Visit the Air Force Web Sight for more details

The military, being what it is, is very competitive. There are rivalries between the Army and Marines, for example, because they’re both ground forces. Another big rivalry is between the Navy and the Air Force to determine who has the better toys (nuclear submarines win over fighter jets, of course).

Nonetheless, after seeing a banner ad on the NBC website, I can say that at least the Navy knows how to spell, unlike the Air Force:

The only human factors lesson to be learned is to proofread your work to make a good impression on the one who is reading the advertisement. They are much more effective that way.

Microsoft Word 2008 keyboard shortcut insanity

One of the rules of software design is that menus and commands should be as similar as possible between all applications. In OS X, Command-C means copy and Command-V means paste. This eases Transfer of Training from one application to another. Microsoft Word 2008 violates this principle, however. To initiate a search, the standard Command-F is used. However, to find the next instance of the search term, Command-G is traditionally used. This is not the case, unfortunately. It is possible to re-assign shortcuts to different commands. As blogger Pierre Igot found out, it is surprisingly and ridiculously difficult to do.

Snip:

“Easy,” you say. “Just go to the ‘Customize Keyboard’ dialog box, find the ‘Find Next’ command and assign command-G to it.” Right.

First of all, good luck finding “Find Next” in the list of commands in the “Customize Keyboard” dialog box. Due to Microsoft’s completely nonsensical way of naming Word’s internal commands, the “Find” command is actually listed as “EditFind,” but the “Find Next” command is not listed as “EditFindNext”:

That would be too easy. Instead, it is listed as… “RepeatFind”:

In the menus, the commands are listed as “Find” and “Find Next.” However, in Word’s internal naming, the command is “RepeatFind.” That’s not even transfer of training - that’s simple consistency, and it is not followed here.

Hit up the rest of the post and read about this exercise in frustration.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Text Input

Nintendo, being the child-friendly video game company, has tried its best to keep online play as safe as possible. Not only do users not have any real-time voice or text chat in-game, but each and every game requires its own game code. For example, to add a friend to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, users need to perform a multitude of steps that are quite confusing.

The worst part of the entire process, however, is adding friends to play with. To add a friend to play against, users need their 12-digit Brawl code, which they can only obtain outside of the Wii environment. Communicating this code requires writing it down over the phone, or waiting for an e-mail or text message. Anyone who remembers e-mail addresses like 72223.10@compuserve.com knows that randomly-assigned number codes are not easy to pass around. Users simply don’t have the memory for that many numbers, and the sending or receiving of that long number can get easily garbled.

What is absolutely mind-boggling, however, is the way to enter an easy-to-recognize nickname for that person. Firstly, users are limited to only 5 characters with which to name that person - an arbitrary limit. Secondly, the typical expectation for text input is an on-screen keyboard to do the typing. This, after all, is the de facto method of entering text. Instead, users are presented with:

Anyone who has sent a text message with their cellular phone recognizes this: it’s T9. It’s a human factors nightmare even though it makes sense on a phone with only a limited number of buttons. In order to type an “H”, users need to click on the “GHI” button twice. To type an “S”, users click on “PQRS” four times. This is necessary on cell phones because you have a limited number of keys. On a television monitor, you have a LOT of space. Why not make a full-sized keyboard?

After all, this is supposed to be a family-friendly game, but when non-text messagers have to type in a simple nickname, they get confused by the keyboard? Ridiculous! Poor design, through and through.

The entire Nintendo online experience is not a pleasant one, and can be summed up from a snippet from this VGCats comic. Click here to see the rest of it, which is Not Work Safe, not PG, and not Child Friendly. But it is funny!

Application Usability Webcomic

An amusing comic about usability at industry-leading companies like Google and Microsoft versus what most in-house company programmers put out for software (originally from http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/):

Tune Folder Push Sound

Concerning my last post regarding hard vs. soft buttons, here is an example of labeling gone horribly wrong. This is from my car.

What does TUNE FOLDER PUSH SOUND mean? This is both a dial AND a button. Let’s go through this:

• Tune: In radio mode, you can twist the dial to tune the radio to a certain frequency
• Folder: In MP3 disc mode, you can twist the dial to change folders. Presumably, your CD has its MP3s organized in folders by band, album, genre, etc.
• Sound: You can push the button at the center of the dial to bring up the sound options such as the level of treble and bass.

So this dial/button serves three functions. The dial does both Tune and Folder and are mutually exclusive because you cannot be in Radio and MP3 Disc mode at the same time. The button does Sound and is accessible from any function. So the Honda engineers decided to use the least understandable label, TUNE FOLDER PUSH SOUND.

It’s understandable that you don’t want two dials and one button all separate on the dash, as that would lead to button overload. But this kind of mislabeling can only lead to confusion. One ideal solution may be technological: have the button face be a little screen that can change based on the current function. If you’re in radio mode, have it say TUNE. If you’re listening to an MP3 disc, have it say FOLDER.

This may sound futuristic, and it kind of is. But this technology is already starting to creep out. For example, the Optimus Maximus keyboard has keys with OLED (organic light emitting diodes) displays that can change depending on how you program it. This, sadly, is the best video demo that I could find. But I can imagine this sort of low-power display being used everywhere, including my Civic’s sound system:

By the way: the cost of this keyboard? Only $462.27.