Mr. Brignull not only provides clear illustrations and real-world examples of how dark-patterns like hidden costs, trick questions, and forced continuity are utilized but, more compellingly I think, he explains that despite whether dark patterns are implemented intentionally or via misadventure they are often hard to eliminate.  Dark patterns often perform well in A/B and multivariate test because their subterfuge frequently results in more conversions; eliminating the dark patterns usually means at least a temporary decrease in conversions and/or revenue.

It’s a great read, and don’t just take my word for it, head over to A List Apart so you learn more about dark patterns, and possibly find out where you and/or your organization falls on the “honest interface to dark patterns continuum” scale!

Links

• Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design, by by Harry Brignull.
• Dark Patterns Wiki. by Harry Brignull.
• Dark Pattern: Now you see it. Now you don’t. by Tyesha Snow.
• Interface Design Bookcamp Workshop notes. by Aaron Walter.

In the last calendar quarter, Apple shipped 11.1 million iPads, which not only expanded the computing market with less need for DRAM, but also held back sales of conventional PCs. Apple actually sold more iPads than rival Dell sold in all its PCs together (10.6 million).

That statistic is staggering, and further proof that those of us in the UX universe need to be prepared for this shift in how users are getting their information.  Obviously Luke Wroblewski, Brad Frost and others have been beating the “mobile first / future friendly” mantra for awhile now, but every day it’s becoming clearer just how prescient they were about this sea change.

Image via Wikipedia

In the same post on Apple Insider Daniel Eran Dilger cites a Bloomberg report that indicates DRAM chipmakers have lost an estimated $14 billion over the last three years on DRAM chip sales for PCs, and an additional estimated $37 billion invested in DRAM factory expansions in expectation of continued growth in PC sales.

To keep from suffering the same fate as DRAM chip makers I think it behooves every UX practitioner to seriously think about, plan for and learn as much as possible about the implications of this major shift in how most users are going to be receiving information.  We should also be thinking about what it means for our own projects/products/services, but also what it means for the UX community as a whole and what we can do to make this change less painful, stressful and confusing.

Feel free to share your ideas about how you’re dealing with the shift from desktop to mobile/tablet (and the inevitiable shift to a myriad of connected devices in the very near future).

Links:

• iPad disrupting global DRAM market, causing chipmakers to lose billions,  Apple Insider, 11/28/2011, by Daniel Eran Dilger

• Apple Now Selling More iPads Than Macs; iOS Eclipses Dell And HP’s PC Businesses, Forbes , 07/19/2011 by Brian Caulfield

• The iPad Isn’t Just Killing PC Sales – Memory Chips Take a Hit Too, ReadWriteWeb , 11/29/2011, by John Paul Titlow

1. Acknowledge and embrace unpredictability.
2. Think and behave in a future-friendly way.
3. Help others do the same.

They also offer more in-depth explanation of future friendly thinking and provide  several links to outside resources to help you become a more future friendly developer/designer.  I sat here for a minute or two trying to decide how to wrap this up, but there was no need to because this little gem was right there on the first page:

The future is ours to make—friendly.

If you are demanding registration before checkout, you need to cease this practice immediately. It is costing you a fortune.

– Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini

Links:

• How to Achieve Painless Registration from the Ask Tog blog.

Adobe Proto, a new Adobe Touch App, lets you create interactive wireframes and prototypes of websites and mobile apps on your tablet.

Interesting….has anyone used it yet and if so would you be so kind as to provide a quick synopsis/review of your experience with it?

Links:

• UXRave
• Adobe Proto

Dustin Curtis makes an interesting observation about the screen sizes of the iPhone and some of its competitors. Newer  Android and Windows7 models have larger screens which look more inviting, and some would assume that the extra real-estate would improve the user-experience (by either allowing more context to the data on the screen, or allowing more white-space around individual objects on the screen for easier visibility, larger movies, etc) .

Mr. Curtis started using a new Samsung Galaxy S II phone, which has a 4.2″ screen as compared to the iPhone 4‘s 3.5″ inch screen. After using the Galaxy S II for a few weeks he noticed that, when holding the phone with one hand he couldn’t reach the other side of the phone.  When using the phone with one hand (which is relatively common given that the device is meant to be used “on the go”) the “extra real estate” provided by the wider screen was impossible, or at the very least quite frustrating, to access much less use.

Mr. Curtis summed it up nicely:

“This is an example of one of those design decisions that you don’t usually notice until you see someone doing it wrong. It’s one of the things that makes Apple products Apple products.”

I haven’t done the research on “median thumb length” or anything yet, and while I realize that Mr. Curtis could have unusually sort digits this is an interesting issue to consider in regards to mobile usability.

Links:

• Dustin Curtis‘s blog.
• Dustin Curtis on twitter.

Coleen Jones,  author of Clout:The Art and Science of Influential Web Content, will be discussing the “mobile moment”, which she describes as:

Whether you’re trying to market a product or change the world, you can no longer ignore mobile as a medium for influence. Of particular power is the mobile moment–the instant a user connects with the right content at the right time. Though this moment seems magical to a user, it doesn’t happen by magic. It takes knowledge of principles. It takes detailed planning. It takes hard work. This interactive session will help you assess a mobile context, generate ideas for mobile persuasion, and plan the right content to turn your mobile moment into a magical one.

Then Luke Wrobeleski, author of Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, who will be in Atlanta speaking at the An Event Apart conference, is also paying CHI Atlanta a visit to discuss “mobile first” development.  Luke argues that the current model,  where the mobile experience for a web application or site is designed and built after the PC version is complete, is flawed and needs to be reversed with “mobile first”.

Links:

• CHI Atlanta.
• Winning Content blog, Colleen Jones.
• LukeW Ideation blog, Luke Wroblewski

Who wants to deal with this dialog box? No one.

The code is a relatively simple change and there are very few caveats, so this seems like a fix that could significantly increase user confidence when browsing in environments that move from HTTP to HTTPS .

HTTPS Goes Mainstream

HTTPS usage has recently moved beyond the e-commerce and banking/financial sectors:

• In January of 2011 Facebook announced that HTTPS access was available everywhere,  not just for log-in.
• And earlier today,  Twitter introduced a setting that allows the user to always connect to twitter.com via HTTPS.

Given the ridiculously heavy traffic on those two sites, it’s pretty obvious that the issue of moving back and forth between secure and unsecured websites, and even between secured/non-secured sections of the same website, will be a much more common activity.

And although IE has been losing market share of late, it is still too much of a force to be ignored.  Today’s release of the (allegedly) HTML5 friendly IE9 today at SXSW seems to indicate IE isn’t going away anytime soon.

Big Return on User Experience (and Investment)

I plan on investigating this seemingly simple fix, as the words NON-SECURE ITEMS create uncertainty, and are likely to give pause to many users.

The results of that “pause” or “uncertainty” ranges from simply slowing the user down and “making them think”, to eroding trust in your brand, to the worst-case-scenario of causing a previously happy consumer to abandon his or her shopping cart due to security concerns.  And no one wants that to happen.

 Links:

• The Protocol-Relative URL, 10/27/2010,  by Paul Irish.
• Facebook Finally Adds HTTPS Support, 01/27/2011 ,  by Stan Schroeder
• Making Twitter More Secure: HTTPS , 03/15/2011, by Twitter Blog Staff.
• Internet Explorer 9 Info & Download

In an article about the John Frum Cargo Cult in Smithsonian Magazine,  anthropologist Kirk Huffman explains:

“You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.” The locals don’t know where the foreigners’ endless supplies come from and so suspect they were summoned by magic, sent from the spirit world. To entice the Americans back after the war, islanders throughout the region constructed piers and carved airstrips from their fields. They prayed for ships and planes to once again come out of nowhere, bearing all kinds of treasures: jeeps and washing machines, radios and motorcycles, canned meat and candy.

Interesting. But what do cargo cults have to do with usability testing?

David Travis, of London-based usability consulting firm UserFocus, brilliantly connects cargo cults and usability testing in his UXBooth article about losing sight of the basic fundamentals of usability testing:

The physicist Richard Feynman once wrote about cargo cult science, where researchers adopt the paraphernalia of doing scientific activity but forget its core principles of empiricism, integrity and avoidance of bias. In the same way, people sometimes adopt the paraphernalia of usability testing, such as the one-way mirror and the video cameras, but forget the core principles of doing user research. Get those core principles right and you can run a great usability test with just a pencil and paper.

Given that most of my UX  knowledge is theoretical, this article made it clear that I have to be diligent to not simply “adopt the paraphernalia of usability testing” without having a firm understanding of the basic fundamentals of user research.

Links:

• 4 Forgotten Principles of Usability Testing. by David Travis , PhD
• ‘In John They Trust‘, (Smithsonian, Feb 2006). by Paul Raffaele
• Richard Feynman’s ‘Cargo Cult Science’ lecture on Wikipedia.
• Cargo Cult entry on Wikipedia.

Links

• Jared Spool
• 19 Lessons from United Airlines on How to Build a Crappy Survey