Thursday 29 May 2008
Wednesday 21 May 2008
Usability in the movies.
We had a discussion at work today about terrible movie cliches. Black character dying in hero's arms, saying 'WWOOOOAAHHHH' as you drive of a bridge. That kind of thing. Here are ten computer usability bloopers that are true and geeky in equal measures. It's venting the weight of frustration from a thousand ill informed episodes of CSI and pretty female colleagues asking you how to email a word document because 'you're good with computers,' then ignoring you when you ask if they want to come to an exhibition at the British museum about Hadrian's Wall. Well fuck them, FUCK THEM.
1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
Break into a company -- possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet -- and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you're a movie star.
The fact that all user interfaces are walk-up-and-use is probably the single most unrealistic aspect of how movies depict computers. In reality, we know all too well that even the smartest users have plenty of problems using even the best designs, let alone the degraded usability typically found in in-house MIS systems or industrial control rooms.
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
An even worse flaw is the assumption that time travelers from the past could use today's computer systems. In fact, they'd have no conception of any of modern technology's basic concepts, and so would be dramatically more stumped than the novice users we observe in user testing. Even someone who's never used Excel at least understands the general idea of computers and screens.
You might think that people coming from the future would have an easier time using our current systems, given their supposedly superior knowledge. Not true. Like our travelers from the past, they'd lack the conceptual model needed to make sense of the display options. For example, someone who's never seen a command line or typed a command would have a much harder time using DOS than someone who grew up in the DOS era.
If you were transported back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you'd have no clue how to sail the ship: You couldn't use a sextant and you wouldn't know the names of the different sails, so you couldn't order the sailors to rig the masts appropriately. However, even our sailing case would be easier than someone from the year 2207 having to operate a current computer: sailing ships are still around, and you likely know some of the basic concepts from watching pirate movies. In contrast, it's highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens.
3. The 3D UI
In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it's very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems.
Many user interfaces designed for the movies feature gestural input and 3D data visualizations. Immersive environments and fly-through navigation look good, and allow for more dramatic interaction than clicking on a linear list of 10 items. But, despite being a staple of computer conference demos for decades, 3D almost never makes it into shipping products. The reason? 2D works better than 3D for the vast majority of practical things that users want to do.
3D is for demos. 2D is for work.
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
In movieland, users have no trouble connecting different computer systems. Macintosh users live in a world of PCs without ever noticing it (and there were disproportionally more Macs than PCs in films a decade ago, when Apple had the bigger product-placement budget).
In the show 24, Jack Bauer calls his office to get plans and schematics for various buildings. Once these files have been transferred from outside sources to the agency's mainframe, Jack asks to have them downloaded to his PDA. And -- miracle of miracles -- the files are readable without any workarounds. (And download is far faster than is currently possible on the U.S.'s miserable mobile networks.)
(See also sidebar about excessive interoperability in Independence Day.)
5. Access Denied / Access Granted
Countless scenes involve unauthorized access to some system. Invariably, several passwords are tried, resulting in a giant "Access Denied" dialog box. Finally, a few seconds before disaster strikes, the hero enters the correct password and is greeted by an equally huge "Access Granted" dialog box.
A better user interface would proceed directly to the application's home screen as soon as the user has correctly logged in. After all, you design for authorized users. There's no reason to delay them with a special confirmation that yes, they did indeed enter their own passwords correctly.
6. Big Fonts
In addition to the immense font used for "Access Denied" messages, most computer screens in the movies feature big, easily readable text. In real life, users often suffer under tiny text and websites that add insult to injury by not letting users resize the words.
Large text is an obvious concession to the viewing experience: moviegoers must be able to see what's on the screen. Still, enlarging the information that much makes for an unrealistic UI.
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
The voice-operated computer in Star Trek is an even more egregious example of designing an audience interface rather than a user interface. Spoken commands and spoken responses make it easy for the audience to follow the action, but it's a very inefficient way of controlling a complex system.
In predictions about computing's future, voice interaction is a perennial favorite -- it probably even beats 3D, which is the other top contender for most over-hyped UI technology. While voice has its place, it's even less suitable than 3D for most everyday interactions because it's a less data-rich channel and it's harder to specify something in words than to choose it on a graphical display.
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond drives his BMW from the back seat with an Ericsson mobile phone that works as the car's remote control. And 007 drives fast, while also evading bad guys.
In practice, there's a reason we use steering wheels to drive cars instead of joysticks, touchpads, or push-buttons. The steering wheel is an excellent input device for fast and accurate specification of directionality.
Many other films feature other types of remote control, which always work with high speed and accuracy despite input devices that are suboptimal for the task. Designing good input devices is a tricky human factors problem, and you can't substitute devices willy-nilly and retain the same performance. A foot pedal, for example, is not as good as a mouse for text editing, because you can't move your legs as accurately as your hands and fingers.
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam. No ever-changing client requests in the face of impending deadlines. And you never overlook information because a message's subject line violated the email usability guidelines.
10. "This is Unix, It's Easy"
In the film Jurassic Park, a 12-year-old girl has to use the park's security system to keep everyone from being eaten by dinosaurs. She walks up to the control terminal and utters the immortal words, "This is a Unix system. I know this." And proceeds to (temporarily) save the day.
Leaving aside the plausibility of a 12-year-old knowing Unix, simply knowing Unix is not enough to immediately use any application running on the system. Yes, she could probably have used vi on the security terminal. But the specialized security system would have required some learning time -- significant learning time if it were built on Unix, which has notoriously inconsistent user interface design and thus makes it harder to transfer skills from one application to the next.
1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
Break into a company -- possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet -- and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you're a movie star.
The fact that all user interfaces are walk-up-and-use is probably the single most unrealistic aspect of how movies depict computers. In reality, we know all too well that even the smartest users have plenty of problems using even the best designs, let alone the degraded usability typically found in in-house MIS systems or industrial control rooms.
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
An even worse flaw is the assumption that time travelers from the past could use today's computer systems. In fact, they'd have no conception of any of modern technology's basic concepts, and so would be dramatically more stumped than the novice users we observe in user testing. Even someone who's never used Excel at least understands the general idea of computers and screens.
You might think that people coming from the future would have an easier time using our current systems, given their supposedly superior knowledge. Not true. Like our travelers from the past, they'd lack the conceptual model needed to make sense of the display options. For example, someone who's never seen a command line or typed a command would have a much harder time using DOS than someone who grew up in the DOS era.
If you were transported back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you'd have no clue how to sail the ship: You couldn't use a sextant and you wouldn't know the names of the different sails, so you couldn't order the sailors to rig the masts appropriately. However, even our sailing case would be easier than someone from the year 2207 having to operate a current computer: sailing ships are still around, and you likely know some of the basic concepts from watching pirate movies. In contrast, it's highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens.
3. The 3D UI
In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it's very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems.
Many user interfaces designed for the movies feature gestural input and 3D data visualizations. Immersive environments and fly-through navigation look good, and allow for more dramatic interaction than clicking on a linear list of 10 items. But, despite being a staple of computer conference demos for decades, 3D almost never makes it into shipping products. The reason? 2D works better than 3D for the vast majority of practical things that users want to do.
3D is for demos. 2D is for work.
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
In movieland, users have no trouble connecting different computer systems. Macintosh users live in a world of PCs without ever noticing it (and there were disproportionally more Macs than PCs in films a decade ago, when Apple had the bigger product-placement budget).
In the show 24, Jack Bauer calls his office to get plans and schematics for various buildings. Once these files have been transferred from outside sources to the agency's mainframe, Jack asks to have them downloaded to his PDA. And -- miracle of miracles -- the files are readable without any workarounds. (And download is far faster than is currently possible on the U.S.'s miserable mobile networks.)
(See also sidebar about excessive interoperability in Independence Day.)
5. Access Denied / Access Granted
Countless scenes involve unauthorized access to some system. Invariably, several passwords are tried, resulting in a giant "Access Denied" dialog box. Finally, a few seconds before disaster strikes, the hero enters the correct password and is greeted by an equally huge "Access Granted" dialog box.
A better user interface would proceed directly to the application's home screen as soon as the user has correctly logged in. After all, you design for authorized users. There's no reason to delay them with a special confirmation that yes, they did indeed enter their own passwords correctly.
6. Big Fonts
In addition to the immense font used for "Access Denied" messages, most computer screens in the movies feature big, easily readable text. In real life, users often suffer under tiny text and websites that add insult to injury by not letting users resize the words.
Large text is an obvious concession to the viewing experience: moviegoers must be able to see what's on the screen. Still, enlarging the information that much makes for an unrealistic UI.
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
The voice-operated computer in Star Trek is an even more egregious example of designing an audience interface rather than a user interface. Spoken commands and spoken responses make it easy for the audience to follow the action, but it's a very inefficient way of controlling a complex system.
In predictions about computing's future, voice interaction is a perennial favorite -- it probably even beats 3D, which is the other top contender for most over-hyped UI technology. While voice has its place, it's even less suitable than 3D for most everyday interactions because it's a less data-rich channel and it's harder to specify something in words than to choose it on a graphical display.
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
In Tomorrow Never Dies, James Bond drives his BMW from the back seat with an Ericsson mobile phone that works as the car's remote control. And 007 drives fast, while also evading bad guys.
In practice, there's a reason we use steering wheels to drive cars instead of joysticks, touchpads, or push-buttons. The steering wheel is an excellent input device for fast and accurate specification of directionality.
Many other films feature other types of remote control, which always work with high speed and accuracy despite input devices that are suboptimal for the task. Designing good input devices is a tricky human factors problem, and you can't substitute devices willy-nilly and retain the same performance. A foot pedal, for example, is not as good as a mouse for text editing, because you can't move your legs as accurately as your hands and fingers.
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam. No ever-changing client requests in the face of impending deadlines. And you never overlook information because a message's subject line violated the email usability guidelines.
10. "This is Unix, It's Easy"
In the film Jurassic Park, a 12-year-old girl has to use the park's security system to keep everyone from being eaten by dinosaurs. She walks up to the control terminal and utters the immortal words, "This is a Unix system. I know this." And proceeds to (temporarily) save the day.
Leaving aside the plausibility of a 12-year-old knowing Unix, simply knowing Unix is not enough to immediately use any application running on the system. Yes, she could probably have used vi on the security terminal. But the specialized security system would have required some learning time -- significant learning time if it were built on Unix, which has notoriously inconsistent user interface design and thus makes it harder to transfer skills from one application to the next.
Tuesday 20 May 2008
Thursday 15 May 2008
Summer: A meditation
Had my first sunny day in the park the other day. Proper job. Bread, Boursin soft cheese, 6 for £5 lagers and my mates from back home...Who quickly started dicking about in the gentile surroundings of Battersea park, which was great. And to my mind, the afternoon is summed up in these two pictures.
Fig 1. My friend pulling a text book one handed wheelie, despite the fact he's 25 and works for an industrial architects.
Fig 2. Two of my friends using a two litre bottle of lemonade to get a football out of a tree. Discussing in earnest the merits of removing and adding water to get "extra purchase."
Fig 1. My friend pulling a text book one handed wheelie, despite the fact he's 25 and works for an industrial architects.
Fig 2. Two of my friends using a two litre bottle of lemonade to get a football out of a tree. Discussing in earnest the merits of removing and adding water to get "extra purchase."
Monday 12 May 2008
Dirty words
Ever heard of David Peace? You should have. He's an excellent writer from Yorkshire, now based in Tokyo. He's the creator of some of the darkest most pounding prose I have ever read. Graphic, chilling and visceral, Nine year old girls murdered, with 4 LUV carved into her chest. No joke.
Great interview with him here, extract to follow...
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2279160,00.html
Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
And in the red corner:
The mother and the father in their crumpled clothes and greasy hair, him flicking at the dandruff on his collar, her fiddling with her wedding ring, both twitching at the bang and the wail of a microphone being switched on, looking for all the world more the sinners than the sinned against.
Me thinking, did you do your own daughter?
The policewoman put her hand upon the mother's arm, the mother turned, staring at her until the policewoman looked away.
Round One:
Oldman tapped on the microphone and coughed:
'Thank you for coming gentlemen. It's been a long night for everyone, especially Mr and Mrs Kemplay, and it's going to be a long day. So we'll keep this brief.'
Oldman took a sip from a glass of water.
'At about 4 p.m. yesterday evening, 12 December, Clare Kemplay disappeared on her way home from Morley Grange Junior and Infants, Morley. Clare left school with two classmates at a quarter to four. At the junction of Rooms Lane and Victoria Road, Clare said goodbye to her friends and was last seen walking down Victoria Road towards her home at approximately four o'clock. This was the last time anyone saw Clare.'
The father was looking at Oldman.
'When Clare failed to return home, a search was launched early yesterday evening by the Morley Police, along with the help of Mr and Mrs Kemplay's friends and neighbours, however, as yet, no clue has been found as to the nature of Clare's disappearance. Clare has never gone missing before and we are obviously very concerned as to her whereabouts and safety.'
Oldman touched the glass again but let it go.
'Clare is ten years old. She is fair and has blue eyes and long straight hair. Last night Clare was wearing an orange waterproof kagool, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, pale blue denim trousers with a distinctive eagle motif on the back left pocket and red Wellington boots. When Clare left school, she was carrying a plastic Co-op carrier bag containing a pair of black gym shoes.'
Oldman held up an enlarged photograph of a smiling girl, saying, 'Copies of this recent school photograph will be distributed at the end.'
Oldman took another sip of water.
Chairs scraped, papers rustled, the mother sniffed, the father stared.
Friday 9 May 2008
Knights of prick
That'll be Marion 'Suge' Knight in my building then. Jesus christ he's big, I ran out of my office with a picture for him to sign and totally bottled it. The mans a psycho, I thought he was going to see the pen , think it was a shank and throw me out the window. Still, like I say, he's a big lad. And as my Nan says of larger frames 'he won't make old bones.'
Suge and Tupac in happier times, apart from the rampant drugs and corruption and stuff.
Suge and Tupac in happier times, apart from the rampant drugs and corruption and stuff.
Grand Theft Auto IV + Limmy = Ripper based humour
Top Scot blogger Limmy taps into the zeitgeist of 2008 and the spirit of the 70's by brutally murdering a prossie in the new Grand Theft Auto. It's pretty fucking incredible that this is an actual game. Look how realistic her movements are as she rolls along the floor after being set on fire and peppered with a Mach 5. Pretty funny though, y'know, in a back handed sort of way.
Wednesday 7 May 2008
Welcome!
My goal on PGC is to harvest the best and worst of humanity and then pass judgment on it in an ill informed and one-sided way. Enjoy, please enjoy.
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