Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Anna Rouben

Anna Rouben — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:49:06 GMT

It seems that it is challenging to create devices that look simple to the customer and are in fact simple to use. I have a feeling that most people that are not familiar with usability and design believe that a device with fewer buttons is easier to use and is less intimidating. Well, it is true in some cases, consider an IPod. In many other cases a few buttons mean several modes (as mentioned earlier by the author), which can be tricky. I am just thinking that would be interesting to test user perceptions by presenting interface with the same functionality but with different number of buttons (interface with few buttons would be actually harder to use). The users should respond just by looking at both interfaces without using them. Maybe, the findings would show that simple interfaces are deceiving but customers are willing to buy them because they look simple and slick.

Anna Rouben — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:45:01 GMT

Very nice article. I am a Visio beginner and have a question about macros needed for this example. I downloaded the storyboard.zip and was able to go through animation of the example storyboard (inlineEditWireframeExample). Although, when I created my own storyboard following explanation it did not work. I assume there are some extra macros that my drawing should have because when I copied my drawing to inlineEditWireframeExample it worked. Can anybody please explain how can I use macros used in inlineEditWireframeExample in my storyboard.
Thanks!

Anna Rouben — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:51:40 GMT

Thank you for the article; it was an interesting insight into product management world.

Anna Rouben — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 16:57:55 GMT

Good article! There are definitely benefits in doing web analytics. We recently did a study of wikipedia users and used a freely available database dump. Data logs gave us an ability to look at behavior of thousands of users, something not easily done with user testing (time consuming). I think that for the sites that have an existing user pool, web analytics is a very useful method. Google also uses data logs to evaluate changes to the site and finds the method quite effective (Google UX video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6459171443654125…)

Anna Rouben — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 01:49:45 GMT

Thank you for an interesting article. I agree that organization of data is far from optimal. I think integrating web with desktop would be quite useful but very challenging at the same time. Having desktop be linked with web resources might raise some security issues. Combining several applications into one can create some bulky products with some features that not every user wants.
But I definitely, agree that there is a place for improvement. I use IPhoto to organize pictures on my computer and use Flickr uploader to upload the pictures. Finding an album in the IPhoto folder can be tricky because the names of the folders are different from albums’ names; the folders are numbered. Kodak offers a desktop application that has an easy synchronization with the online Kodak albums. As Patrick mentioned there are still problems with compatibility; I can use Kodak to synchronize with my Kodak album but not with Flickr. It would be nice if there were more standards and online applications could talk to desktop application independently from the brand. I can also see Web Services as an option to achieve this goal. I am not sure that the companies are interested in such friendly compatibilities though, i.e. Kodak might loose customers of Kodak online galleries because now these customers can easily work with Flickr.

Anna Rouben — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:43:27 GMT

Very interesting article. It is always good to have the design supported with science. I also think that an additional problem with icons is not in the ability to recognize or distinguish one icon from another, but to understand what the icons mean. Suppose, I have never seen a set of icons before and now I have figure out what each icon means. I cannot use recognition in this case because I’ve never seen these icons. Is there any good literature about improving understandability of the icons?

Anna Rouben — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:13:31 GMT

It was interesting to know that PDF allows you to add interactivity to the static prototypes. My main concern with PDF approach is that interactive prototype production with PDF requires use of more than one tool; one for creating screen layouts and a separate tool for adding interactivity. I think using different tools takes more time for updating the document. Suppose I change the layout of the original page in the prototype. Now I have to update the screen in e.g. Visio or other tool and then I have to add this page to PDF and add all the interactivity again. This seems like too much effort, unless I am missing something in the PDF approach . There was a comment that PDF is good because it can be viewed offline. Agreed! And it can be printed easier that an HTML prototype with multiple pages. My approach is to use Dreamweaver to create interactive pages and then to use PDF Prof. to generate a PDF file that contains all the HTML pages. Create PDF file maintains interactivity of the links.
I also recently started looking at trial version of Axure and it seems very useful. Main benefits: easy creation of flow diagrams, specifying rules for controls, ability to create advanced interactions without coding, generation of Word document for Word fans.

Anna Rouben — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:12:28 GMT

Thank you. Good article.
It is interesting that you suggested adding a phone number on every page. I think I might be a little bit hesitant to do that if you would like to decrease customer calls which are expensive. Of course, I agree that it is helpful for the user but in some cases might not be very beneficial for the company. Ideally we should make it easy for the users to find helpful information without making any calls. That is often challenging… And there are users who would rather make a quick call than click on the Help link :)

Anna Rouben — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:22:24 GMT

I think it would great to read about new text input technology for mobile. Which part would be interesting? Usability aspects-how is it different from conventional input approaches, any user testing, technology behind – is it feasible for many types of devices, physical properties. And anything else would be interesting to know :)