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Joining Dots: Blog


Design flaws and why best practices failToday

Just before Christmas, I was having lunch with a friend and former colleague (no prizes for guessing where from). As per usual, out came the gadgets. Including my iPod and his Zune.

Let's rewind back to when I first got an iPod. It seemed obvious how to scroll through the menus - move your finger around the wheel. Less obvious was how to adjust the volume when playing music. It took a couple of attempts at prodding the forward and rewind buttons, despite the labels telling me they were not the volume controls, before realising that the same action to scroll through menus applied to adjusting the volume.

The iPod

No manual required and all pretty logical really. The colour and texture help guide your finger around the wheel. You immediately discover that the centre of the wheel is the button you click to select. And the remaining actions are clearly labeled - press menu to get the menu, forward to go forward, rewind to go backwards and play/pause to play or pause.

So fast forward to the present and the Zune. My friend hands over the Zune and then sighs as I attempt to use it like an iPod. The Zune looks vaguely like an iPod but isn't an iPod.

The Zune

The big button in the middle isn't quite a circle but is a long way from being a rectangle with rounded edges so we will refer to it as the circle for the rest of this post. Net result. I try moving my thumb in a circular motion to scroll through the menu. That doesn't work. You press the top of the circle to go up the menu and the bottom of the circle to go down the menu. Once shown how, you can also swipe up and down to accelerate through the menu. There are two other buttons. One has the familiar play/pause icon. The other has an arrow. Can't remember what it does but would assume it's simliar to the MENU on an iPod.

The reason the iPod wheel is so easy to use is that the shape is logical to the action. The reason the Zune is so confusing is because the shape does not match the action. Compare the two images below.

On the left is how the iPod works. 6 possible actions all contained on a single wheel: 5 buttons and a circular sliding motion. Your thumb is guided around the wheel by using a different texture for the wheel than the rest of the iPod (including the centre of the wheel). The circular motion works both clockwise and anti-clockwise, as you would expect. Four buttons at North, South, East and West and a fifth button in the middle.

On the right is how the Zune works. 8 possible actions: On the circle there are 5 buttons and two sliding motions. There are 2 additional buttons either side of the circle. The sliding motions are up/down and left/right, not that you would know from the look and feel of the circle. The motions do not match the shape. And you have to assume that there are buttons on the circle, because there is no indication icon-wise.

Why did Microsoft choose to use a circle on the Zune?

I have zero formal design or usability qualifications. But if I were given the spec of designing a large 'button' interface that you press at the top to go up, the bottom to go down, and can stroke up or down to accelerate (and similar applies for left and right), I would have used a shape that matched the action. Something like this:

My version of the Zune

And it's a small point, but if you can't fit the word 'menu' on a button and you are Microsoft, why wouldn't you just use the same icon you use on Windows? Most people would figure out what it means... They certainly wouldn't mistake it for the rewind button.

There's an ironic twist to this. Two years ago, a YouTube video appeared - What if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging? It is hilarious and embedded at the end of this post in case you've not seen it. It was later revealed that the video came from within Microsoft. When the Zune launched, it shipped in a simple box.

So why did Microsoft choose to use a circle on the Zune? Was it to make it look like the iPod? A daft decision when the form does not match the function.

This is a common mistake and not just confined to design or usability. How many organisations implement a 'best practice' on the basis it worked for a similar organisation, and yet fail? It is rare to find a perfect match in terms of context and conditions. Instead, it is better to apply lessons learned but adjust them to your own situation, not bend your situation to fit the lesson. Apple's lesson was that form and function should be as simple as possible and align. Microsoft followed the form but changed the function. Wrong.











Web 2.0 will thrive but not yet a whileDecember 19 2008

When economies started to collapse in the second half of this year, many blog posts cropped up heralding the death of Web 2.0. I think Web 2.0 will thrive in this economic downturn. Just not yet.

The sort of start-up that has a wafer-thin business model overly dependent on advertising will struggle and many will disappear (and quite a few won't be missed). Investment in new ideas will become much harder to secure. But Web 2.0 is about more than creating a widget, tagging a picture or poking a friend.

Web 2.0 has yet to scratch the surface of business processes. Whilst consumer habits have changed dramatically since 2000, most organisations internally still look the same. And so they will continue during most of 2009. Going into a recession, the instinctive reaction is to freeze. Stop doing anything and wait to see what happens. Few people would start a new project or reinvent how they do business at this moment in time. And those who would ought to think twice. However, once we are well and truly up to our necks in recession (what we see right now is just the beginning), then businesses will start to rethink the management and processes that led us down down this path. It is at that point that Web 2.0 has the potential to play a significant role.

In short, the next few months will undoubtedly bring more doom and gloom stories about Web 2.0 and related technologies (let alone everything else going on in the world). But the wise will use this t



Links last few weeksSeptember 29 2008

OK, the title of the next one should be back to 'links last week...' :-)

Before sharing links, we have a mini-announcement. Joining Dots has created a sub-site to focus on SharePoint and friends. The site - http://sharepointsharon.com/ - will have it's own weekly newsletter to share links. SharePoint will still appear on Joining Dots, but in context of the focus here: connecting emerging trends and technologies that can influence how we live and learn. If you want to know more about SharePoint in detail, that's what SharePoint.Sharon is for.

On with the link sharing. Usual topics: Systems, the Design of them and the individual dots - People, Information and Technology. Under Technology, clouds have been the most popular topic of conversation. Enjoy.

Systems



Links last couple of monthsAugust 28 2008

Normally, the title is links last week, but since this is the first one after a Summer break... :-)

Here's a small selection to get back into the swing of things. Usual topics: systems, the design of them and the individual dots - people, information and technology. Enjoy.

Systems

Design

People

Information

Technology

And finally, a video to make you smile and remember that most people, pretty much, want to be nice and have fun. Hat tip to Zappos for sharing:



Thinking in ReverseJuly 25 2008

At the end of June, I shared a link in Google Reader - The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete

The short version of what's in the article:

Correlation between data does not guarantee causation. If X increases when Y increases, they share correlation. But we don't know that an increase in one causes an increase in the other. It could be that something else - Z - causes an increase in both. Because of this, we need to create a model - a hypothesis - and then use data to test the model. It's the way science works.

Or, rather, it's the way science has always worked until now...

With the increasing volume of data available, the article argues that using a hypothesis is fast becoming obsolete. That, in the face of massive amounts of information, correlation is indeed enough. Let the computers find patterns in the data. Unsurprisingly, Google is in favour of this approach :-)

Because all of my shared items end up on my FriendFeed page (along with blog posts and Tweets), when I first shared the link to this article, it was picked up by others and a conversation started about it (you can view it here, third link down at time of writing). Everyone, including me, was against the idea of abandoning models. But then, last week, I read a similar article in the New Scientist