Monday April 28, 2008
Monday April 28, 2008 Off to create something new...
Well, the time has come. I am leaving Sun as of May 1st after 16 plus years. I have worked on many different things in that time. Putting Java onto cell phones was the most challenging and the most fun.
What will I do next? I am not certain to be quite truthful. Its time to stop doing what I am doing, let the old structure fall away, make time for a new space and new things to grow in that space. Then I can answer the question of what I will do next.
I am a creative person and have no inclination to pursue my next step in a proper career building manner. In fact, doing that just feels wrong. Instead, I am going to do what I do best. Seriously devote myself to creating and see what happens.
To those of you who I have worked, mentored, collaborated, and laughed with - I wish you the best of luck on whatever path life takes you on. Or you take life on.
If you want to follow my journeys, my personal blog is here. Its opinionated, philosophical, silly, and sometimes downright odd. Your mileage may vary.
[evil laugh]
( Apr 28 2008, 02:46:52 PM PDT ) Permalink
Friday August 03, 2007 Or why I now use two phones.
So what is the real nasty on the iPhone?
The real nasty is call management. It just plain sucks. I don't mean the dialer user interface. I mean the interactions between the rest of the system while you are on a call.
Case in point: I am on a call, rolling my computer bag behind me, heading to my office. A modal dialg appears telling me I have a text message. Do I ignore or view? I try to hit ignore with one hand and get view instead. Argh! The beast puts the call into the "background" and takes me to text messaging. Puts this annoyingly small green bar at the top which is impossible to hit one-handed.
After several tries, I finally get back to the phone dialer so I can end the call. The person I am talking to is a business person from another company who is wondering what the heck I am doing. Sigh.
Case in point 2: I am making a call. I am in a moving car. The person isn't answering. Apparently the neighborhood has folks with wireless. Very common in Silicon Valley.
The person is not answering. The phone pops up a MODAL dialog. Wanna join doohicky-wifi? I am trying to end the call before it goes to the person's voicemail. ARGH! Go away. I make the first dialog go away and before I can press End Call, I get another modal wifi dialog showing me even more wifi networks I can join. And it won't let me end the call!
I press cancel thinking now it will go away and I can end the call. Nope. A THIRD modal dialog comes up. Telling me I can turn off wifi from settings. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! JUST LET ME END THE BLOODY CALL!!!!
I have taken to using two cell phones. The other one understands that a phone is primarily about making and receiving calls and does not interfere with that task.
[evil laugh]
( Aug 03 2007, 08:23:52 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Thursday July 19, 2007 of using my iPhone.
And already I am annoyed and overjoyed. I must be too much of a phone geek.
I send off a text message and skipped over to another app before it finished. So I went to Sent messages to find it 'cause I couldn't remember if it included something I wanted to say.
This is where you all start laughing. There is NO sent messages on this beast! How the heck do you have a conversation via text messaging without a Sent messages or a Drafts??
Then I tried to get my work email account setup. And tried and tried. Apparently the beast had lost its EDGE connection. Had to go to the iPhone support page to figure that out. Had to power it off and on and it came back. Ok, that one I can handle. First day blues or something.
But the camera sucks. Maybe I am spoiled as I love media phones, but this feedback on this camera takes some getting used to. The lag is long and the way the iris closes, you think the picture is taken and you move. Then it takes the picture.
Worse, there is NO way to bluetooth photos to my mac or anyone else's for that matter. Apparently I have to sync or email photos. Ok, fine I will email all five photos. Or not. Ok, I will email each photo individually. Sigh.
Yes, there are parts I like. However, I am surprised at how much I find annoying. The task flows are just a bit too simplistic at times.
Can there be such a thing as too simple?
[evil laugh]
( Jul 19 2007, 04:31:17 PM PDT ) Permalink
Tuesday May 29, 2007
I have had the joy - or pain? - of playing with a Nokia n95 for the last several days. The first phase of the playing was a review of the UE, then I just played with it. Took it home and used it. I love media phones and am a big moblogger of photos and such so this phone is one I have been waiting to evaluate for a while.
The case that comes with the beast is a complete "Kodak Brownie" camera retro design. Its gorgeous - all the details are wonderful. The little metal button to close it; the wavy pattern on the inside. The brown is dead on. I checked it against my Brownie camera at home. The n95 case does have hard plastic sides which stiffen the case to better protect the phone.
Alas, the case is not perfect. The hard plastic is a tad too thick to really use the phone as a camara. Its hard to press the buttons. But the real kicker was the unlock issue. I locked the phone, put it in its case, and tossed it into my purse with everything else. Just like I do with any cell phone.
The phone unlocked itself and called my husband 15 times. Needless to say my husband was annoyed. I tried putting the phone in the little pocket for cell phones in my purse. Same thing. The beautiful stiff brown case is perfectly designed to rock back and forth on the buttons and unlock them. Grrrr!
So, I took the case off. I put the phone in the purse that way. It still unlocked but not as frequently and it only called my husband twice. Better.
I put the phone in the pocket of my jeans. The phone slides in two directions. Nice smooth slides. One way to open the keypad, the other to open the music control buttons. Everytime you move the phone, it slides open. And unlocks. I checked the beast out and tried to figure out if it had a physical lock so it can't slide. Doesn't appear to have anything. Grrrr!
The beast does take great pictures. This one is from the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve tide pools. This one is scaled; the full resolution version is here.
It takes great movies too. None of the tests I did were youtube-able however. You will just have to imagine videos of a dancing 5 year old maniac.
The phone has the latest and greatest Series 60 user interface. I can read my work email, enter appts, SMS/MMS to my hearts content, the contacts application is fully featured. You have to have a memory card to USB it up to a mac to download big files. Bluetooth works great but slow for movies.
Make sure you buy one for your country if you want to plug into a TV. The one I had is a PAL version and I did plug it into a TV and you could tell it just worked - complete with rolling image on my NTSC TV.
The battery life is about what you might expect. Charge it everyday if you plan on playing with all those cool features. I did not play with the GPS as my SIM card from Cingular would not cooperate. But taking pictures and then downloading them all day meant the battery was not going to last more than one day, maybe a day and a half, on one charge.
I love the feature set on this phone but I am really going to have to think about the physical issues around this unlock issue before buying one. I love my husband but even he doesn't want to hear from me 15 times a day!
[evil laugh]
( May 29 2007, 02:27:47 PM PDT ) Permalink
Monday May 21, 2007 Designers love constraints.
Most folks think designers are nuts when they say they love constraints but we do. Constraints are what makes designing solutions to problems challenging, fun, and innovative.
Working with and around constraints means a designer has to be very good at adapting. At figuring out ways to get around a constraint, or how to turn a constraint into a part of the solution, or how to get rid of the constaint by solving the problem a different way.
All of the paths for dealing with constraints require that the designer think "out of the box". Meaning that they think about solving problems in unexpected ways. Thats fun. It can also be very challenging.
Thats why design teachers will sometimes literally take a piece of design work - a poster or product concept - and turn it upside down. It makes you see things differently. Learning to see things in different ways is key to dealing with constraints.
Solving a problem from a different perspective can result in an innovative solution. It can be as simple as eliminating 3 extra steps in a task or opening up new opportunities for further innovation. Your choice.
[evil laugh]
( May 21 2007, 04:12:58 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Focus matters.
If we apply a laser focus on the user populations our tools must target and use that focus to drive our decisions, we have a higher chance of being successful in creating tools for user populations that Sun is historically unfamiliar with. Without the laser focus, we tend to get carried away with our technology and solve problems by throwing technology at it.
Define the problem space. Design a solution. Apply technology.
[evil laugh]
( May 21 2007, 01:39:49 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Tuesday January 23, 2007 I am Wonder Woman.
You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.
I scored 79% on the SuperHero quiz. I am either Wonder Woman or Supergirl. Go figure. Wonder Woman at least has reasonable hair.
[evil laugh]
( Jan 23 2007, 11:41:54 AM PST ) Permalink
Monday January 22, 2007 Five things you don't know about me.
I suppose now that Kathy has posted her five things, I have to do mine...
1. Many years ago I and two comic book artists published the comic book Four Fisted Tales. This was in the days before computer based publishing. I had a degree in graphic design with a minor in offset printing technology so I knew about getting stuff printed. But this was still an adventure. We had to find a small newspaper publisher to do the insides and someone else to do the covers.
2. I was raised on five acres in Santa Cruz County, California out in the country. One night, someone shot a bullet through our house. I was probably about 6 years old and will never forget how terrified we all were. My father had us laying on the floor of the family room while he got a shotgun and went out to see what was up. Turned out that someone up the hill from us had let a teenager try out a new gun and it kicked him so hard the bullet went way up and then down the hill into our house, through two walls to land 3 inches to the left of my father's foot. Made me wonder how different my life might have been if it had not landed there.
3. Pink has not always been my favorite color. As a teenager I painted my bedroom orange because I was determined to not be pink. The room has pink shag carpet. Needless to say the combo was BRILLIANT. Took three coats of white to cover it when my mom had it painted after I left for college.
4. When I was a little kid we had a party-line phone and a black and white TV that only got two channels.
5. I write myths, mostly for kids. Comes from a thread throughout my life of wanting to know about goddesses and gods, mythology, symbology, and what effect all of that has on our culture.
Ok, now I get to tag some folks! Yoojin H, Patrick C., Stuart M., Nezumiko, Eran D. [evil laugh]
( Jan 22 2007, 11:28:10 AM PST ) Permalink
Tuesday January 16, 2007 ...or a business thinker?
I came across this interview with Roger Martin on the Design Strategy conference pages. It offers an enlightening perspective on working with designers from a business person's viewpoint.
I especially like the discussion around reliability and validity. Business people think in terms of how reliable a product will be. Designers think in terms of how valid the design of a product is. This is an over-simplificiation of course but it sheds light on how one might 'design' a better conversation with a business person. Which is the intent of the interview.
The part about how designers love constraints and business people hate them made me laugh out loud. We designers are an odd lot sometimes - chain us up with constraints and we just work harder.
[evil laugh]
( Jan 16 2007, 02:55:29 PM PST ) Permalink
Wednesday December 06, 2006 Why desktop traversal does not equal 2D traversal.
So you're new to JavaME. You come from the desktop world and you want to create an application that runs on a cell phone. Where do you start?
There are many aspects of designing for the consumer mobile space that differ subtly and drastically from the desktop space. Cell phones and desktop pcs evolved for very different usages. Traversal is a great example of one of the places those differences show up so I am going to start with an overview of desktop pc traversal versus phone 2D traversal.
At a very high level, traversal can be defined as a way for a user to move a cursor or focus highlight around on a screen to interact with items on the screen.
Let's do a quick review of desktop traversal.
A desktop or laptop PC has a QWERTY keyboard and likely a mouse or similar input mechanism. The system software supports the concept of multiple overlapping windows. Drag and drop is used as a way to interact with the system. Using the keyboard to traverse between windows, menus, docks, icons, palettes, and such was developed as an alternate input mechanism; the mouse originally seen as the primary input device. What gets moved around might be a cursor and/or a focus highlight.
Desktop traversal assumes the use of a full keyboard. It has to deal with the concept of allowing the user to jump between top-level entities like menus and windows and low-level entities like text fields and popup menus. If the underlying toolkit supports automated layout of components and desktop traversal is built in, then its pretty easy to move about and figure out how to interact with items. There are lots of keys on the keyboard to map to the different kinds of operations needed.
Now lets review a cell phone.
A typical cell phone these days has an ITU-T keypad (0-9, * #), two or more soft buttons (physical buttons tied to soft labels shown on screen), an UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT set of keys, and a SELECT button. Sometimes the UP/DN/LF/RGHT/SELECT combination is provided as separate keys or as a "joystick" or even as a "wheel". Some handsets provide additional buttons mapped to BACK, MESSAGES, INTERNET, VOLUME, etc. The only keys typically used for traversal are UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT and SELECT. This is the primary input mode for handsets.
Most all cell phones also allow games complete access to all key codes. This means there is also a convention of using 2/8/4/6/5 keys to map to UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT and SELECT. We will ignore this usage for now as these mappings are not typically used for general 2D traversal.
The screens on cell phones are reaching the pixel range of 320 X 240 on some high end devices but the physical size of the display is still no more than ~2.5 inches wide and ~3 inches tall. Higher dot per inch resolution then is seen on a desktop PC is common. That said, rarely does one see anything approaching multiple overlapping windows on a phone. Or menus for that matter. Nor does one usually see a cursor on a display; most handsets only employ a focus highlight (or traversal highlight) to indicate where a user is at on the screen.
2D traversal means that the user can move the focus highlight UP/DOWN or LEFT/RIGHT. SELECT is used to select a component. Selecting a text field might bring up a separate screen for editing or it might make a text field active and turn on text input mode. Depends on how the components are implemented on that handset.
NOTE: Rarely does one see a cell phone display that scrolls the entire display left and right. People get very disoriented and lost when that happens. Scrolling of the display occurs vertically only. It could be line-by-line or screen-by-screen.
If you are going to design an application for a cell phone, go out and try using applications and services on several different phones from different manufacturers. Don't just use the browser on the handset, try out the application launcher, games, and sections of the user interface like options or settings.
Do not expect much consistency. There is none and won't ever be any. Handset manufacturers like to differentiate. Thats part of their brand awareness.
Now that you have some idea of the differences in the traversal area, you can begin to think about your application design. Or, how you are going to cram lots of functionality into a small screen AND make it eminently usable with only a couple keys.
[evil laugh]
( Dec 06 2006, 02:22:33 PM PST ) Permalink
Tuesday November 21, 2006 A video.
I finally got a chance to post this. Been a chaotic and crazy few weeks. Open sourcing, cats bringing in bats, and lots of other stuff in between. And, I STILL have not got subversion working on my mac. But I will. And lots of Duke stuff will get posted.
On the day of the JavaME open source launch they had a camera crew there and someone thought it would be a great idea for me to go stand in front of it and talk. There are actually times when I am not a kurmudgeon, alas.
[evil laugh]
( Nov 21 2006, 11:11:35 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday November 07, 2006 State of California Voting Experience Case Study
Did you vote today?
User experience design is about designing the ENTIRE experience a person has with a product, exhibit, or thing.
The State of California voting experience starts when a voter recieves their voting pamphlets in the mail. Its ends when they get their little sticker that says they voted.
I voted today at my local fire station and - given the length of the line - observed several patterns of behavior. This admittedly unscientific observation (even if done by an expert observer) provided some immediate insights into the problems still facing the voting public.
The first issue comes about when you recieve your pamphlet in the mail. In general, the layout of the material has steadily improved in the last several years. There are clear summaries of the propositions, good use of typefaces and headers, etc.
The problem lies in the heart of the booklet - what I call the mock voting ballot. All the candidates and propositions are listed on this mock ballet and most folks mark this up with their choices ahead of time and take it with them to the polls. A very useful beast in California, the land of MANY propositions.
The mock voting ballot was put into the middle of the pamphlet like regular pages yet were not printed out like standard pages. Instead of being printed in an 8.5 X 11 page format like the rest of the booklet, they were printed in an 11 X 14 page format and folded in the middle and put into the book sideways. mistake one.
No title page or instructions were provided as to what these pages were or what to do with them. Mistakes two and three.
I discovered after examining these pages several times that the only coherent way to deal with them was to take both pages out and read them as 11 X 14 pages. The pages were otherwise entirely confusing and unusable. Most other folks I was able to observe at the polls did not do this.
The second issue came from the mapping of the mock voting ballot to the ballot display on the touch-entry voting machines. Or, more correctly, the complete and utter lack of a coherent mapping between the two. Sigh.
Even when one takes out the pages, the mapping between the mock ballot and the machine is less then optimal and results in quite a bit of flipping paper over and over - and dropping it on the ground.
When one does not take the pages out, it can clearly result in failure.
An elderly couple had started voting as I joined the line. They each were at a machine and were desparately trying to map between what they had written on the mock ballot to the display. Add in the factor that they were struggling a bit to read the display and the mock ballot - eyeglass adjustments and leaning were observed repeatedly. The lady could not get the touch input to work. A stylus was supplied.
She had trouble finding her notes on a proposition - much page flipping of the mock ballot which was still in the booklet and comparing with the display. This resulted in her walking over and interupting her husband several times. He walked back and they worked to figure out what she wanted to vote and how to make that happen. Then he would walk back to his machine and work on his voting. And so it went.
By the time I went up to vote, 20 minutes later, this couple was still trying to complete their vote. I ended up at the machine between them. The gentleman was clearly getting angry and frustrated. The lady was bewildered. The election workers were gently trying to step in and offer help. I completed my voting and they were still trying to complete theirs. And the gentleman's machine had timed out as he was at his wife's trying to help her.
This is a great example of a user experience that isn't. I will not point fingers or blame. Instead I hope it improves by the time I turn 80 years old.
[evil laugh]
( Nov 07 2006, 12:58:27 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Thursday November 02, 2006 your family.
2. Cell phones are all about people communicating with people.
Make phone call, talk to person, right? Nope.
In the last 25 years or so, the size of families has gotten smaller and smaller. I remember when I was a kid meeting someone from a family of 20. That was an anomaly. You were far more likely to have 4-6 kids in your family. Today its 2-3 kids or none.
What happens when families get smaller from a cultural perspective? You can't depend on your big brother to take care of you when you don't have one. So, someone else has to fill that gap in your life.
Your friends become your family.
This changes the dynamics of communicating with your "family". Your family no longer entirely lives with you so you have to use other means to stay in contact. This goes a long ways towards explaining why internet based social networking sites and text messaging and chat are so popular with the younger generation.
Thats where the cell phone comes in. Now you have a beast that you can take with you everywhere. Many of the same tasks you can do on your personal computer can be accomplished on your handset.
Oh, and, if you really want to, you can call someone and actually talk to them.
[evil laugh]
Next up is how all this changes tasks as they move from PC to mobile handset. ( Nov 02 2006, 01:50:01 PM PST ) Permalink
Tuesday October 24, 2006 Desktop app to cell phone app?
Its not that easy.
So another UE designer who works in the desktop area asked me how one moves a desktop application to a cell phone. What does one change in the user experience?
This of course prompted a reaction. Why "move" an application from the desktop to a mobile phone? It usually works far better to start from basics.
Why? Cell phones operate in a very different reality then a desktop machine, even one that is a laptop. Those reality shifts ripple through the entire user experience. Let me show you what I mean....
1. Cell phones are personal devices.
Consumers see them as an extension of themselves. Ask any teenager what three items they never leave home without. Then ask a soccer mom the same question. Cell phone is on both lists and pretty high up on the list too.
When a device becomes personal to this extent, one of the obvious implications is that the device must be robust and not crash. It has to be available 24 x 7. Thats all ok but it doesn't really get at the heart of what it means to be personal.
When a device becomes personal, it means the person depends upon it. What this means is somewhat open to discussion, however there are some aspects we can review here.
When someone gets a new phone, they will learn just enough to make the device useful to them. This is called the paradox of the active user. Over time people will also learn to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of the user experience of the device.
Depending on a cell phone means that people think of the phone as an extension of themselves. Over time, many people will start to get frustrated that the device doesn't adapt to them. The phone should remember how they use it. These users tell us that the device should remember where a person left off on a task, that they should not have to re-enter information, or, the phone should know where they are, and so on.
Your homework is to think about what it means to apply this idea of personal to how one creates a user experience for a cell phone and to a application on that cell phone.
[evil laugh]
Next post: 2. Cell phones are all about people communicating with people.
( Oct 24 2006, 11:31:31 AM PDT ) Permalink
Sunday October 15, 2006 Fearless.
Back from my vacation during which I did my little experiment with the younger set and PhotoBooth on my new mac. Three kids: 4, 4.75, and 6.75 years with a racing about 18 month old cramming himself in sideways periodically. Just opened up the laptop and fired up the app and then let the kids take over. One of them knew how to use it.
The 4 yr. old lost interest quickly - she was too busy racing about playing horses. The older two, girl and boy, stuck with it longer with the 18 month old poking in and getting a picture or two in. They lasted about 20 minutes. Less then I had predicted. Got correspondingly fewer photos - mostly singles not multiples. But they tried out most of the visual effects.
They did not need any adult help in figuring out how to use it. The adults were employed to extract the 18 month old when he became annoying.
What I observed was that the entertainment value of photobooth was not more or less then any other activity that day. Exploring around the perimeter of the rental house we were in or climbing on top of the big upside down canoe sans space rocket appeared to get as much or more bandwidth.
Somehow the interest level they showed relative to other activities made me feel better. Which is likely a truly scary thought.
[evil laugh]
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