August 15th, 2008, 6 Comments »
At first I laughed at the labels for the temperature control in my freezer, but then I decided they made a lot of sense. After all, it’s either ‘cold’ or it’s ‘colder’. It’s the ultimate level of abstraction for a freezer.
On a related note, does anybody know why Flickr decided that this photo was taken in ‘Harris Green, Victoria’ (see the ‘Additional Information’ metadata to the right of the photo)?
July 7th, 2008, 6 Comments »
Why did it take us until 2008 for somebody to invent Zoomii (thanks to Waxy for the pointage)?
And the creator is Canadian, as it happens.
It’s a fantastic idea, to apply the navigation model of Google Maps to other virtual representations of atoms and bits. I include ‘bits’ because Zoomii will no doubt extend to MP3 downloads and ebooks, which have no real-world equivalent. I’m slowly reading Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. I wonder how he feels about a virtual representation of the space-limited physical world? Besides the obvious retail goods, what else could we Zoomiize? Voting records for Members of Parliament?
As I zipped around the Canadian version of Zoomi, I note that an author named Stephenie Meyer has no less than five books in the top 20 bestsellers on Amazon.ca. Can I get a WTF? They’re apparently vampire love sagas for the young adult crowd. Them kids–no accounting for taste.
July 18th, 2007, 7 Comments »
I’m running our little Bar Camp Malta survey on Zoomerang. This is the first time I’ve used that service. The setup was a little clunky, but the price–free like the wind and the sea–was right.
Every time I log in to Zoomerang, to tweak the survey or check the results, I’m presented with this message:
There are so many things wrong with that error message. First, it shouldn’t exist at all. How come every other Web app I use can either auto-magically save my work, or prevent me from logging out without saving?
Second, the language is incredibly waffly. “It does not appear” that I logged out? This implies that the developers can’t really tell for sure if I logged out or not. And then the real problem–I “could” have lost changes? Even if I don’t, surely Zoomerang ought to know whether I lost changes.
Finally, I’m given no recourse but to not log in (’Cancel’) or proceed in shame (’Ok’). They don’t even bother to say “to avoid losing your work in the future, be sure to log out”.
It’s classic old-school UI design thinking. Instead of building better software, they just uselessly berate the user.
June 12th, 2007, 4 Comments »
Last month I was at my friend’s place in France, doing some laundry. Her washing machine lit up like a cheap stereo, which struck me as awesomely French.
There was a dial on her washing machine with big numbers like 3000, 6000 and 1200. I believe these were measures of ‘tr/min’ (as per this photo of a washing machine brand called ‘Malice’). Is that ‘tour’, the French word for ‘turn’? It doesn’t really matter–I assumed it referred to revolutions per minute.
I was baffled as to what to set the machine for, and craved some less specific settings like “linen”, “wool” or “super-wash”. I’ve been doing laundry for over 20 years, and have no idea what speed the average washer barrel revolves at.
Fast-forward to our villa here in Gozo. We’ve got a great gas range. Here are the controls for the oven:
That’s a timer on the left, and the temperature setting on the right. As you can see, you set the oven to a temperature between 1 and 8.
Here I have the reverse problem. I want less abstraction–I just want to set the damn thing to 375° to bake some chicken.
The lesson is that my (and possible other’s) preferences change from device to device. I want more abstraction in my washing machine than my stove.
This is also true of software. iTunes has this hilarious setting called ‘Sound Enhancer’. It’s on a slider, and the online help says I can use this setting to “add depth and enliven the quality of your music”.
Why would anybody set this to ‘Low’? Why even bother with something called a ’sound enhancer’? Why not just set it to ‘Totally Awesome’ under the hood and get rid of the user setting altogether?
On the other hand, I want really granular control when converting WAV to MP3–probably more control than iTunes offers out of the box.
The right approach, I think, is to organize the settings in noob-journeyman-expert groups, enabling users to remove layers of abstraction if they want. That’s easy enough in software, but far trickier in the kitchen and laundry room.