? If so, please add your comment below.
Optimize Your Website
Criteria for optimal web design is like a FAQ for Web usability and contains an amazing amount of useful information. Highly recommended.
(via ia/)
Humanizing Technology or Technologizing Humans?
Matt Jones posted a thought provoking entry today, Humanising Technology, or technologising humans?
Got very annoyed at the Design Council the other night. They were pitching their series of talks on ‘Humanising Technology”. Strikes me as a very odd phrase: ‘humanise technology’…
To separate and demonise ‘technology’ seems false. It’s what makes us human. It’s our evolutionary distinctiveness.
What’s the middle ground? Can we make technology, and computers easy to use while maintaining the transparancy, freedom and agency of command-line culture?
In my mind there has to be a middle ground. Not all humans - in fact most humans - don’t want to be technologized. Technologizing humans seems to imply an increase in the knowledge base required to use technology. I assume that most people equate a higher knowledge requirement with a more complex technology, which people then subsequently equate with a technology that’s making their life more difficult. On the other hand, as technology becomes more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to humanize or make easier to use. But I think it’s what more people want: to do more with less time and less effort. And, at the same time, isn’t that what technologizing ourselves also allows us to do?
A thought provoking entry indeed.
Dive Into Accessibility
Yes! Mark Pilgrim’s wonderful “30 days to a more accessible weblog” has been reedited and converted into a website, Dive Into Accessibility. If you didn’t read the original series, do your website and its visitors a favor and check it out. Then after you’ve read it, download the PDF version, print it out and give it to your boss.
Macintosh is Iceland
Chris Hill’s ubergeek.tv presents this hillarious Apple Switch parody. On Apple, he comments:
What really gets at me about Mac is how they propagate this lifestyle, Mac evangelists eat it up, and art students with no clue about computers go,’oh, my art teacher uses a mac and they’re really pretty so if I want to get a job being a REAL artist you have to use a Mac.’
I can’t count the number of graphic designers I’ve heard say that.
I’m still considering the switch to Mac, but Chris’s animation has me asking what I’m really buying into.
Enter the iBook
Nathan Torkington wrote a wonderful little article about his first encounter with his new iBook over at O’Reilly Network. To summarize the article: it Just Worked.
I plugged in the digital video camera (editing be damned!) and it Just Worked. I built wget and it Just Worked. I downloaded VM and it Just Worked. I plugged in a three-button mouse and it Just Worked.
I came to realize something: I’d been with Microsoft for so long, who are complacent and hoard their customers, that I’d forgotten what it’s like to use an operating system built by people who want it to cooperate with the rest of the world. It’s good.
I’m waiting anxiously for the MWNY keynote to see if Apple is doing anything with their iBook line. Regardless of what Jobs announces, I’ll be buying one sometime in the next month or two.
Windows Update Lacking XP
I hadn’t visited Windows Update for a while, so I thought I would swing by and see what updates were available for my Windows 2000 system. It was anything but a swing by.
The first thing I noticed was the new Windows Update interface. In Microsoft’s attempt to cross-brand Windows XP, they’ve redesigned most Web-based Windows services to look like the default Windows theme. I arrive at the site and it asks me if I want to install the newest Windows Update Utility. I agree to install the utility, and then click on the “Scan Now” button. Windows Update proceeds to look for available updates. (So far, nothing has been very different from previous visits.) Within a few seconds, I’m looking at this interface:
“10 critical updates?” Like I said, I hadn’t been there in a while, but 10 critical updates seemed like a lot. Then again, this is Microsoft. I grimace and continue by selecting the “Review and Install Updates” link. Shortly afterwards, I’m looking at this:
“Review and install your updates,” I read to myself. I look below and see a bunch of updates, but oddly each update only has a remove button. “But I thought there were 10 critical updates? Were these 10 critical updates previously installed or did Windows Update automatically select them?”
I’m confused. “Well maybe this red text up at the top will help.” I read the red text. “Huh? My total selected updates include an exclusive item that must be installed separately from other updates? I haven’t even selected anything yet!”
At this point, I consider giving up - until I look to the left and notice the menu:
“So I must be in the highlighted section. But how did I skip the other sections? And what do the numbers by the other sections indicate?”
I select the “Critical Updates and Service Packs” section and am presented with a screen similar to the first screen above, but slightly different. (I would show another screen shot, but it’s just as confusing as the others.) This time, in addition to the remove button, it specifically says which items were selected - whatever that meant - and also included a disabled add button, but I still didn’t know if these were updates already installed on my system or if they were just automatically selected. Finally I click “Remove,” and realized that Windows Update had automatically selected these updates, and I only needed to click “Remove” to deselect them. By discovery, I also was able to figure out that the numbers beside each menu item indicate the number of updates within that section, whether I’ve installed them or not.
I continue to the next menu item, “Windows 2000,” and find nine recommended upates that I could add. I select all nine of the updates. In the next section, “Driver Updates,” there are four updates. (The “Recommended Updates” heading has discreetly disappeared.) I select all four updates.
“So now I can select ‘Review and Install Updates’?” I select it and then see an “Install Now” button. By this point I’m so frustrated that all I want to do is install something and get it over with. I quickly hit “Install Now” and am prompted with an alert telling me that my list of selected updates contains an item that must be installed separately from all other updates.
(Five second pause.)
“Fuck it.” I quickly reach for the close button on Internet Explorer. I then get up from my desk, put on some water for tea, and pick up Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think to find a good quote that I could end this story with.
The point is, when we’re using the Web every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to throw us.
And as a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. The fact that the people who built the site didn’t care enough to make things obvious — and easy — can erode our confidence in the site and its publishers
Microsoft developers, buy Steve Krug’s book. And if you learn one rule of usability, make it Krug’s: Don’t Make Me Think!
The Early Bird Gets the Worm
As you may or may not know, I’ve been compiling sites for Web Simple, a gallery of simplicity in web design. The idea was to show screen shots of websites and then allow comments through Moveable Type. Like many other personal projects, I wanted to launch it a long time ago, but I’ve had to postpone it because of other website affiliations and personal projects.
Well a few weeks back, someone named Jarrod Piccioni contacted me and told me about a project he was working on. He was compiling minimalist websites in order to eventually list them on Textbased.com, his website. Since I was working on basically the same thing, I asked him if he had any interest in combining our efforts. I never heard back from him so I assumed he wasn’t interested. Today, via Harrumph, I found that the site had launched and is called the Minimalist Web Project. It’s hosted at Textbased.com, yet another green website. What’s funny is that even though we corresponded about the project, my own “minimalist” website is mysteriously missing from the pack.
So here’s the question: do I
- develop Web Simple as I envisioned it?
- repurpose it but still do something on the topic of simplicity?
- do something completely new and exciting altogether?
What do you think?
Update: Jarrod contacted me today and apologized for our miscommunication. Apparently, he did reply and I somehow never received the email. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Update #2: The Web Simple project is over.
Joshua Kaufman on 37signals
I’m honored to be quoted on the new 37signals website. Thanks to Jason Fried for the invitation. From their quotes page:
37signals means redefining what works on the web. The 37better series of sites proves this. It’s not about just building a website anymore. It’s about understanding the medium, understanding how people use it, and designing simple solutions that work — better.
— Joshua Kaufman, designer
Minimal Doesn’t Always Mean Simple
Textbased looks like it will be a great resource for minimalist, theory and discussions. However, because Textbased implies that minimalism is the same thing as simplicity, I want to again point out that this is a misinterpretation of meaning. Here’s the difference:
Simple interfaces are reduced (not minimized), understandable, and easy to use. In contrast, minimalist interfaces use a minimum of lines, shapes, sometimes color, and aren’t necessarily easy to use.
Because their meanings are similar, minimalism and simplicity are easy to confuse. I suspect a lot of the confusion is due to Curt Cloninger coining the term HTMinimaLism in his book, Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground. From his article derived from the book, HTMinimaLism Style: Part 1:
Inspired in part by the usability rantings of Jakob Nielsen, with his speedy download mantras and his least-common-denominator design approach, these new HTMinimaLists are proceeding to make beauty from code and very little else. HTMinimaLists use their skills to transform “simple” from boring to bold. And as always, the goal is effective communication — clear and uncluttered.
The simple and clear aspects of HTMinimaLism can be easily forgotten. For example, Harrumph, Heather Champ’s wonderful daily dose of photography and links is clearly a minimalist site, but not really simple or clear. If my mom and stumbled upon her site, it would be difficult for her to figure out what the point was. (See the Mom Test.) On the contrast Method is another mininalist site, but because they follow some basic web design conventions, it’s much easier to use. As soon as you land on the site, you know what they do because they tell you in big white letters. The navigation is in the upper left corner, and it defines a clear hierarchy of the site. See how minimal doesn’t always mean simple? Class dismissed.
Simplicity = Green?
Is it just me or is there an eerie use of the color green on the websites of companies that focus on simplicity and usability?
First there was 37signals, then twothirty, and now Suppose. Does green have some subconsious affect on the brain?
Kvetch is Dead
Derek retires Kvetch to a condo in Florida, so it can sit on the porch sipping frosty drinks, and kvetch about kids today. In the obituary, he writes about why he started the project, why he’s ending it and the valuable lessons he learned along the way. RIP Kvetch.
GUI Prototyping with HTML
Someone at the Institute for Software Research at University of California, Irvine wrote a great tutorial on Using HTML for Early UI Prototyping. As they note, a key advantage of using HTML for UI prototyping is it’s flexibility.
(via LucDesk)
Spread the Dot
bortblog!
Isn’t that fun to say?
Only a few days after launching the website for his multimedia development company, living children, my roomie Eric Bort launches his weblog, bortblog. Powered by none other than Movable Type, Eric says his weblog will be “a gathering of information and resources on the studies of non-physical human computer interaction (such as through eye tracking, head movements, voice, etc.)” With Eric’s sense of humor and insightful thoughts, it will definitely be interesting to see what goes on there so be sure to stay tuned.
The End Is Near or How Microsoft Will Own the Net
Robert X. Cringely writes about Microsoft’s Palladium project, which is an attempt to replace TCP/IP (for non-techies, that’s the protocol that makes the Internet work) with Microsoft’s propreitary protocol. Cringely calls it TCP/MS.
The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That’s taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we’ll all have to buy new computers.
This is diabolical. If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn’t choose to be Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh. It’s a militarized network architecture only Dick Cheney could love.
Junior Information Architects
Thomas Vander Wal wonders if children can teach us how to make better websites.
Reading about observations like this makes me really miss being around kids. When I first moved to Columbus, I worked as an outreach demonstrator at COSI. That means I drove a big truck around the state of Ohio and gave science presentations in elementary schools. My particular program was called “Good Vibrations” and was all about the science of sound and music. You know - pitch, frequency, sound waves, vibrations - that kind of stuff. I loved being around the kids and giving the shows but the travel schedule was rough. These days, the only real exposure I have to kids is when I’m out shopping. However, my crystal ball tells me that I will be around children much more very soon.
Simplicity vs. Minimalism vs. Clarity
Christina Wodtke was wondering if there will be a new trend in minimalist homepages. I responded by trying to clarify simplicity vs. minimalism.
Also, over at v-2, Adam Greenfield has a great quote from Nathan Shedroff on simplicity vs. clarity.
living children relaunch
My roommate, Eric Bort, recently relaunched the website of his multimedia development company, living children. Eric specializes designing educational applications using Flash but he also has a variety of other services to offer.
← June 2002 | Archives | August 2002 →
