Let’s go off-topic again with another stunning visual of the Earth and Moon, this time from the Deep Impact spacecraft.

This is a movie of the Moon transiting across the face of the Earth, seen from 31 million miles out.

Thank you Bad Astronomy for sharing this.

HOLY FRAK! Moon Transits Earth! :: Bad Astronomy :: Discover Magazine

If you remember back a year or so ago, I took issue with the customer experience associated with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Look here for my original nanorant. I believe I quoted someone who referred to Adobe Reader’s update manager as an “attention whore“.

The blogger over at microBlog has written an extremely sarcastic review of Adobe Reader 9’s bad customer experience. My favorite lines:

I had just slurped down the dregs of my coffee when the installer finished. I was so thankful when it told me I needed to restart my computer, welcoming the extra time to drink coffee, as well as the pure delight I knew I’d get from starting all my applications again.

Check it out.

microBlog » Thank you, Adobe Reader 9!

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Yes, this is off-topic for a blog focused on user experience. But I could not resist sharing this picture.

It’s a shot of Earth and Moon from Mars orbit, taken by the Mars Polar Orbiter. It’s one of the most awe-inspiring pictures I’ve ever seen. Just look at the picture for a while and let it sink in: those two half-circles are our entire world and its companion.

What’s more, humans created the technology that allowed us to take this amazing image.

Click the pic then enlarge it in your browser to embiggen and enjoy.

Earth and Moon From Mars Orbit

Profuse apologies for not posting in over a month. Standard excuses apply - swamped at work, volunteer tasks overwhelmed me, and I didn’t want my girls to think that Daddy was completely checked out.

I’m getting myself back into the blogging habit by pointing y’all to an article forwarded to me by a colleague. It’s about the poor usability of enterprise and business apps. Link is below as well.

You might ask why enterprise apps are generally so unusable. The answer is simple really: the people who evaluate and purchase the apps are typically not the target users. And the app vendors typically don’t take the time to understand and model customers’ workflow. (And when they provide the means to customize their apps so customers can modify screens and workflow, the tasks involved in customizing are often insanely obtuse and clunky.)

Have I made enough generalizations for the week?

Users Find Business Apps Complex and Hurt Productivity - Computerworld

<Blowing own horn>

Check UBlog out at http://ui.alltop.com/.

</Blowing own horn>

A contributor to the IxDA discussion list posted about the availability on iTunes of Stanford University lectures in human-computer interaction.

I just browsed the list of lectures. Looks like real good stuff. Some lectures I’m particularly interested in hearing:

• The Design of Implicit Interactions, Wendy Ju, Stanford, Spring 2007
• Designing Interactions, Bill Moggride, IDEO, Winter 2007
• Innovation on User Research Methods During the Development of Windows Vista, Gayna Williams, Microsoft, Fall 2006

You can point your browser to this link to get to the class listings within iTunes.

Here’s a mini-rant about the usability of Apple’s Mac OS X:

I use Spaces, the multiple desktop feature found in OS X 10.5. It’s a nice feature for us Windows-on-VMWare-Fusion (or Parallels) people. I assign Fusion’s window to a separate space, and cmd+arrow down or over to get to my Windows window. I’ve assigned the Finder to be present in all spaces. (I only use the default four spaces.)

The problem I run into is the stupid no-op that sometimes occurs when I’m in Space 1, the Finder is in Space 2, 3, or 4, and I click on the Finder icon in the dock. Sometimes - but infuriatingly, not all the time and with no predictability - a click on the dock’s Finder icon does absolutely nothing. It doesn’t bring the Finder to my current space, nor does it pop me over the the space where the Finder window currently resides.

What I have to do then is cmd+arrow all over tarnation trying to find my frakking Finder window. Lame.

Interestingly, I just tried to reproduce the problem, and I couldn’t. So I don’t know whether it’s a strange interaction between the behavior of several OS X features, or an actual bug. One thing it definitely is is annoying.

I saw this article mentioned on Digg. A techie guy decided to set his semi-tech-savvy girlfriend loose on Ubuntu’s new 8.04 release. What ensued was fascinating. Read the guy’s account here.

I should mention that although he’s not a user experience professional, he does a darn good job of defining the right tasks. The twelve tasks he set out for his s.o:

• Tell me what the capital of Bosnia is.
• Watch a video on YouTube.
• Download a Spice Girls Album. [Note: I hope this was ironic...]
• Draw me a little picture and save it in three formats.
• Burn an album from my music collection.
• Change the speed of the mouse.
• Change the theme of the computer.
• Find a picture on the Intenet and set it as the desktop background.
• Change screen resolution.
• Photoshop a picture of her face onto my body. [Note: He's using "photoshop" as a generic verb...]
• Log onto MSN. [Note: As in the IM client MSN Messenger]
• Install Skype.

These are very appropriate core tasks for someone who’s transitioning to a new computer. I couldn’t pick a better set of tasks if I were the Ubuntu user experience team.

Judging from his descriptions of her behavior, he seemed to take the right approach to facilitation - i.e., he let his participant/girlfriend struggle, didn’t interfere or teach the interface, etc. Hard to be sure though.

So how did Ubuntu’s newest do? The girlfriend succeeded on seven of the twelve tasks. From the article:

Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do. Erin’s intelligent, quick to learn and is reasonably well-acquainted with modern technology. If she had as much trouble as she did, what chance to the elderly or at least the middle-aged stand?

Definitely an interesting read. Be sure to check out my posts about my Linux experiences if you’re interested in more Linux ‘n user experience discussions.

The Great Ubuntu Girlfriend Test - Content Consumer

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This is what you see in Outlook if someone has (rudely, in my opinion) sent an email with a read receipt requested. (It’s none of your damn business if/when I read your email, thank you.)

The problem is in the confusion engendered by the check box text, and the potential irrevocability of the action associated with checking it.

If I check the box, does that mean:

• Don’t ask me about receipts again and ALWAYS send one when requested,
• Don’t ask me about receipts again and NEVER send one, or
• Something else entirely.

I have no idea. But I’m frankly scared that checking the box will mean that I will always and forevermore be sending read receipts to all who request one.

If you read my epic rant about EULA’s from last year, you’ll remember I made the point that the legal dept’s who copy/paste these monstrosities assume that people never read them.

Well someone took the trouble to read the EULA for Apple’s new Windows browser, Safari 3.1. They found that legal couldn’t even be bothered to review their own work for accuracy. Seems that the EULA accompanying Safari for Windows prohibits the user from installing the application on a non-Apple computer. Oops.

Read the Register article, and the comments too, for a little shadenfreude at Apple’s expense.

Apple Forbids Windows Users From Installing Safari For Windows | The Register

A few days ago in this post I mentioned that I was writing my UXmatters Magazine column on the drawbacks of the file/folder metaphor. I just completed that article and you can find it at this URL. Or click the title below.

Where’s My Stuff? Beyond the Nested Folder Metaphor :: UXmatters

Blogged with Flock

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This is a picture of the desktop of an individual who has given up organizing their files and folders, and instead relies completely on Spotlight to access their files. I’ve said in the past that I think the desktop metaphor is insufficient for managing the stuff we now store on our computing devices. (Thanks to Flickr user danpatmore for the pic.)

I’m currently writing an article on this for UXmatters. (And I’m very late, my profuse apologies Pabini…). I’ll follow up on this line of thinking here when I cap that article.

Blogged with Flock

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I know, it’s not nice to point at somebody’s work and say snarky things. And once you look at this site, it becomes clear that it provides a ton of functionality. But the design seriously detracts from the overall perceived quality of the site. The visual design just doesn’t scan, if you know what I mean. And that hurts discoverability.

If I was ready to put my money where my mouth is, I’d mock up a redesign. It’s easy to point out problems, harder to provide solutions.

Man, it’s a busy week. But I’ll try to put something together this weekend.

Blogged with Flock

I got an email from a reader saying he had a usability issue to rant about, and could he do a guest post. I said sure thing. So without further ado, here’s a post from Andreas Bossard, proprietor of NewsOfTheFuture.net. I’ve got a Sony Ericsson phone too, and I’ve been annoyed by this little feature as well. I hope you enjoy UsabilityBlog’s first guest post, and a big thanks to Andreas for putting it together. -Paul

Every time I connect my Sony Ericsson phone to my Windows PC, I am reminded of an annoying feature of Sony Ericsson’s PC Suite: The time checker that checks if the time of the cell phone is the same as the time of the PC (see picture below).

Every time I connect it pops up and asks me if I want to change the time of my cell phone. The program assumes that the time of the PC is always correct. But the opposite is the case: The cell phone time is correct, but the Windows time is wrong. So I always have to select “No”. The funny thing is that “Yes” has the option “Every time I connect. Do not show this message again”, but “No” doesn’t ‘t have such an option.

Only about 30 seconds difference, but PC Suite sees immediate need for action…

What designers can learn from this mistake:

1. Make the right assumptions. Here it is assumed that Windows time is always correct, which may not always be the case.
2. Give the user the possibility to disable an unwanted feature. Especially if it is an annoying pop-up window.

Note: The current version of PC Suite is version 3. This time-checker-feature was present in version 2. Nevertheless, it’s a good example of bad usability.