Screenshots of common mobile flows.
Dan Nguyen has an interesting writeup of Dan McKinley’s talk about why the implementation of infinite scroll at Etsy didn’t work.
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I don’t think speed and volume are at fault here. I think the reason it didn’t work was because the kind of interaction the user has with the data is much more suited to a paginated interface than an infinite scroll. In the case of something like Etsy, the user is searching for something in particular within the list of results. In the case of something like Twitter, the user is scanning and consuming the flow of information. In the latter case, infinite scroll makes sense because the user is essentially reading or scanning down the list of tweets until they get bored. In the former case the user isn’t just linearly consuming the data, they’re mapping the information in their mind, trying to remember the items they like or think are worth researching further.
Samsung may be approaching a point where it wants to take more complete ownership of the mobile experience it offers customers. Today, Galaxy phones offer Samsung’s mobile experience combined with Google’s mobile experience. Tomorrow, the electronics giant might look to eliminate or at least change half of that equation.
One way to accomplish this would be to adopt a new OS over which it has more control. Tizen, for example, may turn out to be a workable option. Reports that Samsung plans to launch Tizen phones in 2013 from earlier this week have now been confirmed by Bloomberg Businessweek, and Samsung has said that it plans to launch multiple Tizen phones this year.
Is it ok to ask your users to learn your interface? As UI design is maturing and the web is becoming a more advanced land of complex interfaces is it now unreasonable for every feature to be instantly usable? Touch devices have also entered the mainstream and added a multitude of interactions that UI designers can lean on.
So, how do you know when it is ok to hide features and ask your audience to learn your application? Is ‘learnability’ now more important than usability?
[Factors considered are…]
Importance
Frequency
Cost
Alternatives
Most of the helium surrounding gamification is generated through discussions about the importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards and motivations. It waxes very lyrically on the idea that users like the intangible more, that the meaningful work of their lives is that which is divorced from monetary reward, which empowers them to self actualise and so find contentment. In the grander scheme of things, this is all true.
But in the smaller scale of a coupon scheme, a social news site or trying to create a sticky application, it’s total bullshit. Your service is not their life’s work, and most of the time your gamifying efforts are never going to get anywhere close to that level of significance in their lives. They are in large part only motivated by the extrinsic quantity (coupons, prizes, etc) that you offer. So stop kidding yourself. Most of the time motivations are not hard to understand.
There is no UX for us
That’s right! I said it. For us (designers, information architects, interaction designers, usability professionals, HCI researchers, visual designers, architects, content strategists, writers, industrial designers, interactive designers, etc.) the term user experience design (UX) is useless. It is such an over generalized term that you can never tell if someone is using it to mean something specific, as in UX = IxD/IA/UI#, or to mean something overarching all design efforts. In current usage, unfortunately, it’s used both ways. Which means when we think we’re communicating, we aren’t.
Here are some tips for effectively planning a design walkthrough:
Set an agenda.
Define the walkthrough’s scope.
Define the walkthrough’s objectives.
Create an appropriate environment for the review.
Schedule the session for the right time of day.
Determine the session’s duration.
Define the session’s ground rules.
Define your design goals.
Create reusable tools.
Define your outcomes.
Define your next steps.
