How User Interfaces can make or break a new service

Small Update: Just saw that Joshua Porter wrote a nice post in which he states that design (not just UI) is becoming increasingly important. Ties in nicely with this post

One of the most difficult things to get right as a designer is the User Interface of a product or service. Getting the UI right is a key success factor in any development. To me the UI isn’t just the look, feel or the interaction. To me the UI defines the identity of the product or service. It is the only thing a user ever sees (unless he peeks under the hood, but then it’s not your average user anymore, it’s a geek ).  When confronted with a UI I find myself (un-)consciously making all kinds of assumptions about the product, it’s capabilities, it’s difficulty or ease, but most of all it’s identity. The UI defines the product or service so to say. I’ll show you a few examples later on.

There are many factors that make the development of a great UI incredibly difficult. You have to think about the function of the product (what is it for), how it is used, where it is used, physical dimensions, material, color, all possible human senses, the form factor, consistency, complexity, in and outputs. This list goes on and on.

When I was working on my PhD in the field of Industrial Design, I met quite a few designers, both professional and those that were educated to become a designer. It seemed to me that the best UI designers had the ability to consequently apply certain design rules they formulated for themselves before they started a design. These design rules were typically inspired by that long list of requirements I mentioned above. They would spent a lot of time formulating such requirements, because they knew that it would help them design more effectively once these requirements and design rules were formulated.

One of the most difficult aspects of UI design is that the designer needs to play hardball with the other developers once development started. Not only does everyone have his own expert opinion on what a UI should look and feel like. it also turns out that in the process of creation there is less time and less budget available to do things right. As a result, shortcuts are taken and the overall design suffers. This is also the phase where the feature war takes place. I have yet to see a project that implements just the features that were specified initially. More often, developers start freewheeling using their own or alpha user’s feedback and add features to the original design.

Why am I discussing all of this on a weblog about media and technology? Because, in my opinion, a UI can make or break any new product or service. Web 2.0 has brought us the (re-)invention of the Beta release. Every startup that creates a new service starts with a Beta release (sometimes Alpha). This has several advantages of which time to market is most important. Instead of having a development cycle of years, the pressure in the market we now call web 2.0 has reduced that cycle to months, sometimes weeks. It’s more important to be out there, testing the functionality with Beta users, than to spend a lot of time on specification, design and implementation only to find out you are either too late, or you created a great product no one was really waiting for. There is a huge trade off here. Developing with your potential user group shortens the development cycle, but at the cost of stability and usability. But that isn’t the only thing. The Beta period is often also used to test the initial value proposition of the new service. Features are added during the test period and the final release v1 often provides a different service than the Beta release did.

In my opinion the usability and User Interface are often not well thought through. And that is too bad, because it inhibits the user to understand and use the essence of the product or service. This factor can literally break a service from becoming mainstream (along with many other things). UI design is very personal, it’s hard to say in general a design is good or bad.

Let me provide you with a few UI designs I like/dislike. That doesn’t imply that they are good/bad, it’s just my personal opinion. There isn’t any ranking involved, I just selected a few examples, I could have chosen any other really.

The iPhone

An interesting example. The iPhone UI is definitely revolutionary. It is one of the best UI’s I have seen in any handheld computer. The touch screen and the simplicity and consistency of the design are incredible. But to give you an idea how incredibly complex UI design really is, I believe the UI of the iPhone also makes it one of the worst mobile phones I have ever used. Actually, I should have probably said MOBILE device. Steven Hodson asked if I had a kevlar vest when I posted that, and many of the readers disagreed with me. But hte people that disagree are likely looking at it from a handheld device, not from the concept of a mobile phone. The reason for my bold statement is that that very same interface everyone loves doesn’t function well when you are mobile!

Try making a phone call while you are walking around, literally. The touch screen provides no tactile feedback, the buttons displayed are way too small for selecting contacts, letters or numbers, and the amount of actions needed to select a contact and actually make the call are too much. In my opinion,  the design is optimized for an immobile user (meaning standing still). The touch screen forces the user to use his eyes as the main sense. The UI sucks you and your attention into the device, and shuts off a number of other senses. All that is left is a tunnel vision. Try it, you’ll know what I mean. Walk, start trying to type an SMS, listen to your surrounding, try not to hit anything etc. It’s Impossible. A regular phone allows tactile input and feedback. I can type blind on a GSM that has buttons because I can find the buttons without looking. I can walk and still perform basic tasks. in other words, I can use the mobile phone while i’m mobile. That’s impossible on a touch screen. The same thing goes for messaging (SMS).

Twitter

Twitter is one of the communication services I use on a regular basis. While I have tried several Twitter clients, one flashier then the other, I’m still reasonable fond of the Twitter home page. Why? Because it is deprived of too much functionality. The basic features, Tweeting and looking at tweets are presented in a simple and elegant way. The profile images make sure tweets are personalized because I can recognize images faster than names. The content is presented in a tidy way, and maybe most important of all, Twitter enforces the rule of only 140 characters, a brilliant move to keep things simple and concise. I don’t mind at all that I have to hit the refresh button of the browser (unlike with the different twitter clients). I also don’t mind missing tweets pass by as I forget to refresh. Most Twitter clients decrease in usability really fast because they minimize the space they occupy (Twhirl is a great example of this, it looks cool, but it’s UI  isn’t nearly as good as the default Twitter home page). Instead of making the service convenient when using such small client, it actually gets in the way of usability and readability for me.

Not everything is great about Twitter’s home page. I don’t like the method of adding new people to follow. And I don’t like the fact that pressing options or links make me go somewhere else. I’d rather stay where I am and do the thing I wanted to do there. Going somewhere makes me mentally leave the service, and that’s not right.

Minggl

This service has gotten a lot of great press from A-list bloggers. Minggl integrates a number of social networks into your browser. It sounds like real handy, but I am afraid I don’t like the UI very much. There is a lot of cluttering when all my friends are displayed on the sidebar. There are many buttons in the toolbar that are not clear on sight what they do. There is actually only one button that could have made sense (it is the Minggl button) all the way on the left). But instead of turning the toolbar on and of as I expected, it merely sends me to the home page of Minggl, a place where there is nothing to do for me.

To me the Minggl UI in its current form provides no value, making it a service that sounds next-gen, but will probably not attract me enough to try it out. This is a struggle for any social networking service. Most users have more friends than can be displayed in one overview. As a result a compromise is sought to provide the user with a better view of his friends. But it proves to be very difficult to get that right. In most cases the solution would probably be to buy a flat screen of 2×3 meters, but since not every user has one of those, designers tend to scale down, instead of limit.

Wixi

I have written about this service before. I tried it as a Beta user, only to never return to it. The UI was non-appealing to me. Interestingly enough the home page which I revisited just now seemed to indicate they had improved the UI, but when I logged in, nothing much has changed. It isn’t a difficult interface, but for some reason it is non-inviting for me. I find the folder icons floating around a bit loose from the rest. As if they don’t belong to the service. An example of a new service with a UI that for some reason  gave me no reason to actually try it out. That may not be fair, but it is the truth.

Flock

What can I say. Flock is a web browser that has it all. But not for me. I find the UI incomprehensible. I don’t like it that they have chosen different icons for pretty standard functions, the icons aren’t self explanatory to me, but most of all, it is just too much. Be honest, without reading a manual or hoovering with your mouse over any of the icons shown on the left. How many of them can you assign an action to? There are at least 10-15 icons displayed there that I don”t have a clue what they do.

The main screen isn’t much better. I can’t believe how much information is screaming for my attention on this one screen. My brain melts down if I remotely try to grasp what is displayed there. Flock may be a browser that integrates social networks for me, but it suffers not just from a cluttered UI, but from a cluttered concept.

In my personal opinion Flock is a good example where the UI defines the identity of the service (or the other way around). I have great respect for Chris Messina (I believe he is one of the original designers of Flock). But I find that too much functionality in one concept makes the overall service and its usability far too complex, and therefore hard to use for me.

Friendfeed

I’m pretty impressed with the design of Friendfeed. It’s a pretty complex service with an incredible amount of information (if you start subscribing to a lot of users). They try to keep the screen from getting cluttered by using a simple and elegant design. They try to reduce the amount of information (text), it is pretty obvious where the comments and the likes are. The channels are depicted with icons so that you can guess where the info came from. There are tabs at the top that allow you to see other views. I’m not so fond of the extra options a user has when he looks at an entry. He has the option to like, comment, hide , or more. Especially the hide and more links are a bit confusing to use sometimes. Below the more link are a bit technical terms such as “link to this entry” and “reshare”. Not sure what they do, unless you try it out. Friendfeed will have a lot of UI challenges coming to them. The users are already crying out for filtering or ranking algorithms (hey, they are early adopters right). Extra functionality leads to possible UI difficulties. It will be interesting to see how the team can resolve that.

In conclusion

Getting the UI right for a product or service is a nearly impossible task. There are so many factors to take into account. It is often the place where a service suffers most when implemented. At the same time there are examples where the users in general find a UI well implemented. Most likely because the designer (or team) has not thrown their design rules out of the window when the development takes place. I’m not pretending to be an expert on the matter in any way.

But I’m a user. And these UI’s are designed for me, and all other users. That gives me the right to have an opinion on them. And that is what it is, nothing more, nothing less, it’s my opinion. And while I’m probably not easily satisfied, I have the deepest respect for the UI designers in this world. It is one of the toughest jobs there is. And it takes the best of them for a service to have a chance of being successful.

Never, ever, compromise on UI design. You don’t have to get it right from the start, but you have to have a clear vision where it is supposed to be going to. You have to have a set of design principles that you carve in rock and don’t easily step away from. In my opinion the UI is one of the most important fail factors for any new product or service.

I’m interested in hearing your opinion on this. What UI do you find really great or really awful?

Web 2.0 has brought democracy, but it comes at a cost

I read a few different posts this morning and they inspired me for this one. First there was a post by Betsy Schiffman writing about the Web 2.0 Expo. She writes:

Now that the first burst of enthusiasm for social networking has died, people are realizing that web 2.0 is actually a huge time sink.

Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plaxo may have helped foster community and communication, but they’ve also added immensely to the flow of often-interruptive messages that their users receive, leading to information overload and possibly a nasty internet addiction.

To underline this argument she uses a picture that I have used myself a few times already, but in a different context.

This is a set of logos of web 2.0 services, you can find many more of them here.

Another post that drew my attention was one by my favorite Pattern Houd, Rolf Skyberg. He writes about the principles of design and challenges us to rethink the way user interfaces are designed:

Is the ease with which we copy-paste both elements and information, forgetting the necessary influences of natural growth, decay, and selection?

If we forced ourselves to design only with pen and paper, would it necessarily create a more understandable interface? Pushing complexity away from the user, exactly where it should be?

Try this experiment for yourself, either in your next design, or your next powerpoint.

If you aren’t willing to take the time to draw each one of those fields and links, I can guarantee that your users don’t want to fill them in.

And he tops it off with a link to a cartoon that says it all.

What do these two posts have in common? To me they address a similar theme, using different approaches. Web 2.0 has brought democracy to web development. Underlying the web 2.0 developments lies a technology wave that has brought us near-zero service development cost. Anyone with an idea (it doesn’t have to be good) can become a web entrepreneur and build that idea into a tool. Anyone can launch that tool without distribution costs and use blogging platforms and social networks to make potential users notice the newly developed service. Anyone can affort to launch a Beta or concept service that isn’t finished because it can then be further developed with the user community. Anyone can build a service and forget about scalability, because it can always be done afterwards. Anyone can follow the ‘American’ dream and hopefully become successful and rich.

There is a clear upside to this democracy process. The speed of development and innovation is higher than ever. New ideas are born every day, but now new ideas can be materialized in the same tempo as they are conceived. There is also a downside to this. Lowering the thresholds to create new services doesn’t make the process of creating a great service ANY easier. If anything, the image above shows that clearly. There are literally thousands of “web 2.0″ services and brands out there. The web 2.0 wave is fragmented into uncountable small, niche, often cloned services. While Betsy talks about the information overload pressure on the user, I would say that the pressure is mostly on the web entrepreneur trying to get his niche ahead of the rest of the pack.

What strikes me most about it is that we tend to forget that building a great service, a great brand, the best usability, is actually all about craftsmanship. It isn’t a craft we all possess just because the technology has lowered the thresholds. Just because I can on-line create and edit images for free and with a few clicks it doesn’t make me a good designer. I can use Ruby on rails and have a web application up and running within the hour. But that doesn’t make me a great programmer or architect. I can easily come up with a web 2.0 brand name, just look at the web 2.0 directory. But that doesn’t make me a brand expert or a brand marketeer. And with the customer running around, constantly trying things out (hey it’s all free right), getting confused or bored easily, making something useful, actually creating user value is incredibly difficult.

Web 2.0 has brought us entrepreneurship and web development for all. But it doesn’t bring us craftsmanship. You either have it, or you don’t. But I know one thing. If you are thinking about becoming the next Facebook, Google, MySpace or whatever, begin your quest with finding talented people. It always starts there. Don’t be fooled by the ease of web development and distribution. Find talented people and create something that is designed, developed, implemented, branded and distributed with user value in mind. That will be the sured way to success.

The usability of mobile phones could be so much better

A few days ago I realised (yet again) that the mobile phone could be made so much better. In such a way that the interface would start working for me as a user, instead of me having to work the interface of the phone (disclosure: I use a Nokia N95, but previous phones from Nokia, Samsung, SonyEricsson gave me very similar experiences). (Another disclosure: yeah, I’m one of those suckers that hasn’t got an iPhone).

It started when I wanted to SMS something to Twitter after I woke up. The following happened:

I pressed the icon for SMS. Started typing “twit” in the address field, the N95 understood Twitter and I could continue to write the actual SMS. Started typing “Woke up early this morning, about to go to the office”. The display showed “Wolf up das?”. Darn, wrong language set. Pressed options, arrow up, arrow up, arrow up, enter, arrow down and selected “English”. Then pressed c,c,c,c,c and started typing “e”, pressed * to change the word “Wolf”into “Woke” and continued the sentence. Had to change “in”into “go” and finished the sentence. Options, then send. After approximately 100 key presses I was able to send away my 53 character message. An overhead of almost 100%.

Next thing I did was get into my car and drive to the office. I decided to turn on the Twitter message stream to my mobile so that I could see who was doing what. So every few minutes I would get an SMS notification from Twitter. I’d pick up the phone, pressed new message and read it while driving. After reading the message I would immediately press options, arrow down, delete message,enter and then the big red button to get back to the main screen while I was still driving. I need to clean up Twitter SMSes immediately as they clutter my inbox way too much. On a typical drive of about 1 hour I get as many as 30-40 messages, and when there are a lot of people on-line even more.

Naturally I wanted to respond to a few Twitter messages, so while driving, I typed a few short messages to Twitter friends. It takes 7 presses to get the @ sign needed in Twitter. I had to switch 3 times back and forth between languages as I follow Dutch and English speaking Twitter friends. In the mean time I answered a few calls, and I got behind in reading the Twitter alerts who would come in during the calls. I ended up with some 10-15 unread Twitter alerts, not to mention the irritating signalling of the alerts during my call.

I wanted to check something on-line, so I fired up the web browser to go on-line. I needed to type in the web address, which is pretty lame to do while in the car. Took me a few minutes, then waited for the web site to appear, only to find out it was too big to see on my mobile display. So I ended up scrolling the site to reach a point where I needed to enter text for a search. Of course I was typing in the wrong language. Ended up wiping out a lot of pressed characters and entering them individually, with spaces between them, which I then erased again to prevent the phone from thinking for me. The Twitter alerts kept coming in.

By the timeI got to the office I was about 20 messages behind. It took me a lot of time deleting them (reading them too me too long). Twitter produces enough alerts to overflow my inbox. I finally switched off Twitter by sending an off message and then I could start work.

Later that day I wanted to check something on my weblog using my mobile phone. I fired up the web browser, tried to connect to a WiFi access point only to discover I didn’t have access. Reverting back to UMTS I typed in my web log address and waited for the content to appear. The site is too big for the screen so Nokia provides me with a cursor to scroll back and forth. This is not nearly as cool as the iPhone does it (you can zoom in/zoom out and move around with your fingers on a touch screen), but at least I can get to the place I wanted to look at. I tried to open and stream a video embedded in the weblog. The phone started a video player which was hopeful, but the video never showed. Unable to grasp why it didn’t work I pressed the big red button to get to teh main phone screen. I saw a nice sunset from my office window and decided to take a picture of it. I opened up the camera at the back of the phone and wanted to take a picture. I got a “not enough memory, please close other applications first” message. It took me a while to figure out that the Internet connection was still there and I needed to close that off explicitly. Closed the camera, and opened it again to activate it and finally took the picture. Luckily Shozu worked fine and I could upload the picture with one press to my Flickr account.

That very same day the phone froze up on me once, and resetted itself (nice). I used it for another 20-30 SMSes or so, browsed the web about 3 times more and finally drove home again.

So what is the moral of this story? Well, there are a few things I realised once I got home and started thinking about the experiences I had that day:

1. The average overhead in terms of user actions, button presses, menu choices etc. is on average anywhere between 50 and 100%
2. The inbox-outbox principle of the mobile phone for messaging is a real mess and is not capable of handling 50-100 messages a day without tremendous overhead for the user
3. Web browsing sucks. The screen is too small, entering data takes too much time, a lot of the content doesn’t display, and no matter how nice the interface is, browsing on a mobile phone screen just isn’t any good. No, not even on an iPhone, sorry.
4. Multi langual input is a pain. it takes a lot of switching between dictionaries to get it to work for me. Turning the dictionaries off doesn’t work either because then I have to press way too many buttons to type.
5. Multitasking on a mobile phone is nearly impossible. Try web browsing while receiving SMSes, phone calls, and trying to take a picture in between. The phone can’t cope with it.

There is actually one functionality for which the mobile phone is optimised. It works just fine for making and receiving calls! One could easily argue that I’m trying to do things on the phone that are not normal. But, I described a pretty average day for me as a mobile user. Yes, I use the phone in the car. I do all these things, and preferably in parallel. Have you watched (your own) kids lately. They multitask even more than I do. And they deal with the complexity, just as I do. Grow up and deal with it.

But that doesn’t mean that we should be satisfied with the product. It basically is not fit for the job. Most of the mobile OSes are based upon mimicking the desktop PC interface, which sucks. The inbox/outbox principle for messaging is as old as e-mail and is not fit for today’s messaging needs. The interfaces haven’t really radically improved. We have gotten more applications, more possible connections, and ultimately more complexity. The iPhone’s major improvement is the touch screen and some really cool UI inventions. But even with the iPhone trying to do the things I decribed earlier aren’t easy.

I have said it before, we really need people to start thinking out of the box when it comes to the mobile user interface. We need people that first think about what, how, and why people are using it during a typical day. And design a user interface that works for the user to get his things done, not the other way around. With Google Android on its way there lies an opportunity to do just that. Why? Because it is open (how open remains to be seen). If it can overcome the Mobile OS es the mobile phone manufacturers ship with it, then there is hope. We might get to see some great designers rethink the mobile interface and update it to support the multitasking, multicontent, multi messaging and browsing world most of its user are in right now. The usability of mobile phones could be made so much better.

Update: just saw that there is another discussion now about the iPhone producing a lot of data traffic. That could imply that its usability has improved over other types of mobile phones, allowing the users to access the Internet easier. At the same time iPhone users are mostly tech savvy, and capable of handling the complexity provided by mobile phones. But the iPhone, with all its incredible UI novelties is still based upon the idea of browsing the way we browse with a desktop. The browsing paradigm hasn’t changed, it has justgotten a better interface. We will have to wait and see if that is good enough. I doubt it. We haven’t seen a real revolution yet, just a fast improvement over something that was really bad in the first place.

Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?

Today is another day after, this time the day after Google announced its Android Mobile OS initiative. Incredible amounts of posts have already been written about it, many of them talking about the breaking news, a lot of them analysing what it means (for example here and here), and very few talking about what it means for the mobile user (actually, I tried searching for it in Google reader and couldn’t come up with a search term that showed me more about the user perspective). Look at techmeme for the tech bloggers bandwagon overview.

So let’s take a look at the user’s perspective. In a previous post I stated that Mobile Internet will eventually break through to the mass but that there are still a number of hurdles to be taken.

The question is now, does the Android initiative provide possibilities to take on any of these hurdles? The most important aspect of the Android Mobile OS, in my opinion, is that it will be open source. What I hope will happen is that it will trigger many developers to start developing new software for mobile users that will work on all kinds of handsets, and will integrate much better with existing mobile phone functionalities. Off course there are already mobile OS platforms available, Windows mobile and Symbian probably being the most important competitors. But, Android, by its open nature, will bring mobile application development into a new ball game, forcing the other platforms to open up as well.

Besides the smart things other people wrote on the subject I named 5 reasons why mass adoption is not there yet:

1. There aren’t that many really useful services that really enforce mobile Internet into the lives of mobile users. Releasing an open source Mobile OS platform is smart. It will trigger developments, not only by mobile carriers, but by people that understand the mobile being your remote control to life. People that will develop user centric services on your mobile.
2. Mobile devices don’t deliver technically yet what is needed. The main question is always, can a non-tech family member or friend start up your phone and connect it to the Internet. Without you helping out? I think not. But the open source character of the Android platform will force developers to concentrate on UI and user value! It is the only way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
3. The mobile Internet interface is not nearly as flexible, intuitive and usable as the Internet browser and a mouse is on a PC. This is a difficult barrier to take. It not only involves clever UI design and new paradigms to let your mobile phone become the remote control of applications, but there is also a hardware component involved. Phone manufacturers will need to develop better phones with faster CPUs, increased graphics performance, touch screens and new interface paradigms to compensate for the fact that this remote control is rather small when you try to use it in life.
4. The cost is high for a large adoption in the market. You need high end (expensive) handsets like the Nokia N95 or Apple iPhone and transferring data is still pretty expensive.This is an issue that can’t really be solved by the Android OS. We need high end hardware terminals and fast Internet access to make the mobile Internet experience useful to the user. But the mobile terminal manufacturers and mobile carriers need to reconsider pricing of the goodies. Especially data rates are an issue. If I am being punished with high bills for connecting and transerring data between my mobile and the Internet, then I won’t be using it very often.
5. There might be a psychological barrier for users to download new applications onto their mobile phone. It is your most personal device and you won’t put any software on it unless the source is trusted. Trust is an issue. People download ringtones, wallpapers and games to their mobile phones. But will they download social applications which tentacle their way into their address books, pictures, video’s as easily? Tech people will. Business people will, but will the man on the street do it as well? Only if the source is trusted and privacy is a key element in development.

Having said all this, let me state my 5 wishes for functionalities that would really help me as a mobile user:

1. I want to be able to save, reply to and forward voice messages. Sometimes you get a personal message that is important to you. But the message can’t be saved, replied to, or forwarded, and the mobile carrier deletes it after a few days.
2. I want to be able to sent pictures and video messages to my friends phones as well as to the Internet. While applications like Shozu take care of the Internet part. It seems impossible to send a taken picture to a friend, regardless of the handset he uses. Not only does it not arrive half of the time, but I also need to think abut the protocol I use to send it, or look in different inboxes when it arrives. And make sure it is so simple to do that anyone non TECH can actually use it without understanding anything about protocols, message formats, Internet connection parameters, installation etc. An application I will be looking into is Radar. Seems very nice for mobile image and conversation sharing, so I’ll give it a go.
3. I want a integrated graphics enabled inbox for all messages, regardless if they are SMS, MMS or e-mail. Who cares about the different types, the distinction is purely technical. I get all these ugly text based headlines when someone sends me a picture. Show me the thumbnail of the picture and text together so I know what it is about before I actually open the message.
4. I would like much better group features allowing me to call, SMS, send voice messages, pictures, video, or microblog with my friends in the mobile space and Internet space. So if I’m on-line the messages go on-line, and if I’m on the move they go to my mobile. But I hate it the way Twitter clutters my SMS inbox. Having me to look at each message separately and deleting them after I read them. Too much work, and each beep when a new message arrives is annoying (yes I can turn of sound, but that is not the point). We need live feeds, allowing me to follow the flow and only act upon it if I want to.
5. I would like someone to start implementing the best possible distribution platform for downloading cool new applications. How am I supposed to know what software is available for me? I only found out about Shozu after another tech blogger pointed me to it, but my mom will never find it?

I could go on for quite a while, haven’t even said anything about location based services, streaming video, music, applications that have nothing to do with the phone itself (like identification, buying , selling, maps, etc). I am really curious about mobile developments. They can have a huge impact if executed the right way. Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?

Poor UI design inhibits mass adoption of web 2.0 services

I am often curious about new products and services. Particularly interested in the intuitiveness of the user interface and the way the product or service presents its functionalities to me. Just a few of the products and services I tried in the past year or so are my Samsung D600, Nokia N95, WordPress, Skype, Twitter, Jaiku, Orkut, Facebook, CuBase (music software), VodPod, Apple TV, Joost, Gaia, many different Firefox plugins, Flickr, Wixi, Shozu, Twitbin, and most recent Flock (there are many more but that is a different story).

I find that many of the products and services lack good user interfaces, are cluttered with functionalities that I find hard to understand to use, that monetizing schemes are in conflict with my preferences of usage of a service, and that often the service in the end doesn’t really provide me with real value (but that is another topic I could write about).

Developing an intuitive UI is really difficult.  Many startups seem to focus on functionality instead of UI. It is more important to have many cool features than to have few features that actually work in an intuitive way for a user. I find myself struggling with most of these services, which usually ends up in not using them. Now I may just be much less of a tech person than I thought I was (see my struggle with getting pictures taken with my mobile onto the Internet here), but I always have a simple 2 pass test that a service goes through. Only if it passes both steps, I would categorise it as being intuitive or even useful.

First of all, I try to use the service as your average Internet user. No manual reading, no assumptions on how things work, a clear mind and just work the thing (hé, I am a guy right!). If I can’t grasp the concept quick enough of find that the UI provides too much cluttering, functionalities I don’t get, or unnecessary steps I usually give up. Just a small example. It takes me almost twice as many button presses to send an SMS from a Samsung phone compared to a Nokia phone. I can’t believe that such a crucial and yet simple functionality (SMS) is being obscured by such a lousy interface. Or another one, notice that web 2.0 services tend to mask complex functionalities behind very small and often not intuitive icons (a few examples further below).

Second, if the service has passed my own observations in a positive way I increase the stakes and play my most evil trick. I ask my wife to give the service a go. Now my wife is the same age I am, 38. She is not a tech person, she is not into the latest Internet trends, but she does use Internet, e-mail, IM, her mobile phone, SMS, MMS, and even Mobile Internet occasionally. She usually nails the service for not providing anything useful (try explaining her why Twitter enriches her life, yeah right!) , but if she does try it, I can often see her struggle with operating the service because the interface was clearly not designed for a user like her. Only few services really pass both these tests.

In terms of mass adoption I always tend to think that a new service that is not intuitive to my wife (or people alike) will have a hard time to obtain millions of satisfied users. I do realise that a younger generation is in many ways more experienced, but in the end the same thing holds for them. If the user interface sucks, it will turn people off (you first need a compelling service of course!). They might adopt at first, but they will leave the service as soon as something cooler comes along. I have some examples of interfaces I looked at here. Please note that I don’t want to suggest that the examples are no good, but they do draw my attention in different ways:

That is why I’m so often skeptical about positive reviews of new services in the blogosphere. The people writing them are not your typical or average Joe. No, they are the tech creme de la creme. Bloggers tend to have a view of what is useful or creates value to a user that is totally disconnected from the mass that should adopt it. Bloggers are often technically more able (wow my N95 does WiFi) making them like features that no one else in their right mind would care about.

The same thing seems to hold for investors too. While they tend to focus on scalability and monetizing models, they seem less interested in services that actually provide value to its user in an intuitive and simple way.

But the real issue lies within the startups that create all these new services. Under the new “Internet Mantra” called “Let’s develop with our user community” they often seem to launch Beta services with only one objective:

Be the first to do something new, get attention from one of the bigger media companies, and sell and become rich and famous. Actually that is 5 goals now I come to think of it.

And look at the way they all copy each others styles, producing the same lousy UI designs  in the end. Another small example, have you ever browsed the web 2.0 directory here? Notice how many logo’s are the same style, sometimes even copying color styles, form, anything really, of their competitors? If web 2.0 has brought us anything it is the copying of designs that have been done already (yawn).

But as a service provider you only get one chance at making a good impression.  And UI design is so often lowest priority for Beta launches, even though the impact on the service’s success can be huge.  Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of community development. And you don’t have to get it all right at once, but you may want to put a little more effort in it before you come and harass me with it.

To all those startups that have great ideas I would say: guys, impress me with usability before you ask me to work with the service or even consider helping redesign your crappy UI for you!

How about you? What UI designs do you like? Are there any products, services or startups that did get it right?

Sending my mobile pictures to the Internet is easy (yeah right!)

I have always considered myself reasonably capable of trying out new technologies. I usually can set up devices without reading the manuals (not cool, right?), have a reasonable intuition to follow the manufacturers weird UI thinking in getting things working.

So, first I tried using MMS to send pictures of to my Facebook account. While the messages clearly reach my GMAIL, Facebook shows no sign of life. After a number of frustrating attempts I gave up and decided to twitter for help. Nearly killed myself while Twittering and driving into a traffic jam at 120 km an hour, but luckily I got good advice from Reihmo (thanks!), and decided to go for Shozu.

So setting up my Nokia N95 mobile to upload pictures to the Internet using a well known software tool like Shozu should be a breeze right?

Well, uhm, not quite. I connected my Mobile to the Internet (using GPRS, wasn’t anywhere near a HDSPA network). Browsed to Shozu and pressed the download button. The N95 froze on me. Hmm, probably a glitch. Let’s do that again. Halfway through the download process the N95 freezes yet again, but now it also lights up every led making it a very cool but seriously worthless flash light in the dark.

It took me 4 attempts to get the application. Installation went fine. So now I can upload my pictures to m Flickr account right? Well, first I need to get Flickr and Shozu to talk to each other. Just a simple “press the button here” on Shozu and it takes me to Flickr which asks me if it is alright if Shozu has access to my Flickr page. Sure, no problem. I’m all set now. Turns out I missed a crucial ok button back on the Shozu page. And, did I mention I had to use my computer instead of my mobile to perform all these tasks? Just didn’t get it on the smaller device.

Well I’m finally of to sent pictures to the Internet. I watched my 7 yr old son play a soccer match this Saturday. Took some  live action shots. Shozu kicks in nicely and asks me after every picture if I want to upload it to Flickr (why yes of course!). Exited I come home and immediately looked at my Flickr page using the computer. When pressing “My Photo’s” Flickr tells me “You have no uploaded photo’s”. What do you mean? Just uploaded a bunch of them from the soccer field.

Double-checked on my N95, Shozu tells me they have been uploaded. If I sent one again, Shozu tells me if I am sure I want to resend this picture. It still won’t show on my Flickr account.

After looking at help files, looking at settings on Flickr and Shozu and my N95, it turns out Shozu only sents things when connected to my home Wifi network. Changed the setting to include any Mobile network.

Phew, the pictures taken with my N95 in a zoo this weekend made it to Flickr. The battery of the N95 drained to death really fast though taking 5Mpix pictures and sending them off over the UMTS network.

So what is the moral of this story?

1. I suck at understanding new (mobile) technology. I am a technology wimp (hate to admit it)
2. The N95 is a great device but lacks battery power like any other great mobile device
3. Once installed Shozu works like a breeze, but setting it up to actually work is NOT easy
4. Spending more than 4 hours on installing and making things work is NOT COOL
5. Although companies like Shozu, Flickr and Nokia are already taking away a lot of complexity from the mobile user (thumbs up), there is still a LONG way to go to make things simple.

See my other post on why Mobile Internet is not going to break through for the masses (yet).

DO you have similar experiences? Anything better out there that is simple in installation and usage?