UI design and Usability
This category displays all articles that relate to UI (User Interface) design and usability.
Nokia ... the drama continues
If you read my last post about the troubles I was having with the atrocity that is the Nokia 5800 then you will probably know whats coming next if not then you had better read this.
Since my last post I have spoken at length to my service provider who have sent me a replacement phone (the exact same model) at the cost of £15 to me for my handset cover. It only took a couple of weeks before problems started to arise in handset no.2. once again due to the cheap quality of the screen it is damned near impossible to do anything right the first time even using the stylus makes sending the simplest or typing a phone number a pain staking task, to the point where whilst composing a text message recently it took 3 attempts to type the word "about" as for some reason unknown to me when ever I typed this word it came up with "fant?" instead, now I'm no expert but seeing as the latter doesn't even begin with the letter A and as anyone who has seen an alpha numeric keypad before knows A and F are not even on the same key so the only way this would be possible would be if either I had monumentally big thumbs, the stylus was in fact a scaffolding pole, or the keys are doing a merry dance around the keypad.
Another issue I have with this phone is how slow and unresponsive the touch screen is when navigating the menus, it sometimes takes 20 to 30 seconds before the application or function you have pressed actually opens. As you can probably tell all my problems with this phone so far are to do with the touchscreen and the software and this one is no exception once again when typing a name or number keys occasionally stick meaning you end up with several of the same character in the message or phone number you are trying to type, now I know this is a hazard on a phone with a normal push button keypad where you push a key and it gets stuck meaning you have to try and free it before you can carry on but on a touchscreen too??? surely this is something that should have been eradicated with the invention of the touchscreen?
Despite having the handset replaced by my service provider, this has not and will not solve the issue of the battery becoming lose and moving around meaning the phone still turns itself off without warning. I also have so many issues with the OS on this phone, as I mentioned last time the communities app still bombards your image gallery with images it has decided to cache (including images from pages you haven't even visited, almost as though its trawling Facebook and caching images on the off chance you might go to that page at some point in your life), well I have since realised this is just the tip of the iceberg, when deleting apps from the phone they don't actually delete everything to do with them, instead you are left with various cache and config files and directories scattered across both the built in phone memory and the memory card, and as far as I can see there are no built in cleanup utilities to help clear this minefield of old unnecessary data.
Considering Nokia have labelled this handset a "smart phone" I have to say that I quite honestly cannot see anything smart about it. If you would like to actually use the phone for its intended purpose then do yourself a favour, DON'T opt for the Nokia 5800 as you will more than likely spend more time shouting at it and ripping your hair out than actually using it, I personally will be doing my best to steer clear of any Nokia devices from now on.
*EDIT* - since writing this article I have spoken to my service provider who asked me to perform a hard reset of the handset, this has not solved any of the issues mentioned in either of my blog posts.
bad UI in real life
I kind of stole this idea from the guys at Less Everything, but I just wanted to share my thoughts as I have stumbled across what I believe to be a bad UI design in real life.
The culprit is the Sony Ericsson K810i mobile phone, on the whole this phone is very good, very stylish, a good sized screen,crystal clear sound when making voice calls, it does everything you would expect from a mobile phone.
However the problem I have with it is that the buttons are just too small and fiddly, the key pad is the perfect size but sadly it is spoiled by the tiny and fiddly silver buttons they have used in place of something more standard and much easier to use, unfortunately these buttons would be fine if you have thin fingers but for someone like me who has pork sausages for fingers I found I tend to spend more time deleting spelling mistakes in text messages or retyping numbers all because I've inadvertently hit two buttons instead of one.
I'm all for making things pretty for the user whether it be a website, or a piece of electrical hardware, but if its not usable by the majority then the design is pointless.
application of the moment
I know this has been about for some time now, but one of my favourite applications at the moment is Spotify (www.spotify.com) for those of you who don’t know what it is, its an application that gives you the freedom to listen to any song you want when ever or where ever you want. All you do is register for a Spotify account, these cost anything from Free to £9.99 per month, then you download and install the application, and away you go free streaming music direct to your computer.
It works in a similar way to most common music players such as iTunes, and has a lot of cool features such as a list of all your most recent searches, you can set up playlist’s and even share them with friends.
Spotify is a brilliant little application, and it’s so simple to use, however there are a few minor drawbacks, for instance if you sign up to a free account you get adverts playing between songs every half hour or so, but personally as the adverts do not tend to come up that often I personally don’t find this to be much of an issue, the only other real problem I have with it at the moment is that it only currently works on Windows or Mac OS X, and they have yet to develop the application for the Linux platform, there are ways to get the Windows version working using Wine (winehq.og) but this can be quite tricky depending on your system.
I already love this application and happily recommend it to any of my friends, music lovers every where should definitely give it a try.
I Dropped IE6!
That's right as a developer I have decided it is time to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 in my work, there are a lot of reasons for this, a side from the fact that Microsoft always seem to fall short of fully supporting web standards in favour of adding some other weird and wacky ideas, Internet Explorer 6 is 8 years old now and has been followed up with version 7 which while it still doesn't fully support web standards made a much better attempt than version 6.
Another reason is the amount of time that has to be dedicated to making applications look and function properly on IE6, if anything I would personally say I have spent more time trying to make things work with this browser than any other and it has got to the point now where I personally feel like I am flogging a dead horse.
It's time for Microsoft to lay IE6 to rest.
