Functioning Form: Interface Design

Real Relationships Drive Contribution

LukeW — 2009-11-10

In social software, attention drives contribution - to a point. An increase in the amount of visible attention (quantity of explicit social relationships or activities) people receive helps drive contribution. More views of a video on YouTube encourages further uploads. More followers on Twitter encourages more updates. But this increase in production is likely to plateau.

The issue may be the kind of attention received. Focusing on real relationships can help further encourage participation without saturation. A 2009 study of Twitter explored this by comparing a user�s �friends� (defined as anyone who has been messaged by a user at least twice using �@� replies) with their followers (explicit 1-way relationships).

While the total number of posts initially increased as the number of followers increased, it eventually saturated. However, the
total number of posts increased with the number of friends without saturating up to 3,200 posts. This suggests the network of real relationships (friends) is "more influential in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends."

So actual friends (real relationships) are more likely to encourage contribution. Perhaps we can blame this on the 0-1-2 effect which states that the probability of joining an activity when two friends have done it is significantly more than twice the probability of doing it when only one has done so.

For more insights from online social relationships, check out my complete Impact of Social Models presentation.

Tags: models, social software, participatory culture, research

Data Monday: Operating System Market Share

LukeW — 2009-11-09

Windows 7 was released at the end of October 2009 so an overview of operating system market share seems in order.

PC Operating Systems

In September 2009, Mac platforms had 5.12%, Windows had 92.77%, and Linux had 0.95% of operating system market share. (source)
Between October and September, Windows dropped 0.25 percentage points (from 92.77% to 92.52%), Mac OS climbed up a sizeable 0.15 percentage points (from 5.12% to 5.27%), and Linux edged forward 0.01 percentage points (from 0.95% to 0.96%). (source)
Total Windows PC unit sales jumped 49 percent year-over-year for the week that Windows 7 launched and 95 percent from the week prior to launch. (source)
Windows 7 has already captured a larger percentage of the OS market than Apple's OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Linux. (source)
PC sales growth during the week of the Vista launch jumped 68 percent over the prior year's sales and 170 percent over the week preceding the launch. Windows PC sales for the launch week of Windows 7 were down 6 percent compared to PC sales during the Vista launch week. (source)
One month after launch, more than a sixth of all Macs were running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. (source)

Mobile Operating Systems

Symbian has a 46.2% share of the global smartphone OS market in the third quarter of 2009, although it only grew that share 2.6 percent year-on-year. (source)
RIM grew its market share by over 40% year-on-year to take 20.6% of the overall smartphone OS market in the third quarter of 2009. (source)
iPhone grabbed 17.8% percent of the global smartphone OS market, up 6.7 percent compared to 2008. (source)
Microsoft has 8.8% of the global smartphone OS market, down 33.1%. (source)
The iPhone's worldwide market share jumped from 33% to 40% over February to August 2009. (source)
Google's Android OS picked up a 7% market share by August versus only 2% in February 2009. (source)
Palm's WebOS had a 4% slice of the smartphone market in August 2009. (source)
The global share for Nokia's Symbian OS fell from 43% in February to 34% in August 2009. (source)
Microsoft's Windows Mobile also lost share, falling from 7% in February to 4% in August 2009. (source)

Tags: metrics, microsoft, apple, android, mobile

UI Pattern: Unified Settings & Tutorial

LukeW — 2009-11-06

This design pattern is a great example of using an ordinary user interface control as a learning opportunity for users. While Apple's Magic Mouse control panel contains the kind of standard checkboxes, buttons, and sliders you might expect in a settings panel, it also features clear and concise videos outlining the key functions of the mouse.

Simply mouse over the label or control you are interested in or want to adjust and the video on the right automatically plays to explain how the feature works. This turns an otherwise technical or confusing experience (very common in settings panels) into a simple learning moment that only takes a few seconds.

As Apple as recently invested a lot of time and effort in video tutorials, I expect we'll start seeing more embedded education within their user interface designs soon.

Tags: apple, interaction design, innovative UIs, patterns, video, user experience

Who Made the IPod Killer? Apple Did.

LukeW — 2009-11-05

There's been no shortage of digital media players that aimed for "iPod killer" status: Samsung's P3, Microsoft's Zune, Sony's X-series Walkman, Creative, Sandisk, and so on. But with over 220 million sold, Apple's iPod still has a 73.8% marketshare of digital music players. So while a lot of different companies have tried to "kill" the iPod -none have succeeded.

But in the second quarter of 2009, the iPod, once Apple's No. 1 source of revenue, fell into third place after the Mac and the iPhone. As recently as 2006, the iPod had accounted for 55.5% of Apple's revenue. By August 2009, it was at less than 18%.

So who shipped the iPod killer? Apple did -when they released the iPhone. As Andy Zaky pointed out:

"It would be incredibly naive for one to believe that iPhone sales aren't cannibalizing iPod sales to some degree. While not everyone who is in the market for an iPhone is in the market for an MP3 player, iPhone purchasers who are in both markets have little need to own both an iPod and an iPhone."

Apple's third quarter numbers further support the story. The company sold eight percent fewer iPods, and seven percent more iPhones compared to a year ago. It's not easy to replace your cash cow with something unproven. Just look at all the companies that can't or won't cannibalize themselves and end up being eaten by new competition or ideas. So I applaud Apple for looking at their products as ruthlessly as their competitors do.

And while, Microsoft, RIM, Palm, HTC, Motorola and more now seek to release "iPhone killers" My money is on Apple being the one who releases a product that really does kill the iPhone.

Tags: apple, business, strategy, microsoft, android

More Attention, More Contribution -To a Point

LukeW — 2009-11-04

Regardless of how social relationships are modeled in online software (be it community, group, 2-way/symmetrical, or 1-way asymmetrical models) more attention seems to result in increased contribution -to a point.

To illustrate, when an average Twitter user gets to 1,000 followers, they move from 3 daily updates to 6. That number rises to 10 average daily updates with 1,750 followers (source). Conversely, less attention often means less production. In a study of over 500,000 users on YouTube, research showed that a decreasing number of video views resulted in a lack of contribution. In this case, to the point of making contributors stop uploading any additional videos.

While an increase in the number of explicit social relationships can initially drive substantial increases in contribution, the rate of increase begins to level off and eventually plateau. Looking again at Twitter contribution data, we can see that while the number of posts increases as followers increase, it eventually saturates. So attention drives contribution but only to a point.

For more insights from online social relationships, check out my complete Impact of Social Models presentation.

Tags: social software, participatory culture, models, metrics

Mobile First

LukeW — 2009-11-03

More often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the PC version is complete. Here's three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead.

1. Mobile is exploding
Though the Web has been accessible on mobile devices for years, today's smart phones are driving huge use of networked applications and Web content. Consider that AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone, has seen a 4,932% increase in mobile traffic data in the past three years. And that's just the start.

Heavy mobile data users are projected to triple to one billion by 2013. (source)
Mobile internet adoption has outpaced desktop internet adoption by eight times. (source)
Smartphone sales will surpass worldwide PC sales by the end of 2011 . (source)
Over half of Android and iPhone users spend more than 30 minutes per day using mobile applications. (source)

Building mobile first ensures companies have an experience available to this extremely fast growing user base widely considered to be the next big computing platform.

2. Mobile forces you to focus
Mobile devices require software development teams to focus on only the most important data and actions in an application. There simply isn't room in a 320 by 480 pixel screen for extraneous, unnecessary elements. You have to prioritize.

So when a team designs mobile first, the end result is an experience focused on the key tasks users want to accomplish without the extraneous detours and general interface debris that litter today's desktop-accessed Web sites. That's good user experience and good for business.

3. Mobile extends your capabilities
The World Wide Web has been built on a foundation of rather simple capabilities (page markup, styling, and scripting) determined by what Web browsers can support. Web application developers -desperate to add innovative capabilities to this environment- have pushed the limits of JavaScript, browser plug-ins, and even Web browsers themselves to enable rich activities and interactions online.

But new mobile application platforms are introducing exciting capabilities that leave many PC-based Web browsers behind. Consider some of the capabilities offered to developers on Apple�s iPhone or Google�s Android platforms: precise location information from GPS; user orientation from a digital compass; multi-touch input from one or more simultaneous gestures; device positioning from an accelerometer; and many more.

Building mobile first allows teams to utilize this full palette of capabilities to create rich context-aware applications instead of limiting themselves to an increasingly dated set of capabilities.

Tags: mobile, devices, technology, Web applications

Data Monday: Mobile Social Networking

LukeW — 2009-11-02

In her keynote on Internet Trends (PDF), Mary Meeker forecast that next generation social networking mobile platforms will drive unprecedented change in communications and commerce. The current growth of mobile social networking seems to support her thesis.

The second-most popular Web activity for mobile users to engage in on a daily basis is accessing a "social networking site or blog." Last January saw 1.8-million do this, with a monumental, 427-percent increase to 9.3-million people in January 2009. (source)
Four of the top ten domains accessed via mobile devices are social networking sites. (source)
In September 2009, there was a one-year increase of 179% in subscribers accessing social networking sites from their mobile devices while those same sites only saw a 10% increase on the PC versions of the sites. (source)
Mixi�s (Japan�s leading social network) mobile monthly page views are three times desktop page views. (source)
Irish mobile-phone users spend on average 45 minutes a day accessing social-networking sites via their mobiles (source)
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. (source)
25% of Internet users with mobile or wireless access, use Twitter or another micro-blogging service. (source)
Almost 40 percent of Internet users with four or more Internet-connected devices use Twitter. The fewer the gadgets, the less a user is likely to connect via a microblog or status updating service. (source)

Tags: mobile, metrics, social software, devices, convergence

Multiple Application Access Points

LukeW — 2009-10-29

Writing up how the iPhone and Android operating systems handle application access & management differently got me thinking about a presentation on the Windows 7 design process at MIX09. In it, designer Stephan Hoefnagel showed the multiple ways people experience Microsoft Outlook on the Windows Vista desktop:

"There are actually eight icons for Outlook on the Windows Vista desktop and most of them do the same thing. This icon allows you to launch Outlook. This one allows me to switch to Outlook. This icon gives me tell me I have new email and this one gives me status about the Exchange server. [etc.] Now as you can see a complicated app like Outlook is spread out all over my Desktop. Is that what we want?" -Designing the Windows 7 Desktop Experience (video starting at 6 minute mark)

Windows 7 went away from this approach and simplified the presence of applications on the desktop (to the benefit of users). Given that applications on Google's Android operating system can reside in the start menu, as shortcuts, or as widgets of varying sizes across multiple home screens. Perhaps, Android has a similar opportunity to simplify?

Tags: windows, microsoft, interaction design, interface, android

App Interface Models in iPhone and Android

LukeW — 2009-10-28

The iPhone & Android operating systems handle application access & management differently. Does either approach lead to more app customization?

Apple�s iPhone operating system only has one user interface control for accessing applications. Apps are represented on one of several potential home screens as 57x57 pixel icons. To run an application, you simply tap the icon.

The application you selected comes forward and takes over the full display area allowing you to interact with it. If an application is not open, it is not running. To close an active application, you press the home button on the phone and the application recedes. All applications on the iPhone work the same way.

Any new applications added to the iPhone from the Apple App Store are placed in the next available home screen position where the application�s icon is displayed in a loading state.

Google�s Android operating system, on the other hand, has several interface controls for applications. Applications can reside as shortcuts (icons) on one of several home screens; as active widgets on the same set of home screens; or within an �all programs� menu accessible through the operating system start menu. (I�m using the HTC Sense build of Android in these examples.)

When adding an application to a home screen, you are given an initial choice of shortcuts, HTC widgets, and Android widgets. Programs is a sub-menu available under shortcuts that provides access to the full application list. The same application can appear in both the widgets and program menus.

When you add a new application from the Android Market, it is placed in the system �all programs� menu but no indication is given that this is happening (unlike the iPhone example above).

It�s up to you to decide which format (shortcut or widget) you�d like for each application on your home screen. However, not all applications have widget states. Not all widget states are the same size and you don�t know what size is available until you decide to place a widget on a home screen.

Some applications have multiple widget sizes available that you can select from. Others only have one or none.

So on Android, applications can reside only in the start menu, as shortcuts, or as widgets of varying sizes. In any of these forms they can run in the background without being open (taking over full display area).

While many people tout the flexibility and customization options Android gives people, I can�t help but wonder if the singular model Apple employs makes managing a set of mobile applications easier. Every app is accessed the same way and only open apps are running. Sure this is limiting in some ways (customization options, background processes) but empowering in others (clarity, control) at the same time.

If people feel more confident with Apple's simpler customization options, they may actually customize more (add additional apps) as a result.

Tags: mobile, apple, interaction design, interface, android, control

Data in the Design

LukeW — 2009-10-27

Though the debate about metrics-driven design continues, it�s becoming increasingly hard to do large-scale digital product design without integrating an understanding of data.

Data is an inevitable result of our world going digital. As books, music, movies, maps, and more become bits, they can be indexed, modeled, mined, analyzed, and queried. The results of these operations quickly create mountains of data that need to be presented in clear and usable ways to people. This task frequently falls on the shoulders of designers. Or as Bruce Sterling put it in his book, Shaping Things:

�People who will make it their professional business, no, even their calling, their practice, their very mode of being �to create a human-object relationship that is as advanced as [we] can manage while still being acceptable to [us]. Who would that be then? Designers. Who else is there?�

But design isn�t about hiding data from people or simplifying it to the point of crippling insights. We are increasingly comfortable using data to manage our personal and professional lives. As more of what matters to us becomes digital, we naturally begin to embrace the way data can empower and inform us. This new culture of �personal data� is on the rise:

�Numbers are making their way into the smallest crevices of our lives. We have pedometers in the soles of our shoes and phones that can post our location as we move around town. There are sites and programs for monitoring mood, pain, blood sugar, blood pressure, heart rate, cognitive alacrity, menstruation, and prayers.� �Living by Numbers

So not only is more data available (as things go digital), but people are increasingly comfortable with data in their lives -data about the items we interact with and data about our own interactions as well.

Designers can (and increasingly do) use this data to learn from aggregate behavior and to influence individual actions. Today�s software analytics provide real time insights into how people are actually using products, which can help product teams make more informed design decisions. When these metrics are surfaced to end users, they can influence individual behavior by spurring additional participation or behavior changes.

Data analytics can also help create and optimize opportunities. Designers versed in data may uncover trends or insights that not only yield better products but new product or business ideas as well. As Google's chief economist, Hal Varian believes:

�A new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati�and it's all about harnessing supply and demand. �What's ubiquitous and cheap?� Varian asks. �Data. And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data.�

Increasingly, there�s data in the design.

Tags: metrics, bruce sterling, decision making, sensors

Data Monday: Digital Video

LukeW — 2009-10-26

The market for digital video continues to expand. Some of the latest numbers:

YouTube is serving well over a billion views a day globally. (source)
Of the 115 million estimated households in America, 9.6% now subscribe to Netflix. (source)
42% of Netflix subscribers streamed at least 15 minutes of one TV episode or movie during the third quarter of 2009. That is a 145% increase compared to last year. (source)
AT&T's U-Verse IPTV offering reported a net gain of 240,000 U-Verse TV subscribers in the third quarter of 2009, moving to a total 1.8 million subscribers. (source)
Verizon added 191,000 new FiOS TV customers in the third quarter of 2009 for a total of 3.3 million. (source)
Cisco said that worldwide, a broadband-connected household consumes 11.4 GB of data per month with 4.3 GB of that being video, social networking or collaboration. This amount is roughly the equivalent of approximately 20.5 short- form Internet videos or approximately 1.1 hours of Internet video. (source)
161 million US Internet users watched online video during August 2009, the largest audience ever recorded. (source)
Online video reached another all-time high in August with more than 25 billion videos viewed during the month. 81.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. (source)
The average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, or 9.7 hours. (source)
120.5 million viewers watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube.com (82.6 videos per viewer). 44.9 million viewers watched 340 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 12.7 videos, totaling 1 hour and 17 minutes of videos per viewer. (source)
The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes. (source)

Tags: metrics, video

Death to Lorem Ipsum

LukeW — 2009-10-22

I've long believed that real data delivers really effective design. Using actual content, information, and activity throughout the design process to inform and guide decisions results in product designs that scale well and communicate effectively.

This philosophy could be thought of as "death to lorem ipsum". Lorem Ipsum, in case you are wondering, is dummy text originally used in the print industry to lay out page designs. It has since been re-appropriated by Web designers (and worse yet software designers) to lay out Web site and application designs.

Using dummy content or fake information in the Web design process can result in products with unrealistic assumptions and potentially serious design flaws. A seemingly elegant design can quickly begin to bloat with unexpected content or break under the weight of actual activity. Fake data can ensure a nice looking layout but it doesn't reflect what a living, breathing application must endure. Real data does.

"Death to lorem ipsum" seems to be popping up a lot these days. Which is personally gratifying.

Designing in code allows you to see how real data works inside a layout. -Facebook design team
Prototyping lets you play with real data and adjust experiences accordingly. -Kip Voytek
Know what the actual content on your site will be before you finalize your design. -Jeffrey Zeldman
Stop using lorem ipsum and boxes �think through real content implications. -Kristina Halvorson
When you sell your client on static mock-ups you are setting yourself up for problems when those designs do are not mirrored in the browser. -Andy Clarke

Tags: form|function, interaction design, interface, Web applications

Event & Discount Code: An Event Apart, San Francisco

LukeW — 2009-10-21

On December 8th I�ll be speaking at An Event Apart in San Francisco, CA about Web Form Design in Action. I'll walk through the latest applications of rich Web form interactions including: flexible inputs, dynamic help systems, inline validation, input masks, and more.

If you are interested in going, feel free to use the discount code: AEALUKE for $100 savings on the event cost.
Official Description
The Web has been transformed by the recent proliferation of rich interactions and social applications. But the workhorses of the online world, Web forms, have been slow to evolve with these changes. As brokers of crucial online interactions like e-commerce checkout and registration, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. As a result, Web form design matters. But web forms aren't keeping up.

Building on topics in his top-selling book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, Luke Wroblewski will walk you through the latest applications of rich Web form interactions (made possible by dynamic technologies like Ajax) including: flexible inputs, dynamic help systems, inline validation, selection dependent inputs, and more. He'll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of Web applications and services. Learn how these modern approaches to Web form design can enhance your Web apps.

Hope to see some of you there!

Tags: aneventapart, forms, guidelines

Tight Knit Circles Flourish in Social Software

LukeW — 2009-10-20

While social relationships can be modeled a number of different ways in online software -tight knits circles seem to emerge in each model. That is, a few people get the bulk of any given user�s attention (as measured by contribution). Looking at community, 2-way, and 1-way social relationships highlights these tight circles.

2-3 average �clique� size on Y! Answers before social relationships were added (source)
4 average people a man messages on Facebook (source)
6 average people a woman messages on Facebook (source)
7 average friends� walls a man on Facebook posts to (source)
10 average friends� walls a woman on Facebook posts to (source)
13 average �friends� for 92% of Twitter users (source)

A 2009 study on Twitter found that these relationships were mostly reciprocal. That is 90% of a Twitter user�s �friends� (defined as anyone who has been messaged by a user at least twice using �@� replies) reciprocated attention by also being friends with the user.

For more insights from online social relationships, check out my complete Impact of Social Models presentation.

Tags: social software, participatory culture, models, metrics

Data Monday: Android Adoption

LukeW — 2009-10-19

Google's free mobile operating system is showing up on an increasing number of networked devices. Gartner Research even predicts Android will surge from 2% of the smartphone market to 14% in 2012.

The complete Gartner forecast for smartphone OS's by the end of 2012 puts Symbian on top with 203 million devices sold, and 39% of the market. Android will be second with nearly 76 million units sold, and 14.5% of the market. (source).
Currently, Android phones are on 26 carriers in 32 countries, and there are 10,000 apps (source).
There are currently 12 Android phones on the market. (source)
In 2010, as many as 40 models of Android devices may ship. (source)
Verizon, the biggest U.S. wireless carrier, will launch two new Android devices this year (one by HTC and one by Motorola), with an entire family planned for the following years. Those devices will include not just Android smartphones, but �specialty devices� such as netbooks, PDAs, and even simpler feature phones. (source)
Sprint will also sell two Android phones this year, one by Samsung and one by HTC. (source)
The HTC Hero runs HTC Sense and is available on Sprint in the US (source)
T-Mobile will sell several Android phones this year, including Motorola's new CLIQ, and a wood-grain "Fender" edition of the HTC myTouch 3G. (source)
The Motorola Google phone, the 'CLIQ' includes Motorola's new 'MotoBlur' software, which basically replaces the standard Android home screen with a social networking dashboard. (source)
According to representatives from China Mobile, Motorola will release up to eight handsets for the largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscribers. The OPhones will use a customized version of Android called Open Mobile System. (source)
AT&T will reportedly sell Android devices next year, including one from Dell. (source)
Dell will bring the Mini 3i Android phone to the U.S. in the next few months. (source)
Acer, the world's third largest PC vendor, announced two of its most highly anticipated products with Google's Android mobile operating system on board, the Liquid smartphone and an Aspire One netbook. (source)
Barnes & Noble's rapidly-approaching eReader is rumored to run Android. (source)

Tags: mobile, metrics, business, devices, android