2020 Hindsight

7 web tricks that users don't know

An article by Carolyn Snyder (author of Paper Prototyping) on web surfing habits and tricks that users don't know. (Some gotchas that she encountered were not found by usability testing professionals in the Bay Area; the users from there seem to be a more web-savvy bunch because they have closer association with web developers, perhaps?) [via PapaScott]

A design epiphany: Keep it simple

NY Times reports on a Simplicity Design Workshop held over the last year at MIT's Media Lab. [via dangerousmeta]

About the Finder -- and spatial orientation

Saw this linked to from a site discussing good usability on Open Source projects (with a tip of the hat to the Firefox browser). Though it's a year old (3/2003), it's a good read. It underscores some of thing things I still haven't been able to get used to with OS X (though I now live in X all the time). From the first MacOS through MacOS 9, the Mac was spatial through and through.

One interacts with such an interface by recognizing objects based on their size, shape, position, color, and other visual traits, and then using motor skills to manipulate those objects.

With OS X lots of old spatial cues disappear.

Although it may offend Mr. Jobs's aesthetic sensibilities, the simple fact is that humans are much more adept at dealing with visual/spatial clutter than mental clutter. By compromising the user's ability to manage files and folders based on familiar spatial cues and behaviors, all the complexity of the file system hierarchy is simply moved from the screen into the user's mind.

Whatever happened to the good old map?

I used to have a link to one of those realtime traffic maps that'd show where things were congested around LA. Can't find it. But, through Google, I found this java applet at the CA Dept of Transportation site.

Although the information it provides (eventually) is worthwhile, the applet is, ahem, frustrating.

What you get is a map of California (by county) with certain portions in black.

In order to see the traffic information of a particular area, you have to perform, oh, quite a few steps.

1. Read the directions
2. Click the Zoom in button
3. Draw a marquee around the general area.

   Oh wait, in order to do that, you have to select the area to marquee around, which favors the graphically inclined, who recognize what portion of LA County to look at, without benefit of landforms, such as mountain ranges.

   The map zooms in so that all you see is black

4. Read more directions to make the map turn something other than black. Oh, there are buttons to click to show different things
5. Click Show Traffic. Oops, not enough info to know where I am.
6. Click Show Highways. Oops, not enough info to know where I am
7. Click Show Street Map. Oh, now I'm orientied to the area I'm seeing on the map. Unfortunatly, it's not the right area
8. Drag marquee to highlight a different area, or else choose a different tool -- Pan tool-- to focus on the area of interest

Okay, it took me 8 steps to get here. This is what I want to see all the time. So how do I create a bookmark for this view? As far as I can tell, I can't.

First and only use of this map. Back to Google to see if I can see the OLD realtime map.

Yeehah. Here's one I can use, at Sigalert.com. Oooh, sweet, and it's got rollover details giving actual speeds near each exit. (TANN is the other good map)

DENIM - web design/UI prototyping software

very cool. Windows, Linux/Unix, and MacOSX.2. Will hafta check this out! Brought to you by the Group for User Interface Research at Berkeley.