December 15, 2009

published in

UX-UI

Don Normans jnd.org / The truth about Googles so-called “simplicity”

Anybody can make a simple-looking interface if the system only does one thing. If you want to do one of the many other things Google is able to do, oops, first you have to figure out how to find it, then you have to figure out which of the many offerings to use, then you have to figure out how to use it. And because all those other things are not on the home page but, instead, are hidden away in various mysterious places, extra clicks and operations are required for even simple tasks — if you can remember how to get to them.

via Don Normans jnd.org / The truth about Googles so-called “simplicity”.

November 17, 2009

published in

IxD

Gran Soleil: error of interaction leads to a lack of the product (and profit)

Last summer, all dressed up and with great expenditure of advertising investments, it was launched a new kind of dessert: Gran Soleil.
After an heavy rotation in TV-Radio slots time band, spot was taken off and replaced with a new one spending 30 seconds explaining, as an ugly tutorial, to users how the product was to be consumed and conserved. These instructions are indissoluble product’s elements ¹. Without the former the product lacks to itself.
Nth money investment (not expected, fruit of first market adoption data gathering) to make up for the lack of better understanding of the product’s novelty during its first launch.

A product, any product, is in interaction with a user, it comes to light from this interaction. It means it.

We study a product thinking about how, when, where, by whom will be consumed, used. There is no product in vacuum, without a social interaction.

If a product breaks some interaction conventions, some user’s expectation it needs to point out the new context, the new rules to follow to enjoy it, in fullness. And all this needs to be said (or shown) in effective manner. And straight away ².

Those Who failed here are two kinds of professionals:

  • Those who looked after the packaging, where no clearly statement about how to properly consume the product is shown (packaging was projected starting from traditional dessert model and so it lacks the major new factor in the product to be launched, the product itself which, without these instructions, is no more the intended product)³.


  • Ad Agency which failed to understand the product, limiting itself to reiterating the same old redundancy (“creative” approach, which of “creative” has only the rate), to advertise without even noticing the product’s specificity as a whole.
    Except for trying to remedy damage done with an ugly spot sequence instructing explicitly clients about new rules of interaction.
    Better than nothing, of course, but a repaired damage is always a damage which points out all “creative” forces involved as incapable to understand the product.

Typical (and studied case) of the same market situation is the old frozen food introduction on large scale which carried on a new interaction with consumables in houses of millions.


ps. Never tasted product in case, so don’t ask ;)


ps_2. A stupid quick, redundant and dirty script for a different launch ad:
Typical family with new product just bought.
The kid (or the man, not the woman who is the main advertising target in this case) willing to consume quickly the product (anxiety, voracity, expectations based of past experience of similar products).

The woman explain why is not possible cause this product is different from others (“different” with a superiority connotation carried on by gestures and tone).

Optional quick new age teaching about the value of slowness to support and justify the requested unusual behavior. (woman teaching: superiority of the woman above man, of the mother above children)

Timelapse.

Dessert taken from refrigerated and offered to man/kid
“Whoa! It is that different!” (product’s superiority as above, waiting time to taste and try the product well deserved, woman was right – woman’s superiority)

1It has to be conserved in a specific way and position to have the product as intended

2iPhone case comes to mind

3Packaging is changed now with the inclusion of appropriate instructions

October 12, 2009

published in

UX-UI

Commentaries on “The Law of Simplicity n°10″

10 – SIMPLICITY IS ABOUT SUBTRACTING THE OBVIOUS, AND ADDING THE MEANINGFUL.

The obvious is the context, what we need to take for granted, as a solid background, to be able to focus on the task at hand. I need to take as predictable my chair to be able to write these stupid words. The obvious, then, is what gives meaning at what i’m doing. Without the sun there will be no human race on earth, no meaning to look after. The sun is obvious. The sun is granted. Ecosystem is granted, always there.
The meaningful is there only because the obvious is there to support it.

You can think about design because you take for granted you’ll eat something today. What if you don’t know how to make some money today to give food to your children? What is obvious here? What is meaningful?

It is obvious i’m a UX-UI Designer. It is my work from so many years. Only because of this i’m here writing about simplicity in design. Without my past years, past choices there will be no meaning in these words for me. They, simply put, will not be here (i were fishing around the globe, maybe, or selling some books in a library…uhm, good idea last one).

Designing a UI we have to build a solid obvious, a context from which all User’s tasks can get meaning, even the more complex task.
There is no meaning without context, without the obvious. The obvious is the source of meaning¹.

Design a UI is take care of the obvious and, often, change it to make it more obvious to the user. Designing an UI is often to innovate, changing the rules and present these changes as obvious (“Why no one has even think about it?!”). Build a new obvious.

In the western world, no one can think about a world without internet, now. It is now obvious its presence.
No one can think about internet without social networks, now. They are obvious.

User’s needs are, for him, obvious, maybe unexpressed, maybe unconscious but they are there.
You can produce new needs, as classical marketing theory teaches us, and present them as something to being included in client’s needs, as new obvious everyday presence of their life (cell phones, twitter and so on).

Build the (new) obvious.

1 In Logic/Linguistic there is a master relation: Sinn/Bedeutung. Sense/Meaning. Without Sense there is no meaning. Sense is not meaning.