Advancing Usability

How bad can usability of a large website be in 2013?

Markus — Sat, 11 May 2013 01:42:32 +0000

Just ask Kijiji, a classifieds site that is fairly popular in French speaking Canada. Let’s say you have just filled out the ad submission form and hit submit. What do you think the message says that I’ve blurred out in the red box?

Very easy! It obviously says:

Thank you for having posted your ad.

What other message would a red box with a red X contain on a page like this, after a user has just pressed submit?!

50 Questions for Google Glass

Markus — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:18:32 +0000

In the context of Google Glass, what should we ask Google and other companies about the technology they release? What questions do we need to ask ourselves when considering to use such technology?

Here are 50 great ideas:

How to integrate Ogre3D into a Qt5 QML scene

Markus — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 03:55:21 +0000

Recently I’ve been checking out again how to integrate Ogre3D into a Qt application. My previous effort Cutexture can be found here, here and the code here. This was nice as a simple integration but didn’t use modern graphics systems as efficiently as it could.

Fortunately the people at Nokia (when they were still interested in Qt) did publish a demo application qmlogre here that integrates Ogre3D into a Qt Quick QML scene by having Ogre render into an OpenGL Frame Buffer Object (FBO) which is in turn added to the QML scene as a textured item. However, this demo was relying on internal Qt headers that are not supposed to be used in production projects.

With a helpful comment I found here, I was able to update the qmlogre example to no longer rely on those internal Qt headers and to build fine with the latest stable Qt 5.0.1. In the hope that others may find it useful, I’ve made the revised code available on my Github account at https://github.com/advancingu/QmlOgre

Let me know in the comments what you think.

Edit: Here is a video of the original qmlogre application.

How to use the new OpenGL features of Qt5

Markus — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 11:38:16 +0000

Qt5 hosts a couple of new features to simplify working with OpenGL, with a helpful introduction given by Dr. Sean Harmer at Qt Developer Days 2012:

Unfortunately the source code to the presentations was not made available. To remedy, I’ve created a GitHub repository of the “Hello World” triangle example that is shown at the beginning of the presentation and adapted it to work with GLSL 1.30 and vanilla Qt5.

Find the code at https://github.com/advancingu/Qt5OpenGL

Taking Android screenshots under Ubuntu 12.04

Markus — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 17:12:58 +0000

Before being able to take screenshots of an Android device connected via USB cable to a machine running Ubuntu 12.04, it is necessary to instruct Ubuntu to give the user full permissions over the device. Unfortunately the tutorials that I found on the web didn’t work, so here is what has worked for me.

Connect the device and get the vendor and product ID by running
```
lsusb
```
in a console.
The output should contain one line listing your Android device, similar to the following:
```
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 18d1:4e22 Google Inc. Nexus S (debug)
```
Note the two 4 character hex values separated by a colon behind ID, these the vendor ID and product ID for your device.
With a text editor, create/edit the file
```
/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
```
and place the following text in it:
```
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="VENDORID", ATTR{idProduct}=="PRODUCTID", MODE="0666"
```
Replace VENDORID and PRODUCTID with the values retrieved in step 1. Save the file and close the editor.
Disconnect your device.
Kill your Android debug server if it was running by executing
```
./platform-tools/adb kill-server
```
from console in the Android SDK directory.
Restart the udev subsystem to let it detect the rule created in step 2 with
```
sudo service udev restart
```
Reconnect your device.
Run
```
./tools/ddms
```
from console in your Android SDK directory to bring up the Dalvik Debug Monitor (DDM).
In DDM, select your device in the top-left device list, wait a few seconds, then select “Device -> Screen Capture” from the application menu.

Nokia N9 User Experience Guidelines

Markus — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:03:37 +0000

Locked Nokia N9 home screen with incoming call

It’s been quite some time since Nokia last released a handset which innovated in the User Experience and User Interface domain. This changed with the recently announced N9 handset, where they have hit the ball out of the park in my opinion. Except for some of the iconography, they abandoned all their legacy User Interface design and came up with a fresh new concept that really stands its ground.

Nokia has now made available an animated demonstration of the software User Interface design and User Experience Guidelines for the N9 on their developer website. It is definitely worth checking out their innovative approach to mobile handset User Interfaces.

What do you think of the N9′s User Interface?

Facebook, the Skinner Box

Markus — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 01:20:28 +0000

Found a great talk by Cory Doctorow today via Netzpolitik, where he discusses a psychological mechanism Facebook uses to get users to frequently return to the site and to disclose more and more personal information.

The psychological reward or kick apparently created when receiving attention from peers as a result of posting something personal ties right in with observations made by game design expert Jesse Schell, who researched the game mechanics of popular games that use psychological tricks to keep players to return again and again as well as to spend money. If you have a few more minutes to spare, you should definitely watch his very insightful talk about what makes the success of some these games as well as how game mechanics could be used to make people exhibit certain behavior in non-gaming contexts:

Is the game-designed world described by Schell – which essentially equals an omnipresent, all surrounding Skinner Box – something desirable? I certainly don’t think so. The potential of (deliberately) misguiding people into something disadvantageous to them or society is far too great and I think only good parenting as described by Doctorow can ensure that tomorrow’s generation will be aware of the psychological tricks that companies and governments will try to play on them in the future.

iPad 2 reality check

Markus — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 07:09:37 +0000

Somewhat buried under today’s news about the major earthquake in Japan was Apple’s retail launch of the iPad 2 in the US. I skipped the long lines and all the hype and went to an Apple store in Los Angeles about an hour before it closed. Deliberately understocked for additional marketing effect (“look, we sold them all in one day”) or not, all iPads were sold out and this easily decided the question of whether or not to purchase a device within the first minute that I had entered the store.

Although Apple has improved the iPad’s software compared to last year at launch, here are my reasons as to why I still wouldn’t have bought an iPad today even if I could have:

Weight: Still much too heavy for my taste and it felt uncomfortable to hold in one hand for more than 5 minutes in a way that my fingers wouldn’t cover the screen.
“Multitasking”: No change compared to last year and apps still need to be closed to switch to another app. Even my Nokia N8 cellphone can do better than that.
Walled garden: All roads still lead to Cupertino, from first forced activation using iTunes on Windows or Mac, to apps and music and video. As I solely run Ubuntu Linux on my PCs at home, getting the device activated would already have been impossible, let alone moving photos and music on or off the device. This remains a major drawback for me.
Garage Band: The arrival of this application on the iPad alone made me go to the Apple store and take a look but sadly Garage Band felt much less expressive than Apple’s promotional videos made me expect. I also found that the force detection when tapping the screen did not seem to be that sophisticated and tones were either loud or very low volume without any in-betweens. In hindsight, from the few minutes I spent in the store with it, the application feels a bit more like a gimmick than a serious music application. Maybe Apple will release new instruments and make other improvements later on.

All in all, I guess I need to check back again in 6-10 months or so for the iPad 3, to see if Apple can convince me to spend my money on their products. In the meantime, I’ll probably give other tablet manufacturers a chance.

Turn left in 700m

Markus — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:03:23 +0000

My previous post pointing out unclear on-screen navigation instructions in KDE’s Marble application was criticized for not providing a better proposal on what an improved screen could look like. I’d like to follow up with this now.

In the first screenshot, I have added notes with recommendations as to how specific elements of the navigation instructions could be improved. In the second image, I have put together a mock-up of what I think an improved screen could look like.

Feel free to suggest further improvements in the comments below.

Right, right, or left?

Markus — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 01:39:12 +0000

Compared to Ubuntu’s usability advances, I sometimes wonder if the people working on KDE’s desktop and application suite shouldn’t implement some kind of mandatory usability testing process before any applications under their brand name are allowed to ship releases. I am writing this as I came across this screenshot advertising the availability of turn-by-turn navigation in KDE’s Marble application (which is similar to Google Earth):

Marble Turn-by-turn navigation promotional screenshot

If you had just one instant to check which direction to turn to – a realistic assumption when driving a car – into which direction would you make your turn?

Slightly right, sharp right, or sharp left?

I cannot even imagine what the designer of this notification must have thought to justify that three arrows pointing in different directions were a good idea in this screen. For the next release, they should definitely use one single arrow only – pointing in the correct direction of course.