10 Mistakes in Icon Design by Turbo Milk

http://turbomilk.com/truestories/cookbook/criticism/10-mistakes-in-icon-design/

Great article.

Online Desktop Experiences: The Meebo Breakdown

OMG, I'm am so geeking out right now.

I liken the current staple of web experiences to how people surf the web on their computers to how they surf the web on their phones. It's watered down and there is a HUGE hesitation because it's a different experience. Only recently with blackberries and iPhones has web surfing increased on the mobile platform.

To bring a desktop experience online essentially eliminates a user's learning curve and makes it a seamless transition from the desktop to the web.

So as painting apprentices painted the great works of the masters before them, I too analyze this monumental work. The images below highlight my points. Read below each for my breakdown:



1 // A Nod To The Web / The bottomline is that this is still a website. Some features that lend itself to that fact are key. The header affirms where a user is and acts as the area where a user can find all high level features of the site.

2 // A Nod To Social Networking / From a lot of the research I've done in the past on eBay Neighborhoods, the left column is a designated area where a user confirms that this space is indeed his or hers. An image, status, and all things of a personal nature are kept in this area.

3 // In Browser Windows Pt I / The in browser windows are such an amazing way for users to manage and customize their experience. Although it seems like such a standard thing, I want to highlight that for that reason, it is amazing. The fact that it is such a familiar experience, an experience that a user does not need to learn is the very reason it is significant. Notice the minimize, maximize and close buttons. Surely familiar interactions to even the most novice of users.

4 // Minimize Windows / Just like daddy taught me.

5 // In Browser Windows Pt II / On top of being Minimizable, Maximizable and Closable, these windows are also draggable and resizeable (from all borders). The texture in the lower right-hand corner indicates those last two things.



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Before I go on, I would like to make a comparison for this website to the half-vampire hero, Blade. Much like him, This site has the best of both worlds. Okay, on with the analysis.

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6 // Innie, Outtie, Innie / It would be such a shame to just make an offline desktop experience and not take advantage of some of the features browsers enjoy. A lot of the times, you really won't need all the features on the online desktop and to be able to pop out what you need while you do other stuff is a great example of how we can take advantage of the web. Imagine in the future when Meebo wants to start incorporating other widgets that you can just pop in and out of the experience. ~drooool.



7 // The Desktop Environment / This totally is the work of Chris Szeto from Yahoo! IM. Oh, wait.. it is... he works there now. Great way for users to customize and a great way for the site to monetize. Cha-Ching!

8 // The Base Line Menu / It's like the drawer underneath your bed. You can stuff extra stuff there without cluttering the rest of the experience. Just like OSX, and windows... It's there when you need it.

Previews: Making Browsing Less Painful

So I've been doing a lot of work on previews. You know, when you are digging around for just the right image, search lisitng or in my case, a sound loop. Overall, I found quite a few different solutions people decided to show their libraries of music however some definitely worked better than others.

The task of browsing multiple results is a daunting task, anything we as designers can do to make it less painful. I don't say more enjoyable because frankly, unless you're window shopping, it's always going to be painful.

The images below contain my analysis. Click on them for a larger version.






So here are some of my thoughts:

1) Make it fast, time is precious.
a) Reduce bounce or pogo-sticking, the back and forth between pages
b) stream content rather than do a pre-load

2) Even work-a-holics don't like this kind of work. Make it so they have to do as little work as possible (making a user move a mouse a lot or click a lot over a long period of time induces suicidal thoughts.

3) Keep everything together. Don't make users have to look at multiple windows or away from where they are focusing on. It might confuse them or more importantly, annoy them. They have to save those looks for incoming IM chats.

4) Easy on the eyes OK? For gosh sakes, they are going to be staring at this page for a long time. Make it comfortable to look at. Soft colors, nothing too stark.

Cheers,
JT

Link Emphasis (Tag Cloud Lite)

I read somewhere that it's best to limit the number a list of links to no greater than five. The reason being is that people can instantaneously recognize things in groups of give but have to count if it is more. An example is people count six items as two groups of threes. I guess what they are trying to say is that if it increases the cognitive load, it has a higher probability of being perceived as cluttered or overwhelming.

With that being said, it's sometimes very difficult to do so because well... everything is important. The categories of an eBay or an Amazon or in this example, the properties of Yahoo! You just can't leave one out, they are all too important for a couple of reasons: One, a lot of times these companies are trying to communicate the breadth that they have and Two, if you hides them behind something, you can't expect people to ever know about them (A bunch of Google's features I still don't know about because they hide it behind their "more" and "even more" buttons.

Anyways, I thought Yahoo! managed this issue quite elagantly... well, as elegant as it was going to get by combining a little tag cloud action with their traditional list of properties. What they do is they highlight the three properties that you use the most by increases the font sizes of those links so what you have is two layers of links. The top most being the links that you are looking for so it increases the affordance while making sure that the other parts of the site are still exposed.

Yahoo! IM / Chat Status Messages.

I have to say, Yahoo! new mail is waaay better than gmail and the outgoing edition of Y!Mail. One of the neat features that has been built in is the ability to chat in the mail experience (Ya, ya, I know Gmail does the same thing). So the chat experience is nothing special but I did notice a small detail that actually amuses me and keeps me in the experience.

Notice at the bottom of the window, the status of your friend is displayed. Normally, the just have " is typing..." but everyonce in a while, they have a random status message that just brightens your day. Here are the one's I've seen so far:

"1000 Monkeys just landed on <-Your Friend->'s keyboard..."
"STAND BY FOR MESSAGE FROM <-YOUR FRIEND->..."
"Don't leave! <-Your Friend-> is typing a message..."

It's a super small thing but man, it adds such a wonderful human touch to the experience. I love it.

Rocking Chairs... Brilliant

On my way to Detroit, I had to make a layover in Midway, Chicago and it's hands down one of the nicer airports I've been in. What did it for me was when I got to the gate, I noticed something that wasn't there in my previous trips to Detroit. Laptop bars w/ electrical outlets and rocking chairs. They were everywhere! Finding seats is usually hard enough but full on areas dedicated to laptop users (everyone) was just brilliant. There is nothing to make a layover more bearable by increasing the affordance for people to use something to keep their minds off the wait. In this case, their productivity boxes (laptops).

As for the rocking chairs, it provided a lot of warmth and frankly, just brought a smile to my face. The first thing I thought was, "That's such a Southwest thing to do."

Link: MacBook Air

This is a great article about how everyone is saying the MacBook Air is useless but also how they are idiots. I think it's a great writing on how perception is not really reality and it takes so real insight into how we use our things to see that the MacBook Air is a truly well thought out design.

My favorite part is the title: MacBook Air Haters, Suck My Dick.

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/01/macbook-air-haters-suck-my-dick.html