HCI User Advocate

Cell phones: Technology User Frustrations

2008-01-22T10:17:00.000-05:00

We all know that computers and technology can be frustrating. But we also know that it can be exciting, and not only enhance our productivity, but significantly increase what we are capable of doing. Just as with other good tools, when technology works well, it can expand human capabilities. That is why I spend my life dealing with the reality of what sometimes seems like endless frustration – in an effort to make our lives with technology better. So, this is a time to look at what works and what doesn’t with technology. Let’s understand where your frustrations lie, and let’s also be sure to talk about what works well. Together, we can send a message to technology creators about the importance of addressing the “user experience”. This isn’t a helpdesk to solve particular problems, nor an advocacy center to get that vendor to deal with your lost data. But by bringing together our heads on where the problems lie, we can bring our voices together and push the industry forward.

Today's Topic: Cell Phones
What simple tasks on cell phones are harder than they should be?

Comment here, and I'll also post the concerns raised on today's Tech Tuesday radio show on WAMU.

FreeRice - charity or profit center?

2007-11-26T08:52:00.000-05:00

Many people have discovered FreeRice, the fun little website where you test your vocabulary, see some advertising, and have some rice donated to the world's hungry - paid for with a fraction of the funds taken from the advertising revenue.

It is definitely innovative, and at first cut, sounds like a good idea. But is it legitimate? I'm not talking about whether the rice actually gets donated. There is no proof given, but even assuming that it does get donated as promised, is this site moral - or is it a personal profit center based on deceit and greedy taking of the public's good will and time? There has been a bit of discussion on this topic, but not very much considering how much traffic this site is seeing (10's of million's of pageviews per day).

So what is the issue? The problem is that the actual value of the daily donation is tiny and the potential revenue is huge. I've seen estimates on the web that show profits ranging from about $10K to $150K. Mine put it at about $100K (see below). But the main point here is not legal, it is ethical and social.

If the sole premise of a site's existence is to do charitable work, then it must do so honestly. As with other charities and organizations that manage other people's resources, it should disclose what percentage of income is actually given as charity, how much is administrative overhead, and how much is profit. It doesn't matter that the source of the funds doesn't come from the customer's cash. It still comes from the customers - just through their time and attention rather than their dollars. And the ethical requirements of charitable work are different than pure business.

The standard bar for understanding ethical behavior is full disclosure. If the site said what was really going on, and people continue to choose to participate, then the site has cleared the bar and will reap the world's good will. But without saying what is really going on, we have to assume there are nefarious purposes, and significant personal benefit taken from the charity of others. That kind of behavior may thrive for a while, but can't last as charitable work that is honest will take over - and it can't happen soon enough.

My estimate:
200,000,000 approx donated grains (Nov 15, 2007)
25,000 grains per pound
8,000 donated pounds
$5,600 donated dollars (assuming $0.70 per pound)

$5 assumed CPM (thousand ad impressions)
20,000,000 Impressions
20,000 thousands of impressions
$100,000 revenue

ICDL Going to Mongolia

2007-10-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

I'm going back to Mongolia next week to finish the job I started last year. The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL - www.childrenslibrary.org), which I am the technical director of, is working with the Mongolia Ministry of Education, Culture and Science on a World Bank-funded project to help improve literacy, and a culture of reading for pleasure.

While the larger project is centered around traditional paper books, there is a surprisingly foresightful effort looking at digital technology. Last trip, I set up an ICDL server in Ulaan Baatar - available at www.read.mn. This time, I'm going to set up some servers in rural schools and to do teacher training (with graduate student Sheri Massey) to explore how technology can be used in places far off the grid.

While Mongolia is slowly wiring up the country, a significant number of soums (i.e., towns) may have electricity, but have no internet. We decided that since we know the internet is coming (eventually), and they were buying computers anyway, we would set up the ICDL on a server in each school, and use the local network to provide access to the 200 new books (plus many of the existing ICDL books) to the children in these schools.

I'm afraid that as crazy as it seems, the only way to set this kind of thing up is to go out there with software (and many, many backups) in hand, and set things up myself. We've got our system configured to now also run on Windows servers with standard distributions of Apache, Tomcat and MySQL. And we've got things set up so it all starts up nicely when the computer starts. And we can even update the library by sending a disk out there, and having someone press a special button (or so we hope).

Installing this software without recurse to help if things go wrong is a bit daunting. Especially because these schools are all 1-2 days drive on cold dirt roads from the Capital and each other. I'm really, really hoping I don't have a bad technology week.

And, of course, I won't be able to blog about the trip until afterwards since I'll have no connectivity - but I'll be sure to have lots of stories when I come back on November 12th.

A Great Computer Scientist - Randy Pausch

2007-09-20T21:00:00.000-05:00

You may not know Randy Pausch, but you should. He is truly a great computer scientist - but unfortunately, one who is dying. He was scheduled to give a CS Distinguished Seminar at UMD last year, but had to cancel on account of his illness.

On Tuesday, he gave his "last lecture" at CMU which Allison & I attended. Given that he is brilliant, a wonderful showman, and forthright - and expecting to die before long with advanced pancreatic cancer, it was a talk that is hard to describe the gravitas of - whether you know Randy or not.

While the audience (an overflowing room of 500 or so), was obviously distraught - Randy focused on the lessons of his life. What he was proud of, what was difficult - focusing on what it took to achieve his childhood dreams. And he talked a lot about the satisfaction he has taken in focusing on undergraduate education and broadening the students interested in computer science (through Alice, his very popular 3D system that offers an introduction to programming) among other things.

You may not have the pleasure of getting to know Randy in person, but I promise that you will not be disappointed if you spend the 1.5 hours to watch his talk. Here is a wall street journal article about it.. The weird thing is that the hyperbole in this article is actually understated. The talk was far beyond anything I've heard before.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119024238402033039.html

The full video of his talk is here:
http://www.etc.cmu.edu/global_news/?q=node/42

Randy's personal page and treatment blog is here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

FolderShare in slow motion

2007-08-17T12:31:00.000-05:00

More than any other software in recent history, FolderShare has changed my work habits, dramatically improving my mobility and the reliability of my data. It is simple file synchronization software that makes all the files (and subfolders) in a folder stay the same across machines across the internet. Adding, removing, moving, or changing a file in one machine results in a near-instantaneous matching change on all synced computers. And it even works on Macintosh (sort of).

FolderShare is amazing because it enables me to go back and forth between my desktop computer at work, my laptop, and desktop at home. (I also use it to collaborate on important shared projects with other people). And by replicating my files across multiple computers, it is a free and simple backup solution. It even gives me the ability to remotely delete files were my laptop to get stolen.

FolderShare was created by ByteTaxi, a startup a few years back, and acquired by Microsoft November 2005. And sadly, Microsoft has not done one single thing since then. The website has not changed. The product has not changed. Actually, that's not true - it got a bit worse. When Apple upgraded their OS some months back, encryption to Mac stopped working, and now the only way you can sync to Macs is to completely disable encryption on all synced computers - pathetic.

Well, they did add a newsgroup, but they don't respond to users. Has Microsoft learned anything about Web 2.0? About the speed of the Web? About being innovative? They acquired an awesome product, and are slowly smothering it to death. Yes, there are rumors that it will re-emerge as a new Live service, but when I saw how pathetic Live's new SkyDrive service is, I came close to losing my last bit of hope. If FolderShare wasn't the best solution of this kind out there, I would have given up on it (and probably Microsoft) long ago, but it is still great (modulo the Mac encryption problem).

So, Microsoft, please, please - be more responsive. Yes, you're a big company - but do you really think sitting on a great innovation for coming on 2 years without any communication to your users is the caring for your users? Has your confidence eroded all awareness of the impact of your actions on people's perceptions and feelings about Microsoft as an entity?

I won't be that surprised if Live does come out with something good here eventually, but I'm afraid that even if the product is revived, my opinion of Microsoft has suffered.

iPhone design trade-offs

2007-07-01T15:54:00.001-05:00

There is plenty to like about iPhone - and we all already know about that. And there are some obvious challenges (i.e., slow network, lack of physical keyboard, no OTA syncing of calendar & contacts). But a lot of important, yet more subtle challenges have not yet been reported widely yet. These are largely due to trade-offs given the lack of not only the keyboard, but also D-Pad, Home and Back buttons, and soft keys that are so common on just about every other phone. So, how does this impact usability? Let's take a look by comparing to some other comparable devices for a variety of tasks.

Make a call to a contact:
- BlackBerry 8800 (~2 secs): Start typing from the home screen, scroll down to filtered item and press action. I have 992 contacts. I can get to just about anyone in 4 or 5 keys, a scroll, and a click. Windows Mobile is also about the same as this, but it responds a lot more slowly.
- iPhone (~4 secs): Press Phone. Press Contacts. Press the first letter of the last name on the right side of the contacts. But since these letters are tiny, you usually have to drag up or down a few times to get to the right letter. Now flick up or down to visually search for the person you are looking for. Press the person. Press the # you want to call. iPhone is not only slow, but painfully distracting.
Look at photos:
- iPod: Flipping through a lot of full-screen photos is unbelievably fast. As you spin the wheel, photos fly by. I can probably scan 20 per second. It is also physically easy and doesn't require much attention. Just fling you finger around the wheel. I can do this to look at tons of photos.
- iPhone: Looking at photos on the iPhone is undeniably beautiful and pleasing - but to flip between full-screen photos requires a flick for each one. The fastest I could manager was about 4 per second, and that required a lot of finger movement. I wouldn't want to do this for more than about 20 photos.
Read text on the web: Much has been made of reading web pages on the iPhone. Everything that is advertised is true - but they forget to mention one thing. If your eyesight isn't terrific, you'll have to take advantage of the beautiful two-finger zooming-in feature - even after you've zoomed in to an article. But if you do that, then you'll have to horizontally scroll back and forth to read each line. This is an unimaginably bad experience. In other mobile browses, content is laid out vertically. They certainly have their own problems, but once you get to reading an article, you can set the font size, and just press the space bar or down arrow to scroll down one page at a time. On the iPhone, if you can't read the natural size, you are just going to have a really lousy experience.
Things to do: Part of the fun of computing is that there is just so much darned stuff to do - from little flash games, to java downloads, to rich apps that you pay to download. And the wonder of "widgets" is that the public makes them, so there are lots of options to choose among (i.e., see what's coming soon from ZenZui). But with the iPhone's closed platform, no Flash and no Java - you're pretty much stuck with what Apple gives you. Sure you can watch a few YouTube videos. But there are about half dozen I know of and actually searched for - whoops, those weren't available. They nicely give you a bunch of Web bookmarks to all kinds of sites – so I visited some kids sites with my 8 year old daughter. Whoops, all the ones she cares about use Flash, and they don't work. So I can read on the Web, and do iTunesy stuff. Don't get me wrong, that's pretty great - but not great enough. For the iPhone to be truly great, they have to open the platform.
Finding an email: Amazingly enough, there is no way to search for email.
Finding some music: Amazingly enough, there is no way to search for music. Hierarchies and tags are great - but sometimes you know what you are looking for, and the fastest and cognitively easiest way to get it is just to type a unique word in the title. Oh well, you're out of luck.

Now if it weren't for the fact that Apple has Spotlight on the desktop, I might think they hadn't learned about search yet. Instead, it's almost as if Apple has tacitly agreed that typing on the iPhone really is so bad that they don't want to frustrate users by having them search for stuff. Or maybe they really want you to think of this as an entertainment device, so efficiency shouldn't be that important - and the act of forced browsing will help you discover stuff you didn't know you had on your device. Or maybe they just didn't get to that yet, and we'll see it in an update before long. Cross your fingers.

Plaxo Makes Me Scared

2007-06-25T10:32:00.001-05:00

Web services that offload the burdon of tedious repetitive tasks offer a wonderful promise. And things like having to update your address book every time any one of your contacts changes something just seems like one of those things that the modern Web ought to solve. And in fact, it does. Plaxo offloads this burdon to each individual to maintain their own contact information – rather than the hundreds of individuals that know that person.

Seems like a good thing, right? Well, almost – except for the details:

It puts the burdon of maintaining your understanding of someone else's address on that other person. Plaxo sends me a reminder email to "check" if I've updated my information every now and then – even if I never change anything, and even if I don't use Plaxo. This looks like a convenience feature for you, but I see it as actually being Plaxo's excuse to send advertising to everyone in your address book at your request with your credibility and (literally) your face. Do you really want to be supporting their advertising?
Plaxo says they will maintain great privacy of my contact information, but should I believe that? From their privacy policy, "Plaxo will not sell, exchange, or otherwise share Your Information with third parties, unless required by law or in accordance with your instructions." In other words, because you want to maintain a personal database of information about me, the government now has instant access to all of my personal information immediately.
If Plaxo's servers get broken into, all of my contact information is available to the world.
You should be aware that Plaxo explicitly maintains the right to spam you. From their privacy policy, they maintain the right: "To provide you with information about Plaxo products, services, news and events through the Software, the Site or e-mail;"
Plaxo can change their policy at any time – and instantly start selling all of everyone's information at will. If they are sold, for example, there is no reason to expect that a buyer wouldn't do so if it was profitable.

Plaxo is not unique – there are lots of places that centralize personal information (think Google). But this one worries more than others because they focus on personal information, and the relationship between individuals, and have an explicit business model and policy of actively and repeatedly soliciting non-customers. They also are unique in shifting the burdon from the user of information to someone else – without their permission.

In defense of Challenge-Response spam detection systems

2007-01-03T16:04:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of people, I get a lot of spam. And in the past months, it has gotten a lot worse. On average, I get well over 1,000 spam a day, and that is after spamassassin has already processed it and deleted what it detects without me ever even seeing that. Of those that get through, Outlook puts most in the Junk E-email folder, leaving me about 100 a day to delete - intermixed with my 50 or so legitimate emails a day.

In terms of actual time lost, it is not great. Maybe 2 seconds per email to delete or 2*100=~3 minutes plus a couple of minutes to look through the junked email to salvage good ones (of which I typically find about 1 per day) for a total of maybe 5 minutes a day.

But in terms of mind share and detraction, this is huge. It means that I am continuously distracted all day long by the dregs of society - pornography, rampant commercialism, and fraud. This is the worst kind of distraction, not only taking my mind away from my flow of concentration, but doing so in a way that I do my best to avoid in every other aspect of my life, and that I would not even consider letting my 7 year old daughter have access to.

So, after giving up on all the standard solutions to spam, I signed up for SpamArrest, a commercial "challenge-response" spam detection system. This works by requiring everyone that wants to send you email to first follow a link to a website and prove they are human by reading a word in a warped image and typing it (i.e., a CAPTCHA). The reason this approach works is that:

Each sender only has to do this once for me. The system remembers that person for the future.
I can preload the system with all of my contacts and anyone I've sent email to in the past so that everyone I already communicate with won't have to validate themselves, and won't know I am using this system.
New people that send me email have to use this system once, and legitmate senders are usually willing to go through this step.
I can authenticate senders unlikely to do this (like various large e-commerce sites).
I can let email lists through by setting them up indivdually.
Spammers that send me email are almost never willing to go through this step, and so I never see their email. The reason that spammers aren't willing to do that is because they are computer software and can't, or because they are human and don't want to spend the time. In fact, most spam is sent by "spambots" which are other people's computers hijacked for the sole purpose of sending spam. This email is sent with forged email return addresses, so they never even receive the request for validation.

So, if this is such a panacea, why isn't everyone using it? Well for one thing, you have to pay for it (about $3/month). But lots of people think this approach is a bad idea in principle, and have been arguing against it. However, while I agree that it does have problems, it is better than any current alternative, and I'm not going to wait around suffering while I wait for better solutions. So, let me respond to one complaint about challenge-response systems. I'll summarize the complaints and respond here.

Concern #1. Spammers will forge mail to me with someone else's return address thus sending my challenge to the poor forgee's email box.

Looking at the actual spam I receive, the vast, vast majority has false return addresses. And of the legitimate ones, most of those very likely come from spambots running on machines that have been infected. The owner of those machines have a lot more serious problems than deleting my challenge to them. In fact, it may tip them off to the fact that they are infected. And of the few third party legitimate emailers who get my unwanted challenges, I apologize. But that is still a tiny, tiny fraction of the total spam in the world. I'll gladly stop when there are better solutions. And I won't get mad if I occasionally get unwanted challenges from others (which I do, and which is a tiny, tiny minority of the total spam I receive).

Concern #2. If a challenge-response person emails me, then both our systems will challenge each other, generating even more email traffic.

So what. We each accept each other's challenges and we're done. We only have to do this once per person. And again, this one-time extra 2 emails is so tiny in the wide world of spam, that it is a totally irrelevant argument.

Concern #3. Challenge-response systems are easy to defeat since all someone has to do is forge the From address as someone that I already trust.

This is the easiest to respond to. Yes, in theory this is true, but in practice, spammers don't know who I trust. And in the past 4 days, I have received 4,491 emails of which 165 have been classified as good. Of those, about 30 were spam, but all of those spam were sent through mailing lists that I trust, not from forged From addresses. This does bring up a legitimate problem which is that popular mailing lists may become targetted as spoofed return addresses. But again, in practice, this has not happened yet. So I'm not going to avoid using a system because it theoretically might not work at some point in the future.

The bottom line is that challenge-response systems are not perfect, and probably won't work as well if everyone uses them. But for now, they work much, much better than anything else short of a human spam deleter (now there's a good business opportunity!). And if they stop working better than alternatives, then I'll switch to whatever works better.

Kojo Nnamdi "Computer Guy" answers questions

2006-12-05T11:06:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of being a "Computer Guy" on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi show along with Allison Druin and John Gilroy. We got to answer a number of email questions on the air, but here are some other ones with my answers.

It is of course, good to see answers, but I do this also to point out the sorry state of affairs of the computer industry as this is just way too many problems for every day computer users to have.

How do I print a listing of the files in a directory?

Alternatively, you can still do it from the command line with the following steps. Run the command shell by pressing Windows-R, and entering "cmd" in the popup dialog and click ok. Change to the directory you want to list with the "cd" command (i.e., do something like "cd c:\video"). List the directory and send the output to a text file with the command "dir > listing.txt". This runs the "dir" command and sends the output to the specified text file. Then go back to Windows Explorer, open the newly created "listing.txt" file in notepad or Word or any other text editing program and print from there.

Subject: question for the Computer Guys

I have Verizon DSL service. When I open Internet Explorer to my home page washingtonpost.com, I get all of these popup boxes saying "Runtime Error." The boxes contain information such as "Object Expected" or "Null Object." and asks if I want to want to debug. Three questions - what causes Runtime Errors? Does debugging fill your computer with spyware? And why is only IE affected by such errors?

If this happens occasionally, it could be due to a temporary problem with the website in question. But if it happens frequently, then it is probably due to some broken plugin for Internet Explorer. That is, you may have installed some software that modified Internet Explorer and did so in a bad way. For IE 7, try Tools->Manage Add-ons->Enable or Disable add-ons, and try disabling stuff. If you are using IE6, try updating to IE7 with Microsoft Update.

Subject: Vista

Hi Guys!

I am one of the few people left on the planet who is still running Windows ME, and have been looking forward to getting a new computer when Vista comes out. Should I buy it right away, or wait to see how it performs?

Thanks,

In general, unless you enjoy living on the "bleeding edge", and the excitement and inevitable problems that go along with it, I recommend waiting a few months after any major technical product is launched. In this case, it probably means waiting until after SP1 (Service Pack 1) comes out to fix the first round of bugs, probably late spring.

Subject: wireless internet security

My home wireless router indicates that I have "security-enabled wireless network (WPA). What's the difference between WPA and WEP wireless security? Is one better/stronger? Is it safe to buy and bank on-line with WPA? Thanks.

WPA is the newer one, and I recommend it over WEP whenever you have the chance.

Subject: Shared Outlook Contact and Calendar Files

Hi, I've paid for a Dell server to be set up running Microsoft Small Business Server software for my small, home-based business. Despite many calls (and lots of paid invoices), cannot share either Contacts or Calendar files from within Outlook. They tried to set up a separate outlook folder, but the server won't default to it, they say, unless we wipe the server and I pay to set the whole thing up all over again. Any advice on how to get these programs to share over a small network of 2-3 desktops, please?

Many thanks,

I'm afraid I don't know how to help you here - but it sounds like whoever you paid to set up the system for you did not do their job properly. If you've tried to get them finish the job and can't get them to do so, then don't pay them and pay someone else to start over. If you already have paid them, then ask for your money back. If they won't, then you've learned a hard lesson about not paying for services before they are completed. Sorry.

Subject: Computer Guys Question

I got a virus on my desktop PC. It was cleaned out but in the process it lost its IP address and now I cant get onto the internet without that, is there a way to restore it? Thanks

I'd start by turning off your cable modem and computer and any other hardware and then turning it all on again (starting with the modem and router and powering up your computer last). If you still can't get it to work, try calling your internet service provider.

Subject: computer guys question

Is there a side-by-side comparison of processors available ... a chart, etc? How do AMD, Pentium HT, and dual processors stack-up? What direction do I go with my next purchase keeping Vista in mind, and knowing that I am now doing more photo and home video work.

There are loads of comparisons out there, but I'm not familiar with any one that I can suggest. Try googling "processor comparison" to get started.

Subject: Transfer audio tape cassette music to PC

Is there an easy way to transfer my old audio tapes to my Windows XP PC so I can hear my music on CD's?

David Pogue discussed this very issue recently, so I suggest reading his description.

Subject: older computers and external hard drives

Help! We have a 6-year old Sony Vaio PC, 60 GB, Pentium 4 processor. We use it for basic applications like word processing, Internet surfing and email. Since we began storing picture and music files the computer has slowed dramatically and now constantly tells us it has no room left on the C drive. I say we need to just buy a new computer so that we can store and manipulate all our digital images and music. Thrifty Hubby says we just need to buy an external hard drive and move our picture and music files there. Please help advise! Our happy marriage may depend on it!

You are both right (how's that for marriage counseling). Buying a new hard drive probably will delay the inevitable, and improve the situation. But using a 6 year old computer for today's pictures and music probably just isn't up to the task. I sure hope you are backing up those valuable pictures and music. Every day. Automatically.

Subject: Firefox

I switched to Firefox because of a corrupted IE6, that wouldn't even start. Tried any number of fixes, including the oxymoronic "Microsoft Help". Downloaded IE7 but the problem lives on. I love Firefox, however now I can't get Windows updates, because surprise, surprise, Updates
will only download thru Internet Explorer. Am I missing a tool feature or preference in Firefox, that will allow a it to talk to Microsoft?

This sounds bad. Your only solution may be to reinstall Windows (and then reinstall your applications). You can do so without affecting your personal data. But definitely back up first to be safe.

Wii @ Home

2006-12-05T00:37:00.000-05:00

After all the hype and violence surrounding XBox 360 and PS3 with graphics to die for and matching games, I was thrilled to finally get my hands on the family friendly Wii.

And impressively, it is essentially all it is cracked up to be. The easy-to-learn controller really is easy to learn. Some games, like tennis don't use any buttons at all. The full body motion really does get kids moving and interacting like never before with a video game. But most importantly, it engages the whole family. I can promise you I have never before heard the words "maybe we should get one" from wife before anywhere near the words "video game".

But it isn't all roses. The games seem to use very limited information about body movement. So, in tennis, you can't move the player from side to side - and there seems to be only a single bit of speed. I'm afraid this just won't stay fun for that long. But that's ok as the free intro game - as long as others go deeper.

And the family friendliness is sometimes pretty superficial. "Rayman Raving Rabbids", for instance, is a first-person shooter that trains kids for the worst in videogames - dressed up as cute rabbits with shooting plungers.

And the risk of whacking your sister in the head with a wiimote is real. I caught it happen on video in the first 10 minutes of use. (Fortunately, no one was hurt.)

(Thanks to colleague Bill Pugh and family for hosting the wiiParty.)

Adobe and Apple give me no respect

2006-11-10T08:46:00.000-05:00

Somehow I would have thought it would be obvious by now, but major software vendors still abuse their privileges when installing their software on my machine. This comes in various forms, but often includes adding buttons in the top part of my Start menu, in my quick launch area, system tray, on my desktop, and even embedding themselves in other applications - all without warning, and sometimes without the ability to undo their actions. Two recent offenders are Adobe and Apple.

Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 on Windows XP is the worst offender. Given the nature of the product, it is reasonable to integrate with some other programs, and I am happy to be able to generate PDFs directly from Word. And the fact that they chose to offer that capability by adding a button to my Outlook toolbar is reasonable. However what is not reasonable is that there is no way to disable that feature. They configured their button to be always on, no matter what. When you try to configure the toolbar to remove the button, it is the only one greyed out - meaning that they think converting to PDF is more important than actually sending an email!

The reason I care so much is that because it is an always-on button, if you make the toolbar small (like I do to avoid having toolbars take over my screen), then it is the one that stays visible, and the buttons I actually want (Send and Accounts) disappear. The only solution I found is to edit the registry to disable the PDF plugin to Outlook. So Adobe has forced me to disable their product so it doesn't drive me crazy. Nice job Adobe - now I can be mad at you every single time I send an email.

The second offender is Apple. They nicely make it easy to offer an update to QuickTime and iTunes, but every time they update, they re-add buttons to my desktop and to my QuickLaunch bar. Do they really think that since I removed them the first time, I'll want them the second time? And do they really think that a minor security update should give them the opportunity to get in my face? Nice job Apple - now I can be mad at you too every time you offer me an update.

Google Picasa screensaver a little bit evil

2006-10-21T22:02:00.000-05:00

I love Picasa, and was delighted to try out the new version 2.5 that just came out. They did an incredible job in addressing just about every one of my concerns (such as not being able to see photos based on where they are on disk, and not being able to save changes to photos back to the photo that was edited). And they even added a very nice pan & zoom screen saver that integrates into Windows, much like OS X's nice one.

However, they must have been feeling a little too proud of themselves. Because they have gone wild in forcing the Google logo on you. The screensaver starts with a *4* second full-screen Google-only logo display. I thought that was a bit much, but hey, I figured - it is a free product and it is reasonable that they take some advertising attention from their users. But the issue is how much. I thought that 4 seconds was a lot (half a second would have been plenty for me to remember that it was a Google screensaver without being annoying).

And then it starts to get a little bit evil. Every so often, during a photo transition, a fairly large bright colorful Google logo is displayed on top of the photo. I couldn't bear to watch it too long, but it appeared after the 3rd photo, and then after 8 more.

Does Google really think I don't know where Picasa came from? Do they really think that by presenting their corporate logo on top of my personal pictures while I sit and look at them with my family that I am going to think - oh what a nice little company to give me this free software. No, I'm going to think - what a greedy multi-billion dollar corporation that would never have done this a couple of years ago. Google, you apparently haven't the learned the lessons of Real, AOL and other companies that making your customers mad at you by being pushy is never a good idea.

Simplicity and trust goes infinitely further. And I fear that this is the beginning of a corporate shift away from their users and trust - which could spell big trouble for Google if they're not careful. Proove me wrong. Remove this ridiculous feature in version 2.5.1 and I'll look at this as a short misguided fit of hysteria.

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Also, despite Google's great success with this software and its continued improvements, I was puzzled that the screensaver was missing one simple but crucial feature - which is to have an easy way of including all your photos in the screensaver. There is just no way to do this. You can include all "starred" photos, but I want all of them. The only way to do that is to look at one folder of photos at a time, and for each one, select all the photos and then add those photos to the screensaver "album". But then every time you add a new photo, you'd have to remember to add it to the screensaver album, or it wouldn't appear.

There's also a way to include photos from disk via the Windows Screensaver Settings. However, I was flabbergasted when I manually added the photos in question, and Picasa explicitly excluded all the photos that Picasa manages. So, not only do they not make it easy to do this - but they purposely stop you from doing this. Do they actually think that no one ever wants to just see all their photos? This is our family's favorite thing to do - precisely because you never know what you're going to get, and that gives something to talk about. Looking at only your few favorites gets boring pretty quick.

Switchback: Horrors of a Windows Power-user Trying to Switch to Apple OS X

2006-09-25T21:44:00.000-05:00

I have been a dedicated Windows developer and user for over 10 years. I am a nut about efficiency and ease of use (and also a professional in this area). While Windows has worked well for me, it is regularly frustrating in it's lack of "pleasingness". I wanted to experience Apple's OS X and take advantage of Apple's attention to fit and finish that has appeared more and more compelling - from their advertising and my casual observation of Mac users, not to mention users' general gushing adoration of their Apples. Plus, their new line of hardware is compelling - and now provides a safety net of being able to fall back to Windows if OS X didn't satisfy me or there were things I needed Windows for.

So, on September 6th, I went to my local Apple store and bought a Mac Pro, once of those nice gleaming high-end desktops w/ two dual-core Intel chips, and a 30" cinema display. My frustration started with my experience at the store and has not yet ended. The problems run the gamut from availability and stability to features and design. Many of the problems are with Apple's software, but they extend to 3rd party software.

Availability

The Apple store did have three Mac Pro's in stock - but with no ability to change disk size or memory. Since I could buy those less expensively from third parties anway and I didn't want to wait for shipping, I took home the base configuration (two 2.66 GHz processors, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB disk) and a 30" display. However, I also wanted bluetooth and wifi, and it turns out they weren't available at all. Seems that they haven't shipped yet by Apple for the Mac Pro's. And the nice iSight camera I wanted for video conferencing is backordered until the end of October. So much for Apple's promise of "available today".

Plus, the 3rd party children's typing software I bought from the store didn't completely load - some of it seemed to be only for Windows. When I tried to return it to the store, they said they don't accept software returns but would give me a store credit since there was a problem with the software. After *much* complaining to the manager and a wasted hour of my time, I convinced them to give me a refund since it wasn't a matter of my changing my mind - it was a matter of them selling me a defective product. The manager never asked for any details about the product, didn't investigate it, or ever apologize for selling a product which didn't work on their machines. Nor would he commit to removing the product from the store's shelves. So much for Apple's promise of "it just works", or their store's "genius bar" helping users with their problems.

A major reason for my trying Apple now the ability to run Windows at near-native speed within the OS X environment using Parallels. I knew that Parallels had not yet released a version that worked on the Mac Pro, but that it was expected "any day", and in fact it became available at just about the time I bought the MacPro. However, it turns out that it doesn't run at all and in fact causes an immediate Kernel Panic upon installation. So that option doesn't really exist (more later). And Boot Camp, Apple's solution to running Windows separately on reboot is also available only in Beta and has its own problems.

So, when Apple says Mac Pro is shipping today, what that apparently means is that part of the system is shipping today and you can use it if you stick to certain basic features.

Features & Stability

My intention was live in OS X at home, and Windows XP at work and on my laptop. Through the magic of file synchronization with FolderShare which does run reliably on Windows and Mac, I could keep my files in sync across machines and keep all my personal information (email, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes) on my university's exchange server. As long as common file formats were readily usable on OS X and I had good exchange server access, I figured I'd be home free.

Well, common file formats are generally usable on OS X. Acrobat reading works well and fast. Apple Pages reads Word documents, Apple KeyNote reads PowerPoint documents - and well, there's always Microsoft Excel for Apple to read Excel documents.

But it wasn't that easy. My first set of problems came from an inability to really work with an Exchange server. There were several potential solutions, but it turns out that none of them actually works well. First I tried using Apple's products. Apple mail was the one success story syncing my email. However, that was not very useful without my contacts, and calendar, notes and tasks are also important. Apple's iCal and Address Book do not have built-in exchange synchronization. Fortunately, iSync is supposed to sync contacts and calendar. However, despite many attempts, I was never able to actually get it to work.

I then turned to a third-party solution, snerdware - which did sucessfully sync iCal and my exchange server. However, their product for contacts only syncs the exchange Global address book, and not personal contacts. Finally, I gave up on a native Apple solution and tried Microsoft Entourage - Microsoft's equivalent of Outlook. This connected right up to my exchange server and nicely synced email, contacts and calendar. However, it turns out that Entourage doesn't sync notes or tasks - which I found only upon significant web search. So, with no complete exchange solution available, I turned to running Windows virtually.

I started with Parallels which had just released an update for Mac Pro. I installed it and to my delight, it initially worked just fine. I had started to set up my virtual Windows machine when iTunes 7 became available from Apple. So I installed it using Apple's Software Update – which immediately resulted in a Kernel Panic and a pretty gray shade that came over my display (Apple's equivalent to Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death - BSOD). It turns out that I now got BSOD on boot and was totally hosed. A 30 minute call to Apple taught me how to boot in Safe Mode, clean out my "startupitems" folder - which removed Parallels, and I could now get OS X running again. However, whenever I tried installing Parallels, I got a BSOD on installation!

Searching Parallel's website, I found no indication whatsoever of any problems, so I submitted a tech support request by email. They offer no phone support, and when I tried calling their offices they refused tech support by email. Their website promised 3 day response (however, after a week, I still have not gotten a response). Searching Google for problems, I discovered that Parallels runs an open discussion forum - which it neglects to link to from its website. Here I discovered literally thousands of posts of miserable users that get BSOD’s on a variety of hardware in a variety of situations. There is one unlucky Parallels employee that responds every few days always promising that their engineers are working 24 hours a day, and that a solution is imminent. In fact, his latest post says that the current version is stable on all platforms except Mac Pro's with more than 2GB of RAM (at the time I had these problems, I had only 1 GB).

So, giving up on Parallels, I tried Apple's Bootcamp to boot Windows and skip OS X. This had the most promise as I had not heard of significant problems, the software has been around for a while, and Apple was up to version 1.1.1 (beta). Bootcamp consists of 2 components: 1) some software that runs on OS X that lets you configure your disks and repartition them for Windows and set the default boot disk; and 2) Windows drivers that get installed within Windows XP to emulate the BIOS and to work with Apple hardware. I had a few BSOD's at various points of initial setup which scared the bejeebers out of me, but happily, they seem to have gone away and Windows is running with reasonable stability. This seems like a tenable solution, however, I still have several significant problems:

Disk access seems incredibly slow, but in a weird way. If I am only doing one thing, everything is fine. However, when I attempt to do two disk-intensive tasks, the system thrashes and grinds to a halt. Task Manager shows all 4 CPUs active at about the same rate, so I am highly suspicious that the OS is not multi-tasking properly.
Device Manager still shows a few unrecognized hardware devices. I don't even know what the devices are and thus can't even attempt to get the drivers for them.
OS X can see and read the Windows disks just fine, so that gives me nice OS X access to all my Windows files - but I can not modify those disks. The entire Windows disks are read-only, so I don't really have the option of using OS X for my regular work based on my Windows files.
Despite bootcamp's promise, my borrowed iSight camera is not recognized by Windows.
Despite Apple's Mighty Mouse theoretical two-button design (it looks like one button, but the right half can be configured as a second button), the hardware is flaky. Most of the time, the right side of the mouse generates a left button, but sometimes it generates a right button. I guess I'll have to go buy an actual two-button mouse.

Oh yes, the rest of Apple's software isn't that stable either. On my first use of iPhoto in OS X, it hung the entire computer when importing my photos from disk. What happened to OS X's Unix promise of keeping naughty applications from crashing the computer? Apple is supposed to "just work", but the reality is that Windows is much more stable. Dead applications do not kill the operating system, Microsoft applications almost never die in the first place these days, and except for this week on Apple hardware, I haven't seen a Windows BSOD in quite some time.

Similarly, even printing doesn't work. I have an HP OfficeJet d145, a standard multi-function inkjet printer. Setup with OS X was fine, but unfortunately, printing is not reliable. For some documents, it works great, and for some documents, the print queue just stops and I have to restart it. It then stops again, and I can not get it to successfully print that job. There is no error message or explanation of why it stops. It just doesn't work. The only solution at this point is to uninstall and reinstall the printer drivers. It just doesn't work.

Design

Ok, you might think my problems are all because I'm trying to live a Windows life in an Apple world, and that is neither the point of Apple's life nor it's responsibility. First off, I disagree with those objections. Apple regularly advertises how compatible it is with the Windows world, and heavily recruits the concept of switching by saying how easy it is to work with your stuff. And I'm using Apple hardware and software to run Windows with bootcamp. All of this stuff *is* Apple's responsibility, and it doesn't work.

But it turns out that even when I try to live an Apple life, that is a pretty lousy experience too. How could that be, you say? The apparent point of Apple's existence is to create a beautiful and polished user experience. Well, it turns out that what Apple does is beautiful and polished *graphic design*. Actually interacting with the system is something else.

The essential problem is that using OS X is slow, slow, slow. It seems as if Apple has never heard of Fitts' Law - the essential human performance concept that it takes longer to move the mouse farther, or to click on small things. There is a related human perfomance issue which is that it takes a huge amount of time to switch between mouse and keyboard (roughly 2 seconds). This may not seem like much, but it is crucial - not only in terms of time, but also in terms of human concentration. (Important digression: to understand why these kinds of small interruptions are important, read my essays about "Flow" and the importance of supporting human concentation).

So, why is OS X slow? Because it is fundamentally designed for mouse access to all functions. Yes, there is keyboard access for much of the interface, but appears as somewhat of an afterthought. Not everything is keyboard accessible, and the keyboard shortcuts that do exist are often inefficient and inconsistent. It wouldn’t be obvious that there was a problem if I wasn’t familiar with how consistently and efficiently Windows supports keyboard access to just about every function in the operating system. For example, in the Finder file browser, there is a special keyboard shortcut to switch between views. In windows, you would either use the menu shortcuts which are mnemonic and easy to remember (i.e., Alt-V D for View->Details), or use the standard UI keyboard navigation using tab, control, and page up/dn to access any part of the interface.

The single biggest issue is how hard it is to explore menus through the keyboard. While there are keyboard shortcuts for common function, it takes a long time to learn those shortcuts, and many people never do. Instead, on Windows, people commonly use the keyboard to navigate the pull-down menu by pressing the Alt key, and then selecting the first letter of the menu item (or faster yet, pressing the Alt key and the first letter of the menu item at the same time). Because it is efficient, and easy to explore, people often start doing things like pressing Alt-F, A for File->Save As without even realizing they are doing it.

With Apple on the other hand, a few seemingly subtle design differences make keyboard menu access so slow as to hardly provide any advantage over a mouse. To access the menu, you press Control-F2. Now, unless you are an orangutan, there is no way that a touch typist can press this key combination with their hands in their natural position. Instead, it requires a significant posture change which is nearly as time-consuming and disruptive as moving your hands to a mouse. (Yes, I have swapped Caps Lock for Control which makes it easier, but still not really touch-typable.)

The other major slow-down issue is that there is a single menu on the top of the screen at all times. I know this approach has been debated for years (decades, really), and there is some good justification for it. I always viewed it as a trade-off between the Windows approach of having a menu at the top of each window rather than a clear negative. However, actually having used it for a couple of weeks, and doing so on a 30" display, I am entirely convinced that it is much slower than the Windows approach. Because of Apple's mouse-based design, you are obligated to use the mouse to access the menu more than you ever do on Windows. And when you do on a big screen, the fact that the menu is so far from many of the windows means that you have to move the mouse several times to even get to the menu (and yes, I have configured the mouse to move as fast as Apple will let it). And what if I had a two-monitor setup - yikes! Apple defenders say that the single-menu design is fast because since it is against the edge of the screen, you don't have to move the mouse carefully to target those small little text labels. This argument may have made some sense back in the days of small screens. But now moving the mouse pointer two and half feet relegates that argument to the dustbin of history.

And of course there are numerous other design details that slow users down as well. For example, while there is keyboard support for navigating the folder hierarchy in Finder, if you are in the middle of a long list of children and you want to move up to the parent folder, you are obligated to press the up arrow key many times until you reach the parent. On Windows, you just press the left key. Why Apple didn't do this is anybody's guess. Yes, the multi-column view supports the left arrow, but why not the other views?

I think the real problem is Apple's narrow view of their users as novice home users that don't care about compatibility with the big player. They can ignore the reality of the world, but that won't serve their user's day-to-day needs. Worse, they seem to disregard their user's time - offering a design that continually gets in between a user's thoughts and the ability to execute them on their computer. Apple has thrived in their role as the underdog. But I'm afraid with the attitude they have taken in the development of their products, they are destined to never get past it.

Postscript - September 25, 2006

Potential Mac Pro buyers will be happy to know that a combination of Apple's firmware update and a new version of Parallels made Parallels work. However, the only way I could get past the BSOD problems was to format the Apple disk and start over. A complete install of the OS did not fix the problems. And because of the three week delay, I'm now committed to a Bootcamp installation which means I don't see OS X unless I reboot. Maybe I'll try again when Leopard comes out...

So what have I learned from this experience? Is Apple really much worse than Windows? Absolutely not. I am aware of many of the benefits of the Apple approach which is why I wanted to try it. And I agree that many of my problems come from: 1) trying to keep a windows life on a mac; and 2) using hardware that is new. Apple does do many things extremely well, but they communicate that pretty clearly. My aim here is to point out that Apple life isn't all roses. Technology remains hard and that there is almost always a set of trade-offs associated with the choice of any platform. I would recommend an Apple for many users, and in fact I plan on buying one for my 7 year old daughter for her birthday (sshhhhh - don't tell). But I would not recommend one for someone that also has to continue working in a Windows-oriented environment, or for someone that is a real Windows expert and an efficiency nut, like me.

Call for "User Advocate" Position

2006-09-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

Microsoft's Windows Media Center 2005 woke me up at night by making two sounds and turning on the screen. Presumably this was a result of an auto update and reboot. But whatever the cause, having a product targeted for home and bedroom use that can ever wake the user up by its "normal" behavior is totally unacceptable.

I set the alarm on my Palm Treo 650 to wake me up for a morning appointment and was frustrated that I overslept because the alarm never went off. Despite the beautifully clear interface for setting the alarm, and the clear hardware switch that silences all sounds, I didn't see that the hardware switch had silenced the alarm. The interface that lets you set the alarm doesn't tell you that all sounds are turned off.

Adobe Reader 7.0 displays an annoying advertisement in the upper right corner of the window that changes every once in a while and thus continually distracts me, interrupting me from my reading. It turns out that you can turn this purposeful annoyance off through the “Edit->Preferences->Startup->Show Messages and automatically update” menu. This was clearly done to make it very difficult to find while giving Adobe plausable deniability if customers complained. I want to let them know that I am aware of their anti-consumer tricks.

Google's Picasa photo-management software politely saves edits to photos separately from the original photo so the original photo is not damaged. But many times I want to modify the original photo and there is no way to do this. Even if you export the edited photo back into the original directory, it gives the photo a new name rather than overwriting the original. And if you manually delete the original and replace it with the exported one, then the edits are mistakenly applied a second time to the edited photo. Surely I am not the only person that wants to crop their photos and see those crops reflected in other photo browsers? Yet there is no way to do this.

The User Advocate

All too often, users of software find themselves frustrated by the user interface of a company's product because of decisions the designers made that may not have taken into account the customer's particular use scenario. Perhaps because of how the customer integrates the product into their work flow involving other tools or perhaps because the user is not part of the product's targetted demographic, things just don't work right. And sometimes these problems occur day after day, and there is a clear solution waiting to be implemented – if only the company would realize it. The challenge is that even for loyal customers that want to help the company, there is often no way for them to give this feedback. And there is no way for users to know that there are masses of other users out there that feel the same way.

I thus call for a new "User Advocate" position within all end-user software companies, similar to "Ombudsman" or "Public Editor" in other contexts. The User Advocate's role would be to cross product lines and business units and communicate directly with the public to understand their concerns, and to communicate them within corporation.

The User Advocate position should have the following characteristics:

Reports directly to upper-level executive, and must not be affiliated with any business unit, product team, or organizational structure.
Has vocal executive support, with encouragement to all in company to be responsive to his/her requests for information.
Has ability to receive input directly from the public - probably through a website that could process, cluster, and tag comments. This would require technical development and some special mechanisms to limit volume. I.e., could require a human entry using a CAPTCHA (human detector), and a valid email address or mobile telephone # that limits suggestions to, say, one per month. Or make these valuable in a way that encourages a market for them, and limit to just a few per year.
Has a dedicated team to support above-mentioned technology and communication.
Has public venue to communicate to the public on corporate property (i.e., company webpage or blog).

Of course most companies already have a significant focus on usability and have dedicated tremendous resources to understanding user requests and usability problems through each group's product management team, but based on what I hear about user's feelings about just about every company's products, it is not enough. I believe that this failure is partly due to a focus on usability within the business units that create the products, and thus are somewhat blinded to real user experiences. This can come from many things, including different products interacting with each other, from real-world use environments that differ from those that are tested, and from differing expectations among product teams and users. It is for all these reasons that I advocate a new executive role focused specifically on the user. As a cross-divisional role, such a person could oversee and manage a company-wide user-focused strategy.

The primary goals of this call are to: 1) improve the products by having a direct mechanism to learn from the public and influence products outside of the normal command chain; and 2) improve public perception of the company by providing an outlet for user concerns, and proof that those concerns are being listened to.

There is a lot of frustration out there in the world of computing. My favorite current analyses of the situation comes from two current studies. The first study is of people's feelings of rage towards computers, separated by Windows and Apple. The second study, led by my colleague Ben Shneiderman, looks at user frustration, and finds that of 111 students and 50 professionals; more than 40% of the time using the computer is wasted in one way or another.

Other models
There are other models for positions similar to a user advocate in other industries. The most notable of which is the Public Editor introduced at the New York Times a few years ago who has had significant success in effecting culture change to improve the newspaper in difficult, but important ways. The public editor is employed by the NY Times, and is given a prominent place to publish his independent views in the Week in Review section about two Sundays a month. He is independent of all departments and presumably reports to executives directly. He communicates with and represents the public's interests. He has direct access to all employees. Most impressively, he writes openly about trends, policies and individual articles in the Times. His existence makes it abundantly clear to every reader that while not every action of the Times may be perfect, they are making an honest attempt to do a good a job as possible, and they are open to public comment and to change.

Many other institutions have an ombuds office (ombudsman) whose role is to provide an impartial, independent and confidential resource for employees, students, etc. This role has been in use since the 19th century when it was initially used to investigate citizens' complaints against governmental agencies.

Challenges

As with any ambitious project, there will be challenges. Some issues I foresee are:

There is a potential for friction between the user advocate and the individual product management teams. This position only has the potential of working if it comes with real power for the advocate and strong backing from the highest levels of the company. The goal of the user advocate is to convince the product managers of problems so they want to change their products to reduce user frustration.
There is likely to be a fear of publicly admitting fault. This is wrongheaded. Politicians and the public have shown over and over that people much prefer the admission of honest mistakes over hiding the obvious. Furthermore, by exposing problems that everyone knows to be true, it will put internal pressure to fix them, and this pressure is apparently needed since the problems are not getting fixed well enough without it.
This could be perceived as an attempt to replicate or renounce the excellent internal design and usability work done within product groups. The user advocate would not be concerned with day to day design characteristics and feature sets that were decided on by sound business analyses. Rather, the user advocate would focus on show stopping user experiences that product groups may be unaware of, or are outside the control of the product group because the experience is a result of feature interaction between multiple products or happen in real life outside the scope of internal testing.
There is the potential for increased legal exposure when faults are admitted. The larger point is that this is a strategy to improve products and improve public perception of the company which in the long run will reduce legal attacks. In the short term, there is no reason that the user advocate can not work with legal counsel to minimize legal exposure without abrogating his/her core responsibilities to the public.

Many companies produce incredibly sophisticated software that is wonderful in many ways - and yet fall flat in a few key ways that continuously irritate their customers. As software becomes more and more competitive, especially in the home markets, companies must focus on "delighting the user" in order to be successful in a landscape of growing competition.