Except on Tuesdays

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has a short article on adding touch to an 20″ or 24″ iMac.

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/06/18/troll-touch-your-imac-screen/

Touchscreens are often hailed as the downfall of keyboards and mice. Their usefulness in situations such as kiosks is well established, but the practical design concepts needed to transition the technology to a complete desktop solution are limited at best.

Adding touch into an environment creates many new interaction concepts that do not exist with a keyboard/mouse. Many concepts from the keyboard/mouse experience do not translate well into a touch environment either, making combining the two technologies difficult.

The technology is very interesting, especially as a step to bring touch “to the masses”. At $900, my iMac will remain touchless for now though.

This is something that I ran across using a version control system that perplexed me.  It couldn’t hit me more as a poor case of alerting in an application.

ClearCase is a version control package owned now by IBM.  I am unsure if we are using the latest version of this package, or if the company is too cheap to spring for an update.  If it has been updated I only hope that things have gotten much easier to use.

This alert appears after attempting to check in files with out placing a WO in the comment field.  The usability nightmare begins…

What is a WO, or a CI?  Vague abbreviations in an alert are never a good idea.  This is lessoned due to the audience using this package, as they will generally know what is meant, but I still had to read this error a few times to get it right.  WO = Work Order, a trouble report that is a commonly known abbreviation — but I see little reason not to just spell it out.  CI = Check In… I think.  I really am not sure.  They spell out “check in” later, so why can’t we be clear!?

What really caught my eye though are the options available to us on this dialog.  Yes, No and Abort.

First, what’s the question I’m answering to?  The dialog does not ask anything, or infer anything, that would necessitate a Yes or No reply.

Abort!?  That sounds really serious!  I mean… damn!  We’re going to abort… something… I think.  The dialog tells me the application has already refused to check the file in, so what exactly am I aborting?

Ultimately, all three buttons do exactly the same thing.  They all close the dialog and force you to begin the process over again.  Something a single “Ok” or “Close” button would have done, with less confusion.

Two highly anticipated games due for release by the end of year, Spore and Mass Effect (PC version), have the dubious distinction of using the latest version of SecuROM Digital Rights Management to “prevent” piracy.  In this case the games must connect to a server every 10 days to verify that the copy you are running is legit.  Is my copy going to suddenly go rogue 12 days after I register?

Both games are single player, offline games.  They have no purpose to be connected to the Internet other then this security check.  Don’t play for 11 days and then try to load the game while on a plane.  Guess you’ll have to watch that in-flight movie after all.

No form of DRM has ever been user-friendly.  It places unnecessary and excessive restrictions on users that just make the gaming experience less enjoyable.  Having to keep the CD in the drive while I played a game (for no other reason then to make sure I actually still had the CD in my possession) was bad enough.

DRM is not necessarily a bad thing.  I have no love for DRM, as I’m sure this blog will reflect in the future, but the notion behind DRM is good — the goal being to prevent people from illegally pirating software.  That’s good.  The problem is that every form of this insipid technology tends to go out of its way to make life difficult for legitimate owners of the digital media.

Apple’s DRM tends to be a favorite target, as iTunes explodes in popularity.  Despite the fact you’ve legally purchased the music from the iTunes store, you can’t play it on any device that Apple doesn’t want you to.

You can follow more of this from Joystiq.

Content Consumer has a usability review up of the latest Ubuntu 8.04 release, Hardy Heron.  Using twelve tasks, ranging from the everyday to the less common, the review points out several of the problems Linux still has with reaching the mainstream computer user.

The author makes an excellent point about the trouble Linux runs into when attempting to make inroads onto the desktop:

The main issue with the desktop experience is that the geeky programmers and designers assume too much from the average user.

You can read the review here: The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment.

MacUser has an amusing post up about the Apple Ergonomics page, which appears to have not been updated for some time.  The items here are still as true today as they were back then (whenever “then” was), but you’d think some of those pictures could be updated with by one of those many graphics people over there.

An interesting review, despite the dated pictures.  Check it out.

As I work some of the administrative aspects of this site, along with working up a queue of past items I want to post about, I kept trying to figure out what to do about one category in particular.  How do I express it the way I really want?

The dreaded Operator Error!

My dilemma is simple: Operator Error is a myth.  It’s an excuse used by others when the real problem can’t be found, in which case it is easiest just to point at the operator and blame it on them.  Operators certainly make mistakes and sure, no matter how well designed the system is, they’re going to make errors sometimes too.  Brain farts happen.  But it is all too common for the excuse to be used as a means to place blame where it is generally not due, which really was the part I was shooting for.

After much thought I’m left with simply “Operator Error”, the anti-category.  It’s a good bet that a post labeled with the category is more an example of system failure then operator error, but the powers that be just ended up blaming the little guy anyway.

Not to get things off to a particularly serious start… all things in the corporate world seem to come back to Dilbert these days, so why not just get things started off that way.

This is a series of comics I picked up several years ago.

I posted it outside the door to my office when at The Ohio State University, in the Industrial, Welding & Systems Engineering building, but it disappeared shortly there after. Perhaps an Engineer who took it a little too personally… the truth hurts sometimes!

I’ve had the comic posted at my desk since starting my current job. Most people who take the time to read it chuckle. Most seem to get the point, but it is not uncommon for someone to completely miss the point.

This comic, at least the first two in the series, has shown itself to truly represent the state of the industry on multiple occasions. Interfaces “thrown” together by software developers will often get the job done, when you know what to do and what to look for in the first place, but quickly hit the fan when the target audience sits down with the interface for the first time.

I am a firm believer that it is important to both make a user interface usable as well as attractive. It comes down to the human condition — if two things will allow us to accomplish the same goals we will tend to pick the one that is better looking. People will often go out of there way to pick the more attractive option, even if it is less usable!

If the user interface is made both usable and attractive, fewer people will need to get their beauty elsewhere (be it from the garbage man, or some other source).

Welcome to Except on Tuesdays. A blog about usability, user-centered design and human-systems integration.

I’ve been wanting to set up this blog for some time now, having been delayed in it’s launch for some time for various reasons. Thankfully I’m finally getting around to settings things up and moving things forward!

I am currently working on several posts that I’ve backlogged in my head as wanting to post here and comment on. I’m hoping to be able to post something at least several times a week, as I’m sure there is plenty out there in the world of usability to be commented on. If I manage to keep my schedule it means that I’m finding this information and (hopefully) learning from it myself.

In the off chance that people find this blog, among the sea of everything else out there, early and find it interesting I certainly encourage comments! This blog is as much an opportunity for me to comment on usability topics as it is a chance for me to learn and develop through the input of others!

Welcome once again!