By Eddie Lopez.
Friday, 17. April 2009, 14:25:11
metaphors, Web Design, navigation
Inhabitat is a great site. I love the designs there and actually spend a lot of time going through all the posts there and reading about eco design. I don't really fancy myself a "green" person, although I'm always for less brown air, but I am very interested in "efficient" designs. As it turns out, these are often found on "green" sites.
Anyway- at the bottom of the page, there's the navigation, but they confusingly mix their metaphors. When you get to the bottom, you see "PREVIOUS PAGE" and "NEXT PAGE." But- "page" is ambiguous as a browser page, previous page is synonymous with "back" in my mind. I haven't previously seen any pages yet! Of course, it means
"previous entries." All navigation schemes I can think of label it in terms of the articles/entries, not "pages."
Replace "page" with "entries," Or "previous/next" with "older/newer"
By Eddie Lopez.
Tuesday, 16. January 2007, 05:47:56
UI, cellphone, BlackBerry,
...
Artemis, Sidekick, Pearl.. all examples of what
David Pogue described as a "Brilliant Idea that Found a Welcome."
The Mobile Trackball. I think these "mini-mouses" are great for getting around my mobile's UI, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to really create a great user experience.
Treo was topping my list prior to my Pearl purchase due to the excellent combination of Stylus/touchscreen, nice clickable D-Pad and of course Qwerty keyboard. I compromised on the touch screen and tried the trackball and found that it's a comparable solution, but still needs to mature a bit more.
For example, on my BlackBerry's OS, even though the Pearl is the namesake that dares to replace the clickwheel, the UI is still remarkably living in a linear world. I have found only 4 instances where I can move around in 2D space like a mouse.
Read more...
By Eddie Lopez.
Monday, 17. April 2006, 13:53:49
navigation, user centered, Good Design, donald norman
...
As a follow up to my original thoughts on online maps (
when will they think like us?),
Donald Norman's "
Emotionally Centered Design" essay mentions something I have never heard of before:
LineDrive.
He describes it as:
a method for displaying routes that are structured the way people think: so the route only contains major landmarks and turning points and the drawing is simplified to eliminate extraneous detail. The route drawing is not to scale: it is expanded in complex areas, shrunk in simple ones.
Certainly a step in the right direction. Excercising effort in trying to structure maps "the way people think" is what we all like to see. I'm not sure about Line Drive though, the jury is still out. I plan to use it in a handful of scenarios, including around town, where I'm fairly familiar and on trips to places I've never been before. The summer months are here, so that mean plenty of road trips... err, research. Feel free to leave some comments on what you think about LineDrive or other "user centered" online maps. No cheating and mentioning GPS nav systems.
Here's an example of linedrive in action. Anyone who's driven from Rochester to Minneapolis will realize that it's not to scale, but still somewhat easier to read/understand. the longest part of the drive is US-52 at the bottom. It has a "58.8" mile number underneath it to give you a better idea of the scale.
UPDATE- here's
a comparison of online mapping services
By Eddie.
Friday, 2. December 2005, 19:58:24
usability, navigation
First, go read Donald Norman's take on this. (
on useit.com) I’m not going to try to add anything new here other than a rant…
To be fair- I haven’t seen the new Star Wars movie DVD navigation. But EP 1 & 2 on DVD and the menu navigation is absolutely ridiculous. DVD menu navigation is out of control. It seems akin to Flash intros: The first time you saw one, you think, “well, that’s interesting...I suppose- now, show me what I came here for.” Then every time after that, your first thought is “good Lord man, where is the skip link.”
The difference is, with DVD’s there is no “skip” link. You have to endure the barrage of animation and cut scenes to get to the chapter of the DVD where you left off, assuming of course, you can find the correct link to select. For the love of pete- just show me the chapters, as many as you can get on a screen, with clear navigation and don’t spend 5 seconds after I click “next” to show me some animation of Anakin flying in a spaceship. That’s what I’m trying to watch if you’d just let me get there in a timely manner. Don’t make it into a game. Accessing your content should not be difficult or time consuming. I don’t want to be entertained by the navigation of the DVD menu, I don’t want to be impressed by the cleverness of it. If you want to impress me, make it easy to use.
I wish there was a way to have your DVD player present a bare bones display of the navigation scheme for the DVD. Analagous to how the Opera browser allows you to switch to your own stylsheet when viewing a web page, this would allow you to just get a list of the links. I know it wouldn’t work without some standards (See Norman’s recommendations #4), but I did say it was a wish.
By Eddie.
Monday, 31. October 2005, 19:59:40
back button, usability, navigation, history
...
As web applications mature and continue to exploit capabilities allowing more effecient updating of screen information, what is the future of the back button?
Since applets, AJAX, plug-ins, and anything else have been around for awhile- why can't we break this notion that the back button rules all? Haven't we gotten used to applications on the web? Maybe it's the online "undo" that we are looking for. The safety net we need.
Admittedly, I hate web pages that break my back button. If you've ever used Opera, the caching of the history combined with mouse gestures is a killer feature for me*.
That said- I understand that technology marches on. I understand that it often doesn't make sense to update a whole page just for one piece of updated information. I understand that the back button may be antiquated. But can't we grow into the back button instead of take functionality away from it? As web apps continue to pioneer new ways of making themselves more complex and/or effecient, maybe the lines should blur between the browser UI and the application UI? The back button could be an undo. That's basically what we're trying to accomplish. Even in browsing. It's a navigational tool, but we are undoing the page we were looking at trying to get back to the original state (or page).
Anyway- whatever happens in the future- don't break my Opera caching of the history. I will be VERY angry at you internet.
*I hear the new version of Firefox do this- so maybe I'll try it out since that's what kept me away from it. Opera will still be primary though.
WIDGETIZE