UX Chat

one of the key concepts defining "addiction", imho, is that the behavior continues even without the reward, even after the experience becomes hollow, even perhaps painful or at least detrimental.

Rahul

I think it's funny that everyone is writing about Pinterest but no one is writing about Canv.as, which did it earlier and (imo) better

Erics

the UI, or the community?

Rahul

Both, really

The stickers and remix features on canv.as are brilliant

The community is just 4chan, mostly

Which already wins the prize for best internet community

Well, them or Reddit

Erics

only to those that like 4chan :P

Rahul

No - I don't like 4chan per se, but you kind of have to recognise them because of things like Anonymous and all the memes

Erics

12:50 AM

@Rahul an edgy/gritty community appealing to nerds, where they can act out without judgement ... not exactly novel

Rahul

It needs to be novel? :)

I think 4chan is more like a superdistilled version of the internet

Reddit is a layer on top of that

Erics

if you want people to notice it, amongst all the rest of the offerings

Rahul

lolwut:

0

Q: Why has the font size changed?

The Font size on Facebook pages are really to small,us old people can hardly read it. It was fine this morning when I logged in!

website-design

Erics

@Rahul "everyone is writing about pinterest but no one is writing about canv.as" was your complaint

@Rahul lol

Rahul

@Erics Oh, I thought we had meandered off-track into a separate conversation

I wasn't still trying to make a point or anything

Erics

12:56 AM

@dnbrv the homework would entail a painful trial and error process developing a new (to me) research protocol

@Rahul hence my confusion :-)

@dnbrv my user research question is along the lines of how to discover people's error handling methods during the persona research phase.

I'd like to incorporate the different error handling methods into the personas I build - they strike me as useful and actionable intel. Unlike, say, "Bob Builder, a business banking client, has a wife, 2 kids, and 3 dogs"

or "Sally Sales prefers pistachio icecream over chocolate icecream"

more microcopy issues:

dnbrv

1:13 AM

Win 8 Beta will be announced at MWC

Erics

whats MWC?

Rahul

Mobile World Congress

dnbrv

Not to be confused with Winter Music Conference in Miami

Oh, shiat. I messed up. It's MWC - Mobile World Congress

Erics

1:54 AM

lunchtime ... think I'll walk a mile for some miss chu

Rahul

Bring me some, yo

"me likey" hmm. sort of awkward, but maybe not in Australia

Erics

heh, you noticed that too =)

Rahul

Pretty nice website, though. I like the typography

Erics

yeh, it's very tongue in cheek, they can get away with it under the guise of self-deprecation

very nice food photography too

oddly, the [+][-] buttons next to the quantity fields don't appear in their iphone app. They just have a number and a drop down indicator which then vomits the massive roller into the bottom of the screen.

Rahul

Nice choice of words there

Erics

2:09 AM

@Rahul isn't that meant to be Judaism?

Rahul

Don't ask me

I'm just confused as to what "Please select" worshippers believe in

@PeterOlson with the mindbender again!

1

Q: How do you sort a list of languages?

A website is available in 100 languages. There is a form to select a language, and it includes these 8 English Русский 日本語 עברית العربية বিষ্ণুপ্রিযা় মণিপুরী მარგალური አማርኛ Normally, I would sort a list in alphabetical order. However, some of these languages aren't even written in alpha...

forms list

Erics

@Rahul ah =) ... y'know, there was a time before @placeholder

hmm ... can a <select> even have @placeholder?

Rahul

Nope

Erics

well, that sucks

oh, this sucks more...

Whoa! Experience design firm Different Solutions in administration. http://www.smartcompany.com.au/economy/048136-experience-design-firm-different-solutions-in-administration.html?utm_source=SmartCompany&utm_campaign=712e61e723-Monday_12_December_201112_12_2011&utm_medium=email

Tweeted by jenioye on February 9, 2012 at 1:56 AM

they're one of the big, early, pioneer local firms

Rahul

2:31 AM

Guess they weren't different enough anymore

Erics

I suppose its to be expected, limited client spread in the UX segment, lack of cheap talent, & mature talented new UX firms in Sydney.

Tweeted by Tuna on February 9, 2012 at 2:28 AM

yep

Rahul

1:51 PM

New in Google Chrome 17: the new tab button no longer contains a "+" symbol:

dnbrv

@Rahul Just like in Android Beta.

Rahul

I wonder why they did it

Rahul

2:11 PM

@BenBrocka Have you given Tim Schafer $15 yet? Why not?

Ben Brocka

2:26 PM

@Rahul I assume you mean "bought psychonaughts"? I actually haven't, I suppose I should. My steam games go pretty much unplayed though...

Rahul

No, I meant this; kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

Ben Brocka

@Erics I have seen (probably due to JS) "placeholders" in selects that are grey and are equal to "no answer"

@Rahul It's a technical way of referring to agnostics

Rahul

I think you guys should downvote answers that are clearly wrong and not just point it out in the comments. It's just one rep and you help the community.

Ben Brocka

@Rahul wasn't aware of that, assumed you were talking about the rumored psychonaughts sequel with nothch

Bought/funded it, love the idea of games being funded on kickstarter

Rahul

2:43 PM

cool :)

They just started it last night and already made $500k

Might be the fastest funded Kickstarter so far

Huh, windowsazure.com is pretty well designed

Some of the newer MS sites are getting pretty good

Ben Brocka

No wonder I hadn't heard of it

@Rahul ohhh that's different. Not the same site I saw last time I checked out azure

Rahul

Yeah. microsoft.com/web is similarly non-suck

Ben Brocka

Zero Bundle free crap for designers

dnbrv

@Rahul Is that the new incarnation of FrontPage?

Ben Brocka

My favorite MS site is still ie6countdown.com on principle though

dnbrv

2:56 PM

microsoftstore.com isn't bad either

I'm installing that WebMatrix Beta - let's see what it is

Rahul

WebMatrix is pretty cool

I use it for lightweight windows platform coding

It comes with IIS express built in, which makes setting up a local webserver completely transparent

Ben Brocka

Sounds interesting, never heard of it

Rahul

And it supports web deployment, so you can deploy to live from within the tool without having to open ftp or anything

@dnbrv microsoft.com/web is just the hub for MS' web stuff, including the Web Platform Installer

WebMatrix is effectively a stripped down build of Visual Studio for Web Developers

Ben Brocka

Ugh, visual studio. I spend 3 hours trying to get that damn thing to publish 4 pages once. Never used it again.

dnbrv

Wow. The installer is very nice.

It allows to add other dev tools, server options, or even CMSes.

Rahul

3:18 PM

Welcome to the web platform installer :)

@BenBrocka Visual Studio is awesome now

But I guess you don't need it if you write primarily php

even though Visual Studio and IIS both support php out of the box now

I think WebMatrix is even PHP-friendly

I'd recommend checking it out, MS' dev tools are fantastic in general

Ben Brocka

I just used it to slap together a site to read a database for a RDMS course. Site took 5 minutes to make, getting the damn project to publish on the server was a nightmare

dnbrv

WHOA! The code suggestion is on par with Titanium Studio!

Ben Brocka

I tried 5 different compatibly/version/ect things before it worked

Rahul

@Ben how long ago was this

Ben Brocka

Year and a half or two

It's a common problem I've found with MS programming/server/anything. I was throughly impressed SQL Server wasn't god awful, I've been avoiding MS like the plauge for anything development related

Rahul

3:24 PM

amazing: 5 year old analyzes brand logos

Well, it sucks that you had a bad experience

Things are pretty cool these days though

Ben Brocka

3:38 PM

The version to version compatibility was/is monstrous. At least I now know why ever Windows PC has 40 versions of .Net and Direct X

Rahul

6 questions asked in the last hour.. I guess the American continent woke up

dnbrv

And the Quora experiment is going well

colmcq

4:10 PM

hi everyone

Ben Brocka

Hey @colmcq

@dnbrv quora experiment?

colmcq

'sup?

whenever i think of Quora I think of Quorn, a rather tasteless tofu-based meat substitute

mmmm quorn.com

Quorn is the foodstuff folks in the 1930's would say would be "the way of the future! Future food!"

....if only they knew...

Ben Brocka

lol

colmcq

mmm...Chilli con, erm, Quorn!

Ben Brocka

Qhili Quon Quorn

colmcq

4:16 PM

Spaghetquorn

"your favourite meal....make it with Quorn!"

"meat-free-inspiration"

Rahul

Quorn is yummy

colmcq

@Rahul you are dead inside!

erm what was the quora experiment? Was it like the Quatermass Experiment?

Matt Rockwell

Quorn is pretty good

colmcq

..but on Earth, and not The EY67 orbiting The Moon?

dnbrv

@BenBrocka The question I borrowed from there: 6 answers within just over an hour (though only 2 upvotes for the question itself)

Ben Brocka

4:43 PM

Ah...animation + wireframes makes little sense

sort of like asking how I can put them in sketches

Rahul

A lot of people "do wireframes" without really thinking about what they're for

So many companies even use them as deliverables when they're not meant for that purpose

We're going to end up with a whole crowd of "UX designers" whose only skill is sketching non-real UI wireframes, but who can't actually build or prototype them

colmcq

@Rahul wireframes are pretty useless unless you can interact with them

Rahul

Of course we already have that problem with a crowd of "UI designers" whose only core skill is using Photoshop

@colmcq that makes no sense, because it's impossible to interact with a picture of something

All you can do is talk about what it represents

And then go and build it

colmcq

@Rahul I meant a prototype

Rahul

@colmcq Well, there's a huge difference ;)

A lot of people use them interchangeably

blog.handcraft.com/2010/05/wireframing-is-not-prototyping

colmcq

4:48 PM

i meant prototype==set of interlined wireframes

Rahul

That's not a prototype, that's just a set of wireframes

A prototype must be interactive and built using the same process the final product will be created with

colmcq

so more than click through routes?

that's what I would call a type of prototype

or does a prototype have to have the representative functions of the end product?

Rahul

So if I draw a rectangle on two sheets of paper and scribble a bit of detail in them and then draw an arrow from one to the other, you call that a prototype?

Yes

Think about what a prototype is in industrial design

Eg. a car

Do car manufacturers show you a blueprint of their new car and call it a prototype?

Ben Brocka

@Rahul I'd rather we had people that know how to make a flow and nothing else than people know who now to make a page and nothing else...

Rahul

No, they show you the new car

@BenBrocka Agreed

colmcq

4:51 PM

but you can demonstrate a degree of interactivity with a set of linked wireframes, yes? you couldn't ever do that with a set of blue prints of a car!

Maybe i'm being a bit opaque; the prototypes I build are not just linked wireframes: they include some CSS/javascript to illustrate certain functions or features. I think it depends on the context and how much you need to communicate the concept to the client. would that be a fair comment?

Rahul

You can't demonstrate interactivity with wireframes, you can only describe it

And describing isn't even remotely as useful as actually showing the interaction

I'm pretty sure blueprints for cars describe how the various components fit together and are intended to move

And of course everything does depend on context, but my complaint was mainly about people who think wireframes are the final deliverable and don't take the next steps

You're obviously an exception given that you can write code :)

colmcq

ha! badly

well, enough so that it works.

i think the words 'wireframes' and 'prototypes' have no solid def

Rahul

Which is part of the problem

I don't think people in industrial design ever confuse the two

colmcq

i don't consider a prototype to be the same as a single wireframe, that would be insane

but my point is that i can take the layouts from the wireframes, sprinkle some html css etc over them and make a prototype. this is fairly standard.

Rahul

5:08 PM

Yes! And that's exactly how it should be - wireframes come before interactive prototypes

Rather than making wireframes, handing them off to the client, and thinking you're done

colmcq

@Rahul you've read client dev wars, right?

newfangled.com/client_vs_developer_wars

pretty much exactly the probs with static wireframes and the waterfall development method

@Rahul how was edinburgh at NY?

or xmas

Rahul

I had to cancel because my brother was in the hospital

And no, I haven't read that book

colmcq

I hope he's OK?

Rahul

Yeah, he's okay now

Ben Brocka

Are there any particular patterns on how modal windows should be closed? IT seems to me that clicking outside of the modal window should be equal to a "cancel" action (unless taking an action is required) but I'm not finding much to back that up

Rahul

5:14 PM

I always implement click-away, esc key and close X

and obviously a "cancel" button or whatever

colmcq

@BenBrocka see rahul's answer

Ben Brocka

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking

colmcq

@BenBrocka its the cancel and save that can cause problems

I can elucidate if I can dig up the test I did last yr

Ben Brocka

Found a modal that's a delete action. Close X and cancel link are the only ways out of it...and Delete is emphasized on the modal which I don't care for

colmcq

c ya guys!

Ben Brocka

5:24 PM

Don't be a stranger @colmcq

Ben Brocka

5:40 PM

I hate when sites change your middle click (new window) into a left click (same window). I assume that's some JS stuff?

Rahul

If you're not clicking a hyperlink but some kind of funky custom button, then that's what will happen

Ben Brocka

middle click doesn't even trigger buttons though. Unless it's a JS link that then triggers the page change I can't think of how they'd cause that

Rahul

<div onclick="dosomething();">button</div>

if you don't listen for the middle mouse button, it won't do anything

a normal <a href="#" onclick="dosomething()">button</a> will respond to middle click, but might not do what you want

Ben Brocka

ARg, it really does act weird. you can try it on the Read more section on baekdal baekdal.com/opinion/rip-kodak

IF you click the image, sometimes middle click does something, sometimes it opens the same page. Middle click on text opens a new tab.

Rahul

6:15 PM

0

Q: Proposal: Handcraft integration with UX.SE so members can easily add HTML mockups to answers

Lately I've been making HTML mockups for some of my answers. Here are two examples: Interactive table - with many levels of information How to make a 20-field online form more user friendly? I've been using my product Handcraft, since that's what it's made for. Sometimes people post screensh...