I%u2019ve no scientific research either, but when I observed users
filling in a form with two email fields, I saw several times that
people filled out the first field correctly, got annoyed with the
fact that they had to retype their address and made a typo in the
second field as a result of that.
Robert, this sounds to me that you want to measure the user's emotion
while using your app. This is a topic Marco van Hout
(www.design-emotion.com) addressed in his talk at the Design by Fire
conference last year. Marco and his team developed a 'layered
emotion measurement tool' to measure emotions
IxDA NL and Chi Nederland, the Dutch local chapter of ACM SIGCHI, organize an
international conference on interaction design. This event, by the name of
'Design by Fire conference', offers an inspiring stage for interaction,
information, interface and experience designers.
After the success in
Noldus is a company providing software and instrumentation for
usability labs worldwide.
http://www.noldus.com/
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32489
__
At Iceweb 2006 Joe Clark gave a presentation on this topic.
His conclusion may still be valid:
"...Ajax has problems. Maybe not fatal problems, but problems
nonetheless. [...] You%u2019re more than halfway there just by
getting your page to work in the first place. What I expect to
happen, though,
I don't agree that Arial or Myriad has no longer any particular
connotations. It is a design decision, even if you choose a very
common or neutral font.
If you want feedback on the ideas behind some sketches I would advise
a handwriting font like Notepad:
http://www.dafont.com/notepad.font
(or jus
Hi Nick,
It depends of course on the target group and the intended purpose of
the site.
Furthermore it depends on font (serif requires a larger font-size
than sans-serif), character set (Arabic requires a larger font-size
than Latin) and contrast between text and background.
As default for a main
I liked this interface. Not that we have to get rid of clicking. For a
button that is still a very good interaction.
The experiments show a few nice complimentary interactions to make
information and functionality accessible while keeping all parts in a
logical context.
- Yohan
. . . . . . . .
:: Update :: We are very pleased to announce the seventh speaker at Design by
Fire 2008. Thomas Castro, one of the partners of multidisciplinary design
practice LUST, will give a presentation on non-hierarchy and non-linearity in
design.
With the confirmation of Thomas, the list of speakers for
Most often I use the UML State Transition Diagram for complex
(non-linear) interaction.
By selecting a tool, clicking on an object or dragging a bounding
box, the user brings the application in a certain state. Each state
has it's own options for interaction.
Here an example of a diagram for 'edi
Hey Andrei, thanks for sharing. Good to see that you are promoting
Dutch Design (Wim Crouwel and Dick Bruna).
My recommandation for everyone designing products is:
Designing for the Social Web, by Joshua Porter
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Social-Voices-That-Matter/dp/0321534921/
- Yohan
.
O, and be sure to get a copy of Analog In, Digital Out: Brendan Dawes
on Interaction, by Brendan Dawes. It's full of inspirational ideas
and concepts.
http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Digital-Out-Brendan-Interaction/dp/0321429168/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A more obvious solution to your problem is:
Label [input]
Label [input]
The lay-out of the form should contribute to the understanding of the
form.
I see no problem or in putting related fields in columns
Phone Extension
[input] [input]
or in putting tabular data in columns:
http://www.ylab
I like the visual style of Nicholas Feltron's annual report. But why
are infographics so extremely non-interactive?
I have seen very few examples of interactive infographics (and I'm
following Manuel Lima's weblog) while interaction could add so much
to help people understand the information.
The
Yes, I'm interested. I plan to stay there for a week.
I've seen a Whistler three day trip in the list of workshops a while
ago, but can't find it anymore...
Gustavo Gawryszewski started a thread about skiing as well:
http://www.interaction09.crowdvine.com/posts/show/1974060
- Yohan
. . . . . .
Fixed menus do make sense in terms of usability.
Two examples with a menu fixed on the left:
~ http://www.designbyfire.nl
~ http://www.nva-amserfoort.nl
Both work in Internet Explorer 6 as well.
I use the same technique (as described in
http://tagsoup.com/cookbook/css/fixed/) for making sure the
Hmm sorry, a typo. The second example should be:
~http://www.nva-amersfoort.nl
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34162
Welcome to the
I vote for 'AFTER'. I always need some time to digest the
information overload of a conference. Blackcomb seems a perfect
environment for this.
And I vote for budget. For skiing it doesn%u2019t matter for me how
luxurious the hotel is. If there%u2019s snow and lifts are working I
will hardly be in
For right to left scripts (languages don't have a direction, the
direction depends on the script in which the language is written) the
complete lay-out is mirrored. When designing for the web, you don't
have to worry about it. The direction property in HTML takes care of
it.
See the following test
I like the fact that Microsoft dared to change the interface so
rigorously. The old interface with menus and toolbars wasn't perfect
either.
I guess that the ribbon is helping new and even intermediate users.
But as a expert user I'm missing the fast overview a classic menu
offers. I think the rib
Another 10 article list of user (more specific: citizen) rights is the
Dutch e-Citizen Charter.
This charter is written form the citizens' perspective and consists
of 10 quality requirements for digital contacts. Each requirement is
formulated as a right of a citizen and a corresponding duty of
go
There is an updated version of the previously mentioned e-Citizen
Charter:
http://www.burger.overheid.nl/files/workbook_ecc_english.pdf
Or check the html summary:
http://www.burger.overheid.nl/service_menu/english/what_we_do
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hi Dimiter,
I support your approach: draw the attention to the dynamic content.
When possible: emphasis the data that really needs attention or
stands out, an approaching deadline or a metric that doesn't meet
the standard.
Stephen Few wrote two nice books on visual communication of data. He
adv
I have no favorite memory of Interaction 08 | Savannah because I was
too late to register. The event was fully booked by the time I
decided to go...
That won't happen to me again! This year I will join you in
Vancouver. Looking forward to meet you all.
- Yohan
http://www.ylab.nl
To be honest:
Sorry to disappoint you, but I think a dropdown with 195 country names
is the most convenient way to select the country you live in. I
propose to use the official UN list * of ISO 3166-1 country names in
the same language as the rest of the form **, ordered alphabetically.
My design consideration
Michael,
In this case language and country are not related.
The language used for the list is the language of the user interface.
In my opinion the list of country names should be in the same language as
the rest of the page. On a French web page the list will start with:
Afghanistan
Afrique du
At the Design by Fire 2008 conference, Joe Fletcher presented a design
vision for Microsoft Surface.
Go to http://www.designbyfire.nl/2008/coverage for his slide deck or
check http://designIsBeautiful.com/?p=74 for a summary of the key
slides.
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
For me prototyping and design documentation are two very different
things. I use the first for testing ideas, the second for
communicating design decisions / considerations / motivation.
The possibilities of AJAX are great for the web, but nothing new for
desktop software. For specification of (ri
It's no use testing bad designs. A-B-testing will only work if both
alternatives are good (good enough to meet the requirements).
If there's an opinion war after testing, then I would think that the
design problem wasn't clear to start with. Did the stakeholders agree
on what problem the design sh
Richard Ishida, the Internationalization Activity Lead at the W3C,
gives practical tips in his presentation 'Designing for
International Users':
http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0706-atmedia/
There's more on his blog: http://rishida.net/blog/
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The email address as user id is becoming the preferred way in my
opinion.
Pros:
an email address is unique;
an email address is easy to remember;
in many cases the system requires the email address also for sending
messages.
Cons:
still not everyone has an email address;
an email address may ch
Here is a more exhaustive overview of methods and deliverables which
can be used throughout a design process:
http://project.cmd.hro.nl/cmi/hci/toolkit/
Unfortunately, you won't find Andrei's pencil sketches and
pixel-perfect mockups in this overview. Neither does it answer all
Jarod's questions.
The site of the Dutch Railways uses a tab metaphor with a color
transition if the user clicks one of the tabs.
http://tinyurl.com/tab-transition
I think they implemented this to draw the user's attention to the
fact that the content has changed. A better example is in their
planning module. They
Hi Greg,
The answer to your questions from my point of view:
1. A rollover could be annoying for users when the mouse hovers over
the menu unintentionally. For that reason I used a short delay
between rollover and showing the menu in http://www.vanluin.nl
2. Yes, I think the arrows on the right
Hi Nicole,
Although not a high volume site: the navigation on http://www.annemarike.com
is fully based on tags.
Hope this example can offer some inspiration.
- Yohan.
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To p
Manish Pillewar wrote:
> Looking at http://www.annemarike.com, I wonder what purpose such an
interface serves? There is an extensive search required for content that's
relevant to me.
The idea behind this interface is, that there is no 'relevant' content.
People browse sites like this for entert
Did you try the Internet Archive Wayback Machine?
http://web.archive.org/web/20070206064455/http://www.fawcette.com/interviews
/beck_cooper/default.asp
- Yohan
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this
Hi Christine,
To prevent spelling mistakes you could use a textbox with auto complete (aka
type ahead) functionality.
I think the current standard solution is: using a dropdown with ISO 3166-1
country names.
There is a previous discussion about selecting a country:
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.p
Hi Allan,
An approach could be, to advise users about choosing a strong
password, rather than forcing certain requirements.
In combination with this advise, you can show users the password
strength (poor, average, strong) of the password they are creating.
(I've an working example available if y
The article on baekdal.com referred to by Michael is really worth
reading!
Here is another example of feedback on password strength
http://www.ylab.nl/lab/password/
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/disc
Hi Anne,
The only test I can think of, is using JavaScript to measure the
download time of an image.
See the source code of:
http://www.ylab.nl/lab/speedtest.html
This script ignores the overhead of the http-request. So it's no
precise method, but it gives a rough indication.
In a real situati
Hi Elle,
I like your approach, saying: if you (mr developer) can't do it, I will do
it myself. In my experience you only have to say/prove it once or twice and
professional developers will take the challenge the next time.
Nothing is impossible. Some design solutions are expensive, unsecure or fo
There are many examples where users can create a wish list without
signing up. Only when they want to access that wish list form another
computer, they will have to create a personal account.
e.g.: http://www.deverborgenstad.nl/kooktocht (in Dutch)
Hint: look for the button [Toevoegen aan Favoriet
This autumn the third edition of the Design By Fire conference will take place
in Utrecht, the Netherlands. This one day event strives to be the incubator for
the newest ideas on interaction design.
http://www.designbyfire.nl/
After two successful editions in 2007 and 2008, we are now starting t
In my experience users prefer scrolling a long list over clicking
through separate pages.
If there's a reason for pagination, consider creating logical pages:
instead of grouping per xx items, it might be useful to group the data
-for example- per letter (A, B, C...), per month or per price
categ
I would say that you don't need research to support your view.
Shouldn't common sense be sufficient?
I've observed a usability test with 8 participants. None of them
made a typo in the first email field, but two participants made a
mistake in the second (confirmation) field. And yes, you're not th
Noldus is one of the companies offering solutions and tools for
usability studies:
http://www.noldus.com/human-behavior-research
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42287
Hi Krishnaveni,
You might take a look at:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
Supporting accessibility doesn't depend much on the browser brand.
The w3c offers guidelines;
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php
Or check out these books
"Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory
You could also look from a different angle at this design problem:
1. New visitors get automatically an anonymous account, with the
account id (semi-)permanently stored in a cookie.
2. Visitors can upgrade their anonymous account to an identifiable,
lasting and transportable account that can be acc
There is no perfect solution I'm afraid. Using the native language
name seems most logical, but then ordering alphabetically is not
possible. http://www.wikipedia.org/ uses the native language name and
orders by sound.
For choosing a default language, you could use the language
preference of the u
Hi Michael,
The position of Save and Cancel is no longer a matter of logic, only
of convention. The best would be to detect which operating system the
visitor is using and place the buttons accordingly. Second best option
is to find out which operating system is used by the majority of the
user ba
Hi Mike,
answering your question:
>Orgs like Cooper??? What does that mean?
>Do you have any contact info?
http://www.cooper.com/services/training/
http://www.cooper.com/insights/books/
http://www.ixda.org/profile.php?id=Alan+cooper.com
- Yohan.
__
For choosing a default language, you could (or even should) use the
language preference of the user.
With each request the browser includes the language preference of the
user. It's stored in the variable HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and will look
like something as "en-ca,en;q=0.8,fr-ca;q=0.5,fr;q=0.3".
Mark wrote:
> Apple takes an interesting approach
(www.apple.com/choose-your-country). Overall, the languages are
broken up by region.
The page Mark is referring to, asks the user to choose a country NOT
a language. That is a major difference! Language and Country are not
interchangeable.
Examp
Hi Emely,
I would advise to sacrifice space and add the fourth radio button with a
clear label explaining the meaning of the null option.
Unselecting a radio button may be learnable, but due to conventions it is
not intuitive.
In products it is often possible to unselect by pushing one of the
uns
The way masking is done in iPhone originates from the days a phone had
a numerical keyboard where you had to press the [9] key four times to
get a 'Z'. In that scenario visual feedback was essential.
The iPhone solution seems to combine worst of both worlds: users
don't get full visual feedback an
Danny wrote:
>Does anyone else suspect that this might be *an issue for browser
vendors* not designers?
Shouldn't browser vendors have interaction designers in their
development team?
Designers should not wait for market or technology to improve user
experience.
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . .
Alan,
I would organize the form into tabs. It's a conventional way to
group related input controls. I don't think the varying size causes
problems for this design pattern. The main advantage of tabs is that
all sections are easily accessible.
http://www.ylab.nl/lab/tabs/
http://developer.yahoo.co
Objectified is a documentary about our complex relationship with
manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1241325/
Helvetica is a documentary about typography, graphic design and
global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typ
Based on convention I would say that hyperlinks indicate navigation,
buttons indicate actions. To differentiate navigating from acting:
navigating doesn't change any data, is reversible; acting does
change data or is not reversible. I would put Back and Cancel under
navigating, and Submit, Save, Pr
The design pattern used in desktop applications is a raised versus
pressed button look, as a metaphor for real world buttons.
In case of the recording button, the on-state could have a small
animation, indicating the 'tape' is running.
Differentiation by color is not bad per definition, although
There are some user centered applications of iframes.
For example image search:
http://images.google.com/
http://www.bing.com/?scope=images
Or this cute chat application, where you visit websites together with
the buddies you're chatting with:
http://quek.nl/
(Quek is in Dutch, but it's childish
An experiment from Mattt Thompson in how to visualize the input of
masked password fields:
http://mattt.github.com/Chroma-Hash/
Some explanation taken from his blog:
Chroma-Hash displays an ambient color representation of the input as
it is being typed.
Use Case 1: Login Check
If your password
Tuesday October 20th 2009, Spoorwegmuseum Utrecht (NL)
For the third year in a row IxDA Nederland and Chi Nederland organize
an international conference on interaction design. The event, by the
name of 'Design by Fire 2009', offers an inspiring stage for
interaction, information, interface and exp
IxDA Nederland is happy to organize it's first 'Design by Fire Café', an
informal gathering for (interaction) designers. Each café will feature a short,
inspiring presentation as tapas for discussion.
The first café edition will take place on Monday 28 October 2009 in Utrecht
(NL).
PRESENTATIO
The event date in the body of this post is incorrect.
The correct date is: Monday 28 September 2009.
- Yohan
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45487
Hi Andrei,
I regret that you're signing off the list. Strong opinions make great
discussion.
Why not ask the list manager to put your account back under moderation? Just
kidding.
I sincerely hope you will find some time to publish new articles in your
blog again.
Looking forward to catch up next
I think there is enough proof that something emotionally appealing CAN
make up for its lack of usability. Philip Starck's lemon squeezer
shouldn't be judged on it's functional usability. I guess it was
never meant for squeezing lemons. It's purpose is to appeal.
Personally we don't disagree - and
Dear Dave,
I don't agree that making design decisions BASED on the INTENDED
purpose of a product is a limitation. The INTENDED purpose is just
the starting or reference point. Isn't that the core of User Focused
Design?
That the ego of the designer is the differentiator of design is true
for Desi
Gilberto, I've got the feeling that we don't disagree at all :-)
To be clear: formulating the design philosophy IS a creative and
subjective process where the designers leave their signature. I even
agree that this FEELS like magic. But I object to the statement that
what designers do IS magic.
D
Depending on the type of information, you could also consider a
dashboard to make the data easy accessible and present the
information orderly. An adaptive UI is not required in that case.
Stephen Few wrote an excellent book about Information Dashboard
Design (Effective Visual Communication of Dat
@Thomas: The IxDA Discussion list is in the first place a mailing
list. The website offers an archive of the emails sent through the
list. This archiving is automated, but the algorithms aren't
perfect.
@Gayatri: IxDA Discuss is not a formally moderated list. However, to
ensure that new subscriber
On Monday 23 November 2009 the second Design by Fire Café will take place.
Design by Fire Café is an informal gathering for (interaction) designers
organized by IxDA Nederland. Each café will feature a short, inspiring
presentation as a starter for discussion and chat.
PRESENTATION ABSTRACT
F
The Design By Fire conference in the Netherlands strives to be the incubator
for the newest ideas on interaction design. Last year's conference was a
success, with a great keynote presented by Andrei Herasimchuk.
Preparations for the second Design by Fire conference have started. The date is
The infosthetics.com blog drew my attention to Google Insights for Search, a
service that allows users to compare search volume patterns across specific
regions, categories & time frames.
I couldn't help typing in the search terms 'interaction design':
http://google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=i
Hi Arijit,
An other option might be a text box with a smart auto complete feature.
See the previous discussion on this topic:
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=36721
- Yohan.
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA
Hi Sandeep,
In many cases the suggestions only appear after the user types 2 or 3
characters. In those cases a visual cue seems very useful. In a recent
project, I added a visual cue to the textboxes with type ahead (or auto
complete) functionality.
The visual cue I added is not intuitive, but I
Sandeep Karmarkar wrote:
Any thoughts on [...] the technical HTML + CSS implementation as I
have never seen an image sort of object aligned this way for an input text
field.
The first solution that comes to my mind is wrapping the textbox in a span
element and adding a background image to
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