Vincent Gable’s Blog

October 19, 2009

Less is More

Filed under: Design,Programming,Quotes,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on October 19, 2009

Fundamentally, a computer is a tool. People don’t use computers to use the computer, they use a computer to get something done. An interface helps people control the computer, but it also gets in their way. Inevitably, any on-screen widget is displacing some part of the thing the user is trying to manipulate.

As an infamous example, expanding Microsoft Word’s toolbars leaves no room for actually writing something,

word-all-toolbars-small.png

(Screenshot by Jeff Atwood)

Users don’t want to admire the scrollbars. Truth be told, they don’t even want scrollbars as such, they just want to access content and have the interface get out of the way.

—Jakob Nielsen

Show The Data

I highly recommend Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It’s probably the most effective book or cultivating a distaste for graphical excesses.

Tufte’s teachings are rooted in static print. But many of the principles are just as valuable in interactive media. (And static graphics are still very useful in analysis and presentation. Learning how to graph better isn’t a waste of time.)

Tufte’s first rule of statistical graphic design is, “Show the data” , and it’s an excellent starting point for interface design as well.

Cathy Shive has an excellent post expanding on Tufte’s term Computer Administrative Debris.

The Chartjunk blog showcases a few real-world examples of Tuftian redrawings.

Get Out of My Mind

Learning happens when attention is focused. … If you don’t have a good theory of learning, then you can still get it to happen by helping the person focus. One of the ways you can help a person focus is by removing interference.

–Alan Kay, Doing With Images Makes Symbols.

Paradoxically then, the better the design, the less it will be noticed. We should strive to write our interfaces in invisible ink.

April 15, 2009

Beyond Two Page Programs

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Programming,Quotes | , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on April 15, 2009

And one of the things that is disturbingly true about most novices on computers is that about 2 pages of program is the maximum they can handle. They like to spread it out, use their visual field as an extension of their short term memory

–Alan Kay From Doing With Images Makes Symbols

A few thoughts on this phenomenon.

A denser, more concise, less “English like” programming language would counter-intuitivly be easier for novices to use, if it let them keep their project below the 2-page limit.

Does this limit increase with more and bigger displays?

Do graphical programming language change anything? It seems like they might “scale” better on a very large display. But in my (albeit limited) experience they are much less compact then textual source code. And it’s not clear to me they support abstraction as well.

March 13, 2009

Reasons to WANT to Design For Accessibility

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on March 13, 2009

Accessibility is too often seen as a chore. But there are many reasons to be excited about making things usable for everyone.

It Just Feels Good

I know it’s cliché, but helping people does feel good. Making your website work with screen-readers is not the same as volunteering your time to read for the blind and dyslexic. But it still helps…

More cynically, accessibility means your work reaches more people. Even if it’s just an extra 0.6%, it still feels good to know you are having a bigger impact.

We Are All Impaired

As Keith Lang points out, “we are all impaired to some amount (or sometimes)”. Everyone is “deaf” in a library, because they can’t use speakers there. Similarly, if you try showing a video on your phone to a dozen people, many of them will be “blind”, because they can’t see the tiny screen.

Consequently, accessibility means designing for everyone, not just a disabled super-minority.

Accessible Design is Better Design

Usability improves when accessibility is improved. For example, a bus announcing stops with speakers and signs means you can keep listening to your iPod, or looking at your book, and still catch your stop. It makes buses easier to ride.

Maximally accessible design engages multiple senses. Done well that means a more powerful experience.

Early Warning

The flip-side of accessibility improving usability is that bad design is hard to make accessible. How easy it is to make something comply with accessibility guidelines is a test of the soundness of the design.

I don’t care about accessibility. Because when Web design is practiced as a craft, and not a consolation, accessibility comes for free.

—Jeffrey Veen

Accessibility compliance should be like running a spellcheck — something quick and easy that catches mistakes. When it’s not, it’s a warning that something is fundamentally wrong. That’s never fun, but the sooner a mistake is caught, the cheaper it is to correct it.

Challenge the Establishment

Accessibility might be the best “excuse” you’ll ever get to do fundamental UX research.

I think for people who are interested in user interface disability research is another area that gets you out of the Mcluhan fishbowl(??) and into a context where you have to go back to first principles and re-examine things. So I think the future there is very bright but we need more people working on it.

–Alan Kay, Doing With Images Makes Symbols

If anybody knows what he meant by what I heard as “Mcluhan fishbowl” please let me know!

Technology is Cool

Accessible design makes content easier for machines and programmers to deal with. This makes the future possible. For example, embedding a transcript in a video means that the video’s contents can be indexed by google, or automatically translated, etc.

BUt the really exciting stuff hasn’t happened yet.

Accessibility research is going to be a huge part of what advances the state of the art in Augmented Reality and cybernetics/transhumanism. The common theme is mapping data from one sense to another, or into a form that computers (eg. screen readers today) can process.

Why do You Like it?

I’d love to know what makes you passionate about accessibility. For me it’s that it feels right, and as a programmer, I am very excited about what it enables.

A Chair for Design

Filed under: Design,Quotes | , ,
― Vincent Gable on March 13, 2009

Alan Kay explained why he liked beanbag chairs at PARC,

And one of the reasons we used them was that we discovered it was almost impossible to leap to your feat to denounce someone once you had sat in a bean bag chair, because you tended to sink into it further and further. So it had a way of relaxing people and it was very good for design.

From Doing With Images Makes Symbols

What seating arrangement do you think works best for creativity, both individual and group? Personally I like pacing when I’m thinking alone.

February 5, 2009

If You Don’t Know How to Help, You Can Still Do Good by Getting Out of the Way

Filed under: Design,Quotes,Usability | , ,
― Vincent Gable on February 5, 2009

Learning happens when attention is focused. …
If you don’t have a good theory of learning, then you can still get it to happen by helping the person focus. One of the ways you can help a person focus is by removing interference.

–Alan Kay, Doing With Images Makes Symbols.

Point Of View is 80 IQ Points

Filed under: Design,Quotes | ,
― Vincent Gable on February 5, 2009

Point of view is worth 80 IQ points … it’s not logic that is powerful. Logic is actually a weak method because it depends on fragile chains of inference. And people have used logic throughout history but mostly in inappropriate context.

There’s nothing illogical about the way the alchemists did things, it was that they were in a context where there logic couldn’t do much. so it’s this notion that the context is powerful, and if you want to be able to be good at solving problems and acting much smarter then you are then you have to find the context that will do the thinking for you.

Most computer scientists know this because it goes under another heading “choose the appropriate data structure before you start tinkering around with the algorithm”. If you choose the right data structure it will have most of the result computed almost automatically as part of its inherent structure.

–Alan Kay, Doing With Images Makes Symbols.

There are many related anecdotes about solving the right problem.

Pens Suck

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Usability | , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on February 5, 2009

In 1987, Alan kay said,

By the way, Sketchpad was the first system where it was discovered that the light pen was a very bad input device. The blood runs out of your hand in about 20 seconds, and leaves it numb. And in spite of that it’s been re-invented at least 90 times in the last 25 years.

Almost 50 years after Sketchpad, you can find a light pen at any computer store today. Today, these light pens are used to supplement more circulation-friendly input devices. Maybe that’s enough to solve the problems Sketchpad had.

Personally, I think the metaphor of a the pen is too blindingly strong. People love their pens, because they grew up with them. I don’t accept that they are the pinnacle of input. We can do better then copying a pointy stick filled with dye.

But I have my own biases and unique experiences. I am dysgraphic — I have trouble writing legibly by hand, and spelling. To me a pen is not something that feels good or puts me in the zone. It’s something that gets in the way of expressing my ideas. But fundamentally, isn’t every input device a barrier between your mind and the medium?

January 18, 2009

Touching The Information

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Programming,Usability | , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on January 18, 2009

Alan Kay talking about GRaIL, Graphical Input Language, a system implemented in the late ’60s that was so far ahead of it’s time, it’s still pretty impressive today.

“I felt like I was sticking my hands right through the display and actually touching the information structures directly.”

I had no idea this sort of interface was done so early.

January 15, 2009

Even a Small Child Can Do it

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Programming,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on January 15, 2009

This segment of an Alan Kay presentation (pt 2) really jumped out at me.

She’s never lived in a world that wasn’t densely populated with Macintoshes. …She literally learned to use it by sitting on her mother’s lap while her mother was working. So for this child, the Macintosh is not a piece of technology, but simply more material in the environment to manipulate.

Another interesting point to note is that even though she can’t read, she’s able to recognize standard textual menu items.

And in fact we discovered that she was about 70% literate — that about 70% of the generic window commands that are found in any Macintosh application, she’s able to use. Not just in a visual program like Mac Paint.

One message Alan Kay really drove home is not just that that computers can be simple enough for children, but that designing for children can lead to better designs for adults. But remember that that just because a child can use a computer does not make it a silver bullet for education.

November 6, 2008

Alan Kay on Why Computer-Based Teaching Fails

Filed under: Accessibility,Quotes | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on November 6, 2008

Here’s a lightly-edited transcription of Alan Kay, explaining why computer-aided instruction so often fails (from “Doing with Images makes Symbols”, 1987),

After the experience I’ve had with working with both children and adults with computers (and at least dabbling in the areas of learning and education), I think that one of the best ways of thinking of a computer is very similar to thinking of what a piano means when teaching music.

The piano can amplify musical impulse. We can only sing with one voice. If we want to play a four-part fugue, we have to use something mechanical, like a piano to do it. And it can be done very beautifully.

But for most people the piano has been the biggest thing that turns millions of people away from music for the rest of their lives. And I think the best way to sum it up is just to say that all musicians know that the music is not inside the piano…

So, in any situation where education and learning is involved, you first have to develop a curriculum based on ideas, not on media. Media can be an amplifier of those ideas, but you have to have the ideas first.

And I think the reason computers have failed is that almost everybody, no matter which way they have tried to use computers, have wanted the computer to to be some sort of magic ointment over the suppurating wound of bad concepts. … But first you have to have the ideas.

This was exactly my experience as a student. I am dysgraphic — I have trouble writing legibly by hand, and spelling. So I took a laptop to all my classes, from 8th grade (1997) through college. The laptop solved a particular problem for me. But outside of that, it did not enhance my education; in some cases it got in the way. (One professor found students using laptops the most during class did 11% worse on tests compared to the rest of the class). If I wasn’t dysgraphic, I would have been better-off with a Moleskine.

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