Archive for the 'User Interface & Design' Category

Two Blog User Interface Issues

Published
by
Josh Kim
on May 8, 2008
in User Interface & Design
. 0 Comments

Two. Two big issues that I see rarely, but often enough to write a post about it.

Previous/Next vs Older/Newer

NEVER EVER use “Previous”/”Next” when paginating. EVER.

The vast majority of the use case of the Internet: Googling information. What happens when you pop into a blog with hive page and is faced with two options: “Previous” and “Next”. Does “Next” correspond to chronologically later or earlier posts?

A better pair of words that should be used here are “Older” and “Newer”. Since blogs are almost always, by default, ordered chronologically, it makes a whole lot of sense to use this pair of words.

The place where I feel like there is actually a little leeway is the positioning of “Older” and “Next”. I’m on the side (pun? hardly) that puts “Older” on the left, as if the person reading is flipping through the book from page one to the last written page. In this case, the blog becomes a sort of a never-ending story.

But regardless, as long as it saves me the trouble of guessing, hitting the wrong one, swearing inside, hitting back, and then getting to the right page, I’ll be a happier person inside.

Not having pagination at all (Yes, Blogger, I’m looking at you)

What is wrong with you?

I really do need to test this out, but I seriously hope that Blogger doesn’t default to not having any sort of Previous/Next or Older/Newer links.

Let’s go through an example: http://buzz.blogger.com/

Go all the way to the bottom. Where are the pagination links? Who knows. Scroll back up. WOW The months are in backwards order than I expected (I mean, the posts that are just left of it go chronologically newer to older… why should the archives link follow that logic, too?).

The real fun starts when you want to go to the post made just before the oldest story on the main page. You have to remember what month when the story was posted (Feb 2008, while I write this), click on that month’s archive (grumble again how the month order is backwards), scroll down until you see that oldest post on the main page, then go down one more to start continuing the stream of blog posts.

Horrible.

This isn’t just for Blogger, though. I’m sure there are other blogs or other web applications that get this wrong. Please fix it.

Your password is WEAK.

Published
by
Josh Kim
on January 4, 2008
in User Interface & Design
. 0 Comments

As I was going around the Internets, doing my business, this error popped up.

Your Password is Weak

For some reason, this was hilarious for about 30 seconds. It’s because of the emphasis of the word “weak” as I was reading that line.

Your password is too WEAK. Just like your FACE.

I might have added some emphasis. And a few words.

Though, this error message is vague. What is not “too weak”? More than 8 characters? Capital letters, symbols, numbers? Are users just supposed to guess?

Luckily, one of my passwords worked, and so on my merry way I went.

Yeap. Now back to work.

Category Tweaking

Published
by
Josh Kim
on April 17, 2007
in Project Ideas, Site News and User Interface & Design
. 0 Comments

I took an hour trying to tweak the categories on my site. This is how I’m taking my break today. Nerdy, no?

Realization

I realized my “Industry Commentary” category was mostly about content and media. I mean, seriously… what was I thinking when I labeled that category… half of my stuff on this blog should be commentary, anyway.

Added a “Gadgets” category. I know I’m going to be needing it…

Removed “Blogging and Writing”. I wanted to post on things about how to write essays and little grammatical things I picked up along the way… but seriously, me? Write? Please.

I started adding descriptions to every single one of my categories. It’ll help me keep on top of what goes where… and when I need to start renaming/splicing/merging categories.

I swear, there was a time when I was stressing how I needed to lay out the foundation for every single category I would cover on the blog. What a waste of time that was.

But I think there should be a tool… with a really nice UI that can help me with recategorizing and tagging of multiple posts in Wordpress. I’ll get searching on that. Or better yet… it’s… another project idea?

Couple More Things About Google Reader

Published
by
Josh Kim
on March 22, 2007
in User Interface & Design and Web Applications
. 2 Comments

A few more things about Google Reader.

Shortcut Keys: Space and Shift+Space

I think the best way to use Google reader is to use space and shift+space to go through stories.

I thought that the space button went through one post each at the time, but I found out that it either does one post at a time OR if the post is longer than a screen’s height, then the behavior of the space key changes to a “page down”. It’s ingenious. I can go through all my feeds with one hand… kinda… which leads me to my next point.

Need a Shortcut Key for: Opening up Links

Currently, I’m having to command+click a title of a story to open up in a tab. There needs to be another key that opens up the story I’ve selected in a target=”_new” window.

I tried the enter key but all that the enter key does is open up the story in “list view”, and it does nothing in “expanded view”. Blah.

Another Feature Request: Sort Options

I like to read my posts backwards than how Google has set it up. I like to read the posts that were posted earlier than those posted later. I’d much rather go directly to the post: I don’t want to hear some garbage summary on the original post. (I love posts that add thoughtful and meaningful content to the original post… but that rarely happens in this digg world.)

So going back to the first point: I have to use shift+space rather than space to scroll through my stories… Kinda clunky, but it works.

Overall: Satisfied

It’s quick. It’s painless, to a certain extent. It’s not as clunky as Vienna…

Plus, it’s a web application. Half-minus, it’s Google. (Google is neither on my list of companies I love nor on my list of companies I hate…)

Wow… WoW?

I swear. Sometimes, writing on this blog turns out to be something like leveling in World of Warcraft: I can’t stop it. I gotta level up just once more or turn in one more quest.

A Lesson in Word-of-Mouth Advertising AKA Why the iPod Earbuds STINK

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 27, 2007
in Gadgets & Toys and User Interface & Design
. 1 Comment

The iPod Earbuds were never that great to begin with… but being a college student (poor, poor, and poor some more) and not an audiophile, I decided they were “good enough”. I was okay with them, as long as the little black covers that came with them stayed on it to provide some kind of friction so that the dang things would say in my ear (and would provide me with SOME bass…). However, since those pearly white earbuds seemed like they were designed for maximum slippage of the black covers, I’ve lost them… after years and years of properly caring of those little thingers. It’s been a couple months since that’s happened, and I’ve coped.

No longer.

Now, I’ve been forced to just jack up my volume (JK TO THE MAX!) to be able to even hear the music… I feel like when I do that, I:

  • Waste battery
  • Screw up my hearing more than I should when in an area with lots of ambient noise, and
  • Let everyone else around in a 3 feet radius know what I’m listening to.

And that’s not something I want them to know… I like to enjoy my Korean Pop mostly alone, dancing and singing. Ahem

The Pre-Review

So I’ve been on the market for some nice earbuds. There are those that go all out for the Shure’s, but I don’t think paying more than $100 for a pair of earbuds… is going to fly with me. I was going for maybe ~$50 as the price range.

CX300-B

Randomly, I meet up with two friends who pointed me to CX300. Of course, word-of-mouth is so effective… I even got to see how they looked and felt like (didn’t put it into my ears… cuz… it’s the kind you stick deep into your ear canal… but I got the point), and get user reviews on the spot.

For some reason, I love reading personal reviews on people’s blogs or forums. They feel much more real to me than those reviews from mainstream review sites (even though those sites are actually pretty good at what they do). Like this one, which puts the CX300 head-to-head with the Sony (which I hear very bad things about… and I never like buying anything Sony, anyway… that… is yet another post…), makes me feel a lot better in putting my money in a pair of these lovely earbuds.

The Realization

Then it hit me. No longer am I dependent on TV or radio or print advertisements to tell me what I need to buy. Even more so, the way we research products is changing through the Internet.

I have a need for a product to fulfill a need in my life (listening to music). I have preferences in what features I want in that product (asymmetric cord length, middle-to-high-end quality product, ~$50). I want reviews from people, and not just any people… the people whose opinions I trust.

Identification of the product/service, search parameters, and peer reviews. It’s being done the world of Web 2.0.

And then I took another step back: The Internet is just filled with opportunities to leverage (it’s that word again… [hurl]) what people think of something, and to help others choose based on that information. So much growth is needed in this space… and I hope to fulfill that need with the next project. Or not… I might go a completely different route.

Closing

Like a good blogger who’s trying to monetize from his blog, I should go ahead and post the Amazon link to it, but it’s so cheap here. I highly suggest you wait until I get mine, though, because it does look kinda shady. Looks like it might be shipping from China… and it’s going to be taking a while to get here…