There are a few obvious things — Fitts’ Law, which describes how long it takes someone to point at a target, for example — but there are many little nuances that people don’t understand, realize exist, or take for granted.

The most important thing a UI designer can do is make their interface intuitive. It should be obvious what a button does, and how to do a certain task. This extends to things outside of the local interface: if you double click on an icon, you assume that it’s going to open an application. If you need to reply to an email you see in your inbox but that you’re not currently reading, the first thing you’d think about doing is clicking that message, and then hitting the reply button. We, as users, have been trained by years of use to know how to do these things, but there are still many inconsistencies between applications. The number one rule is that if grandma can do it, it’s a good design.

Making things obvious can involve a number of things, from a predictable behavior to a label to an icon. There’s a certain balance you have to acheive between being obvious and dumbing things down, however. The most-used functions are the ones that should be the biggest, most obvious, and easiest to get to. The lesser-used functions are still important, and shouldn’t be hidden away in a hard to get to location. It should take less than three clicks to be able to use them again. Tabbed interfaces demonstrate a variation on this: One palette is open with tools on it, but by clicking once, you see the new tools in that same palette. Clicking again returns to the previous ones. Contextual menus, menus that change depending on what you’re doing, are another way of doing this.

Another UI sin is making your interface too cluttered. There’s an art to this, and some companies have a harder time with this than others. Take the Microsoft website, for example.

While visually pleasing, it’s a navigation nightmare. First off, look at the sidebar. Microsoft is most known for one thing: Windows. No-where on that sidebar is their a link to Windows. It could be under “Products & Related Technologies,” or under “Customer & Partner Solutions.” Further, those links don’t really describe what you’ll find under each one. What is a “Customer Solution?”

Clicking on one of those links brings you to a page with a new interface to grapple with. There’s no longer the title bar at the top, or any information besides the sidebar and some labelled thumbnails. It’s anyone’s guess what happens when you click on the thumbnail. Once you’re at this new screen, you start to see commonly accepted user interface conventions thrown out the window. You can’t click the back button in the toolbar to return to the previous thumbnail view, nor can you go back to the Microsoft homepage. You have to direct your attention to the sidebar, find the “Microsoft.com Home” button, and click that, then redirect your attention back to main content.

Now consider the Apple site.

The very first thing you notice is the new iMacs. Below the picture are two links with images and labels that clearly indicate where they go. Scrolling down the page, you find smaller images, again with labels that tell you where the links they’re attached to go.

At the top of the page is a navigation bar with all the essentials on it: A link to the home page, descriptive, relevant information for people, and a search box that says search in it, and even has a little magnifying glass icon. The navigation bar presents the things that people care about the most — Apple’s Mac, the iPhone and iPod, downloads, and support — in a large, nonintrusive, and obvious way. You know that when you click on the “Mac” button you’re going to find things related to the Mac, and the Mac itself.

The comparisons between the Apple and Microsoft website bring up two important points. The first is that of speed. The Microsoft website forces you to direct your attention for a long period of time to the sidebar in order to figure out where you want to go, and in order to navigate anywhere on the site (that uses that layout: more on that in a moment), you must return to that sidebar, even if you just want to go back. Conversely, the Apple site lets you access information quickly. They have relevant, up-to-date content on their front page, so that if you want to find out about their newest product, all you have to do is click there instead of drilling down through their navigation.

Second, the Apple website uses a consistent layout. That doesn’t mean that it’s exactly the same, but it follows the same flow: Navigation at the top, brief information right away, and below that more specific information, and thumbnails in a row with labels. You’ll also notice that on the Apple site, you know when there’s more content on the page without looking at the scrollbar. Apple’s accomplished this by making sure you see the top couple of pixels of everything below your current view. Your eye picks up on this, and so without ever having to glance to the scrollbar, you know if there’s more on the page.

The Microsoft site, on the other hand, is centralized around a hub-like layout. You navigate to different sites, each with their own information and layout. Every time you go to a new site, you don’t know what navigation scheme you’ll be using, or even what kind of content you’ll find. If I want to figure out what updates there are for Microsoft Office on Vista, do I go to the Office site or do I go to the Vista site? A link may direct you to the proper place, but if it’s on a different site, like an Update website, you suddenly have a new interface all over again. It’s unsettling and disorienting, and makes users more likely to leave.

Interfaces, by definition, are not places to show of a shiny effect. They’re ways that people interact with the device, and so effects should only be used if they enhance the user experience and make it easier for the user to do what they want to do. The interface needs to be responsive as much as it needs to be intuitive. As Andy Ihnatko said, “If the interface stops to catch up with my scroll command, it’s no good to me.” Users are trying to do something, and as a result, any delay in what they’re doing irritates and distracts them.

User interface is an art, and making an interface that works well is a decidedly difficult task. It’s more than just slapping buttons onto a toolbar, and as with everything, the perfect interface doesn’t exist.

He looks at the two boxes on his desk. One is labled "In," the other "Out." The "In" box is filled with papers, with a foot-tall stack of paperwork on top. He reaches for the top piece, and sets it on his desk. He begins to read over it, fishing into his desk drawer for a pen and beginning to write on the appropriate lines. He gets about half-way through before he sits back with a sigh. After a moment, he puts his pen down and puts the piece of paper into the "Out" box. He then picks up everything in the "In" box, and puts it in the "Out" box. He rubs his chin, thinking, then picks up the "In" box itself and puts it in the "Out" box. Smiling like a proud parent, he pulls out a newspaper and begins to read.]


I have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. This is not because I am a slow reader — far from it, if I may take a moment to brag, I finished the sixth Harry Potter book in just under five hours yesterday — but because I only recently received the book, what with my being in Boston. To call the novel “amazing” is like calling one million oranges “a lot of citrus fruits:” it doesn’t do it justice.

The book is epic, sweeping, and grand. It’s more like three of Rowling’s books compressed into one. There is no detail lost, however, and Rowling still masterfully creates emotions inside of the reader. More than once I found myself rooting for one particular character, or worried, or amused, and countless other feelings. Rowling takes you on Harry’s journey like you were actually there. She makes you feel as though you’re a part of the story, and not a reader who is merely peering into a fantasy world.

Rowling draws the series to a close in a masterful way. Questions are answered, people are vindicated. The book is one of the few that makes you content the series is over, thrilled and at peace with the way she did it, and still hungering for more. I want to know what will happen in Harry’s future, I want to know what will happen in his world. But I know that unrealistic to assume, and to demand, that Rowling continue writing. And while part of me yearns for that eighth Harry Potter book, the other part of me will be disgusted if it is written. The series is done, and I’m glad. Rowling has ended Harry’s quest in the best way, and while some people will be upset (someone always is), the vast majority will be glad to see their friend, the one who has been with them for the last decade of their life, finally done with his quest.

For the sake of those who haven’t read the book, please, no spoilers. They will not be tolerated.

Suicide is a dark topic. It doesn’t get talked about except in reference to preventing it. Rarely does a suicide really drive home what exactly it is — the ending of a life, all their contributions, their personality, everything — unless it happens to someone you know. Suicide statistics are just statistics: numbers that you can’t understand the magnitude of even if you try.

These two artists contributed something special to the world. They produced art no one else could. They were rising stars in their fields, with a huge potential and and even larger set of skills and talents. Blake’s work is amazing, dream-like photographs that don’t seem quite real. He’s the kind of artist you’d expect to see become famous one day. Theresa’s 1999 video, The History of Glamour, is a biting and humorous commentary on the fashion world.

But none of that matters now. One artist is gone, and one is probably dead. In one short moment, they became a statistic. Their galleries no longer have just their birth date below their name, but the date of their death, too. They’ll never make anything new. Their collections will stand as a testament to what could have happened, and what never will.

The Blue Men are silent — they never spoke a word, yet, through subtle motions and expressions they managed to convey more personality and emotion than a normal stage production. From eating Cap’n Crunch to learning how to be a rockstar, the Blue Men make you feel like you know them personally.

From the very beginning, the cheekiness of the Blue Man Group begins to show through. LED tickers have things like “Please please no pictures” and “Anyone caught using video recording devices will be removed from the theatre via the ejector mechanism in your chair.” As soon as the show started, there was a deep voice that told in you case of an emergency, you should “leave your chairs and move to the nearest emergency exit. Seriously, leave your chairs. They’re bolted to the floor and it wouldn’t be worth the effort to remove them and carry them with you. Besides, they probably wouldn’t match your personal decor anyway.”

The ticker tapes continued by telling various people to stand up for their accomplishments, like mapping the human genome or having a birthday. It was great: it got you in the right mood, gave you the feeling of being a part of the show.

I’d say more, but words just don’t do justice to the sheer awesome of the Blue Man Group. Instead, enjoy the following video:

Boston itself is amazing. I’ve always been partial to big cities — I love the energy, the sounds, smells, the people, the activity — but there’s something special about Boston. The interesting mix of the old and new buildings, glass-covered skyscrapers towering over the smaller, wooden buildings that have been there for years.

Harvard Square is my favorite place. The streets wind around obstacles in a snake-like way, and parks are liberally scattered throughout the buildings. There’s always something new around the corner, something surprising. It’s Boston at its finest, most beautiful.

One thing I’m struck by is the number of foreign languages. Spanish, Italian, French¹, and several Germanic or Slavik languages I couldn’t identify are almost more common than English. A large number of these seem to be schoolgroups or something like that, but not all. There’s an Italian district of Boston, and from time to time one of the Italians escapes and finds his way onto the T².

The T, as it happens, may have been as old as the lightsabre-weilding tourguide¹. Parts of it, anyway: The different lines were obviously built in parts, starting with the orange line. The orange line is so loud that it isn’t allowed to run at night time. The red line is the one we took the most, as it connected to the green line that went just about everywhere. The green line is loud compared to the red line — it makes you feel like you’re in the worker’s class train instead of the plush business class train.

Advertising on the T is pretty standard, with one exception. As we were zooming along in a tunnel, I was staring out the window at nothing in particular. Suddenly a billboard popped in to view, and stayed there for a while. It was about a second after I noticed it that I realized how spectacularly clever this billboard was: it was animated. It showed to kayakers paddling their way off the billboard with the companie’s slogan above them.

Boston is a beautiful city, and if I get a chance to live there, I’d jump on it. That’s unlikely, however, since the average price of property here is around one million dollars. Still, it’s good to have dreams.

1. My favorite encounter with a French person was outside of Fanueil Hall, where a French tour guide was telling French Canadians about its history. He must have been at least fifty years old, and in order to keep his group together, he was carrying a green lightsabre. If anyone was seperated from the group, he said, they should just look for the lightsabre. (↩)
2. Boston Transit, which, for some reason, is called the “Charlie.” (↩)

For those of you too lazy to follow the link, that post is about music scores and the problems with getting the rights to them. I know copyright law and how much it sucks has been beaten to death before, but this time it strikes closer to home. These are high school kids just trying to make a movie. They’re not stealing music. They’re not going to make a profit off of the music. It’s just something they need in it. Yet, copyright law, and to a lesser extent, the RIAA, makes this nearly impossible. How ridiculous is that?

During takeoff and landing, it’s common (read: mandated) practice to require all passengers to turn off all “portable electronic devices,” including, but not limited to, iPods, pagers, cellular phones, portable gaming devices, portable TVs, laptops, pacemakers, and positronic brains. The only reason given to this is that they may interfere with the controls on the plane. I have to admit, I’m skeptical: why even bother? The only products that might interfere with the radio are cell phones and radio jammers, the former of which operate on entirely different frequencies from the plane’s radio, and the latter of which is only going to be used by someone who isn’t going to turn it off when they’re asked to anyway.

Airplane seats were designed by someone with a moderate knowlege in ergonomics, and the knowlege that he would never actually need to sit in one. Armrests are inch-wide plastic boxes with sticky, rubber-like coatings on top. One has to jostle with the person sitting next to them for control of it¹ and stay seated if they wish to continue their dominance.

Invariably, I’m place behind someone who leans their seat back as far as it can go within thirty minutes of the plane leaving the ground². On the offchance I’m not, I find myself in the Screaming Baby section, a private hell of children laughing in a pitch just below the inaudible level, screaming, crying, and repeating phrases over and over. If, by some miracle of planning or luck, I happen to get an exit row, I usually end up having people giving me dirty looks when they pass.

Food, if one can call it that, is abysmal. Astronauts have it better, privvy to dehydrated stakes, soups, ice cream, and Thanksgiving dinner extravaganzas. I get four peanuts and fifty milliliters of water. This is never enough to last, since the air conditioning systems suck out all the moisture in the air to the point of skin cells flaking off en mass. My tactic is to get the water, down it while the attendant is serving someone else, and quickly ask for some more. Some ignore me, and others are more than a little hesitant after the third time. Still, it’s a small price to pay to keep from shrivelling up into a cloth-covered husk.

At least the flights are short. And from time to time, one actually enjoys it. Then the person sitting to the left of you needs to use the bathroom for the seventh time that flight, and you have to put away all your stuff, get out of the way, and find something to do while they’re gone. It’s like airplane limbo at that point — your seatbelt is off and you can’t really go back to what you were doing, so you sit idly and twiddle your thumbs or try to see what the businessman is doing on his laptop in front of you.

The bathrooms themselves seem to be afterthoughts: strange, convex and concave walls bending in and around. There’s just enough room to sit down on the toilet and to wash your hands in the sink. I find I have to wash one hand at a time, since the level to turn the water on rapidly goes back up of its own accord. This is evidently a feature and not a bug, probably to keep people from overflowing the sinks. Still, I have yet to meet someone who can wash their hands in the five seconds before the water turns off. I imagine a large number of people don’t even bother to wash their hands afterwards, simply because they don’t have the patience to continue bashing the lever and because they need to escape that claustrophoic chamber³.

This is, of course, all only relavent if your plane actually leaves the ground on time. The only planes I’ve been on that have taken off on time have been those operated by Qantas in Australia. More than once we’ve had to disembark from the plane, wait two hours for them to move our luggage and work out who was actually on the plane and what plane we’re moving on to, and board that new plane. Delays are abundant, especially with North West Airlines, an airline that has as much constiancy and ease of use as a 1967 Volvo running on ground up coffee beans. Flights are delayed due to:

1. Mechanical issues
2. Planes leaving late
3. Outdated tracking information
4. Planes landing at different airports
5. Late flight crew

The only reason we still use Northwest is because they fly nonstop from where we live to ever major city in the US. And they know it: how else could they get away with four peanuts?

1. Although Wired magazine recently had an article on just how to do that. (↩)
2. This is no exageration: I’m currently writing this in such a state. The last five flights I’ve been on have had me in similar positions. I have long femurs, and they already rub against the seat in front of me without my fellow passenger crushing my kneecaps into a fine powder. (↩)
3. How many of you haven’t had at least one experience where you were sure you were locked in? (↩)

In theory, if you tell one or two people, they’ll tell other people, who will in turn tell others. And others. It’s an exponential growth, in theory. The problem arises when the stuff you write isn’t very interesting to the newcomers¹ . So while they’ll read it once (maybe) they don’t stick around.

There’s also a weird disconnect to me between my art and my website. I have over 10,000 Flickr page views, and yet, I get an embarrassingly low number of hits on my website. I realize this is mostly because I use Flickr, and so more people can find it, but it’s still an interesting phenomenon. One that’s been increasing steadily for a few years, not just for me, but for lots of media. People want one place to look at things, and they’re hesitant to go to the “official” site for something just because it’s the official site. It’s the YouTube model. YouTube works because it’s basically the dumping ground for video on the internet. You can find basically whatever you want in one place. Instead of getting out of your chair to change the channel on the TV, you can just use the remote.

The question, then, is whether you want convenience for the masses or higher rankings on your site. For most people, the former is the obvious solution. However, the problem grows stickier when you have ads on your site. You can’t get the revenue unless people look at your site. In the case of large media companies, they have the ad revenue issue, as well as a control issue: they want to be able to control all their content themselves, and most services (like YouTube) won’t give them the kind of controls they want.

Some types of media have no centralized service. Flash content, for example, has no YouTube. There are sites like Newgrounds and many others that are similar to it, but there is no one place that you immediately think of when you think of Flash media. This was true of video until YouTube came around, so it’s foolish to think that Flash — or any other type of content — is safe from this or is somehow immune. It will happen, the question is when.

1. Or anyone in general, for that matter (↩)

1. It’s a blog system (↩)
2. Yay footnotes! (↩)