Tag Archives: UI

F@#$ You! Password Rule

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In the name of UX and Holy Interaction Design and Information Architect Perspective, I respect Adobe’s effort regarding the coolness and awesomeness it offers to billions of designer around the world. Yet on there Job site I still need to follow the Password rules as shown in the screenshot.

Password rules are so 90s, there should be only minimum length restriction, and rest should be the responsibility of the User. Because Internet already trained those who are using websites for Job Search that Password should be easy to memorize and tricky enough for someone else.

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Usability Guideline by Jakob Nielsen

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So the limitation is pretty clear when you are developing Mobile Apps: Tiny Screen, User have short-attention span, they simple-app not a feature-freak-app, the Jackob Neilsen put it nicely and following is the quote I love most from his article:

People want me to give hard and fast rules: don’t show more than X menu items; don’t write more than Y words per page; nothing should be more than Z clicks from the homepage. Sadly, UI design doesn’t work that way.

Observation: Application Icon Page

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While back I was talking with my friends about the iPhone Revolution, and I was kinda disagree with them that this is anything bit revolutionary device in terms of UI, it is a device that actually “evolve” the UI and then it packages itself  in such a way that from surface it does look like the “Revolutionary Device” and it lead the Android UI which heavily borrowed the application item representation from PC/Mac.

Obviously we all know that Android is actually took some “hints” from iPhone, and you know where else these Android & iPhone got inspiration, yup, one and only Windows Phone 6.0/6.5. This last sentence will make some outburst, however here is what I experienced since April 2003 till today’s mobile phone usage.

Sidekick Black & White: Scrolling Menu (different approach)

Nokia 3660: Menu Screen and Icon Placement. (video)

Nokia 3660

Nokia N91: For Music Player, but same Application Menu Page

Nokia E65: Icon on Taskbar.

T-Mobile Dash: Menu Page/Start Page

iPhone 1, iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS: The whole package was surreal that’s why I bought it.

HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7: Content oriented approach, Outlook, Office & People integration, to the point and content specific-only.

Now lets see the common part that still exists in to our so called “Revolutionary Devices” or Post-PC Devices:

  1. We are still seeing the “Menu Items” in an icon format since the inception of GUI on Desktop Computer starting from XEROX and then popularized by Apple and then the Windows inspiration from Apple.
  2. The Taskbar inception as we can see in T-Mobile Dash, Nokia E65 etc. This is also borrowed from Desktop PC/Mac’s task bar idea.
  3. Under-usage of the Desktop/Home-screen. Where as iPhone totally got-rid off from it since there debut. Android did trying to fit in the Widget placement approach. The winner in my point of view is Windows Phone 7, there desktop is somewhat talking to me according to what the People to whom I am connected is saying, calendar is more meaningful.

These are my observation so far that we are still lingering on the Icons and still borrowing it to the Post-PC Devices, not utilizing the full potential of Mobile Devices and trying our best to stuff the unneeded icons, is Windows Phone 7 trying the different approach? I think so it is, however as usual Microsoft is always a failure when it comes to a proper execution fresh ideas. I am still hoping that industry will try to adopt the idea of “Focus on Content’ rather than glossifyin the app icons representation in those Post-PC Device.

User Experience in my opinion is the content-focus approach &  representing it in a way to communicate the need properly is what is missing in mobile industry (I haven’t used the HP’s WebOS and RIM upcoming Mobile OS).

Swap.com Search Fail

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Okay, I am kind of little frugal when it comes to buying books, I do look for a good deal or willing to buy it used online mostly from Amazon.com until and unless if it is not available anywhere in Used condition, then my second choice is Swap.com, a cool website where you can trade-in your unwanted CDs, DVDs, Video Games and Books with something you want. Pretty cool.

However I hate there search feature, they implemented in such a way that it won’t search the “Complete Title”. Instead the search engine at Swap.com is actually using the first three words of the book. Good stuff is it does offer the auto-complete. But sometime when you copy paste the desired book name in to the search box and try to search the desired keyword at Swap.com you will be disappointed.

Check out the following video:

I think the best way to implement the search is using the “Like” Feature and and also make sure the “:” is not hurting your Search Queries, sometime those special character become too annoying and best way to deal with them is encode them in HTML and then decode them in to the unicode for your database query related operation.

If you have more ideas about Search Logics and Algorithm please do let me know in the comments section.

Thanks

My Idea Wall

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Today I start using the Posterous Blogging Service for one single purpose, to bookmark my finds in Blog Style. Although there are many public bookmarking services out there, however I need something more like Blog and able to make the “Tweet Shout” while doing it. So there you go :

http://mmudassir.posterous.com/

It will contain all articles, images and videos/audios  that I will be using for my UX, UI, Design and  Idea development.

Interfaces and Future

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These days tap tap, flick left & right, touch and hold becomes our natural interaction on mobile devices, now here comes the Kinect, no touchy touchy all waving the gestures in the air, and making sure  device attached to it do understand and translate the gestures.

Then we just entering in to the “3D” Hologram Interface, and the first entry in this category that is portable so far I can see ishttp://gizmodo.com/5040631/3d-app-converts-iphone-into-window-to-alternative-world . So that makes me think that evolution is speeding at 100 MPH and if we keep going in this direction, the Minority Report Interface, Star Trek like Gadgets will be a toy.

Let see how things will surprise us, till then we can enjoy the happiness of “tap tap, flick left & right, touch and hold” bliss and the big treat on this Christmas with Kinect.