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!

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.

Inconsistencies in Deleting Objects on the iPhone/iPod Touch

Transfer of training is the concept that if you learn how to perform a function in one context, learning is much faster to perform the same function in a different context if the actions are the same. For example, copying and pasting is the same between Microsoft Word, Notepad, Adobe Photoshop, and others – Control-C and Control-V. These conventions are created through traditions and user interface guidelines, such as Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for OS X and the iPhone. Consistency is good: users learn an action once, and it can be applied everywhere. Transfer of training.

However, the iPhone/iPod Touch interface has several glaring inconsistencies. One is how to delete objects. What’s been touted in Steve Jobs’ presentations has been swiping your finger across an object to delete it. For example, in Mail, the user swipes their finger across a message, and they get:

Then, they press delete, and it’s done. Simple enough, once users learn the finger swipe action.

This is almost the same with deleting a video. The finger swipes across a video and the red Delete button appears, but there’s a second confirmation:

This is not too drastic of a change, and adding a confirmation is not necessarily a bad idea, especially when it’s so obvious as to which buttons do what.

However, trying to delete a bookmark in Safari requires not only confirmation, but trying to guess at the meaning of buttons. The user brings up the bookmarks list, and a finger swipe does nothing. Instead, there is a button on the lower left labeled “Edit,” which does not evoke the “Delete” action at all. Once the user finally presses “Edit”, they are presented with little red circles to the left of the bookmark. It is important to note that this iconography is not used anywhere else in the interface. Finally, once the user clicks on the red circle next to the bookmark, they see the familiar red “Delete” button. Whew, that was different.

Moving on to the Notes application, however, shows a major breakdown. This, in my opinion, is the worst offender of implementing the delete feature. Deleting a note does not involve a finger swipe or an “Edit” button. Instead, to delete each individual note, they must be opened one-by-one. Of course, there is no indication of this. Once the note is opened, the user is presented with:

Suddenly, there is a Trash Can that is assigned the Delete command. More iconography that is never used in the iPod Touch interface, despite its familiarity to the user.

Yes, the iPod Touch interface is very new, but Apple is known for its consistent and intuitive user interface. This is an example of a total disregard for consistency in Apple’s shiniest new product, and it detracts greatly from the usability of the iPod Touch. Every computer user knows how to Copy and Paste, because the keystrokes are the same across applications. But when something as simple as a Delete command takes on four different implementation in four applications on a system, there is a problem. Apple desperately needs to standardize their interface to make transfer of training much easier from one iPod Touch application to the next.

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)

iPod Touch User Interface: Touch controls

I know I’m extremely late to the party, but I just got myself an iPod Touch. It is quite impressive, and one of the major aspects of the user interface that I love so much is how intuitive the touch-based action gestures are. Being intuitive is hard to define, but I like to think that if something is intuitive it appeals to common sense.

The touch controls are something that have been highly touted and are well-known at this point. In order to zoom in on a location in Maps, a photo, or a web page in Safari, you put two fingers around the location you want to zoom in on, then you bring them closer together. This is known as the “Pinch.” Conversely, to zoom out, you spread your fingers apart (the “Anti-Pinch”?). Finally, to move around the map, you simply press your finger against the screen and move it in the direction you want the map to go.

This is an example from the Mobile Safari web browsing application:

These actions seem so intuitive that they elicit a reaction of “Well, obviously!” from many people. However, this is not one of those times when common sense would seem to point to these gestures. This seems to be more a function of hindsight bias (hindsight is 20/20) than anything else.

For example, the simple “pulling” action to scroll around in the Maps application is the most intuitive, gestures. This is so intuitive, in fact, that I find myself trying that with other map programs. Google implemented this first with their web-based Map application (so this was not an Apple invention). However, other companies have simply not caught on - MapQuest, for example, does not implement this feature. My GPS (a TomTom Go 720) has not, either. When I want to make sure the route it is giving me is correct, I want to be able to grab the map and scroll to get a better sense of where the route is taking me. Instead, the GPS thinks I tapped the screen, which brings up a different part of the interface. I am left unsatisfied.

The zoom controls are another aspect of the interface that are intuitive. I don’t find myself trying to pinch and anti-pinch on other interfaces. Instead, I am satisfied with a zoom bar (pictured below) or using a scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

The biggest reason for this is that zooming on the iPhone/iPod Touch requires two fingers, and there is no way to emulate that using the input devices available to modern computers. However, the iPod Touch pulls it off quite nicely, and it is continually impressive to show off. The master, Steve Jobs, certainly impressed the crowd when he introduced the iPhone:

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What this all boils down to is ease of use, which can be split into two parts. One is ease of learning, which is what intuitiveness is all about. A shallow learning curve for these gestures means they are grasped easily. This then improves information retention, the second part of ease of use. Users remember what action to perform to reach a desired state, and they perform the action admirably.

Compare this with a new computer user learning Copy and Paste. Click + Drag over text, choose one of 50 different commands that let you copy (right-click, the Copy button in the toolbar, the Edit menu, a keyboard shortcut…) and then repeat for paste. The learning curve is somewhat steep, and the retention of information is not all that great.

The iPhone/iPod Touch, however, gets it right.