Eye Tracking: The 'F' Shaped Pattern

The 'F' shaped pattern

F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website’s words in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school.

According to Nielsen (2006) users tend to focus on the left side of the body of a webpage when reading and fixate very little on information located on the right-hand side. Users maintain this ‘F’ viewing pattern with a few horizontal scans, the first one being longer than the second and a long vertical scan (Figure 1). Implications of this are that users may miss valuable information located on the right-hand side of the page.

To read more, click here.

Mobile Revolution: Apple's iPhone

Get ready for the Next Big Thing!

The mobile revolution is in place: iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

Related Links:

• Apple's Official Site
• YouTubeVideo
• Live from MacWorld

Cheers!

Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic

A great post examining the two contrasting visual approaches employed by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in their presentations.
You will definitely enjoy this one. Click here to read this great post.

Cheers!

UI Cartoon

Designing using a systematic process based on the best usability practices is our mantra!

Ms Dewey

A search engine with a 'sexy' difference!
Ms Dewey comes and asks you strange questions, says spooky thing to catch your attention, powered by Microsoft's Live Search, Ms Dewey is an amazaing search engine.

Cheers!

Now thats Collaboration!

Talking with Orkut

Yes, you read it right.. talking with Orkut is now possible. Google is continuing with its innovation process and has built Google Talk into Orkut.

Sounds groovy.. right? For more details and how to use it, click here.

Cheers!

The Google Story

The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed is a great read. Get your copy soon and learn great things about its founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, their philosophy and the inside world of Googleplex.


If you are a big fan of Google, drop in regularly to Google's Official Bog for latest insights from the hottest firm.

The Dilbert Principle

With appraisal at my workplace around the corner and seeing the signs of things to come, it was inevitable for me to fall to the Dilbert Principle.

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing.

How true the dude Scott Adams was or is!

Have a look at one of the strip:

Dilbert truly rocks, to read more on Dilbert, click here.

[Post inspired by enginerd]

Cheers!

Everyday Usability

Scene at Bangalore Railway Station. Where do we go for platform 5, right or left?

For some more fun examples of everyday usability, click here.

End of an Era?

With 7 time World Champion, Micheal Schumacher retiring from Formula 1, he has left behind a huge void in the Ferrari camp and perhaps in F1.

He graced F1 for 16 years and broke almost all possible records. But he would be just a touch disappointed that he couldn't win the Brazilian Grand Prix, his career's final race.

Many believe that F1 minus Micheal will never be the same and may even cease to exist. But as is always the case, with end of one era, a new one begins..

If that's the case perhaps we may now witness the new era of the Spaniard, the 2 time world champion, Fernando Alonso..

Long Live Formula 1..

Cheers!

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation (HE) is defined as "Inspection of an interface against usability heuristics, with the goal of identifying usability issues." It is conducted by 3-5 trained evaluators and it does not involve end users.

Problems can be identified across several UI categories - Branding, Site Strategy, Navigation, Layout, Wording, Graphics, Animation, Color, Fonts, Control Elements, Web Standards, Error Handling etc.

Usually following severity types are considered:

1. Showstoppers – Catastrophic issues that prevent people from accomplishing their goals.
2. Major Issues – Issues that cause waste of time, increased learning and error rates
3. Irritants – Minor cosmetic or consistency issues that slow users down slightly / are a minimal violation of usability guidelines

Here are couple of examples of a typical HE:

Cheers!

Particpation Inequality

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Click here to read the article by Jakob Nielsen where he talks how participation inequality affects the web.

Cheers!

Frame by Frame Playback in Windows Media Player 10/11

Just in case you have not tried this yet…

You can do frame-by-frame playback in Windows Media Player 10 by enabling ‘Play Speed Settings’. (View > Enhancements > Play Speed Settings)

Cheers!

Kicking Nielsen!

Celebrating the 100th post at technophobic via some skepticism!

I always thought Jakob Nielsen was the unchallengable guru of usability but here are a list of few articles which challenge his invincibility and mock the king of usability! Check them out..

1. Jakob Nielsen Drinking Game

2. How usable is Jakob Nielsen?

3. Spanking Jakob Nielsen



Cheers!

How UI design has to incorporate the good and the bad..

An interesting article by Mike Padilla tells us that how designing the UI is fundamentally an exercise in compromise—not compromise between designers and other project stakeholders —but compromise between the drawbacks and benefits of design decisions.

Click here to read the article.

Cheers!

Card Sorting Technique

How to discover the user’s model of information space?
How to start with the information architecture process?
How to validate the information architecture?

Though these questions don't have a straight forward answer, but Card Sorting Technique eases out most of the complexity from these questions.

Card Sorting is a technique for exploring how people group items, so that you can develop structures that maximize the probability of users being able to find items. It is a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method, which serves as input into your information design process. Card sorting generates an overall structure for your information, as well as suggestions for navigation, menus, and possible taxonomies.

How it is done?

[via useit]

Card sorting is done by giving users a bunch of index cards with concepts from the server written on them. The users were then asked to sort the cards into piles such that cards representing similar concepts were in the same pile. The users were also allowed to group piles to indicate looser levels of similarity, and we finally asked the users to name their piles. These names provided us with additional insights into the users' mental model of the information space and served as inspiration for the names we finally chose.

For more information, you can visit this link.

Cheers!

Engineer or Designer?!

I was in hibernation for last few months but Iam back now in a new avatar! From being an engineer I have turned into a User Interface Designer in one of India's top-notch corporate design setup.

Interesting? Well I will furnish more details later on.. for the time being, here is a pic of my office building which is famously known as The Studio.

"CON"

Say the word "CON" in front of Bill Gates and his face is bound to get red because of embarrassment. Apparantely on Windows XP, one cannot create a folder named "CON". Creating a new folder with the name "CON" just renames it to "New Folder". Microsoft team has no answers for this screw-up. Don't belive it, try for yourself!

Cheers!

Why Google needs Orkut?!

A ubiquitous question which has been even answered many a times. But for the ignorant junta Jeremy Zawodny lucidy explains why Google badly needs Orkut and how they are banking on the viral fever of social networking sites.

Click here to read the article.

Cheers!

PS: Feels good to be back at the helm after a long hiatus. Lot of good things have happened but lot of confusion has also persisted, but its time to move on!