

Learning from "bad" UI (37signals on TripLog) - bdotdub
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1128-learning-from-bad-ui

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dlytle
Very nice article. I'm in agreement with the sentiments of TripLog's author;
the #1 impediment to this kind of data entry is convenience. The goal here is
to have users spend as little time as possible using the application.

It could definitely use some improvements visually... but for that
application, function should trump form if the two conflict.

~~~
bdotdub
True, but I feel there are better approached to include both.

Does anyone who has knowledge of the iPhone SDK know if you can make a regular
window scroll?

That would allow the "Latest Trips" to be slightly below everything, so its a
quick swipe to check.

~~~
ardit33
Yes, you can have views that scroll inside a window. It makes perfect sense
for long list of repetitive items (such as the list of videos in the youtube
app). It would be counterintuitive to have controls that are hidden, and you
have to scroll down to see them. Many users might not notice them.

BUT, I still think that ui is poorly designed. The iPhone SDK, has a plethora
of ready views and controls, or you can even make your own customized view, if
you think what the iPhone SDK is providing is not good enough.

So, I think the author of the app didn't want to go the extra mile, to create
something that is both useful and appealing.

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tialys
Honestly, I think if the colors were just better picked it wouldn't look so
awful at first glance. It's designed for speed, but that doesn't mean you have
to make it bright and oddly colored.

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bprater
One of the things I learned while playing Warcraft was the importance of
scalable interfaces.

When I first started, I was lucky to get my character to move across the
screen in a straight line. I didn't know what a mod was, I just wanted to kill
squirrels.

By the time I joined a guild and we were raiding high-level instances, I had
to have a screen full of mods that tracked every nuance of my characters (and
raids) performance. Without them, I would have felt naked and nearly unable to
play.

As developers, I think we often forget that folks go through a very rough
period of learning how to use an app to being able to quickly navigate it.
Once they hit the latter period, there would be no harm in offering them
additional power.

~~~
0x44
Blizzard does not offer additional power, it's only through the use of third-
party add-ons that you have it.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Blizzard offers the Lua scripting interface which facilitates the add-ons. It
seems to have been a successful strategy.

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bscofield
I'm going to repost here what I did there, so sorry to anyone who reads both:

I’m sorry, but I’ve read his defense – and this analysis – and I still say
FAIL . If speed’s the primary concern, why would you use the scrolling widget
to enter the mileage? That’s going to be measurably slower and less accurate
than a simple text field that pulls in the dialing/numeric keyboard.

My impression is that they’re operating entirely without user testing – their
intentions are correct (make if fast, etc.), but they’re unwilling, unable, or
too rushed to verify their decisions by watching people use various
alternatives.

~~~
webwright
Hrm-- it'd be interesting to time the two options.

With a text field you have a tap to edit, a tap to switch to the numerical
keyboard (unless you can start there with the SDK), a tap for each # (say 3 on
average), and a tap to save the record and send the keyboard away. That's 5-6
taps with a fair bit of distance between them on the screen, assuming that you
don't have to drag the largely keyboard-obscured screen around to see other
data ("I know I it's a few miles further than the post office... What did I
enter in for that?").

OTOH, I just tried to simulate the odometer with the alarm clock setting
controls on the iPhone (which is similar) and the flick-tap that it allows is
pretty damn fast with zero major screen changes.

I find the iPhone keyboard to be a PITA and typos abound, even after practice.
Editing a text fiend would bring up the keyboard, obscuring a LOT of info.

I'm not disagreeing, per se-- just saying that it's not so cut and dry that I
wouldn't test the two side by side for speed/learning curve.

~~~
bscofield
At least with iPhone web apps, you can bring up the numeric keyboard by
default - and with two fingers, it's much faster and more accurate for
entering digits than the scroller (I use alarm clock quite often, and can't
stand it - overshooting numbers all the time, for instance).

You're correct that the keyboard would obscure the rest of the interface, but
you shouldn't often need to see the rest of the screen when entering mileage.
If it's a frequent trip, for instance, you'd just use the frequent trip
shortcut.

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ojbyrne
The one thing that stands out for me is that TripLog has inadvertently
generated a ton of publicity (and maybe a bunch of people willing to offer
free help). The next version will have a professional UI and sell a gazillion
copies.

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josefresco
I'm begging 37signals to take a crack at an improved interface. Sure TripLog
will get even more free PR but I'm really curious to see how they can improve
it.

Put your UI skills where your mouth is.

~~~
alabut
They did demonstrate their UI skills, by deconstructing the logic behind what
the TripLog interface was trying to do and showing the logical groupings of
related info. Translating that into visuals is simply the next step - scroll
down to sanj's comment or go to daringfireball's followup post for links to
visuals the 37s discussion sparked - and unfortunately, many people see it as
the _only_ step.

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edw519
The one thing I noticed from the Flickr comments, 37signals comments, and the
2 threads here is that there's a lot of feedback _from_ programmers _to_
programmers.

Fine. Lots of good data. Maybe even some that will go into product
improvement. It's a necessary but not sufficient step.

What we really need is feedback from paying customers, legitimate prospects,
and monetizable eyeballs. We can critique each other's stuff all day long, but
sooner or later, we need to get this in front of the users.

There's a pretty good tradition here at hn called, "What do you think of my
app..." There's usually a lot of good feedback, but don't get fooled into
thinking this is anything other than pre-alpha.

After reading all of this drama surrounding TripLog, now I'm curious what the
_real_ users think.

(My customers always have additional and sometimes very different feedback
from "hackers". One of their biggest differences is regarding the mouse. Some
of them never want to touch it during heavy data entry sessions. Talk about
something drastically changing the UI...)

~~~
kirubakaran
I thought hackers despise the mouse more than anyone else.

~~~
edw519
Right. But they think everyone else likes it.

I have a customer with 2 call centers, one on GUI and one on green screen. The
green screen center consistently beats the the GUI center by 2 minutes per
call every month. Drives him nuts. He can't move people from the green screen
center to the GUI center or they quit in a week (too much clicking to get
anything done). He asks me why it has to be that way. I say it doesn't, but
whoever wrote it probably didn't know any better.

~~~
JesseAldridge
What's a green screen? You mean like a terminal with green characters?

~~~
edw519
Just imagine this with 80 columns, 24 rows, a black background, a lime green
foreground, and no mouse:

    
    
      |==========================================================|
      | 21:33             CALL CENTER SYSTEM            07/09/08 |
      |                                                          |
      | ENTRY TYPE: __                          OPERATOR ID: 127 |          
      |  CALL CODE: __                            SHIFT NBR: 2   |
      |   CUST NBR: ______  ____________________ AGENT MODE: 3   |
      |                     ____________________                 |
      |                     ____________________                 |
      |                     __________, __ _____                 |
      |                                                          |
      |   CHANGE CODE: __                                        |
      |     CALLER ID: ___/___-____                              |
      |  REQUEST TYPE: __ ______________                         |
      |       MONITOR: ___                                       |
      |                                                          |
      |  COMMAND: _____________________                          |
      |                                                          |
      |==========================================================|

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jamesbritt
"When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the
web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user."

The sort of thing that pains me, in so much as I will not always be a first-
time user; my time as a first-timer is nothing compared to time being an
experienced user.

I'd rather have to spend a bit of time getting going it if pays off in being
able to do things fast and reliably down the line.

Ideally there should be ways to switch from the Newbie UI to the Old Hand UI,
but most of what I see seems to forget that second part.

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run4yourlives
Well, all I can say is that I hope to release an app with this much free
publicity one day. I'm sure it's going to help his bottom line.

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auston
I honestly believe a contextual UI for TripLog would be an order of magnitude
easier to use.

Gmail makes GREAT use of contextual UI elements.

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youngnh
with all the furor, it seems like its only a matter of time until someone
actually redoes this guy's interface for him.

~~~
marijn
Ah, you're giving people too much credit. Collective bitching is easy and fun,
constructive work is _hard_.

~~~
sanj
Turns out he's not:

<http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6351/iphoneua8.jpg>

<http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6964/triploggw5.png>

<http://ralovely.com/downloads/triplog1040.png>

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noel_gomez
wonder how many copies have been sold so far

