I have a thing for infographics, and a lot of Ji Lee’s work is awesome. Word as Image is especially cool.

The image, although an interesting take on the different levels of intimacy per communication medium, I would reorder, remove, and add certain levels.

And the important thing here is that different people would order this differently. Some who never use Twitter won’t even have that on their spectrum. I hate text messages, so I wouldn’t have that in my graphic.

I had a project years ago that never left my brain trying to capture this data: How different people use different channels of communication, and how people infer certain data based on the usage of a certain medium. Yeah, I still don’t know what I’d do with it, but it kinda made me think of that project from long ago…

I’ll say it again for the logic-impaired: keyboards aren’t just for CLIs, and mice aren’t just for GUIs. There’s no good reason whatsoever that even in what’s commonly referred to as the GUI world, that you should eschew the keyboard. For many problem domains (xbill and its ilk notably excepted), the keyboard remains the fastest, most efficient, and most powerful input device available, and it would be the height of folly to avoid it.

via Slashdot | Interface Zen.

The problem right now, is that my wrists and forearms, and now my eyes, are killing me. It’s very tough to stay in that zone these days.

To make matters even worse, I’ve been using Time Out to make sure that physical pains don’t get worse. This only adds to the problem of getting into the zone, and staying there.

In any case, an eye-opening piece of the usability of keyboards and mice.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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…

Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design

Hypothesis 1: Human interface cognitive load is proportional to the number of clicks/keystrokes/gestures

For me, this hypothesis comes to life through the wonders of Quicksilver and keyboard shortcut. With Quicksilver, my fingers have less reason to leave the keyboard. Maybe one day… we’ll have bitmapped keyboards (iPhone, anybody?)

Hypothesis 2: Human interface cognitive load is inversely proportional to interface latency

In other words: Make the user feel smarter than the computer at all times. Sure, the computer is able to calculate much much better and faster than the average human being… but what it comes down to is making the user feel like he’s in control. Regardless of how fast he can type or not type, the user shouldn’t be the one that’s waiting: The computer should be the servant to the master user, never EVER the other way around.

I hate you, beachballs and hourglasses.

Hypothesis 3: The usability of an interface is inversely geometrically proportional to its cognitive load

The better the interface, the easier it’ll be to use, and people will want to use it. It’s as if the system is calling out to the user, “Use me, and feel better about yourself.”

This is the case with me and Apple products: I want to not only use them, I want to lick them.

Conclusions

What does this all mean?

When designing human computer interfaces (including web UIs):

• Minimize the number of text fields in your interfaces down to the absolute minimum necessary.
• Minimize the number of click/keystrokes/gestures necessary to accomplish actions in your interface.
• Make your interface as responsive as possible – minimize the latency of each and every action a user might take in your interface.

And be prepared for both lots of users, and frequent users.

I’m going to take these points to heart in designing my next web application’s interface. I want things to be customizable, but at the same time, I don’t want to impede the user at all in his or her quest to achieve UI heaven.

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Wi-Fi: YES Bluetooth: YES Camera: 2 MP Size: 4/8 GB Battery Life: 5 Hours talk/video/browsing, 16 hours for just audio Price: $499 – 4 GB, $599 – 8 GB, with 2 year contract… Availability: Shipping JUNE

Time to start saving.

This device… is almost exactly what I’ve been dreaming about since the first day I had a phone. I was never happy with the phones I’ve had. They’ve always the user interface I was looking for. Even my newest phone, the d807… I was happy with the slider functionality, but the headset volume is quite low. The camera is 1.3 MP, but I keep getting blurry pictures… And man… don’t get me started with music. I always wondered when the heck we would get something that brought together listening to music, watching clips, making calls, sending emails, using the Internet, chatting online, taking pictures… blah blah blah. A do-it-all gadget.

I’ve bought all sorts of gadgets to try and have this happen. I tried to make my iPod into a PDA… I’ve tried making a PDA (my first compaq, then the iPaq, then the Toshiba…) into a music player… I’ve tried making my first MP3 player (what was it called… it used Iomega’s Clik 40 MB disks…) into something more than something that plays music.

And I’ve failed at every step of the way. This is because I’ve only know how to deal with the software that I could mess around with. I could try and hack it… but man, if only there was the hardware to do what I wanted to do.

Then Apple shows up in my life… and now… the iPhone.

Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 2.0. Freaking mini-OS X running on the thing. Not to mention… an extremely improved user interface to deal with phone calls and voice mails. Oh, and a 2 MP camera… and I’m sure it’s built solid. And all the prettiness… three extra sensors to make everyone happy.

Why I bring this up is because I’m working on my newest client, and I’m stuck in the design process. I’m having a hard time really feeling for the company, and designing from it. I also feel like I have a set of rusted tools to work from. But I guess it’s about time to sharpen and shine them up…

From this company, I was basically given a navigational layout and a logo. I know what the company does, but I feel like these things are not enough. Graphics will be provided later, was what I was told.

I really tried to create something “useable” from what I was given. And I ended up creating two templates that basically gets across the logo and the navigational layout the client wanted. However, I still wasn’t feeling it.

Was it because of the skills I’m lacking in creating a design?

Hence, now I’m taking inventory of what I can do, just so I can look back to this entry, and see how much I’ve grown.

In the early days, what I could do was purely <TABLE> (yes… even in caps…) hacks. Attributes colspan and rowspan were my friends, and tables within tables within tables enabled me with the pixel perfect layout. Ah, those were the ignorant days of my youth.

Currently, as I’m rocking out to the tune of CSS, I feel like I’ve definitely grown to appreciate the separation between content and layout, the browser-OS intricacies, and the effort being put forth in managing all these ideal concepts.

Rounded corners are simple. You can use JavaScript through the Nifty Corner Cube (MUCH better than the old nifty corners… update NOW) or you can still get away without using JavaScript. I’ve basically changed my stance on compatibility: as long as the users can get to the info, I’ll be able to sleep at night.

Rounded corners basically leads itself to navigational design. Tabs for the main sections, check. Drop-down menus or scroll overs, check. These are all doable for me.

Two columns. Three columns. Columns within columns. ALL doable with CSS. It’s just that now, while it’s doable, it’s extremely annoying to create something from scratch. I’m still not as well versed in CSS as I should be.

These are all good for a CSS coder. But where are the gradients, the shapes, the abstract “stuff” that only comes from a true Photoshop/GIMP masta? So all I can do is mess around with colors and these design concepts I’ve honed over the past couple of months?