Category — Clickable Wireframes

The financing of this interface design project has been undertaken by Microsoft Austria. What this means is that this form of accessing the service is only available to users of Internet Explorer. From Microsoft Austria’s standpoint this is a relatively cheap way of boosting Internet Explorer’s 35% market share (according to the Wikinomics blog) in the country as well as a PR stunt. This, however, shuts off Mac and Linux users completely from this tiny bit of interface design innovation, as well as urging users of other browsers to switch allegiance. The toolbar itself is great and I can’t help but feel a wee-bit jealous at the Austrians for having such a great service with great usability.

The toolbar, with big clearly marked buttons, itself is found at the top of the interface design below the Address Field but above the Tab bars. It is itself distinct in the same red and white colors of the Austrian flag. The colors also add to the legibility of the text. The toolbar has its own search bar on the left of the interface design unlike the top right customary search bar of the browser itself. This, I think, is a good touch because it serves to further distinguish it as not being the same as full internet search but rather specific. Clicking on a service in the toolbar automatically launches it in a new tab leaving your hitherto browsing unaffected. The challenge now for the Austrian government is to work on incorporating their services into the interface designs of other browsers that work with different operating systems. Hopefully other governments will be close by behind them.

It is a platitude to say it, but usability tests are conducted to obtain feedback from new (i.e. unbiased) users of an interface design, so the most natural conclusion to draw is that all usability test participants are website greenhorns.  Of course this is not true.  While it is extremely common to have novice usability testers, testing users that are deemed experts also has its advantages.  Experts can sometimes be forgotten in the mad rush to get fresh, new user experience feedback, but experience shows: don’t forget about them because they are more important to the sustainability of your interface design than you might think—especially for interface designs that are already in existence.

Expert Users are Longtime Users

So what is the main benefit of obtaining user experience feedback from experts?  The fact is that at one point, everyone was an amateur— even the experts. Amateur users grow into expert users, just as your interface design matures over time.  That is why expert users play such a vital role in usability testing new developments for extant interface designs. Experts are longtime site users, users who have shown commitment to the evolution of your website, users who have buttressed your interface design’s success by sticking with it over the long haul. If you are running an eCommerce site you want to know what makes it most usable to your most loyal customers—the expert users. You want to keep their business as returning customer often make up a considerable portion of business for an e-commerce website. So increasing your interface design’s usability for expert users will make your site sustainable because you will be appeasing a core group of users who keep your website relevant and your business running.

VP8 seeking to become a de facto video codec standard

Much like Android, VP8 came to be a Google product by way of acquisition and, likewise, then released as open source code and available royalty-free for a number of uses such as online and mobile video. The VP8 video codec is paired with the open-source Ogg Vorbis audio to form the WebM container format which is directly aimed at providing high quality video compression for use with HTML5 video. Is there an immediate impact on the interface design of websites? Not really, but interface designers and web developers have to think carefully about which users they’re targeting when implementing video into their interface design. These decisions are more pronounced when developing a website that requires natively hosted video (i.e. not using YouTube embedded videos) because one has to decide on which format(s) to use. For now Flash is still the most popular player but, say, you are targeting a significant amount of iPhone users you’d have to use an alternative. And since Apple has embraced H.264, the use of that codec brings with it its own set of baggage as we saw with Nero. So, is open source the right way to create a video codec standard? Quite possibly, but we will have to wait and see what lies ahead.

Challenges preventing a universally accepted video codec standard

With HTML5 looming, video codec standards have recently become a hot issue popularized by the oh-so public feud between Apple and Adobe. Up until now Flash has been the preferred video format on the web due to Adobe’s Flash Player being installed in most web browsers. The HTML5 video tag is intended to become the new standard way to show video online. The question is which formats should be supported in the tag. Despite its tremendous popularity Flash remains the property of a single corporation, Adobe. Apple favors the H.264 codec and due to the success of the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad (which don’t support Flash) many popular sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and CNN, to name but a few, now have all or a growing number of their videos available in the H.264 format in addition to Flash. Criticism of H.264 is centered on the patents leading to most users of the format to pay licensing fees leading to the software company Nero to sue the licensing authority of the codec. This is where VP8 comes in.

In a bid to usurp Google as the world’s most popular search engine Microsoft’s Bing has been continuously updated in the past couple of months. And it would seem that Google is taking notice if its introduction of a Bing-like background picture to its interface design is anything to go by. Bing’s interface design is attracting the sincerest form of flattery for good reason. Both search engines have a winning interface design that displays search results with minimal noise, but there are some differences between the two that deserve mention.

In what ways does Google have a better interface design?

At first glance I found Google to score higher on usability. Firstly the advanced search option was more clearly labeled on Google as ‘advanced search’. The blue letting immediately made it clear that it was a clickable link. On Bing this option was only labeled ‘Advanced’ and even though underlined it had the same font color as the text next to it. The news items results for my search input (which in case you were wondering was Snoop Dogg) appeared much higher whereas on Bing I had to scroll down all the way to the bottom of the screen. Google adheres to the quasi standard of showing the login option in the top right corner, while Bing puts the ‘Preferences’ option in that spot, requiring users to search for the login.

In what ways does Bing have a better interface design?

Where I found Bing to be better was in displaying related searches on the left side whereas Google displayed them at the bottom. Another neat feature of Bing was when hovering over search results and having the option of activating a pop-up box on the right of the link with more information from the website without leaving Bing. Clicking on an image in Bing revealed a better interface design. In Google a frame of the interface design reveals metadata about the image but only that image. Bing allows you to view the information contained within the website where the image comes from right within Bing but also shows all the image results on the left with a scrollbar. The start page of Bing offers a more compact setup for entering a search, while in Google the user has to move his mouse quite a distance to search for images, videos and others. The background image serves to unify the main parts of the page, while all peripheral options are faded back into the grey frame. Tooltips for search categories in Bing also enhance its usability. Finally, Bing does not distract the user by offering an equivalent to Google’s famous “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

What strategy is Bing adopting in order to one-up Google?

Bing has also added a new ‘Entertainment’ section dedicated to music, movies, TV and games. What this essentially means is that Bing once more incorporates a lot more into its interface design even allowing users to play videos, songs and online flash games right within Bing. Where Google seeks to be your transit point connecting you to your destination, Bing seems intent on being the destination.

The Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 promises to be full of surprises when it kicks off on June 7 in San Francisco.  Apple’s chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, guarantees that the customers „won’t be disappointed“ by Apple’s newest developments. The focal point of the WWD will be the new iPhone 4G.  Apple was furious over leaked images of the iPhone a few months ago, but since the images did nothing but stir the public’s interest in the new device, the expected release of the iPhone 4G at the WWD will likely double the event’s publicity and excitement.  Here are a few things to expect from the new iPhone 4G interface design (these features are still firmly rooted in the world of speculation):

New Operating System

The iPhone 4G interface design will likely be powered by the new iPhone OS 4. The key new feature for this system is the facilitation of multitasking—users will be able to run apps simultaneously and switch between them with fluidity.  For example, users will be able to instant message a friend, look at photos and listen to their playlist all at once.

Prezi is a Flash-based app that is also taking a revolutionary approach to presentation tools by employing a zooming user interface design approach. A ZUI is a type of GUI where users can change the scale of the viewed area in order to see more details or less and thus peruse through documents. Traditional presentation tools, such as PowerPoint or Keynote, use an interface design based around the use of linear slides modeled after traditional slide projectors. By using a zooming user interface approach, Prezi’s presentations are more like one giant slide or a blank canvas if you will. All the different components of a presentation (text, pictures, video, audio etc…) or added on the canvas and a path through different objects and frames can be defined non-linearly as a visual map that users zoom in and out as the presentation unfolds across the matrix of ideas on the virtual canvas (and making slide transitions so last century)!

Microsoft delivered a clear one-two punch to Google with its announcement of the simultaneous release of Office 2010 and the new Microsoft Office Web Apps in June 2010.  It’s no secret that the two technology giants have been at each other’s throats over the last few years, but “a lot of people say we will see pigs fly before we see Microsoft Office running in the clouds” said Microsoft’s senior director of platform strategy, Tim O’Brien.  Many in the technical realm never thought Microsoft would offer Office as a cloud application.  This new turn of events emphasizes just how critical web-based applications and their battle with Google has become — you could even be so bold as to call it a software usability war.

Micrsoft is clearly capitalizing on the popularity and usability of cloud apps. Cloud applications provide users the ability to instantaneously access and use software via the internet, avoiding the hassle of messy installation processes and facilitating a convenient user experience.  Cloud computing is cost efficient, flexible, and completely mobile. As the world of technology continues to evolve, cloud apps could become the software usability staple of the future. If you are thinking of designing your own cloud app, remember two things to ensure usability success: Real-time collaboration capabilities and interface design.

The editing toolbar has also been revamped with the Article & Discussion tabs now on the far left of the main pane and the editing tab on the right side. The editing page has also been simplified to reduce noise and clutter employing collapsible menu items. A link and a table wizard have also been introduced to simplify the editing process. The revamp has been finished off with improvements in search suggestions among other refinements. All these changes to Wikipedia’s interface design work together to boost the ease of learning for new users, the efficiency of use for repeat users and the subjective satisfaction users feel when using the website. Other usability advantages that are brought about through the new interface design are the memorability of the system (is the new interface design like a bicycle that – once learned – users will be able to remember sufficiently well, even after a long period of time, to effectively use) and a lowering of error frequency and severity. It is often said that less is more, and Wikipedia confirms this view with its new website design. But the new interface design of Wikipedia doesn’t just do away with options but instead also repackages them in a more manageable and presentable format that offers much more, but with less noise, clutter, alienation and frustration.

Importance of usability

The manifold improvements undertaken by Wikipedia show how important usability and its impact on the users of a website – even such a well-known one as Wikipedia – are, especially when the users come from a wide range of backgrounds. The new interface design certainly is a step forward, but it remains to be seen how active the older Wikipedia users will become in editing pages and contributing their fading knowledge to the “collective memory”. This is a great case to prove that there is also a social or societal aspect of usability.