Ugh. Just ugh. I suppose I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that, in fact, most heavy users of Illustrator prefer this behavior, but I absolutely hate it. It used to be, if you selected a text block, and rotated it, it would, in fact, rotate the text to whatever angle you released the mouse at. Not any more. It now rotates the block, but not the text within:
Now, then, you must perform an extra Transform operation to get the text rotated. The UI for this sucks already, so I see this as a big step backwards in what is otherwise a really wonderful iteration on a generally great app. Fail!
Continuing on the theme of my last post, more good visuals to indicate to users what’s going on. In this case, the MobileMe preference pane shows what direction data will flow on the next sync.
Not only is there a great big toggle button with arrows (instead of a silly text label you have to decipher), the orange arrow moves in the direction chosen, reinforcing the decision. Nice!
Don’t just tell your users what to do, show them!Daily Mug Shot is your basic, Web 2.0-ey kinda social networkingish website, and on the whole not much to write home about. I did notice, though, how well they use arrows and clever placement to clue users into what to do. For example, on the home page:
Nice, huh? The great big arrow that breaks out of its container points the way towards the action, and calls out new content. Easy, classy, attractive. Win!
Even better, though, is another callout, used on the desktop reminder app (which, in itself is a brilliant idea). Once installed, the app pops up this nifty little block reminding you just what the hell the icon is in your menu bar:
Double win! Dare I say “epic win”? Nah, I don’t think I will; they’re such small features.
Buried options are irritating. Yesterday, I wanted to switch my external editor in iPhoto from Pixelmator to Photoshop, but had to hunt and hunt for the setting. Here’s the relevant options screen:
Totally obvious where to set it, right? Yeah, not so much. See, I don’t want to switch to editing every photo externally, so clearly “Edit photo:” isn’t what I want, given my mental model of my goal is “I need to change the external editor” versus “I need to change if photos are edited internally or externally.”
Too bad “Edit photo:” is only place the external editor is listed, as part of the drop-down:
Of course, by choosing Pixelmator, it sets the option to edit externally, but also pops up the standard Open dialog to locate the application’s binary. Ugh!
Here Apple has done what they (unfortunately) often do: go for simple over flexible, combining two discrete tasks into a single control. It fails both ways: if I want to just switch from internal to external edit, I get a dialog I don’t need and have to dismiss, and if I want to choose another program, but keep my default setting, I have to change that setting back after selecting the new editor. Would it really have killed them to add another line to the dialog with “External editor:,” a label for the current one, and a “Choose…” button? Nope. Sure, it would have added to the weight of the dialog, but it would have also saved me time in a) not having to remember the wacky, custom behavior of the control, which since seldom used is easy to forget, and saved me an extra step when I need to make a change.
I’ll admit I’ve designed stuff like this before, thinking “Hey, look how clever; I combined related tasks and eliminated a control. Yay!” But you know what happens every time I put something like this in front of users? They don’t get it, and rightly so. They’re not in on my cleverness, which came from , frankly, overthinking. They just want to get their task accomplished. We often forget that when a user sees a piece of UI for the first time, they’re not regarding it the same way we do in a design review, so even (to designers) too-long and too-dense dialogs can be successful, if they get the user from A to B as quickly as possible*. Start doing real user testing, Apple, and you’ll have fewer irritating fails like this one.
*=In fact, I just designed something like this last week. It’s atrociously cluttered, but it’s totally clear what the (complex) task is, and how to accomplish it. We’ll see if users agree!
In the 21st century, Google calls you. So, I’ve been using GrandCentral for quite a long time, and have been sorta cranky they’ve not done anything to it since the aquisition by Google. Well, it’s been rebranded Google Voice, and they’ve added some fun features along with generally Goog-ifying the UI (by which I mean: making it boring visually, but simple and functional). Here’s some of the hotness:
Voicemail Transcription
I use GrandCen Google Voice for phone-spam, mainly. I’m perfectly happy to give out the number wherever, post it on my website, etc. knowing that if it ever gets out of hand, I can have it stop calling my actual phone, or go away completely. Naturally, I don’t pick it up unless I know who’s calling, so the ability to screen callers’ voicemails without having to dial in or listen to the webified version is, well, fucking awesome.
SMS
Yay, another free SMS service. Yawn. But wait! In this case, the sender is properly displayed (unlike in Gmail chat), making it something practical to actually use (and you bet I will!). Also (and naturally), the messages are grouped and organized a lot like Gmail conversations, another big win:
Recording Greetings
The slickest bit, though, comes with recording names & greetings. Instead of having to initiate it from the device, with clunky touch-tone menus and the like, the service will give you a ring and ask you to start talking. Hang up, it adds it. Seamless. Beautiful.
There’s a (pretty obviously credible) rumor that Gmail integration will be coming soon. Since I already pipe all mail into Gmail regardless of source, here’s one more step towards the beauty of Exchange Unified Messaging without the peskiness and complete impracticality of Exchange*.
None of this is earth-shattering technically, but the seamlessness and dead-simple operation take the UX of previously-fiddly operations to another level. EPIC WIN!
* = unless you’re a huge organization with a ton of money to spend and people to devote their lives to keeping running
Your faithful correspondent, J.D. Welch, has been a professional print, web & UI designer for ten years. Starting with PageMaker version 3 in the early nineties, he has worked in media ranging from student newspapers to sprawling desktop applications to magazine ads to websites for nonprofits.
