Efficacy and Need for User Interface Design

Many technological innovations rely upon User Interface Design to elevate theirtechnical complexity to a usable product. Technology alone may not win useracceptance and subsequent marketability. The User Experience, or how the userexperiences the end product, is the key to acceptance. And that is where UserInterface Design enters the design process. While product engineers focus on thetechnology, usability specialists focus on the user interface. For greatest efficiency andcost effectiveness, this working relationship should be maintained from the start of aproject to its rollout.User Interface Design increases the intuitiveness, efficiency, and comfort level with aproduct, which translates into product acceptance and use. One requires both goodtechnology and usability for a successful product launch. Primarily, userinterface design revolves around the ideas of Information Architecture and Usability Study. Their brief are described below:

• Information Architecture
  

Information Architecture is a science and an approach towards designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentationof data and information. The goal of information architecture is to enable users to find the information they are seeking in a clear manner which is done by organizing theinformation for efficient navigation, layout and search functionality. Well-planned architecture is a great boon both for consumers and the producers. Accessing a sitefor the first time, consumers can quickly understand it effortlessly. They can quicklyfind the information they need, thereby reducing time wasted on both finding information and not finding information. Producers of web-sites also benefit becausethey know where to place the new content without disrupting the existing content andsite structure. Information Architecture is not about graphic design or programming or userexperience testing. Rather it is a mediator solution which helps create road-map for thedevelopment of an application.The job of an information architect can beformulated as a person, who: • Determines what content and functionality the site will contain • Specifies how users will find information in the site by defining its organization,navigation, labeling, and searching systems • Maps out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.

• Usability Study

Usability is a multidimensional attribute that relates to the impact a product has on itsend-users. In general it refers to the effectiveness and the efficiency with which acustomer can do their tasks with the product, and their overall satisfaction with thatprocess. Usability is a key design and marketing concept meaning the extent to whicha product is safe, comfortable, effective, and efficient. Usability refers to the ease withwhich a User Interface can be used by its intended audience to achieve defined goals. It incorporates number of factors such as design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and more. Usability can be measured objectively via performance errorsand productivity, and subjectively via user preferences and interface characteristics.Web design features that affect usability include navigation design and content layout.Remarkable diversity of human abilities, backgrounds, motivations, personalities, cultures and work styles are the challenges faced by interface designers.To develop high quality, there are three keywords that the crossdisciplinary interface development team needs to keep in mind, which are: Usability, Applicability and Utility. By Usability, we imply factors such as speed of learning, rateof errors by users, retention over time, subjective satisfaction of the user. ByApplicability, we mean that the interface is accepted and appreciated with peoplecoming from wide culturally diverse groups, from different age groups, possessing different cognitive and perceptual abilities, having different personality styles. By Utility,we mean that the interface should be useful and should satisfy the need of the usersthat the interface is intended for. This is one measure, which is most important to gain customer satisfaction and appreciation. Jakob Nielsen, usability guru has proposed 10 set of heuristics to evaluate websites and they are globally accepted. Click here to go through them.

Thus, as evident Interface Design is a highly specialized and creative field encompassing many areas of study , which at times does get driven by sheer common sense.

-Arpit-

Webby Awards

Though Iam little late in posting about Webby Awards, but these are one awards which really deserve a post.

Webby Awards

The leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality.Established in 1996, the Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 500-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.

This year on May 3rd this academy unveiled their choices for Webby Winners, and netizens from around the world cast more than two-hundred thousand votes to determine Webby People's Voice Winners.
Here are links to few which simpy have to be visited:

1. Best Navigation/Structure Website: 10X10 news site
2. Best Personal WebSite: Rtm86.com
3. Best Games Site: Metamorphical.net
4. Uncategorized: Don't Click It
   

For more Webby Awards, click here

Happy Surfing!!

-Arpit-

Google Logos

When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance.

Google - our favourite search engine, displays different logos from time to time. Here are some of my favourite google's holiday logos:

1. Leonardo da Vinci's Birthday - April 15, 2005

2. Leap Year - February 29, 2004

3. Happy Valentine's Day! - February 14, 2004

4. Google celebrates Einstein's birthday - March 14, 2003

5. Father's Day - June 16, 2002

For more of these logos, click here.

Microsoft's XBox 360

Microsoft's XBox 360 is the future of digital entertainment. It boasts of the most popular and stunning games, a DVD player, internet connectivity, and plethora of intelligent services. With so much to XBox 360, some people have gone to the extent of saying that this is not merely a gaming console, its here to change your lifestyle in social terms forever.


Unlike the first-generation XBox, the 360 is sleek and concave, with optional face plates and a glowing green on/off button. XBox 360 is very un-Microsoft because it reaches acme of innovation and as we all are familiar with Microsoft's bullish work culture and with innovation least on its priority list. This has been made possible because XBox 360 was developed in a far-off simplistic, unimpressive Microsoft Center called The Millenium. This is the place where all the Microsoft's money losing projects are done. But in this project Bill Gates is betting billions of dollars. XBox 360 has been driven by one of their head shaven whacky VP named J Allard who is often called as "Baby Gates". Even Bill Gates admits that he and Allard are very alike and share the same insane passion for the technology. Here's J Allard for you (the brain behind new XBox)




Microsoft has sold 20 million of XBox 360's predcessor since its introduction in 2001. The machine has outsold Nintendo's GameCube console and has seen its momentum grow dramatically as it gets more mature. Despite its successes, the Xbox is merely an also-ran when compared to sales of Sony's PlayStation 2, which launched a year earlier and has sold nearly 87 million units. By being first to market in the next generation with the launch of XBox 360, Microsoft hopes to reverse its market position with Sony and take a leadership role in the industry.

Visit XBOx 360's home page.

Organic Information Design

Very few design techniques exist for modelling dynamic information which is primarily because dynamic information continously changes data taken as input from one or many sources. Very few techniques exist for visualizing dynamic information because of the extremely large quantities of data is to be considered and also extents and bounds of the data set are not clear as well.

Organic Information Design is a design technique that augments the perception of qualitative features of dynamic data by co-relating the design to the traits of organic systems which respond to a complex and changing enviornment similar to that of dynamic information.
This design technique maps the nine properties which are necessary components of primitive oragnic systems to design of dynamic information. These properties are listed below and what they mean in this design technique is listed:

1. Structure - It talks about how the nodes of the system are associated with different sizes and shapes.
   
2. Appearence - By changing the size of some of the nodes, appearence of the system changes and those nodes call attention to themselves.
3. Metabolism - The rules of metabolism are at the heart of what drives the system, the basis for what will result in an appearence that is qualitatively 'well fed' or 'sick'.
4. Growth - In computational medium, it refers to changes in the underlying structure of the data coming from an information source. Atrophy allows element to wither and die when they become no longer pertinent. A balance of growth and atrophy is important because the presentation space on hand is finite. There are both physical and cognitive limitations that affect the presentation space.
5. Homeostasis - It balances the system and does not allow values to run out of control which might cause the system to blow up. For example we can apply certain maximum limits to the values.
6. Response - There are three sets of response-stimulus rules: composition rules, data rules and interaction rules. Each rule taks about the response of the system when an activity occurs.
   
7. Adaptation - It brings with it ability for a visualization to stretch, allowing the representation to slowly shift based on new input.
   
8. Movement - Due to nature of human visual system, movement immediately attracts attention and control focus. By definition, it is one of the most dominating factor in temporal behaviour.
   
9. Reproduction - Here we are considered with the scenario of what happens when new data is added to the existing system, causing new elements to inherit characteristics from siblings that already exist in composition.
   

Organic Information Design is very useful for qualitative representation of information but fails for quantitative analysis or information which lacks structure.

"Organic Information Design" is the master thesis of Benjamin Fry submitted to MIT, Media Labs. To read the complete thesis, click here.

Technocrat speaks

A budding ICT (Information & Communication Technology) engineer from a burgeoning institute namely Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), who has always been in love with technology, takes a step further and moves into the phenomenon world of blogging .. why? Well, in this global scenario and with the advent of digital media, its technology which definitely moves one and all and with blogging gaining hyperbolic popularity in a very short period of time, it was only inevitable that this techie explores the world of blogging.

technophobic.blogspot.com is a space where this techie will be running loose to satisfy his urge of sharing knowledge and strengthen the never ending learning curve.
Hoping this to be an eternal technological endeavour!!

-Arpit-