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Products For People Who Make Products For People

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Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#51

Post by arnorhs »

StavrosK wrote: post #40
neilk wrote: post #12

There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius. But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise. For the most part, so-called usabilit…

You know, I thought I had UI design mostly figured out, using a few simple rules: * Minimise the total number of clicks needed to access the sum of the program's functionality. * Make frequently-used functionality easier to reach than rarely-used functionality. * Don't have more elements in the UI than is easy to parse quickly. * No surprises. However, after reading this article, I get the feeling that it's a more ar…

Solid list.

Personally, I spend a great deal of time putting myself in the mind of the user, trying to figure out how we as humans visualize things and simplifying the actual underlying task at hand.

The list you summed up does work for 95% of all cases - especially if you're just thinking about a "website". However when you're trying to create something new or working with some new concepts you have to imagine how the user pictures things so that it matches his thought pattern as much as possible.

This also includes placing things were the user is most likely to look for them etc.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#52

Post by Qz »

StavrosK wrote: post #40
neilk wrote: post #12

There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius. But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise. For the most part, so-called usabilit…

You know, I thought I had UI design mostly figured out, using a few simple rules: * Minimise the total number of clicks needed to access the sum of the program's functionality. * Make frequently-used functionality easier to reach than rarely-used functionality. * Don't have more elements in the UI than is easy to parse quickly. * No surprises. However, after reading this article, I get the feeling that it's a more ar…

One of the key things about UI design these days is that it's very easy to fall into the 'widget trap'. This is where you have some content you want to interact with, and instead of really analyzing what the best way to interact with it is, you just throw the data in a standard widget, like a listbox or textarea. It might be a really nice listbox or textarea, but there may also be a much better way of interacting with the content that wasn't explored. Widgets are the typical area where this happens, but it can be generalized to any situation where people just go with pre-established conveniences rather than try to find the best solution.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#53

Post by Qz »

jimbokun wrote: post #43
jpr wrote: post #18

Great stuff. I think I'm developing a severe case of nerd crush on Zed. The part about linguistic experience was especially good. I have thought for some time now that all configuration files, command-line options etc. should have simple and clearly defined syntax. Some already do. My dislike of weird, inconsistent and complex syntax (and semantics) is so severe that I've semi-intentionally not learnt shell-scripting…

"I have come to think that GUIs as we know them are based on fundamentally flawed ideas - pointing and grunting - instead of using a language, the feature that separates humans from other animals." The dilemma is that human language is staggeringly ambiguous. This works because human beings have an extremely sophisticated model of other human beings in their head and a really good pattern matching facility, which mak…

One of the issues is that current UIs for computers have very little context information about whats on screen, which would make language based interaction much more convenient.

Also, editing a photo is a perfect example of where language interface would be useful: instead of hunting through Photoshop's millions of menus for the graphic effect you want, you could just say/type things like:

  Scale to 200%
  Increase contrast 10%
  Resize to 400 by 600
I'm pretty sure that language based interaction for photo-editing would increase productivity by huge amounts.

The other thing is that we've somehow locked onto the idea that the computer should be able to understand everything immediately or else it's not even worth it. But in the real world human's constantly miscommunicate, and we solve that problem very simply: ask more questions. So if the user says something like:

  Adjust contrast by 10%
The computer could respond:

  Do you want to increase by 10% or decrease by 10%?

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#54

Post by nkurz »

danielnicollet wrote: post #15

I have been a "product person" for 15 years and I believe that product people like Michael describes are bad product people. A good product manager knows the UI and the guts behind it. I am not an engineer by training but I wouldn't be a good product manager in this field if I didn't know how to build a web server either. For the "Jeep Cherokee made from iron ore": I give up. ;-)

I want to believe, but I'm dubious.

I'm almost certain when he says he can "make a web server", he means that he can sit down with a text editor, a compiler, and a standard C library, and produce a program that will serve HTTP requests. There's some gray area beyond this, but he definitely does not mean that he can download, configure, and run a premade piece of software.

Is this what you mean too? Is there really a population of self-described "product people" who have this knowledge? Or did you interpret his statement differently? I certainly agree that such people exist, but I would be surprised that their luxurious gray beards don't blow their cover. Which is to say, do they really work as product managers?

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#55

Post by neilk »

StavrosK wrote: post #40
neilk wrote: post #12

There is really no mystery about UI. Yes, it requires skill and a deep knowledge of how humans process information, and even a touch of design genius. But the real problem is that most shops can't measure usability in a fine-grained way. And yet everyone does have some idea that it's really important. Consequently they are bamboozled by anyone who purports to have such expertise. For the most part, so-called usabilit…

You know, I thought I had UI design mostly figured out, using a few simple rules: * Minimise the total number of clicks needed to access the sum of the program's functionality. * Make frequently-used functionality easier to reach than rarely-used functionality. * Don't have more elements in the UI than is easy to parse quickly. * No surprises. However, after reading this article, I get the feeling that it's a more ar…

In my opinion it isn't arcane, at least, no more arcane than other "soft" design fields. But the simple rules are complicated to follow.

Your first three principles are about efficiency. That's a big part of usability. When you reduce clutter, you make it easier to use by clarifying the next action the user should take.

But "No surprises" is rather complex. It means that you not only have to explain what you are doing, but also work with the user's mental model, which might be totally wrong.

Here's an example from my current project. We are designing a web form to upload images and video to Wikipedia. In 2010, the users' model of media uploads comes from Facebook, ImageBucket, and maybe Flickr. Even after you make them click on a box that says they give up their own rights before proceeding, they don't understand what they did. Apparently people's mental model just continues on blithely until it smacks against a major contradiction.

So we've tried various metaphors. "License your work" was replaced by "Release rights", and the next iteration is going to be "Donate your work". That wording was the suggestion of a usability testing and analysis firm we hired, by the way. So it does take a certain amount of inspiration to come up with alternatives, but recognizing where the problem areas are is just a matter of measurement.

Inspiration is aided by just having a bigger bag of tricks, too -- knowing common problems and solutions. For instance, if there is so much to do on one page that users are finding it overwhelming, it is helpful to break it into multiple steps (a "wizard"). That's another approach we have taken.

Anyway, I'm not sure if my expertise with usability is so deep that I could pronounce just a few principles. Maybe "reduce cognitive load to the minimum" is one, which has been more memorably distilled by Steve Krug as "Don't Make Me Think". Since we want to avoid onerous information transfer and cognition, there are some models of communication that might be helpful here; a classic text on human communication is The Responsive Chord, by Tony Schwartz. He argued that most communication is about activating stuff you already know (at the right moment), which you can see at play in the example I gave.

But ultimately it's about motivating human behavior, so it's only about as complex as the human heart. ;)

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#56

Post by [deleted] »

binomial wrote: post #50
jacobolus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "UX guys" are these you’re thinking of, who don't have a competent understanding of graphic design? I posit that it is irresponsible to claim to be a "UX guy" and not try to learn quite a bit about spatial hierarchies, data presentation, human response to colors and visual relationships, etc.

Though graphic design surely includes all those things you've mentioned, I was using it in the sense that most "web designers" might use it, as in the ability to make pretty stuff in photoshop. I'm not sure that someone who can, for instance apply Tufte's advice on data representation, necessarily also makes nice looking logos.

[deleted]

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#57

Post by jacobolus »

binomial wrote: post #50
jacobolus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which "UX guys" are these you’re thinking of, who don't have a competent understanding of graphic design? I posit that it is irresponsible to claim to be a "UX guy" and not try to learn quite a bit about spatial hierarchies, data presentation, human response to colors and visual relationships, etc.

Though graphic design surely includes all those things you've mentioned, I was using it in the sense that most "web designers" might use it, as in the ability to make pretty stuff in photoshop. I'm not sure that someone who can, for instance apply Tufte's advice on data representation, necessarily also makes nice looking logos.

Equating “don't have any great ability in graphic design” with “can’t draw logos” is applying a pretty narrow definition. Someone who just “makes pretty stuff in photoshop” should probably be called a “digital illustrator” or a “photo retoucher”, or a “digital imaging expert”, not a “graphic designer”.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#58

Post by [deleted] »

jacobolus wrote: post #57
binomial wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though graphic design surely includes all those things you've mentioned, I was using it in the sense that most "web designers" might use it, as in the ability to make pretty stuff in photoshop. I'm not sure that someone who can, for instance apply Tufte's advice on data representation, necessarily also makes nice looking logos.

Equating “don't have any great ability in graphic design” with “can’t draw logos” is applying a pretty narrow definition. Someone who just “makes pretty stuff in photoshop” should probably be called a “digital illustrator” or a “photo retoucher”, or a “digital imaging expert”, not a “graphic designer”.

[deleted]

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#59

Post by billswift »

greenlblue wrote: post #16

Good to be reminded once in a while that code is written for people and not machines.

English is written for people and not machines. Code needs to be written for both. It's too bad that coders often forget that someone is going to need to be able to read it later.

Re: Products For People Who Make Products For People

#60

Post by Poiesis »

Steve Jobs on design: "It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works"

This applies just as much to infrastructure as it does to anything customer-facing. To a non-programmer, for example, sendmail, nginx, and mongrel2 may all look like user-hostile crap. To a developer or administrator, it's easier to discern the differences in the design of this part, which is itself a major part of the usability of a webserver.

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