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 world’s most popular encyclopedia just got a makeover. After months of beta testing by 500,000 account holders the new interface design theme, called Vector, went live replacing the old Monobook skin. The redesign follows a usability study conducted in April 2009 by the Wikimedia Usability Initiative Team along with a user experience consulting firm mainly focusing on the editing experience and process, drawing the following conclusion among others: that three quarters of updates are made by men of an average age of 25. Although 80% of users would like to edit pages found the editing process under the previous skin too intimidating. The usability studies found that young people were more willing to experiment with editing while older users were afraid to destroy the site.

A sleeker interface design improves usability

The result is a much sleeker interface design that scores big on usability providing users with “so much more less”. The new interface design looks less dated than monobook. For starters there is much less noise around the interface design and the menu items interaction, toolbox and languages are now expandable/collapsible, instantly clearing Wikipedia of unnecessary clutter that often goes unclicked. Navigation on the page has been improved with the use of much bigger tabs. The search bar has been moved from the middle of the left sidebar (where it was previously hidden between menu options) to the top right hand side of the website under the ‘log in/create account’ area. A discernibly big space between the two is there to make sure that users, particularly those with jittery hands, don’t accidentally click on log in and vice versa.

What are the limitations of paper prototyping?

Of course, as with all things, paper prototyping has its limitations.  Paper prototyping’s main drawback is also one of its main benefits: it’s on paper.  While this method is cheap and easy to use, it is also static and not interactive.  A hyperlink on paper looses all of its functionality as do drop-down menus, datepickers and text input fields or the like. Simulating the elegant subtleties of all these effects can be a real challenge using print-outs with a person fiddling through a stack of paper trying to find the right screen.

Rapid Digital Paper Prototyping with Wireframe Software

Thanks to wireframe software provided by companies such as Pidoco, you can infuse your prototypes with interactivity and sophistication.  The Pidoco wireframe tool allows you to create clickable wireframe prototypes that embrace interactivity with the ease of drag and drop functionality without the need for programming. These prototypes are created by way of web-browsers without having to install any software. Paper prototyping really is a great usability method, but if you are looking for something more collaborative and re-usable, take advantage of wireframing software to create interactive digital wireframe prototypes that can readily be adapted and test remote in online sessions.

This blog post is the second in a series of two about paper prototyping as a usability method.

How do you undergo usability testing with paper prototypes?

Paper prototyping as a usability test works best in the format of a workshop that is attended by both users and developers.  You should select users that represent the demographic targeted by your interface design.  Tasks, or use cases, have to be designed for users to go through before you can create the paper prototypes. Make sure to review your paper prototypes before you use them in a usability test.  During the usability test it is important to have a good facilitator, someone who is able to take note of issues raised and encourage users to be open and communicative with their feedback.  At the end of the usability test, make sure that the facilitator communicates the feedback/results to the rest of the team.

The four stages of prototyping

Paper prototyping is usually performed in four stages:

1.    Concept design state.  During this stage you brainstorm different approaches and strategies with a view of learning which thereof fulfills the targeted usability requirements.

2.    The interaction design stage.  This is when you organize the structure of your different interface designs.

3.    The screen design stage. This is when you create the initial graphical user interface designs by drawing them on paper.

4.    The screen testing stage. This is when you test and refine your interface design.

The internet is based on links— it wouldn’t exist without them.  While search engines organize the internet, links build it. Links facilitate the internet’s ubiquitous exchange of information. If you want to improve your interface design’s online visibility, then building a link directory is a good strategy to begin with.  Link directories that are well-designed and contain helpful, related, and relevant links make your interface design more appealing to users.  In addition, the better your link directory, the higher your interface design’s search engine ranking.  This is because websites with excellent link directories are considered authorities on the given content of the site.

Link building strategies

There are various strategies you can employ when creating your website’s link directory.  When building your website’s link directory, think carefully about search engine optimizations.  Is it important for you to have a website that is highly rated among search engines?  Undoubtedly, a high search engine ranking is important to you, and some linking methods are better for search engine optimization than others. Here are a few popular methods of website linking that you can use

Adobe Flash (née Macromedia Flash) has become so ubiquitous with the internet that many users don’t even notice its presence underneath the interface design, unless of course you are an iPhone user! Most of the videos on the web are delivered via Flash. Not only video, but also games, widgets and apps that deliver content such as music use Flash. The iPhone’s lack of official Flash support has become such a hot issue and is nicely parodied by this photo that lampoons the iPad’s usability and user experience credentials. One of the upcoming Flash CS5’s flagship features allows developers to re-purpose existing Flash code and export it as iPhone, Android or Blackberry applications. To date, over 100 apps in the App Store have been created by a small group of developers using private beta versions (and this includes games that can be played concurrently by, say, someone using an iPhone while the other uses an Android phone).

Along with announcing its upcoming iPhone OS 4, Apple has changed the terms to section 3.3.1. of its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement to effectively prohibit the use of cross-platform software toolkits such as Flash and MonoTouch. But aside from Apple simply not wishing for a competing company to usurp its territory, there are a couple of other possible reasons not to allow cross-platform toolkits. The first has to do with maintaining quality. A single app based on Flash code for three different platforms might not play to the strategic advantages of each. Flash also saps a CPU’s power and is blamed by Apple to cause most browser crashes on the Mac OS X. Another reason is simply that Flash is proprietary technology. Unlike CSS, Ogg Theora, Javascript or HTML5 for that matter, Flash code is the fiefdom of Adobe. Whether or not iPhone apps created for multiple platforms would maintain ‘quality’ is open to debate, after all YouTube et al seems to work just fine whether one may be using a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. Regarding crashes on the Mac platform, Adobe itself has promised to speed up and improve Flash Player. Yet, also the argument that Flash is a closed proprietary system seems valid.

This is the third part of a four part blog post series about the future of the real-time web.

Realtime Communication: Social Networks and the public sphere

There is another area of the web where the trend towards real-time interaction has left its imprint: communication. In the spirit of Jurgen Habermas’ work on the public sphere, social networks and the real-time web help rekindle public debate and discussion. In the past citizens would meet in public places, such as coffee houses and public squares, for discussions, in some cases serving as a counterweight to political authority. Today, the public sphere has expanded well beyond the physical constraints of a singular location and all the limitations that come with it (such as accessibility and time constraints). Public discourse can now take place over the internet, through social networks, and reach a much bigger and more diverse audience. Through the use of technologies such as RSS feeds, chats, and micro blogs like Twitter, user generated textual communication is happening in real-time with users being notified when new messages arrive and able to communicate back instantly. Social networks such as Facebook, StudiVZ, or XING allow their members to use messaging aside from traditional email, to benefit from even quicker return times. And the system works: Facebook is now one of the most visited websites in the world. But this shift to real-time communication via the web also has scientific impact. Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, two researchers at HP Labs, were astonished to discover through a computer model factoring in two variables (the rate of tweets around the release date of a movie and the number of theaters it’s released in) that they were able to predict opening weekend box office sales with 97.3% accuracy!

This is the first part of a four part blog post series about the future of the real-time web.

The history of communications and information sharing has been overarched by an ever increasing acceleration towards real-time interaction. This shift is exemplified in the evolution of printing. Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th century breakthrough printing technology was used in the beginning to produce copies of the Bible (referred to as the Gutenberg Bible), one might say in order to share a collection of narratives, reflections and commentary on events set, at the very latest a millennium and a half before its production. The dissemination of printing technology led to the production of more and more current media from official government bulletins circulated in some centralized empires to the invention of daily newspapers, via printed periodicals, in the early 17th century. Emergent communications technologies such as telegraph, radio, television, computers, and the internet have since exponentially sped up the trend towards real-time diffusion of information as the time between emergence, or occurrence, of events and dissemination of the related information became shorter and shorter.

The advent of social networking websites, blogs and the availability of such media in a mobile context, enabled by increased miniaturization, sophistication and relative cost effectiveness of gadgets (such as mobile phones, cameras etc…), has allowed for images and information of important public or private events, including natural disasters like earthquakes, political events like election results, or the emergency landing of a commercial airliner in the Hudson River, to be published on the web before even traditional media houses can. As we venture into the future everything becomes faster, both our private day-to-day lives and business-related communication! We are moving to a real-time era, and here’s how the web supports this shift.

The Real-time Technology: Technology as an Enabler

As with the printing revolution in the 15th century, technology is a driver in the shift to the real-time paradigm. The development of the internet layed the foundation for the quick transfer of information of various formats: text, images, audio data, and even video files. Today the development of high bandwidth internet connections, mobile broadband, multiple-core processors and other technologies mean that users have not only faster access to data but can process even more of it more quickly (e.g. HD video). This has enables many of the modern applications that rely on almost instantaneous transmission of large amounts of data. Cloud computing, whereby technological capabilities are maintained off premises and delivered on demand via the internet, enables users to access supercomputing power via technologies such as the computational answer engine Wolfram Alpha to answer even the most convoluted equations within seconds using an active internet connection. An example of cloud-based applications is Spotify, a music streaming software-as-a-service that allows users to store music in the cloud, meaning online. Whereas in the past music collectors had to physically collect music through vinyl and CDs, the internet revolution allowed for a huge amount of music to be downloaded into the finite and relatively small dimensions of a hard-disk. The catch was always having to download and, oftentimes, document one’s collection. Now, the music is already ready for you to stream within seconds whenever you please – in real-time.