UX Chat - 2011-10-12

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8:14 AM

Hey Roger. They are all very valid points and I think the example of the subway maps in an excellent one. However I'm just worried if I distort the world map, it will create bad UX, because most people are extremely familiar with this format and have certain expectancies of it.

Also the various distribution issues cause problems too.

I had thought about having the map display the whole world by default. Then possibly have a visual nav element. This would have options for user to click on and zoom in on a specific continent, or revert to world view.

sort of a 'quick view' feature - it would save a certain amount of scrolling and zooming on the users part.

Maybe I could also display a little indicator over each continent to show how much activity is on that specific region (like mail app on iphone that shows you how many new mails you have).

you could take some cues from Wordle and show the size of the continent's title according to the amount of activity. Big title for Europe, small title for Africa, for example.

I'm thinking along the lines of good infographics here

Sure I hear you...

It is more of a business app than an infographic...

but of course doesnt mean it cannot be designed well

Do you know of any examples that used the larger-means.popular model in a geographic context?

8:58 AM

not in terms of the labelling, but in the visual representation it's common

user image

the map itself is much more of a background element

2 hours later…

11:00 AM

Morning Dave

Morning all

11:57 AM

Good morning

morning anyone

afternoon even

Has anyone done app development in html5?

like beyond simple forms etc

coded you mean?

ya

I don't code anymore. I don't like getting my hands dirty. I like to work outside the kitchen etc

12:05 PM

our company wants support for tablets, we were trying to figure our out which path to go down, and it seems like its going to be in html5

right on

My feeling is you're right

can't use anything else tbh

if you're building for tablets design as high spec as you can

as high spec?

high spec== html 5

gotcha

dont feel you have to design for the lowest common denominator

12:13 PM

ya it was either html5 or android, and possibly windows (tablet) or iOS but those two are less likely

the benefit of html5 would be to write once and have it everywhere

12:30 PM

you're building diff versions for tablet and android, right?

you mean tablet vs phone?

yes

tablet only, no phone support at the moment

good call

the apps consume a lot of screen real estate and are a bit too complicated to use on a phone

12:32 PM

so you would have to focus the app for that platform

for phones yeah

but with a team of me plus 3 other developers that would be way too much

at this point

fairy nuff

where you based?

Connecticut (USA)

you?

glasgow, scotland

oh that's right

12:38 PM

aye

1:03 PM

@MattRockwell: HTML5 is the way to go

And you can be selective in what you support

for example, we don't support IE at all

In the mobile and tablet world they are nobody

and supporting IE would mean a lot more work than it is worth at the moment

why, does ie(9) cause a lot of issues?

IE9 doesn't compared to other versions but it's not the most common version of IE, and it's still not as compliant as Chrome, Opera or Firefox

microsoft sure is pushing it though

especially with JS IE is a nightmare

They should be pushing IE9, it's the first non-terrible version of IE ever made

Anything that gets people off IE6-8 is wonderful

well if the windows tablets are using ie, which I am assuming there are we are going to have to support

and the new window 8 tablet

1:08 PM

I don't know much about the windows metro IE, I assume it will be more standards compliant than IE8 but it's not based on IE9 IIRC

IE 9 is better than previous ones, but still seems to break more often than I would like

And for us, most of our app is JS, so big fails there

good to know

Also, do yourself a favour and use a framework

will save you a lot of time (and pain)

i was looking at jQuery, good move?

jQuery with jQuery UI

Have you ever used a CSS framework? Only frameworks I'm using now are Cake for PHP and jquery for JS

1:12 PM

Depends on what you need

we started with jQuery, but still had lots of CSS issues where it would display one way in one browser and another in another

but we are pushing the limits in many ways

so our experience may not be general

CSS is usually where an issue is, or JS for IE

Especially with CSS3. It's only been a known draft for 12 years. Can't stand doing moronic things like using PHP to apply classes to a table/list just to zebra stripe

thank god I dont code these days.

Dave, are you the pointy haired boss?

nope, I am a island of expertise people come to

a bit like buddah#

The bald boss then :P

1:24 PM

So Dogbert?

I have lots of hair. I am sometimes referred to as Sasquatch

Actually Ben, that is a better choice

Dogbert it is then

Definitely dogbert then

Yeah, Dogbert. Go Dogbert!

FTW

1:39 PM

@RogerAttrill: can I steal your square checkbox image as an example of good looking checkboxes?

0

A: Making a legend Interactive?

The interactive legend is a good option to go for, but people need to know that it is interactive in the first place. Using checkboxes may not be the most visually appealing method (although there is a lot that you can do to make them look good), checkboxes are probably the most discoverable met...

Used with attribution :)

1:52 PM

err - yeah sure - np, though the area around the checkboxes was someone elses...I'll happily provide a set of standalone graphics for these checkboxes for anyone who asks!

Patrick McElhaney

2:05 PM

3

Q: What research is there suggesting modal dialogs are harmful?

"Everyone" knows they're bad, at least in UX and HCI, but often times clients don't. I intellectually know all of the reasons to avoid them and some rare cases they may be warranted, and we have a great deal of anecdotal evidence and professional opinions in our modal-dialog questions. I know t...

research modal-dialog

@BenBrocka Nice question. Would it make sense to add a cognitive-science or cognitive-ergonomics tag?

2:19 PM

Has anyone worked with HTML5 and File reading/writing?

2:37 PM

Yikes, it looks like mobile/tablet browsers are nowhere near supporting the HTML5 File API or Drag and Drop

@BenBrocka nice question. I need the research base too...anecdotes and opinions are like nipples: everyone has one and the plural of anecdote is not data.

2

@PatrickMcElhaney I would love a cog-psych tag, I'm surprised there aren't more questions with such a tag

Hey Roger, John was aksing about them checkboxes in response to my question, above.

Would be cool if you could fire them on so I could take a look..

Cog-ergonomics is a bit too specialized, I think it'd be more clear what cog-psych means to most UX people even without a research background

@colmcq I missed my opportunity to save a bunch of research docs while I was at college, and I get here and what most people consider research is a blog post =p. For practical reasons I can't fault having a lower standard but this is a case where I know research has been done

Patrick McElhaney

I don't really understand the difference between cog-psy, cog-sci, cog-engineering, and cog-ergonomics. But I think we should have one of those tags. :)

2:51 PM

Cog-psych is probably most applicable, cog-sci is a bit broad (linguistics, AI ect) and does cover over into some HCI and UX but I think most of us learn/know it as cog psych, I'll go ahead and add that tag

Something I was never sure on...should a question be tagged with a broader tag like "psychology" when a more specific but much less common tag "cognitive-psychology" is applied?

Patrick McElhaney

I think in our case, all psychology questions are about cognitive-psychology, and we should just stick with the latter so people who start typing "cog..." will get the autocomplete.

Just tagged a few questions with cognitive-psychology. There are more, but I don't want to take over the home page.

There's some behaviorism in it as well, but generally yeah

Gamification for example

I was thinking of asking a behaviorism question too, looks like we don't have that tag either

3:09 PM

@BenBrocka : I like questions that are cog-sci focussed. more interesting.

@colmcq Too few people realize that they are cog sci focused or don't know how to express/focus them in that direction

We're HCI guys though so we should like cog psych =) one of my degrees is in psych after all.

Patrick McElhaney

@BenBrocka Yeah, we need a tag that covers behavioral psychology as it relates to UX. We have gamification, user-behavior, and behavioral-economics. I think they should be merged into one tag with a reasonable name.

I think Gamification is a separate enough thing with enough buzz to be a separate entirety. I was thinking maybe behaviorism could be used instead of user-behavior but that's not quite how it's used.

Behaviorism gets quite the bad rep lately, I'm not as sold on it as my behaviorist professors certainly were, but far too many people think "skinner box? How offensive!" and ignore a great deal of understanding of the mind just because it seems "insulting"

3:28 PM

@Spiral13 thinkui.co.uk/freebies/rounded-checkboxes - there's a sample and a set of standalone on/off checkboxes for lighter, medium and darker backgrounds.

3:46 PM

Ah good stuff Roger. Thanks!

Did I just take a wrong turn and enter a psych 101 class?

@Rahul Sit down and be quiet or it's right to the Skinner Box with you.

:-(

Man remember how Jin said we were going to get out of beta?

When was that, like 2 weeks ago?

We need some new moderators up in here

12 days...it's still in the starred chat messages list

All this power is going to my head

3:57 PM

stop doing so much crack then!

developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile

4:22 PM

I need to update to a real profile picture on here someday

Yoshi's Island just isn't gonna cut it

Wait no, yes it is. It totally is.

Yeah, me too

but I like the mystery of the square ninja star thing

...runs off to change avatar....

man, I can't without signing up for a Gravatar. I just want a simple picture uploader. screw that.

@Rahul Hah. Awesome that you recognize it. It's my usual online pseudonym. Only started using my real name on here because I realized I would WANT people to find what I post on here. Should probably change it on the other SE sites

4:38 PM

But Gravatar has one of the best sign up forms ever

it's just your email address - nothing else!

I'm using and love Gravatar (though SE is the only place I'm using it). Gravatar is super simple, a lot simpler than most picture uploaders themselves are

@RogerAttrill: how do you authenticate who you are if you don't have a password?

Oooh

interesting

ok - so it's progressive disclosure - they send an email and you click on a link and enter a password as far as I remember - then upload your avatar and then it gets used anywhere you use the same email address and that uses gravatar

Does anyone know of any other services which follow this pattern?

I like it.

the barrier to sign ups is in amount of fields. Fewer fields = win

yeah - the only better sign-up is no sign-up - this is the best I've seen

4:47 PM

No sign up is tricky to implement

we've been discussing that at work. Sort of like a demo that you can save if you create an account

4:59 PM

@BenBrocka Yoshi's Island is the best 2d platformer ever made, as far as I'm concerned

@JohnGB I use gravatar in Handcraft

And I think wordpress uses it as well

yes it does

@Rahul Loved it to death as a kid and still do, never did beat the extra episodes though...stupid Poochy.

@BenBrocka :-D

Bbl lunch

@Katey I see you there lurking

5:07 PM

Here I am!

Trying to get more familiar with UX and UI - I am not at all an experienced person in this field, so I am trying all I can to get more familiar and comfortable with the concepts and terminology.

What is your background?

If you cook us something we will teach you

Sociology for undergrad, and still a bit when I devote time to it. I am a sci-fi and fantasy nerd, as well as a comedy nerd and performer. I like cooking because I like food but I am by no means an expert at that either :)

Oh yeah I think I remember reading you were a stand-up comedian or something

We can talk about Game of Thrones and you can crack jokes about Ned's fate

I haven't read those yet!

I keep trying to convince myself to crack Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon back open. And I have a to-read pile that's about a foot high too.

5:17 PM

Tell me about it

I've had Snow Crash on my to-read list for, what, 10 years?

Instead I just read business and design books!

Doesn't help that his books are so heavy, I never want them in my bag if I am running around all day.

You read a lot but you don't have a Kindle? I'm shocked!

Haven't made the leap. I re-read A LOT and already have those books. If someone gave me one as a present I would use it but I already feel uncomfortable with the amount of technology I own. I already regularly carry around an iPhone and an iPod Classic.

Patrick McElhaney

@Katey "A computer shall not harm your work or, through inactivity, allow your work to come to harm." and "A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary." - Jef Raskin

Uh oh. You woke the beast.

5:28 PM

They don't waste my time, I just feel like some kind of technology hoarder owning them all. Not a rational reaction, necessarily. Just how it makes me feel.

I feel that way too, but then I probably have about 10 times as many gadgets lying around :(

@Rahul: you'd probably get them surgically implanted if it were bug free

Yeah baby!

Of course the government wouldn't include a kill switch or anything like that

that would be unethical

I am also resistant to rebuying the 100+ books I own and routinely re-read.

5:33 PM

@Katey: If you own a book, you are legally allowed to make copies for your own use.

So you can download the ebooks for them from any site you can find.

OOOh, I thought you meant like photocopy and make a pdf.

And I was like... uh, no thanks?

Electronic copies are copies

meeting, brb

have any of you seen Codecademy.com? Pretty cool and uses gamification, really additcing

Yup, really liked it

have they added more recently?

5:41 PM

Yeah, I like it. tryruby.org is similar but for Ruby

i'm not sure, it's my first time using it. but I need to learn JS so its really coming in handy

Patrick McElhaney

Awesome. I showed my 10 year old tryruby.org and he got stuck when it got to hashes. It was too much of a leap.

There is one for the Go language as well

@PatrickMcElhaney That's cool though :)

@PatrickMcElhaney You should have him try Handcraft, it has a guide to learn the basics of HTML

We get a lot of feedback from Indian people (I know) who use it to teach themselves how to make websites

And I've talked with a couple of ~10 year olds who stumbled across it and were using it too

Patrick McElhaney

@Rahul Neat! Thanks, I'll check that out.

5:56 PM

What's a better icon for settings, a wrench or a gear?

gear

I think gears are better, but it's personal preference

I've seen a wrench or a screwdriver used

Patrick McElhaney

@Rahul Can I access the tutorial in the free version, or do I have to upgrade?

but not as nice

@PatrickMcElhaney The free version has it. Paid is (currently) for professionals who want to do multi-user stuff with several prototypes

@PatrickMcElhaney If you sign in with Google it'll dump you straight into step 1 of the "learn HTML" guide

5:58 PM

a wrench could also be misinterpreted as "tools"

What's the difference between tools and settings?

tools could be like a toolbox or the toolbar in photoshop

toolstip

etc

Matt is right

What about Google Chrome?

for example you often see "tools" as a menu name in windows apps

That is more like tools @Rahul

you can print from there etc. It isn't settings

5:59 PM

chrome has settings as a gear

Although it has "Tools" in there

o wow im sorry

it wasnt chrome uicon it was google while in chrome lol

if i were to guess, the only reason they used a wrench is so user wouldnt be confused of googles gear that is within very close proximity

Summary: @Rahul should use a gear

there is actually a perfect user case: chrome uses wrench (possibly for the aforementioned reason, google uses a gear

(unless he is google)

6:02 PM

which is more popular google or chrome?

answer: google

Google

I think

le me google that

haha

definitely google without a doubt

safari uses gear

ie uses gear

firefox and opera dont use either

Firefox 9 will use a gear :)

you workin on firefox 9?

No, I just meant: Firefox 9 will use a gear

6:09 PM

o haha

Patrick McElhaney

@Rahul Oh, I signed in a long time ago so it didn't just take me to the beginning.

@PatrickMcElhaney Right, it's something we introduced in April or so when we added Google authentication

Patrick McElhaney

@Rahul Okay, I signed in with my wife's account and now I see it. This is cool. Nice work! :)

Thanks!

Wait what's this about FF9? Are they ditching the Firefox dropdown thing then?

6:24 PM

people.mozilla.com/~shorlander/ux-presentation/…

user image

Oh, you guys should check out Raven

raven.io

It's a new browser that just came out last week and has a completely different UI approach

@Rahul Ah, I like. Cue even more complaints that it looks like chrome though

Very reminiscent of Twitter for iPad/Mac

@BenBrocka Yeah, well, Chrome is awesome, so that's how it goes :)

Looks Mac only?

I always find it annoying when someone does an interface well and people complain that it looks similar to other good interfaces

Yeah, it's Mac only

@BenBrocka Yeah, I've been playing Rift lately and it basically copies WoW's UI 1 for 1

But it does it really well and adds a lot of new ideas

I can get behind that kind of thing

View your competitor's achievements as the new default foundation that you can build upon, and go from there

Seriously, look at this: thisisnotarift.blogspot.com/2011/02/…

MMOs have some crazy UI designers

I'm so glad Firefox started a shorter release cycle...

6:29 PM

OK, I gotta split, talk to you later

See ya

7:04 PM

Is the plural of UI just UI or UIs?

UI

7:21 PM

0

Q: What examples are there of Operant Conditioning in UI?

Like many cars, my car makes an annoying beep when you start the car with your seatbelt on; plugging in the seatbelt immediately ends the noise. I used to find this annoying, but I eventually realized it's a great ploy of Operant Conditioning; with classical negative reinforcement a user is quick...

examples behaviorism

1 hour later…

8:37 PM

@BenBrocka: I'd upvote your answer on tags if I hadn't run out of votes today

I'll try to remember tomorrow

And I'm so close to mortarboard...again =(

It's no problem, glad you like the ideas

How close are you today?

Not that close really, 150

nope, no trickery can get you there today :P

There's still 4 hours!...though the site's pretty much dead from around now

Wish I knew tag wiki edits got me +2, I could have easily got the badge when I was at 195 for a day

8:46 PM

You'll get it another time

People need to ask more questions, hard to get votes when there's like 5 questions a day

@BenBrocka: new question. Hurry and you may still get there

I'm off though o/

9:06 PM

Bye

9:33 PM

I suggested that iconography be a synonym of icons: ux.stackexchange.com/tags/icons/synonyms

9:45 PM

Have you guys seen Facebook's Places Editor?

facebook.com/places/editor

They basically crowdsourced the accuracy of their places database to facebook users by making it feel like a game

It's pretty addictive

Sounds interesting, I'll have to peek at it when I get home

I've seen similar crowdsourcing approaches to image recognition, I wish I could remember the site

Google Image Labeler?

they made a game of recognizing the objects in a picture, and you couldn't pick objects others had picked more than X times (a confirmed object)

I like this Facebook app because it's a great example of their philosophy that you should build social into your app rather than adding it as a layer

Yeah, that's Google Image Labeler

We built something similar for videos for one of the Dutch TV networks

I would have thought I'd remember it being from Google

9:48 PM

You watch a video with other people and tag things you see, and if other people use the same word or synonyms, then it's a match and it becomes metadata for that period of the video

Google Image Labeler

Google Image Labeler was a feature, in the form of a game, of Google Image Search that allowed the user to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results. It was online from 2006 to 2011. History Luis von Ahn developed the ESP Game, a game in which two people were simultaneously given an image, with no way to communicate, other than knowing the matching label for each picture or the pass signal. The ESP Game had been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler and launched this service, as a beta on August 31, 2006. Players noticed vari...

aww, it only just got taken down on September 16th

The ESP game! That's exactly it then

lame! I just noticed that, why was it taken down?

On a crowd sourcing related note I meant to bring up, is SE "Community Driven" or "Social Media"?

I've noticed many sites use the term "community driven" because they seem to view "social media" like the plauge

10:49 PM

@JohnGB farm7.static.flickr.com/6216/6238629295_83e2532fa0_b.jpg

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