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Sad to see that one of my heroes, cyclist Jan Ullrich, has announced his retirement from the sport. In a discipline dominated for so long by the machine perfection of Lance Armstrong, Ullrich represented the more human, fallible side of cycling. His annual battle with weight and fitness to prepare for the new season resonated with many amateurs. And in an event as competitive and as controversial as The Tour de France, Jan showed his sportsmanship by waiting for Armstrong to catch up after Lance had been unseated. The Tour wasn’t the same without Ullrich last year and he will be sorely missed in the future.
In 1995 Alan Cooper’s About Face coined the phrase ’stopping the proceedings with idiocy’. He was describing the needless dialog boxes that blight our interactions with computers. About Face 3.0 is due this year so I might send my original copy to Microsoft. Why? Windows Updates.
The good thing is that updates happen more-or-less in the background so I don’t have to be troubled by them. No, the trouble starts once the updates are complete.
Up pops the Automatic Updates dialog box. Windows arrogantly assumes it is more important than the diagram I’m drawing or the document I’m writing. My concentration is broken and now I must choose, not whether I want to restart my computer, but when.
I imagine that only the most ardent security nut is going to want to restart immediately – to save all their work, close all their open applications and wait for several minutes until Windows comes back up. Most people would rather get on with what they’re doing oblivious to the inner workings of the operating system. Presumably Restart Later is Microsoft’s concession to the rest of us. But even this choice is illusory; the dialog being dismissed only to reappear later on. What’s the big hurry? I’ve managed just fine without these changes up ’till now. The fact that they’ve been released shouldn’t override what I’m doing. Why not just wait for the computer to be restarted naturally, at the end of the day or whenever it usually happens? Or, even better, engineer the software so that it doesn’t have to be restarted at all.
The computer is a tool, not an end in itself. It’s good that Microsoft takes security seriously, but not at the expense of my work. Excellent interfaces respect the user. They tiptoe, working in the background, presenting things when they’re needed and very rarely interrupting. They don’t blunder straight in, assume they’re the most important thing on the computer and then wrest control away from you. These kinds of dialog boxes are the idiot in your computer talking. Every one that we can remove means the idiot’s voice gets a little quieter. As interface designers its our job to try and silence him.
You’ll end up a lonely figure, unsure of what you believe in, forced to peddle your practice from an old garage whilst the global media watches on (AKA leader of the Conservative Party).
… the fireworks on New Year’s Eve wake you up.
Ask any parent with young children what they’d like for Christmas and a bit of peace and quiet will probably come pretty high up the list. The trouble is, toy designers don’t seem to have the same priorities.
Most of the electronic toys I’ve seen use a switch that combines power with volume settings for quiet and loud. When young children turn the toys on their lack of fine motor skills means they invariably push the switch as far as it’ll go … to loud. The designers want the toy to be stimulating and sound is a big part of that experience, but does it have to be so loud? There are other audiences to consider: parents, other children, neighbours etc.
Why not change the positions of the switch to off, loud and quiet? That way when the switch is being pushed by little fingers quiet becomes the most likely position. Or better still, simplify the switch and save money by getting rid of the loud setting altogether. (Children’s hearing develops very rapidly so if you can hear it, your child will be able to too.) Otherwise, for noisy toys in our house this Christmas, batteries won’t be included.
A while ago I wrote about my copy of Word developing a fear of flying. The neurosis seems to be spreading; now my laptop has become agoraphobic. Yesterday, I bought it into work to do some stuff with the tablet. As soon as I powered it up, it showed me the blue screen of death and nothing I could do (Safe Mode, Last Known Good, booting from a Linux Live CD) would make it work.
I travelled home trying to remember the last time I'd backed it up and wondering how much stuff I'd lost. In desperation, I thought I'd plug it in and give it one more try (a last gasp 'have you turned it off and on again?' fix). Lo and behold it started straight away without any problems (and this is the second time that's happened!). I feel like I'm living in a Woody Allen film.
I’m obviously not coping with the sleep deprivation bought about by Number 2 Daughter’s birth as well as I thought. This was the conversation around the dinner table tonight:
Me to Number 1 Daughter: What colour are your eyes?
Number 1 Daughter: Blue.
Me: What colour are mummy’s eyes?
N1D: Brown.
Me: What colour are daddy’s eyes?
N1D: Red.
Adaptive Path: Conversation with Michael Bierut – Part I
It’s a dirty secret that much of what we admire in the design world is a byproduct not of “strategy” but of common sense, taste and luck. Some clients are too unnerved by ambiguity to accept this, and create gargantuan superstructures of bullshit to provide a sense of security. Not only do designers enthusiastically collude in this process, but many have found ways to bill for it.
Design Council: A very modern designer
There’s a dirty secret: that much of it is a God-given talent. As an instructor of design I come across students that don’t need help and others who can’t be helped. It’s an accident that kicks in at conception.’
My feeble attempts at humour aside, I’d certainly question the second ’secret’. Michael’s a graphic designer. It seems to me that there’s an implicit assumption in what he’s saying: graphic design is difficult, but anyone can teach. Michael takes the easy route by placing responsibility for the perceived problems of design education on genetics rather than looking inward. Indeed, you could read this as a public admission of failure by an individual design educator – I can’t stretch those that are good enough, and I can’t help those that aren’t.
We need many more designers and that’s something that can’t be left to chance. Let’s hope that it’s the ability to teach and inspire the next generation that’s not the god-given talent.
A great example from Google Docs of how errors should be handled. I want to add tags to a document, but I’ve forgotten to select one. Rather than let me go through the process of choosing tags and then telling me something’s wrong, Google puts the problem right up front. And because this is modeless feedback there’s no dialog box to decode or buttons to press so I can get on with putting it right straight away. To err is human; to help you recover as quickly and smoothly as possible is humane, and as interface designers that’s where we want to be.
Well-designed hospitals help patients recover more quickly according to this New York Times article.
A sprinkling of architects and designers around the world are working to greatly change hospitals by humanizing their design, a concept that is slowly gaining influence in Europe and the United States.
The idea is obvious: Build inviting, soothing hospitals, graced with soft lighting, inspiring views, single rooms, curved corridors, relaxing gardens and lots of art, and patients will heal quicker, nurses will remain loyal to their employers and doctors will perform better …
Their research shows, for example, that patients who can see trees instead of cars from their windows recover more quickly …
Actually, this is a concept that’s been gaining influence for over a hundred years. If you ever visit Barcelona, check out Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Completed in 1910, this working hospital is the equal of it’s better known architectural neighbour the Sagrada Familia, but is often overlooked. The architect, Lluis Domenech i Montaner, wanted to create an environment that would stimulate patients, helping them recover more quickly. Having visited it, I can say that he definitely succeeded (are any of the hospitals in your area tourist attractions?) In fact he may have been too successful. It’s such a wonderful place that as a patient you can’t imagine ever wanting to leave.
Via 37 Signals. Photo from Mariana Steiner on flickr. See more Sant Pau pictures.