Only going to ask you one more time: step away from the interface!

Why do so many people in tech management find 3D interface so strangely addictive, when it's clinically proven to be idiot-forming? Techcrunch reports that AT&T has been developing a new web 3D browser, Pogo, based on Mozilla. I'm amongst the readers who reacted with a strong WTF? at the news, though it brings up some important points about interface design, following trends, and remembering history.

I remember my history. Right about when I joined Yahoo! the company cut a deal with Caligari, a maker of 3D software and browser plugins. The two companies collaborated on a 3D visualisation of the main web directory categories of Yahoo! (News, Finance, Sports, etc.) I can't find a video of the interface in action (challenge: can you find one?) but each section of the web directory was represented by a giant icon on a huge green field of grass.

From memory, Yahoo! 3D was something a lot of senior yahoos were interested in as something fun to play with - it really wasn't something the company was expecting to monetize or present as the primary interface for Yahoo! then or in the future. This was in the days of 28.8kbps modem bandwidth, 13" CRTs and Navigator 3.0/IE 3.0. Flying across the football field from one category to another would take about a minute, with frame rates at about 5fps, and you were quite likely to miss the category you were aiming for with the frame rate and lag time.

Yahoo! 3D taught me that desktop web browser interfaces were already  quite mature, and that on the desktop, the old "click on a link with a mouse" routine was widely-understood, easily adopted by new users, and fast to use.

Since then, browser interface design has tried and rejected a few new  ideas, and  the only one I can point to that has really been taken up widely is tabs in the browser, as well as in the web page itself.

Twelve years later, 3D visualization of data and relationships is a powerful tool, but 3D navigation remains a solution without a problem. Why is this so? I can't point you to research on this, but my trusty gut instinct says:

 

 

1. 3D interfaces need 3D input devices and displays. It's too hard to learn to grasp, manipulate and move objects using 2D input devices and displays. It takes too many brain cells to do the interpolation, even for those with strong stomachs and keen to try new  things.


2. Despite Javascript, AJAX, Flash and all that whizzy coding stuff, websites and web apps are still built using metaphors dredged deep out of print publishing. You can stack a bunch of web pages together and drag them about, sure, but each of those web pages has only two dimensions. I can only interact with the content on a web page when viewing it from "the front". Stacking and dragging are useful for organising large numbers of web pages and bookmarks, sure. But who organises large amounts of web content? A tiny percentage of the internet audience. And that dragging is inevitably going to be easier using folders and tabs until Apple ships me a 3D input device and display with my next Mac.

The other classic mistake I see in these videos of Pogo in action is mimicry without purpose, in this case, mimicking Apple's Cover Flow interface. I betcha nobody at AT&T knows what percentage of Apple's OS X customers actually choose to use Cover Flow (versus not knowing how to turn it off) but I am sure Apple knows and isn't telling.

Cover Flow is chrome: something that's meant to sweeten the sale or upgrade of the operating system, iTunes and iPods, not to be a primary interface mode.

Knowing your new BMW M5 has a gazillion suspension and transmission settings helps you justify your purpose, and six months later, if BMW surveys M5 customers and finds <5% actually mess with the settings? Who cares? We've still sold a lot of M5s.

How do I know Cover Flow is just chrome when I don't have any data? I asked my friends. The responses are all quite similar: even the musicgeekiest friend I have can identify only 30% of his  iTunes library by album art alone. Subtract the albums he originally owned on CD, then subtract the albums he'd owned for years before buying an iPod, then subtract the album covers that actually have the band name and album name on the cover? He's down to <5%.

Don't believe me? Test yourself, I'd love to read about your results.

Meanwhile, who'd regularly use an interface that forced you to stop and think about 95% of the choices available to you?

While website homepages aren't as obscure as album covers, they certainly aren't designed to be recognisable - much less legible - at Cover Flow-sized dimensions. And any new content on them worth clicking on won't be readable unless the Pogo user is viewing at something far greater than 1280x1024px.

AT&T's Pogo mistakes the chrome for the fundamentals, and then tacks it onto its own product without any understanding of its true purpose, like a Chinese manufacturer designing cars that come out looking like a BMW that got left too long in the microwave with a LandCruiser.

Some of the videos of Pogo in action are well worth watching, and I'm in favour of AT&T and other large companies with too much money/time doing research of all kinds, even if its only into doomed interface design.

But while you watch, don't let the siren song of 3D interface whizzyness lure you away. Don't start picturing yourself in a 'Minority Report' future with productivity levels 10x today's. Expect the personal jetpack to ship first!

One for the ladies (you're welcome, ladies)

if i woz a grrl, i would want to wear this! I love the "WTF" and the octopus shouting "PWWWNND!"

Feedback on scouta.com redesign mockup

New scouta.com Mockup
Originally uploaded by rich115.

Richard Giles from Scouta was looking on Twitter for some feedback on his new redesign. I charge for this kinda work, but here's some brief feedback:

S-P-E-L-L out the benefit

You haven't yet shown the user the benefit. You assume they know why receiving personalised recommendations is a good thing. Start with, "Who has time to find good stuff to listen to/watch online?..." and explain the benefit. Most consumers still aren't aware of what recommendation is, much less why it matters to them.

Who's your target audience?

It's really hard to get a good balance between the consumer target and the media publisher target, so why try? It just clutters and confuses to have a message aimed at publishers wedged in-between two consumer messages. Just put a button-shaped link near the bottom that says, "Are you a media publisher?" and take the publishers to another page. We media publishers are smart, we're better at retention when scanning a page than joe consumer.

What's your brand?

You've got two competing brands on the page: the "scouta" text and the whirly play button, which is really your chicklet - what should be small, subtle interface cue used before links, instead of player play buttons, etc. Which do you need the user to really recall? I'd suggest it's the Scouta logo.

Not all ratings are equal

Are you sure you want to collect user ratings on content right from the homepage with no prior Learn More or new user registation? Before they've really invested in the idea that rating things well delivers good recommendations? Having worked on content recommendation products before, not all user ratings are equal. I'd expect these ratings would be next to useless in this context, and aren't likely to give the user a positive result - they're going to expect a perfect recommendation after the first rating click, or click both of them to see what happens, or worse.

When it doesn't work as they expected (because you haven't yet told them what to expect) their simple little mind will come to the end of their tiny little attention span, they'll click off your homepage and whatever you paid the SEO to get them will be wasted.

CaPiTaLiSaTiOn!

I'm Not A Big Fan Of Capitalising Words That Aren't Actually Proper Nouns ;-) When The Whole Page Uses Them It Doesn't Focus The Eye, Instead It Decreases Readability Significantly.

25% OFF! Oh wait, it's free...

Love rosettes for highlighting 'special deal' info, though they tend to get ignored by users not interested in clicking on advertising links. They're not very 'with it' anymore. If you must use one, consider one with fewer points. If you're not wedded to a rosette but still want visual impact, nothing says "Ideal for iPod, iPhone and AppleTV owners" better than a pic of the products all nicely arranged together with some dramatic lighting and a zushy background.

Black on orange isn't kind on eyes, and, uhh... were you happy with that font?

Love the promise of personalised content recommendations, keen to see how the new site looks when it goes live! Hope that helps!

Canon Pixma MP600R: drama of the good kind

Hey, is this thing meant to glow like that?...

Unfortunately experience teaches us to expect drama of the bad kind when installing a new multi-function printer on a home network. But the new Canon Pixma MP600R I installed tonight completely blew me away with some drama of the positive kind, and I'm still smiling from the memory.

After all, it wasn't until I brought home my HP PSC-2210 that I discovered Mac network drivers hadn't yet shipped and that I'd have to search high and low for compatible open-source drivers that would work. And it wasn't until I tried to scan for the first time that I discovered that was one of the many features the PSC-2210 only offered over a USB connection. And it wasn't until the power supply failed just out of warranty that I discovered HP's appalling policy of not offering service for out-of-warranty inkjet devices in Australia, its terrible policy of not making spare parts available for inkjet products to third-party repairers, and its shameful policy of not offering recycling for printer products for home and small business customers. (HP, I hope you get buried in a landslide of your own dead printer products.)

Talk about drama of the bad kind! Not so with the Canon Pixma MP600R... so far, it's been all drama of the good kind.

What's wrong? Sceptical that a multi-function printer could be dramatic? How's this: when I turned it on for the first time and flipped up the bright, clear colour LCD, the printer popped open its own paper tray during the power-up.

Surprised? I was. But not nearly so surprised as when I discovered the individual ink cartridges light up with a warm red glow when you've plugged them in correctly (or, according to the manual, a bright orange if you get it wrong.)

Holy self-destruct-sequence-on-the-Nostromo-batman! Plugging each of the cartridges in one-by-one was like something from Mission Impossible or Star Wars, more like re-enabling the tractor beams on the Death Star than installing a mere printer. Cool!

The MP600R doesn't fax like the HP used to, but the only thing non-recyclable in the entire box was the foam packing inserts - all the other plastics and tape were recyclable. And it scans over the network, over wifi, to a Mac, with Canon Mac OSX drivers.

Cool!