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Facebook (Phone) Home So the Facebook Phone did happen, and the phone itself couldn’t be more irrelevant. I mean it’s an ok phone, but it barely matters. What’s truly interesting is Facebook Home. As a user who constantly tries to limit his dependency on specific tools and likes to have the freedom to move, this seems terrible. Facebook knows too much already, and now it will know [and control] even more. I don’t want to live in a world where my life depends on a couple of companies like Google and Facebook. Except, that kind of already happened, and I pretty much want to continue on living.  As a researcher concerned with privacy issues, I really don’t like it. Then again, that means that altogether I don’t “like” over half the internet already. Home, fundamentally, changes nothing.   As a user experience designer, however, all I see is fertile land full of opportunity, where the amount [and quality] of social+mobile data could allow for amazing, never seen before kind of user experience. Well played, Facebook.
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Facebook (Phone) Home

So the Facebook Phone did happen, and the phone itself couldn’t be more irrelevant. I mean it’s an ok phone, but it barely matters. What’s truly interesting is Facebook Home.

As a user who constantly tries to limit his dependency on specific tools and likes to have the freedom to move, this seems terrible. Facebook knows too much already, and now it will know [and control] even more. I don’t want to live in a world where my life depends on a couple of companies like Google and Facebook. Except, that kind of already happened, and I pretty much want to continue on living. 

As a researcher concerned with privacy issues, I really don’t like it. Then again, that means that altogether I don’t “like” over half the internet already. Home, fundamentally, changes nothing.  

As a user experience designer, however, all I see is fertile land full of opportunity, where the amount [and quality] of social+mobile data could allow for amazing, never seen before kind of user experience.

Well played, Facebook.

Treason to design. I think this whole notion of touch friendly personal computers is finally getting under my skin. You see, there are several good reasons why this whole concept (as is) is detrimental to the user experience.  First, is the debate between direct and indirect manipulation. With your fingers you’re directly manipulating objects on the screen, whereas with a mouse you’re doing it indirectly. This “indirection” implies some level of abstraction that makes it less intuitive to use compared to direct manipulation, but at what cost?  Pointing with a mouse is both more precise and less tiring than using your finger, period. My two and a half years old nephew can use it without any professional training. I don’t think the “benefit” is worth it on personal computers. Then, theres the notion of “input on output”, which means using what used to be an output device only (the screen) and use it as input at the same time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, in this particular scenario, input on output means blocking vision on the screen   as you point at it. And, let’s not forget about the other fairly popular input device, the keyboard, which sits right next to my mouse or trackpad, making it really easy to work with them together. Not so easy with the main display. In the end, you get a more “intuitive” device (their pitch, not mine) for the cost of usability, precision and performance. There’s no real benefit. You can do the same things you do with a mouse, but slower and with more physical effort. They could’ve focused on new things you can only do with touch, like multitouch interaction, but didn’t. They expect you to use it once, wear it off, and go back to using the mouse/trackpad. I’m pretty sure the product designers behind these products are aware of all this, and they’re still selling a product as more “usable” while in fact it isn’t, probably because of several business reasons. Regardless the reasons, instead of actually improving the product, they just stapled a feature that works great on mobile devices and labeled as better. And that feels to like treason to design to me.  
Zoom

Treason to design.

I think this whole notion of touch friendly personal computers is finally getting under my skin. You see, there are several good reasons why this whole concept (as is) is detrimental to the user experience. 

First, is the debate between direct and indirect manipulation. With your fingers you’re directly manipulating objects on the screen, whereas with a mouse you’re doing it indirectly. This “indirection” implies some level of abstraction that makes it less intuitive to use compared to direct manipulation, but at what cost?  Pointing with a mouse is both more precise and less tiring than using your finger, period. My two and a half years old nephew can use it without any professional training. I don’t think the “benefit” is worth it on personal computers.

Then, theres the notion of “input on output”, which means using what used to be an output device only (the screen) and use it as input at the same time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, in this particular scenario, input on output means blocking vision on the screen   as you point at it. And, let’s not forget about the other fairly popular input device, the keyboard, which sits right next to my mouse or trackpad, making it really easy to work with them together. Not so easy with the main display.

In the end, you get a more “intuitive” device (their pitch, not mine) for the cost of usability, precision and performance. There’s no real benefit. You can do the same things you do with a mouse, but slower and with more physical effort. They could’ve focused on new things you can only do with touch, like multitouch interaction, but didn’t. They expect you to use it once, wear it off, and go back to using the mouse/trackpad.

I’m pretty sure the product designers behind these products are aware of all this, and they’re still selling a product as more “usable” while in fact it isn’t, probably because of several business reasons. Regardless the reasons, instead of actually improving the product, they just stapled a feature that works great on mobile devices and labeled as better. And that feels to like treason to design to me.  

Home Office of 2001. 

Besides the obvious thoughts on how current technology may limit our creative thinking about technology in the future and therefore why research is important, I found this to be a fascinating, and very early, example of video-prototyping; and very well executed if I may say so. It also reminded me of so many current “future tech” visions that I think will totally miss the mark.

Dynamic Physical Buttons on Touch Screens.

Now this is something I can take more seriously, it looks really promising. Specially if shape, size and location of buttons can be dynamically generated via software. The pace at which technology evolves never ceases to amaze me. Still, I’d be curious to see if performance has a significant increase in either speed or accuracy now that most users have been trained for years on touchscreen devices. And if so, in which set of tasks.

Bro-tip: I hope they release something my lab can buy so that I can play with it.

The Future of Glass.

I like watching these videos, they’re fun to watch and remind me of the existence of minority report. The hardware tech looks great, but the interaction designer and software engineer in me know better than this. We still have a long road to walk ahead of us.

Pro-tip: I can’t believe they didn’t show the mirror she used at the clothing store, talk about a wasted opportunity.

Infidelity Phone

Why do [some] Japanese users still hang on to dumb-phones? Privacy. I think this is a great example on how, even in this age of immensely quick technology progress on mobile devices, understanding users is still as important.

This specific brand of phones by Fujitsu, have a very specific set of privacy features that allow users to hide all contact or interaction with certain numbers they deem private. Sure, you can’t play Angry Birds on it, but for this specific (and large) set of users, privacy is their biggest core need and this product delivers the best user experience for them.

Understanding and solving a user’s key need is always more important that just handling more tech, hertz, cores and GB to them.

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