New Wesbite Design

So I got bored of my old design. It was kinda ugly. I like the colors for this one better and yeah- Enjoy. Its a piece of PHP mastery btw. This page you're reading right now is 50 lines of refactored php goodness.

Reading Glasses FTW, originally uploaded by Mike Mayer.

Sexy.
I have nearly 20/10 vision. 20/15 for sure. But my eyes are often strained with computers/reading so the eye doctor recommended reading glasses. Fair enough. :)
Mike Mayer
www.mikehmayer.com
--

We've chosen to analyze a type of application that is used for an ever growing type of file sharing called Bittorrent. There is an official client that is called Bittorrent but we won't be evaluating its performance since it is so infrequently used. Instead we've chosen three alternative popular clients: Azureus, Transmission, and Deluge. There were many other clients to choose from and certainly other good ones but we performed our tests on Ubuntu and picked our favorites that were available from the default Ubuntu repositories.

The very first impression that was made upon each application's launch; they looked quite different from each other. Azureus was defaulted to full screen and Transmission was very small.

Contents

Holistic Analysis    3

Usage Illustrations – Creating a Torrent file    4

Deluge    4

Azureus    5

Transmission    8

Qualitative Analysis    9

Conclusion    9

Azureus

Deluge

Transmission

Holistic Analysis    

The task we've chosen is creating a torrent file to be shared. This is a process that people, who like to share files, do frequently and as such should be optimized for usability and speed.

We've decided that the clear winner in usability is Deluge. It's large and easily recognized buttons make it easy to quickly find what you want to do.

Conversely, we think that Azureus is an utter failure of usability for having nearly the opposite of ideal design- small unlabeled icons that aren't very clearly understood. Its dubious design may be a result of it being written in Java, which certainly detracts from its overall speed- but makes it a candidate for usage on all platforms with a Java Virtual Machine.

Usage Illustrations – Creating a Torrent file

Deluge

Click New Torrent

First click the radio button (RED), then click the file browser (BLUE) to select the

file to share, then type in a torrent file name (GREEN) and finally click Save

This is where Deluge really dropped the ball. You MUST type in a torrent name. The other client applications will have a default filename chosen for you based on the file that you wanted to share. To make matters worse- once you've typed the name in you cannot just press enter and move on, you must use the mouse to click Save.

We're letting it download in its default directory so click OK

Azureus

Click the really small unmarked piece of paper icon, aka create a torrent

Over complicated, we didn't need anything here: just click Next

Browse for file then click next

Filename was already filled in for us based on the file we were going to share- click Finish

Click Close, we're finished with Azureus.

Transmission

Click Torrent and go to Create New Torrent: Note, this was the first time we had to enter a file menu.

Clean display, nothing complicated here! Just choose 'single file' and then click the file browser Icon

Click New. And that's it. Seriously.

Qualitative Analysis

Contrary to our naïve prediction that Deluge would be the client with the highest usability it becomes painfully clear that, in fact, it is worse than Azureus in our tests. We had to make a prediction for what the constant time for typing in a torrent file name would be. We decided that the typing constant would be a great hit- 20 performance points. Clearly because taking your hand off the mouse and typing a name and then moving back to the mouse is a lot of time lost. Additionally since every application has the same file browse constant we chose not to include that in their overall usability scores (Fitts).

All measurements are in centimeters

Conclusion

This means the clear winner is Transmission by a landslide. Its simplistic design and great design blew away the competition. According to our calculations it received a usability score which is nearly twice as good as both of the other clients. It was quite a surprise to us that Transmission won in the calculations.

The one correction that would need to be made to make Transmission even better would be to add a large icon for 'New Torrent' as Deluge had.

This one simple change would increase he usability by negating the need to open the file menu and change the direction of the mouse to complete the action.

iPhone 3G Line, originally uploaded by Mike Mayer.

I'm number 19 in line.

Mike Mayer
www.mikehmayer.com
--

Not In-Stock (@ everythinginstock.com ), originally uploaded by Mike Mayer.

I was looking for a Wii Fit... and this site called "everythinginstock.com" didn't have it in stock. _Wonderful_

Wii Numbers

Nintendo is a company whose purpose is to design and build so-called family friendly games and gaming systems. Ease of use is paramount in being family friendly. Something that Nintendo has been quite good at for some time. They have, however, made a grave mistake in their "Wii Number" and "Friend Code" system.

In order to play games with friends on the Nintendo Wii system you must first share your "Wii Number" with them. They will have to register it and you will also need to share their "Wii Number" with you too. It would be less painful if it stopped there, unfortunately, you must also register each other "Friend Codes." The friend codes are associated per game. So a minimum of 16 (Wii Number) + 12 (Friend Code) = 28 numbers are required to play with a friend on line.

This is an example of a monumental failure to uphold G.A. Miller's item short-term memory capacity. They do try to make it easier by grouping it into four digit chunks; however, the sheer number of numbers required makes the aid nearly moot. Perhaps a system where only the "Wii Number" was required would be much easier to manage. Every other modern console does fine in a manner with a centralized code (or nickname) is used, why not the Wii? I say that Nintendo needs to simplify this number system if they intend on maintaining their ease of use for families.

iPhone UI

Much discussion about the lack of an expected affordance in the iPhone UI has gone around in circles in various on-line communities- where's the copy and paste?

No doubt the iPhone has the most user friendly interface ever designed for any kind of Smartphone platform yet and the device is so highly regarded as an internet communicator yet to be missing such a simple feature is quite surprising. My first cell phone, a Samsung E715, had copy and paste. If I received a text message which contained something that I wanted to put in my address book I could. While convoluted in the process needed the functionality existed.

Apparently this is just an affordance that we've grown to expect in a device with functionality similar to our laptops, desktops, and other computer-like devices. There is a mock-up of how the design for copy-paste would work on iPhone. I completely agree with the original author's work.

iPhone Copy and Paste by lonelysandwich

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

Signal/Battery Strength

A great example of graphical coding which has grown into ubiquity is battery and signal strength bars which are present on nearly any device which requires radio contact or batteries to operate.

They are on nearly every cellular phone, they are seen on GPS devices, and they can be found on our laptops for their Wi-Fi strength. Their purpose is clear. They indicate how strong the connection between two radios is or how charged a battery is. Certainly obfuscated from their actual measurements in dBi or mV- they serve their purpose valiantly. We know what they mean and our expectations are generally accurate with the imagery given.

An example of my signal strength being quite poor, my Wi-Fi being decent, and my Battery being not quite full.

A quick look at the screenshot of my iPhone UI shows quickly how easy it is to read the graphical coding which has been used by Apple.

The battery and signal bars have been engraved in our minds though commercial advertisements and though our gadget-centric society. I'm glad to report that it's a system that works and doesn't require any obvious revising to make it better.

My HCI Notebook

Is virtually empty. I've written down a few things but mostly junk. I find it more useful to take pictures of things that are weird/good/interesting with my iPhone and reviewing the pictures later. I am definitely not a "write-it-down" kind of person and I really can't get used to it.

Not all those pictures are mine and the video certainly isn't. However the text is all mine so if you want to plagiarize me you'll have to ask first. I will not be held responsible for your failing grades. Thanks.

Part A: Problems with HCI encountered

Seismic Button

What is this thing? It looks like all the rest of the buttons in a Donald Bren Hall elevator but it says SEISMIC.

One time when the elevator was filled with people I announced that I was going to press the SEISMIC button. Someone said "NO! Don't!" They were quite anxious about it. So I pressed it. It's not a button at all. I would have to say that it's probably a light that indicates when seismic activity has been sensed by whatever sensors the elevator has available to it.

The problem with this thing is that it looks like a button. Why did they make it the same shape, size, and just general look as every other button in the elevator? Perhaps it was to build the elevator for a couple dollars cheaper. Hardly worth it if you ask me.

The users of the elevator are presented with the SEISMIC "button" and are given no indication for what its purpose is. Its white- and that would seem to implicate that it's going to portray some information to the elevator users- one point for the designers there. It's the same shape as all the other buttons in just about every elevator I've ever seen and it even looks like a button with its flange around the edges.

My recommendation for future elevator designers is to never, under any circumstances, make lights that resemble buttons in any way. If a light such as the SEISMIC light is needed then it should, perhaps, just be a function of a segmented LCD panel like most elevators have to indicate the floor currently on.

McDonalds Chinese Billboard

Certainly not a result of computer interaction in the simplest sense- the Chinese McDonalds billboard was seen on the 405 in Los Angeles. Since I wasn't anywhere near the Asian parts of Los Angeles I thought that it was interesting.

It's clear that its advertisement for an Egg McMuffin- that much is clear. I, however, have no idea what the point is. Perhaps its saying "Egg McMuffin now with lots more communism" or maybe it says "Egg McMuffin- now with more sodium." I really couldn't say.

Users of this billboard, rather the drivers on the freeway, will be largely in the same position as me. Since we don't understand what this advertisement is for we certainly aren't being influenced by the message about the Egg McMuffin that we are supposed to be getting. It's just a simple language barrier problem.

 My solution is simple and transcends natural language. Instead of using a specific language- why not use glyphs that indicate what is being expressed. It would be effective for most advertising campaigns; especially those with as large of a canvas as a billboard. It could be the same picture almost:

Now obviously that says "Egg McMuffin: Happy for less money"

I'm not an artist and those glyphs are terrible for this since they could definitely be misinterpreted further: "Money is greater than happiness: Egg McMuffin." Still, I think my idea is valid given more appropriate glyphs and much greater graphic talent.

Part B: A Problem on uci.edu

UCI's website is expertly made and it was quite a challenge to find a part of the site that wasn't made with skill. I eventually found one that may even be a security problem. I'm sure that the guys who made the site aren't that silly.

Alright what we have here is the campus directory, located at http://phwww.cwis.uci.edu/cgi-bin/phonebook.

It's certainly not the worst page ever designed or anything like that. However, it is visually inconsistent with the rest of the entire uci.edu domain. Sure there's Peter and some blue but none of the other pages use that blue or have that image of Peter in the upper left corner. The page surely functions correctly- as you can see I was able to find my record with ease. The information is mostly accurate and what I'd probably be looking for if I was looking for my record.

The users of this page are most likely to be other students, faculty from other universities, or someone who wanted to know how to contact someone from UCI. I believe that since the page is so much different from how the other UCI pages look someone could think that the site was a fraud or some kind of fake page.

The problems are relatively small. It appears that the directory was made in a very lazy manner. It's quite obvious that the database's fields are given in plain text (nickname, email_address, picture_url, home_page_url, major, email, rewrite, type, last_first_name, alias). If the form on this page was made poorly and we had this information we could hack their database and arbitrarily change people's majors or anything else we wanted (at least in the database the directory uses… hopefully not the same as any important ones). I have no idea what the "rewrite: alias" thing is for and I certainly don't know what that #######@es.nacs.uci.edu email address is- those could be eliminated. Additionally as I said before the page just doesn't look like any other UCI page.

Solutions for the problems are simple. Have some kind of lookup table at least for the column names for the database. It's a terrible practice to just dump the column names and the data in the row retrieved. Change the style of the page to be more like the other UCI pages as to not confuse the users. Eliminate any possible confusion with the data that's retrieved by not including irrelevant data. Confirm that the forms are smart enough to disallow any kind of SQL injection attack and I think the problems are solved. That should absolve this page of any of its usability problems.

This assignment will also be posted at: http://www.blog.mikehmayer.com/?p=341

Anything on this site is mine ( except for the things that aren't ). To use it for anything you will need my permission. I'll probably give it to you. But if you use this for anything I cannot be held responsible.