XBox 360: New and less-cluttered Dashboard

Only two weeks ago, I posted about an excellent analysis of the XBox 360 Dashboard and a potential redesign. It would have been a great new interface. Microsoft, however, had other ideas.

Yesterday at the E3 conference, Microsoft released details of their Dashboard update this Fall. Frankly, it looks far more modern and far less cluttered. The “blades” have been replaced with a Zune-like menu that should be easier to understand. From a human factors perspective, the biggest feature is: less clutter! The interface is much cleaner with an emphasis on the important UI elements.

A big deal was made on making it easier to find downloadable content. I haven’t seen any screen shots showing an improved search feature, but anything would be better than the current system. Hopefully there will be screenshots to come!

Product line confusion and too much choice

The Problem:

One of the most exciting areas in mobile computing today is the “netbook.” It is an incredibly small, lightweight, inexpensive machine that runs either Linux or Windows XP. It’s generated a lot of buzz because it is one of the first truly take-everywhere laptops due to its weight of under 3 pounds. The Asus Eee PC is one of the first models of this new laptop class. The Asus Eee PC website has some mention of the different models currently available, but these are all about to be replaced by a new model line. The UK division of Asus recently published a handy chart.

By handy, I meant the most confusing product chart ever. What’s wrong with this? An examination of other big laptop manufacturers can shed some light on the issue.

The Analysis:

Dell’s website has nice big labels for Home users and a drop-down menu for “Laptops.” Within that, there are different labeled categories for each of the different laptop classes, each with descriptions of what each category of laptop is good for. The one issue: the category names are not very self-explanatory - the difference between Inspiron and XPS is not immediately clear. But the descriptions are informative, at least.

Continuing to the Apple website, the homepage has a big label for “Store.” Within that, there are large graphics that list all the Mac products. There are three lines of Apple laptops, and they are reasonably labeled: MacBook, MacBook Air (not totally descriptive), and MacBook Pro (the professional version).

When one of the laptop models, is chosen there are a few options that are ordered Good, Better, and Best. It’s not spelled out exactly, but it is implied.

The Research:

What’s the human factors lesson here? Keep the product lines simple (like Dell and Apple), put multiple configurations in a hierarchy (Apple), and give the product lines either easily identifiable names (Apple) or easy-to-understand descriptions (Dell). What Asus is doing with the Eee PC violates every one of those principles and can only lead to confusion.

The problem of too many options is the subject of Barry Schwartz’s book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. The central thesis is that too much choice leads to stress about the purchase and then the onset of buyer’s remorse. The book is from 2004, but some companies have not learned their lesson.

Barry Schwartz gave a talk at the 2006 TED conference and, while long, is very interesting.

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This, by the way, is one of the major problems when Windows Vista was released. Four major editions with a few other variations here and there. Confusion and (some) panic.

Which led Apple to post an attack ad based entirely on this issue!

Incredible analysis of a display

The XBox 360 dashboard is the user interface to the XBox operating system. When the game console is booted up, the user is presented with a display that looks like:

The user can navigate to different sections of the display using the XBox 360 controller to switch “Blades” - between, Games, Media, and other functions. It’s a fairly usable design, though it is difficult to make sense of initially (at least, based on my experience).

Over at the blog The Fanboys, there is a fantastic analysis of the 360 dashboard display. The dashboard is broken down into pixels and classified as being used for the user’s content, interactive items (buttons, menus, etc.), ad space, or blank space. The results are startling but also inform a smart redesign that minimizes dead space but does not lead to increased clutter. It’s a really impressive redesign.

The Fanboys: Dreaming of Dashboard 2.0

As someone who is starting to propose a display redesign for a submarine tactical system, this kind of analysis could be incredibly useful to implement. At the very least, it gets the mind thinking in a visual, yet quantitative, manner. Oftentimes, it is easy to be descriptive about changes that need to be done. But when you get sensible and realistic numbers, the case becomes far more convincing.

Bill Gates’ 2003 e-mail detailing usability nightmare

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently published an e-mail from Bill Gates to several Microsoft employees about his experience trying to download Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP. It’s scathing in the level of detail Gates goes in to, number of steps he had to perform, and the fact that he never got it working. Bill Gates didn’t get it working. He created Windows.

Now THAT is user testing!

Best Bill Gates quote from his e-mail: “So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package. I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself. I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.”

Best quote of the replies in response to Bill’s e-mail: “Guess we should start working on a list of things that need to be fixed withe web sites. W1J, and with windows, and identify owners. Bill’s frustration is not unreasonable.”

Note: This e-mail is from 2003, but I’m sure much of the content is still relevant today.

Link to article
Link to the original chain of e-mails (PDF)

Alleviating Office feature bloat with text-based search

A common complaint about Microsoft Office is how many features and commands it has. The new “ribbon interface” introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 was designed to help users find their desired command more easily. A prototype feature that was recently shown off let the user type in their intention. It almost works like the good-old command line of DOS or Unix, but with much more flexibility.

This is a keyboard analog of the “virtual intelligence” that would be an ideal interface. Instead of pointing and clicking, many users would like to talk to their computers in a (more or less) natural language and have the computer understand. The command lines of DOS or UNIX are rigid in their syntax, which did not correspond to natural language at all. Being able to type “Insert a picture” in Microsoft Word is much more natural. For that matter, there are many search engines striving to accurately reply to a request like “Give me census data for Illinois in 1997.”

While this will likely help users navigate the confusing Office interface, this screenshot shows just how many features there are. Type “insert” and get 205 command options? Page 1 of 23? This would take an incredibly long time to sort through this many options to find the desired one, which is not the best solution. Nonetheless, Search Commands is a decent first step, though.