The Creme Delicacy That Wasn’t…

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  Let me share a story with you: Yesterday, I went to the supermarket to buy groceries. As I was passing through the sweets aisle, or as I like to call it: “the aisle of dare”, I did my everyday staring contest with the delicacies there. Cheesecake, tiramisu, trifles and the like. But yesterday it […]

Nielsen and the Problem With Thinking About the Present.

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Nielsen recently released guidelines about mobile websites, triggering an outburst of the UX community causing him to explain himself. Unfortunately, Nielsen is thinking about the “now”. How we are going to satisfy the user now, what will work given the technologies that are in our disposal now. This could have been a great post for everyone to read and a […]

Thoughts on Google’s “Project Glass”.

Every time I see a revolution in the tech industry, I tend to try to embrace it, rather that start critiquing. Being negative about everything will definitely not take things forward. Google glasses might be a disruption in the tech industry, especially in the area of wearable technology. There are, however, plenty of issues arising […]

137 Years Later..

I just wanted to share something that has been bugging me the past days… The quality of telephone or VOIP communications.

Spontaneous grunts aside, we all accept the fact that half of our communications involve tons of issues. No signal, inability to reach the contact, repetition of phrases like “Can you hear me now?” and “How about now?”, sometimes resulting in screams at the phone’s microphone only to hear a very calm voice on the other end telling you “can’t hear you, sorry, I’m gonna have to call you back”.

What’s worse, is when this form of failed communication occurs at the most inappropriate circumstances, like when you are on a phone job interview, or when your pissed girlfriend is shouting about forgetting an anniversary. Definitely not the time you want the network to impishly hung up the phone for you.

In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone. The network was clumsy and the quality of the communication laggy and poor. 137 years later, satelites orbiting the earth, high speed networks, great quality of microphones and speakers, the network is clumsy and the quality of the communication, laggy and poor…

What gives?

Siri. Why the Sound When In Mute?

So, there you are, having switched your iPhone to mute, when you want to trigger Siri. The familiar “ti din” sound is heard. But why? My phone is on silent mode. Is this an omission? Nope. I want to share some quick thoughts.

 

1. The way Siri is triggered, is by pressing the home button for a second. The sound signifier meaning “I am ready for your command” is preventing accidental presses and all kinds of weird stuff Siri might hear that you are unaware of! 

 

2. The phone assumes that since you are in a position to dictate something to Siri using your voice, then, perhaps, you are indeed able to talk in this environment even if your phone is shushed. The only issue arises when you accidentally press and hold the button in a very quiet environment, say the library. Then you will notice glances and heads turned your way. But, the sound is not *that* loud and and it’s duration is no more than half a second.

 

Trade offs, trade offs..

The UX Behind the New Camera Function in iOS 5.1 Lock Screen.

All of us who have updated the iPhone iOS to 5.1, have noticed something different in the lock screen. The camera icon has changed and you no longer need to double-press the home button in order to call the camera function. Let’s discuss the usability incentives that might have driven this decision.

The slide up gesture

So far, every interaction the user has with the lock screen is slide based. Slide to unlock, slide the notification icon to launch the relevant app. Why not just “touch”? Isn’t that better/faster? The idea behind this, is simply to avoid any accidental taps in the lock screen. The lock screen is triggered in many ways. You either press the power or home buttons, slide the silence switch, or receive a notification of any kind. This means that during these instances, the screen is available for interaction at its “locked” state. Before 5.1, the only lock screen function that could be easily triggered by accident, was the camera. This is why you had to press the home button twice to trigger it. But on the other hand, this is counter-intuitive. You have a basic function, that appears only when you press the button twice? Hence, Apple’s decision to put it as a main feature, omnipresent at the lock screen.

 

The new icon

Since Apple replaced the “tapping a button” style with a “slide up” gesture, they had to change the signifier. So, they replaced the button around the icon with 2 parallel lines above and under it, making it look more “fixed” and “drag able”.

Still, they did kinda needed to communicate this new interaction style change to the users. Every user, being used to the old method would simply touch and wait for the camera to launch. So, how do you solve this? Simple. When you tap on the button, instead of doing nothing, leaving you wondering what you did wrong, the entire lock screen moves up a bit and then drops back bouncing, resembling the ball movement when it hits the ground, playfully hinting the proper gesture that needs to be done in order to carry out the task.

The difference is in the details..!

The Future of Messages

It’s no secret, that Apple’s intention is to bring the iOS experience to the OSX and vice versa towards an as unified OS experience as possible. One of the apps that made it through, is Messages. Now, let’s elaborate how important that is.

Many people I discuss with, keep nagging that Apple is releasing something that considers it to be a novelty, most of the times is just a modified or simplified version of an existing product. Messages triggered similar discussions. “Skype does the same thing”, “Adium is better”, “What about Google chat, MSN, e.t.c.”, “So what now, Apple reinvented chatting?”. Yes, there are so many free services out there with official iOS/android apps to support messaging on the go. But there are 2 fundamental differences:

1. Availability.
In order to start chatting with someone via the above services, he/she has to have them installed in their mobile device, be logged in and “available”. Now imagine someone sees your availability and starts bombarding you with messages. If you don’t respond, or change your status to “unavailable” or “offline”, that person might be offended and the next time you talk online or in person, you feel the need to apologise. And what if that someone was your girlfriend? Yikes. But imagine this. A contact, sends you an SMS. He doesn’t know if you are available or not, if you phone is on silent mode, or if you have no reception in that area. You haven’t explicitly announced you are available, so his expectations are lowered. This is what happens with Messages. It’s an “always on” free of charge chatting system but with the benefits of the SMS social norms.

2. More than just chat.
Chat, is a very informal communication between two people, usually friends, who happen to be available at a specific time online. SMS, is used mostly for information exchange that is too urgent to wait until the other person is online, and at the same time less urgent to start a phone call. E-mail, is the exact opposite of chat; a formal way of messaging and creating appointments, and a way of exchanging small-sized files.

What Messages has brought to the table, is the unification of all three. The casual, immediate and continuous message exchange, initiated only when the other person responds, signifying he is online. At the same time, it’s a very easy way to share documents, videos, photos, and other files (currently only from Messages on the Mac) to every iOS device.

Oh, what I’d give to replace that:

“Dear X,

Upon your request, I hereby respectfully send you this email where you can find the document of that cupcake recipe you disclosed to me that you are longing for, attached.

Kind regards,

Dimitris Kontaris”

with that:

“Dimitris sent you a message: superdupercupcakerecipe.pdf”.

Using Messages Beta for OSX

I’m always excited to test out anything new that comes out! Especially if it’s complimentary… I’m basically focusing on two things. The visuals of the application, aka “eye-candy”, and the ease of use. This time, Messages is under the microscope:

Visuals

Starting with the icon, it’s very welcoming, pretty and clean. It resembles the iOS messages icon, but stays true to its predecessor, the iChat. The colour consistency with the functionality is also evident;  iOS 5 has “taught” us that when we send a carrier message, the bubble is green, but an iMessage’s bubble is blue. So, blue is the colour of choice here. The application itself is pretty neat and looks like a hub, where you can have all of your contacts and communications in one place. But more about that later. The way information is presented and the linen background, resembling its iPad sibling.

Usability

Messages is pretty straightforward. To create a new message, you simply press the familiar (from iOS) icon on the top left. As you start typing, it diggs into your address book and if your contact has iOS 5, or has Messages installed to their machine, a blue bubble appears, consistent with the blue chat bubble on iOS when you send an iMessage. The contacts are neatly placed at the left column and are prioritised in chronological order. They can be from any service associated with iChat, automatically ported upon the Messages installation. A neat way to have all the contacts in one place. To the right, the linen background gives a more “human” interface to the communication differentiating the place where you “choose your contacts” to the place where you “communicate” with them. All in nice and pretty then, right? Wrong.

When switched to full screen, the application is magnified proportionally, taking a small part of your screen, while the rest is filled with linen. Way too much screen real estate going to waste there, especially when using two monitors where the secondary one is just linen on full screen apps. Also, the typing area is at the very bottom of the screen. This has two drawbacks. One, it is at the same place where the dock is triggered when you move the cursor twice at the bottom. The other, is more of an ergonomic issue. Since we tend to look at what we are writing, the  viewing angle is problematic and might cause neck strain. This might not be such an issue on the 27″ iMac, but imagine writing on a MacBook Air where the eyes are in line with the camera.

Moreover, when you start typing, 3 dots appear, signifying your action, to be replaced by the message you are writing when you press enter. This triggers the whole dialog to shift upwards while you type, causing you to think that your contact has written something in the meantime. This is not the case in iOS 5.

Finally, they must address the bug where the phone keeps buzzing when a message is received on the Mac. After a 15′, I had to turn off the iPhone, since it was driving me crazy! And after I turned it back on, the buzzing kept going, while receiving the messages from the conversation I had two hours ago one at a time. The bug strangely disappears when the other person is writing on an iOS 5 device.

Of course, the application is on public beta and many of these issues will most definitely be resolved in the final release.

All in all, Messages is a great piece of software, ubiquitous and the only one so far that can send a message on a phone, without the need of any additional software installation on the phone or subscription to any services. It just works!