Back in January of this year, I documented Adobe’s wild succes with their attempt to prevent people from downloading Acrobat Reader by utilizing getPlus(tm) from NOS Microsystems.

Today, I downloaded Acrobat Reader and much to my surprise, getPlus is no longer front-and-center.  I simply downloaded the executable and installed it.

What happened to getPlus?  My interest was piqued, so I had a look around the NOS Microsystems site to see what they offer.  As it turns out, some pretty cool technology.

“We offer the only simultaneous download, extraction and installation platform available.”

Sounds pretty cool, right?  Unfortunately, it has the side effect of modifying the all-too-familiar download and installation experience from Next -> Next -> Next -> Finish into something that looks like this:

You’ll find plenty of diagrams and literature on the NOS site about their technology, how easy it is to customize and how it increases customer satisifaction through ease of use and simplicity (this, I strongly doubt).  What you won’t find is screenshots.

Countless companies employ “Download Managers”, as though the Save File functionality in Internet Explorer or Firefox is insufficient for the task at hand.  Typically these serve as advertising shells or simply an excuse to get more software on your machine.  They all miss the mark; additional software downloaded and installed under the assumption a download will be interrupted or some marginal increase in download and installation time will make up for the additional complexity.

If Adobe has indeed continued to utilize getPlus, they’ve done a terrific job of hiding the complexity so that we reap the rewards without paying the price.

Continue Reading

Much of this site is dedicated to identifying and improving usability gaffes, but there are some terrific companies and products out there that deserve mention for Getting It Right ™. Panic is one of them. The contributors to WordPress are another.

Now is the Time to Panic! – If you own a Mac but haven’t experienced any of the applications from Panic, you’re missing out on something phenomenal. Hell even if you don’t own a Mac, take a trip over to their site and revel in the aesthetics. All of my web work these days is done in Coda, one of the handful of programs you’ll find at the Panic website. Combining terrific usability with best-of-breed graphical and visual design, it’s a must-buy.

As mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of modeless feedback. Coda has an integrated FTP client which allows you to edit files on the server and download those updates once complete. Yes I realize I should be working the other way around, but it’s a pain to setup a local dev environment ;) Watch what appears when I download several files:

So much conveyed in so little space:

• Current filename.
• Current file count.
• Number of files in total.
• Progress indicator.

Absolutely terrific.

When Coda was first released, I found it a little rough around the edges, but picked it up anyway. Even if it wasn’t going to be in daily use (as it is now), supporting developers who Get it Right just Makes Sense(tm). Each application like Coda serves as an example to others and the more of them, the better.

Presstacular – As I type this post in my recently upgraded WordPress 2.5 blogging software, modeless feedback is occuring in the form of auto-saving. The folks at WordPress have this one about 95% correct. WordPress in general gets most things 90-95% right which is well above the open source community whose usability track record is abysmal.

The “Save” and “Publish” button colors change during an auto save. The color change is not drastic, however it is a considerable amount of area which draws my attention from the task at hand. I take it the buttons disable so as not to interrupt AJAX during the auto save? There’s a simple solution – just ignore the button click if an auto save is in progress and report success. If, when the auto save returns the content has changed, run another auto save. It happens so quickly (<1s), you’ll barely notice.

It’s great to see developers and designers getting it right. Is there room for improvement? Sure there is, but they so frequently get so much of it right that the little glitches don’t seem to matter. For all of the great design successes, this holds true. Every iPod and iPhone iteration has a few glitches, but nobody seems to care (some people care, but Apple’s ridiculous success shows to what extent).

Where does your application land? Did you get it mostly right? 5%? 70%?

How do you know?

Continue Reading

(In which I, Rob S., a man of relative experience with the personal computer, failed to install a program.)

It begins with a desire to communicate.

As I had recently re-imaged my machine at the office, I realized I was yet to install Windows Messenger.  A quick trip over to MSN and I’m ready to roll.

The process begins with this dialog, which is also where it ends.

Confronted with a confusing array of check boxes, progress bars, buttons and links, I simply froze.  This was unlike any installer I’ve ever seen, and I’ve used every computer from the Atari 800XL, Apple IIe, various PCs and Macs for 20+ years.

I sat there, perplexed, until the top half of the dialog sprang to life and changed to this:

The installation had already begun and subsequently failed, all before I could understand what I was looking at.  I clicked the “Get help with this” links but they presented me with the software installer equivalent of a brick wall – a general help page at the Messenger site.

Having failed the installation with no idea what to do next, my only remaining course of action was to quit the installer, so I did.  This web page appeared:

As some sort of cruel parting gift, Microsoft drops me at the Sign In page.  Or is it the Sign Up page (see top left)?  Where I would have loved to sign in with my new Messenger ID had Messenger finished installing.

Let’s look at went could have gone better:

• The installer dialog, in and of itself, is far from the most complicated dialog out there.  In context however, it is amazingly complex.  When an installer appears, I expect to repeatedly click “Next” until either (1) the installation completes or (2) the installer tells me to close Firefox and Microsoft Office.
• The word “waiting” adjacent the Messenger and Sign-In Assistant components should be relabeled “installing.”  Just a few pixels above, the dialog refers to its own action as “You’re installing these programs.”  Why the confusing terminology?  Who or what is the installer waiting for?
• “As each item finishes, you can start using it while the others install” – I would just be happy to get something installed, let alone begin using my installed programs while the others are being installed.  In my entire history of using computers, I’ve never met an installer that’s allowed me to begin using parts of the applications it was installing…

…which brings us back to the title of this post.

While the installer allows you to continue installing and running in parallel, this new installer presents an interface and interactions completely unfamiliar to anyone who’s installed 100 other programs.

Don’t buck the trend.  Your users have already learned how to install a program – play to their strengths.

Continue Reading

If you’ve used Amazon within the past few years, I hope you’ve stumbled on to the Gold Box.

The Gold Box is daily set of deals tailored to your interests, with what appears to be at least a 5% discount over the normal price. 5% might not seem like much, but when you’re mostly interested in a new Mac Pro and Nikon D300, it’s quite a lot :)

What I’ve noticed recently, is that the discussion topics at the bottom of the Gold Box have turned into a general community, irrespective of Gold Box deals.

Of note:

• motherless at 5yrs old, anyone else? how did it affect you?
• How to dye gray hair?
• PB&J pancakes How do you make them? (communication side note – no punctuation separates this sentence but we read it as two separate because of the use of sentence case)

Why is this? How does design factor in? Specifically, what did Amazon do to encourage this?

(1) This ‘forum’ is not a separate site as most forums are. They tend to have their own unique URLs where you leave an area of interest (e.g. the Gold Box) and transition fully into the forum. Here Amazon has a forum ‘preview’, to show that there is a community in place with (mostly) relevant ongoing discussion.

(2) No extra steps are necessary to begin posting – not a single one. The text area at the bottom allows you to begin a new topic immediately.  As you click into the Topic: field and begin typing, message components appear immediately below the topic.

No page navigation, refresh or other needless transition.  Compare this to the flow over at macnn (not to target them specifically – I just happened to be there yesterday).

Now to be fair, when  you are looking at an individual topic, there is a “quick post” section.  However that is not the focus here – quickly creating a new topic is.

(3) Simple posting interface.  Compare Amazon’s interface to the one in use over at macnn.  I had to max out the browser window on my 30″ display and I still have a scroll bar.

If you make it easy for people to express themselves, it will happen.

Continue Reading

It’s been quite a while since my last post and a lot has happened during that time. Unfortunately, not much of it has been related to a general, world-wide increase in usability.

I finally moved away from iPower, my previous hosting provider, and over to GoDaddy. This move was due largely in part to the usability of their new hosting platform (or rather, the lack of). Combined with increasingly poor customer service, it was an easy decision. Oh, and when they moved me to the new platform, they botched all the file permissions, didn’t copy hidden files and didn’t copy the admin interface folder for WordPress… which makes it difficult to post!

Back to business.

This past Tuesday morning, I was visiting the Kaiser Permanente office here in Mountain View. While waiting for my physician, I used the iPhone to snap a few shots.

Oops, wrong one.

Have a look at the login screeen for Epic’s “Hyperspace”, taken from the terminal Kaiser has in each patient room:

If there’s a screen I’d like to be simple for my practitioner to use, it would be the login screen.

• Centered, giant, red letters to indicate a safe state?
• “Spring 2007 iU1″ – I would guess this is the release/version of the software. Seems like something my physician or her assistant would like to know while logging in.
• Why an “Exit” button on this screen? Windows users are certainly aware of the the ‘X’ to close a window, especially physicians – this ain’t their first rodeo.
• A checkbox for “Change Password”. Rather than a button or a link (which I would actually like to see here), a checkbox. Does it mean that I enter a new password instead of my current password? Will I be taken to a separate screen? Do I have to enter my username first?
• That background and those graphics might look great as the default desktop for Apple’s Leopard OS, but are entirely out of place in a business setting especially in a health care environment where speed and efficiency are of the utmost importance. Any distractions (like a flashy, garish background image) should be cut.

This is only the login screen… Next time I’m at Kaiser, I’ll see if I can finagle a peek at my patient record when the system is online.

Hopefully not too soon :)

Continue Reading

The most frequent type of clicking on the web are forward navigation clicks (i.e. links) and… the back button!

While navigating Rally, I was experiencing a slight amount of navigational trauma and wanted to push the proverbial “eject button” and get back to somewhere familiar.  Here’s what I saw:

Don’t forget about page titles, even when you aren’t interested in having the pages searchable!

Continue Reading

At my accountant’s office yesterday morning -

“Stock sales… looks like you sold SPDR and INTC this year?”

“Yep, I- WHAT?!  SPDR?”

“Your 1099 from TD Ameritrade.  You sold a few stocks?”

I unwittingly sold a very large chunk of an index fund that I’ve owned for several years.  The buying and selling flows at TD are virtually identical save for the words “Buy” and “Sell” being interchangeable.

TD could have easily caught this mistake with some simple logic.  “You’ve only been buying SPDR in big chunks once a year for 5 years now.  Type the words “SELL SPDR” into this field to verify your (strangely seeming to us) intention.”  And in the future, no more typing as the pattern is now established.

I’m sure there are generalizable patterns among traders.  Why doesn’t TD use some of that knowledge in its interface?

Reinforcing yet again that confirmation screens and pop-up warnings are no substitute for an interface that too easily lets  you do the wrong thing.

Continue Reading

My 401k fund allocation was recently modified due to changes in available funds.  I logged on to TransAmerica to verify, who by the way has an absolutely killer site compared to GWLA, my previous benefits company.

While I’ve become less a fan of pie charts than I have been in the past (c/o Information Dashboard Design), I get quick verification that I am indeed in four funds.

Because the colours are identical between charts, I’m left wondering why I only have three slices on the left.  I spent a bit of time hoping to decipher which of the funds on the right were large/mid, small or international equity.  After a few moments I gave up, although I can’t seem to shake the fact that there is some hidden meaning there.

Without contrasting colours between charts, I still can’t help but think there’s a connection I’m not seeing.

Continue Reading

In spite of a the ribbonifically overhauled UI, one thing remains the same in Office 2007: the font selection component is a combo box.

Who out there is typing “A-r-i-a-l” into this thing?  Or “T-r-e-b-u-c-h-e-t—M-S-”?  (I left out the ‘u’ and had to correct that – Ha Ha!)

In spite of all the advancements with that control – font preview in previous versions of Office as well as MRU fonts and true font preview in 2007 (the selected area in your document changes while you mouseover the font list), it’s still a combo box?

One shouldn’t be too excited about this – it tailors to the 99% of the us who use the drop down without harming the 1% of us who still feel the need to type “Plantagent Cherokee” rather than select it from a list.

Continue Reading

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about my home audio and video equipment is the ever-present blinking “12:00″ on our VCRs (now DVD players I suppose).

I was very much surprised to find a terrific example of usability in a niche product for those of us with too few component video and/or digital optical inputs: the Audio Authority 1154A. It’s the perfect example of something I wouldn’t have asked for but is exactly what I needed; goal-directed design at its best!

I’ve got too many devices and not enough inputs. Here I am updating the system software on the Playstation3 (right-most device on the top shelf).

Many “serious” A/V switchers can be remotely controlled as home theater enthusiasts typically sport universal remotes as part of their gadget repertoire. The remote control commands for all devices are added to a single device that rules them all. If your target market has a remote, makes sense to give them what they want right? An A/V switcher with a remote?

Not quite.

My goal when sitting down isn’t to mess around with my gadgets, it’s to have fun playing Rock Band! Enter the 1154A, the perfect goal-driven device:

No remote and only one button. It automatically routes the signal based on which device is powered up (my PS3 in this case). And as turning on a device is a prerequisite for using it, this switcher is completely invisible.

Multiple devices turned on? No problem, it gives priority to the higher numbered device (connections in the back are numbered) – simple as that.

Really phenomenal design here and not at all something I would expect from the home theater enthusiast industry which is typically more about the size and complexity of your universal remote than how easy it is to use. Best $250 I’ve spent in recent memory even though I sometimes forget I own it :)

UPDATE: Hopped in the shower after posting this when it hit me – look at where the 1154A is on my setup.  Top shelf, facing forward,

as though I need line-of-sight to use an infrared remote with it

This 1154A could be behind the receiver, out of sight, out of mind.  Instead, I’ve positioned it as though I’m using a remote with it, even though I’m not.  Old habits…

Continue Reading