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Modes cause issues if they make computers behave in unexpected ways. However, if the modes themselves are obvious to the user, if it is always clear how to exit the current mode, and if the modes interfere with as few of the user’s actions as possible, these issues disappear. In some cases, modes may even be preferable to quasimodes or to a non-modal interface.
from “Modes, Quasimodes and the iPhone” by Lukas Mathis
Indeed, many applications would scarcely be possible at all without modes. Any application with a tool palette—Adobe’s entire Creative Suite, for instance—will usually treat its tools as modes. Choose the Marquee tool and you’re in Marquee Selection mode until you choose something else.
The trick in Adobe’s case was to switch the mouse cursor to a graphic reflecting the current mode. Since the cursor is generally the focal point of a user’s interaction, it’s hard not to notice that your mouse’s normal arrow cursor is suddenly a crosshair, or a paint bucket, or whatever.
iPhone’s modal text selection is good because it’s very obvious when it’s active and there’s no consequence to forgetting: tap elsewhere on the screen and the mode disappears. iPhone photo touch-up and painting applications don’t fare so well: without a cursor and often without a visible tool palette, it’s too easy to forget you’re in Giant Red Paintbrush Mode. Thankfully most of these apps have Undo.
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When looking at frequency of use and gesture the delete key became an obvious candidate for increased size. The upward trajectory of movement towards the delete and escape keys also suggested making them taller rather than wider. For example, the enter key is wider for a similar reason, but with a more lateral trajectory.
from “ThinkPad T400s: Key to a Better Experience” by David Hill
There’s a good reason Lenovo is one of my favorite hardware manufacturers. They don’t have the sex like Apple does, but they have the practical.
I’d love to see a blog like Lenovo’s Design Matters come out of Apple’s hardware development team. Even if every post were held in a queue for two years and vetted by marketing and legal, it’d be a great read.
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The privilege of establishing what value the default is set at is an act of power and influence. Defaults are a tool not only for individuals to tame choices, but for systems designers — those who set the presets — to steer the system. The architecture of these choices can profoundly shape the culture of that system’s use.
from Kevin Kelly’s “Triumph of the Default”
I very much like the idea that the default behavior of a piece of software will dictate the culture that springs up around that software. Given a large enough audience (say, Facebook) those defaults impact the culture of a whole society.
So keeping that in mind, it’s terribly obvious how important sensible defaults are. Imagine you have no Settings screen at all, that the defaults are written in stone, and design as appropriate.
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Just those two words in the title of this article, Deceptive Design, brought to mind Aza Raskin’s memory hacking idea I posted here three months ago. At the time I said it made me feel dirty, but I guess the dirt stuck. I really like Aza’s idea, and I like what Jony Ive and his team have done with the unibody (or, let’s all say it like grown-ups: monocoque) MacBooks.
Because let’s face it. All design, if it’s anything more than plainly utilitarian, is deceptive. It makes something cheap look more expensive. It makes this year’s model look substantively different from last year’s. It makes breasts look perkier and lips look fuller and it makes armpits smell better. They’re lies, but we’re better off for them.
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Most websites (and many other applications) mask passwords as users type them, and thereby theoretically prevent miscreants from looking over users’ shoulders. Of course, a truly skilled criminal can simply look at the keyboard and note which keys are being pressed. So, password masking doesn’t even protect fully against snoopers.
from Jakob Nielsen’s “Stop Password Masking”
This is like saying that a truly skilled criminal is not deterred by fancy locks, so you may as well not lock your doors.
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Today branding often is about love. So, on one hand you have Dell and Microsoft, ‘needed’ brands. On the other hand you have Apple, a ‘loved’ brand. Dell has a P/E of 12; Microsoft’s is 13. Apple has a P/E of 120. Companies do the math, and come to Cooper saying , ‘We want to be the iPhone of (our product category)!’
from Cooper Journal’s “A conversation with Ed Niehaus”
Everybody wants their product to be the iPhone of its category; nobody’s prepared to be the Apple of their industry in order to do it.
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To fully appreciate the problem of registration, we should consider an annoyance that has led to the opinion that sign-up forms must die. This certainly doesn’t mean they should be completely omitted but rather that they should be only one part in the process of introducing users to a system, and should come late in the process.
from Janko Jovanovic’s “10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To”
A nice roundup of design patterns new and old. I’ve been glad to see lazy registration, described above, catching on more and more. It’s practically a religion at Stack Overflow.
If you want an example of the exact opposite of lazy registration, look no further than paid apps in the iPhone App Store. It’s a Buy Before You Try environment, and dropping cold, hard cash is the ultimate signup form — even with 1-Click™.
It’s little wonder app prices hit rock bottom even for complex, useful applications. And little wonder wonder we’ve had to optimize our entire design and development process for the screenshot come-on.
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I went to one of my notes in Mail.app, selected all the text, brought up the font panel (Command-T) and chose Arial. It gets displayed in Mail.app in Arial, and guess what? When sync’d back to the iPhone, that note is no longer in Marker Felt — hurray!
from “Change a note’s font in Notes on iPhone 3.0” on MacOSXHints
This isn’t something I’d normally say on this site because I like to think I have a little decorum. But ARIAL LOL.
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The Pre is missing some little bits of finesse that the iPhone has…Of course these are all software nits, and one hopes that Palm will refine things over time.
from “Palm Pre Notes” by Steven Frank
If you can trust anyone to have a balanced opinion on the new hotness in mobile devices, it’s Steven Frank. The man gets new phones like Rodman gets new haircuts (yes, 1998 called to donate that joke), and it’s telling that he’s stuck with his iPhone for so long.
I’m excited by the Pre, and roaming charges are a bitch, so I might end up buying one for use in the USA. But you’ll see me standing in front of the Davie Street Rogers on Friday morning, waiting for an iPhone 3GS all the same.
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To make the most of the Hot list, Fever asks you to make a simple distinction between essential and supplemental feeds. Essential, must-read feeds are Kindling. Supplemental, low signal-to-noise feeds are Sparks. Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.
from Shaun Inman’s “Fever°”
Nice to see Shaun looking into ways of dealing with the noisy, link-a-trillion-things-a-day blogs that I usually have no hesitation skipping over, and finding a pulse for the web that (unlike Twitter trends) is full of stuff you actually give a damn about.
