Small Surfaces

Increase mobile UX quality? Just add standards.

Gabriel White — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:10:01 +0000

“Apple, Android, and Blackberry all do a great job of sharing standards with their developer communities. They share detailed guidelines on standard UI elements, the associated terminology, and their behaviors, and give usage examples for the UI. However, what they don’t do is string them all together into patterns. What happens after you click this button? How should these messages change in context of the task? If you’re opening a document online, should it open in a new window or in the current window? When and where do error messages appear in a form? Is that different or the same in a wizard or series of forms? These are the questions that designers and developers spend most of their time toiling over-the little things that pull UI elements together into a full interaction. And these are also the questions that the OS standards do not cover. This is a key gap in standards for designers and developers that can be filled by a new custom set of guidelines, which further save money and time in development efforts and add value to the existing, basic OS standards.”

Link: Raising the Bar for Mobile Standards (uxmag.com, via)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

The messy fragmented Android universe

Gabriel White — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:36:49 +0000

In an interview with Android’s head of design, Mathias Duarte gave the (unimpressive, I think) response to the question of why there are so many different versions of Android in the wild just now:

“A lot of those issues really are much more related to the hardware capabilities. Things like just how much memory you have. The reality is, right now Android is growing so quickly, it’s like it was back in the X86 days of PCs. When you got that 286 and were so excited! ‘Yes!’ And then Quake comes along and your 286 just couldn’t do the job. So right now, we have that issue people call ‘fragmentation,’ where some of the older hardware just won’t run the new OS. So trying to upgrade the OS is really difficult.”

While I don’t normally write about technical / platform issues, the Android fragmentation problem is now becoming a genuine challenge for organisations that want to deliver consistently fantastic user experiences on the platform.

This great chart, published last year by Michael Degusta, really brings the point home.

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

10 principles for awesome mobile design

Gabriel White — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:58:53 +0000

Uday Gajendar pulls together a set of 10 mobile design principles distilled from some of the leading mobile designers.

“Pivot, snack, bursts: support “snacking” by enabling users to pivot through tasks and information in quick bursts. Remember, the user is not chained to a desk for hours. They are often in a state of “constant partial attention,” multitasking across physical and virtual contexts, sometimes one-handed while doing something else.”

Link: Mobile UX Primer: Principles (ghostinthepixel.com)

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Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Finally, a UI style guide for Android

Gabriel White — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:25:53 +0000

Finally, a Google has put together a user interface style guide for Android. Better late than never.

“It’s not enough to make an app that is easy to use. Android apps empower people to try new things and to use apps in inventive new ways. Android lets people combine applications into new workflows through multitasking, notifications, and sharing across apps. At the same time, your app should feel personal, giving people access to superb technology with clarity and grace.”

Link: Android Design (android.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

How to write a product design review: Nokia N9

Gabriel White — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:46:54 +0000

Critiquing the Nokia N9, running Meego, Dan Hill shows us how product reviews really should be written.

“…The skeuomorphic nonsense that incomprehensibly pervades apps like Apple’s own Contacts, Calendar, iBooks, GameCenter, Find My Friends et al – all awkward faux-leather, wood and paper stylings – is is of such questionable “taste” it threatens to damage the overall harmony of iOS with its discordant notes. You cannot derive value from the idle suggestion of such textures on screen; they are physical properties and should be experienced as such, or not at all. Yet Apple’s design team will not explore those physical properties, merely sublimating their desire for such qualities into a picture of leather, a picture of wood. It recalls Marcel Duchamp’s critique of ‘retinal art’ i.e. intended only to please the eye. This has no place in Nokia’s design universe, thankfully. The design work here is intrinsically of its medium and pleases the eye consistently, without resorting to cheap imagery, but it also pleases the hand and the ear rather more than the iPhone.”

Link: Portable cathedrals (domusweb.it, via)

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Luther used social media to go viral

Gabriel White — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:09:17 +0000

The Economist takes a look at how the distribution of Luther’s thoughts followed some of the patterns that are very familiar in today’s digital social media universe.

“Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.”

Link: Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral (economist.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Technologies that drive 3D gestural user interfaces

Gabriel White — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:24:15 +0000

A primer from EE Times surveying the technological landscape (with challenges and opportunities) related to the creation of 3D gestural UIs (more EE Times articles on similar topics).

“Stereo vision technology demands considerable software complexity for high-precision 3D depth data that can be processed by digital signal processors (DSPs) or multicore scalar processors. Stereo vision systems can be low cost and fit in a small form factor, making them a good choice for devices like mobile phones and other consumer devices. However, stereo vision systems cannot deliver the accuracy and response time that other technologies can, so they’re not ideal for systems requiring high accuracy.”

Link: Gesture recognition–first step toward 3D UIs? (eetimes.com)

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Seven inch tablets must be treated as a different platform

Gabriel White — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:12:55 +0000

7 inch tablets should not just be considered smaller versions of their 10 inch cousins, proposes Nielsen in a study about the Kindle Fire.

“7-inch tablets have either a glorious future or will fail miserably. I doubt there’s a middle path in their future. For 7-inch tablets to succeed, service and content providers must design specifically for these devices. Repurposed designs from print, mobile phones, 10-inch tablets, or desktop PCs will fail, because they offer a terrible user experience. A 7-inch tablet is a sufficiently different form factor that it must be treated as a new platform. Furthermore, these mid-sized tablets are so weak that suboptimal designs – that is, repurposed content – won’t work. Optimize for 7-inch or die.”

Link: Kindle Fire Usability Findings (useit.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Conversational UIs help low-literacy mobile users

Gabriel White — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:42:25 +0000

“How can systems be better designed with education of those in emerging regions in mind? One answer may lie in moving away from the world of directly selecting and manipulating objects that are in part recognized by their Western written script. It requires reimaging a world where the direct manipulation paradigm of today’s smart phones is not the primary interaction method. Embrace a system designed from the ground up on indirectly manipulating a system through voice commands. While we are a long way off from a truly intelligent system that can hold a conversation, products are beginning to be produced that are able to gracefully respond to natural voice input. These systems should be built around a back and forth between speech and command confirmation, creating a two way dialogic interaction model.”

Link: The Role of Mobile UX in Developing Nations (usercentric.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Mobile web fails

Gabriel White — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:40:20 +0000

WTF Mobile Web collects screenshots of web sites that fail on mobile devices.

Link: WTF Mobile Web (wtfmobileweb.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

How to design multi-device user experiences

Gabriel White — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:14:26 +0000

Just finished presenting about how to design multi-device user experiences at MobXCon in Berlin. It’s all about defining the relationships!

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Tactile experiences are the future, not touching glass

Gabriel White — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:31:05 +0000

Provoked by Microsoft’s future vision video, Bret Victor argues enthusiastically that future visions that involve ‘Pictures Under Glass’ are missing a core element of what the future holds: tactile experience.

“Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit. What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing? I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade. Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat…Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.”

Link: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (worrydream.com, via)

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Organizing mobile content so it’s actually useful

Gabriel White — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:24:09 +0000

Luke Wroblewski writes about how to organize information in a mobile web site or application.

“It’s great that Facebook puts relevant content I can frequently check-in on front and center in their mobile web experience; but because of the three navigation bars at the top of their pages, I can only see one update on my screen. The Google Finance mobile web experience also has relevant, timely content-but it’s sandwiched below five navigation bars. That’s a lot of precious screen space spent on navigation options people might not need-space that could have been devoted to useful content instead.”

Link: Organizing Mobile (alistapart.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Video: the future is all content-based UI and gestures

Gabriel White — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:23:33 +0000

The future of productivity, according to Microsoft. It’s a slightly lonely world shown in the video, but one interesting theme (building on the steps being taken in the real world by Windows Phone) is that content unambiguously becomes the user interface. Combine content-driven user interface with gestural interaction, and there’s a whole lot of implicit understanding needed to successfully interact with these systems. Some really hard design problems.

UPDATE (2/11/11): Microsoft has a web site that explains some of the thinking that went into the video, and Inventing Interactive has collected some of the commentary in response to the video.

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Turn any object into a ubiquitous touchscreen

Gabriel White — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:22:25 +0000

“We explored and prototyped a powerful alternative approach to mobile interaction that uses a body-worn projection/sensing system to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides…Tables are often an order of magnitude larger than a tablet computer. If we could appropriate these ad hoc surfaces in an on-demand way, we could retain all of the benefits of mobility while simultaneously expanding the interactive capability.”

Link: OmniTouch (chrisharrison.com, via)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more