iPad+RoamBI = Simply Magic!

I can never forget the first time I encountered RoamBI's demo app on the iPhone. I was really thrilled to see how they leveraged iPhone's display and multi-touch gestures to visualize data. I'm almost certain any CEO (or generally any information-savvy person) will cherish how fun it would be to play with data in such an interactive and easy-to-use manner.

A few days ago I was watching a video of their new app on iPad. Well, without a doubt iPad is faster, equipped with a larger display as well. That might not seem noticeable, but the results are simply amazing. Take a minute or two to watch this video:

That's the magic of software. A larger display and a faster processor helped RoamBI's developers to take benefit from such in-hand features in order to design a brilliant app to present data delicately. They did a terrific job by meeting a number of important factors:

- Smart choice of colors: For example, best green and red prototypes were used to show good or bad data. Proper choice of color won't require users to process anything further in their minds. All humans would instinctly understand the logic behind a green or a red number.

- Proper use of animations (and not overdoing it): Animations help users to be aware of their actions (instead of being lost they know exactly what they're doing). Navigation (especially when it comes to view-to-view transitions) seem more understandable and traceable when proper animation is in place.

- Multi-touch gestures are available when needed: When two points of a chart are to be compared (to understand the trend), what approach would be easier and simpler than using two fingers to pick them simultaneously? Other single-touch gestures (such as tapping or sliding) were also properly used to make horizontal or vertical scrolling easier than ever.

- Good choice of visualization techniques: Other than pie charts of which I'm not a fan, the rest of the diagrams were chosen wisely. The small line charts (that were almost identical to sparklines) were another intelligent design decision.

RoamBI is still in its infancy and there's still a long way to go. Their approach should be admired as it presents a handful of fresh and novel ideas to make Business Intelligence apps more user-friendly. Also Apple is another key player as its innovative touch screen and software design tools (Apple SDK) makes apps more fun to design and easier to use. I bet the popularity of such gadgets will no longer retain people's interest in using the typical desktop or laptop computers in near future. That's how the interface design progresses and enriches itself.

Touch Interface: Is it the Future?!

Today I found that Apple's iPad is outselling its Mac computers in the US (here). All these years Apple was scrambling to have a fair market share in a PC-dominant environment, but now their recent innovations (e.g. iPhone and iPad) are becoming the industry standard and their main sources of revenue. Does it convey a message?

Comparing the iPhone with personal computers doesn't seem rational, but iPad has a lot of similarities with classic computers (laptops in particular). All manufacturers have presented dozens of light and stylish laptops with mediocre to outstanding capabilities at reasonable prices. However, iPad is beating them all and the only thing that crosses my mind is the interface. Its touch-based easy-to-use interface is what attracts people, especially mid-aged people who were never used to be computer-savvy. iPhone was a huge success and now iPad is repeating the history.

As a consumer, I feel Apple is not paying much attention to its computers (either laptops or desktops) anymore. Clearly, the company is finding its future direction towards easy-to-use portable devices with connectivity and multimedia capabilities that can easily integrate with its online stores (App Store, iTunes store and iBook store) as well as its online services (such as MobileMe). Apple has invented one of the best touch screens of all time with dedicated multi-touch gestures feature and it just works beautifully and flawlessly with all the applications.

I reckon point-and-click is losing its relevance (although it's still perfect in certain areas such as graphic design, publishing or CAD). Nothing seems easier than tapping, pinching and all such gestures on a glossy screen that hardly ever gets stains. An easy-to-use interface is also an essential complement. Microsoft embedded touch support in its Windows 7 as a core feature, but nobody is paying much attention to it. The reason is clear: Windows was never designed to be used with touch gestures. Fortunately, Microsoft is now working on its Surface device (which has a huge touch-sensitive display and has a dramatically different interface). Obviously touch screen makes sense when the interface is able to its capabilities up to its full potential.

When everybody was waiting for the iPad, people were expecting to see a tablet device with a similar (or minimized) version of Mac OS on it, but Apple made a wise choice. They used the iPhone OS on their new toy as they knew such OS was designed from scratch based on touch gestures and they had the success of iPhone as a reliable fact to support their new decision.

Touch screens were around for years, but it was Apple's innovation (the iPhone) that made it popular. We've been frustrated by touch screens at many places (e.g. inside aeroplanes or at the office counters) or in many devices (our cameras, cars or older mobile phones), but not many people are now complaining about Apple's touch screen and that's the key. Nowadays, many other companies are designing iPhone-like devices (e.g. Google, HTC, Nokia, Motorola, Palm or RIM) and many more are considering that (e.g. Dell, Microsoft). I think sooner or later mice and keyboards would become luxury peripherals rather than a necessity. That's another evolution in the user interface area.

Right Click, a Missing Feature of the Web

I've always been a fan of right clicks and pop-up menus. Despite their ugly look, they are handy, especially when dealing with objects in an application (such as shapes in a Word document, cells in an Excel spreadsheet or files and folders in an explorer window). Such menus provide users with a convenient way to run commands that are related to a particular object or a specific surface. Whenever I'm using a new application, I instinctively do a lot of right clicks to interact with the application.

Right click gestures (and pop-up menus) were so handy that even companies such as Apple have started embedding them in their products. Apple was resisting the idea by designing 1-key mice for years until they added a secondary button to their recent mouse prototypes (although they still seem invisible). By default, the pop-up menu feature is not set in Mac OS, but users have the option to enable them. I reckon they are useful in point-and-click platforms (not touch-based interfaces) and help software designers to make their applications less cluttered.

In recent years, web has been advanced in the way that developers can now implement websites that are so desktop-like in terms of user interaction thanks to new technologies such as JavaScript and AJAX. Google Docs, Yahoo Mail and Apple's MobileMe are good examples of rich web-based interfaces that let users do things that could not be imagined a few years earlier. Nobody could ever think of drag-&-drop in a web page, let alone hovering, resizing, etc.

However, there's one missing feature that bothers me occasionally. I recently have been working a lot with Google's Office suite and I found the lack of right-click and pop-up menus quite annoying. For example, in a typical application such as Excel, I simply pick a cell and right click to change its properties (such as its color, border style or format), but in a web-based spreadsheet platform (such as Google Apps) there's a drastically different approach. Since there's no pop-up menu option present, users have to click on a button on the toolbar to customize a cell. In a mail system (such as Yahoo), users cannot right click on an email and hit 'Delete'. They have to select it and click on the 'Delete' button that is embedded on top of the panel. Although this is not torturous to learn, being able to do right clicks and having access to a relevant menu could make more sense.

This is actually an issue caused by browsers' limitation. Web browsers are by themselves typical applications (just like any other application). They have pop-up menus that are triggered by users' right click actions, but they only contain browser-specific features (such as saving the photo or page, navigating back, downloading links, opening hyperlinks in a new window or tab, etc.). Eventually, there's no possible way to replace that menu with another pop-up menu to interact with the website by bypassing the browser functions. This gets even worse with websites designed by Flash technology as they have their own Adobe-powered pop-up menu.

I think web-based applications are still immature in terms of user interaction. They are advancing in general, but I still prefer to use desktop applications rather than their equivalent web-based versions. That's why I'm never interested to use Google Apps rather than Microsoft Office. I'm not sure whether web developers have ever noticed, but pop-up menus are really handy and user friendly. New web technologies such as HTML5 seem promising, but I'm in doubt if they are ever to be addressing such issue.

Windows Phone 7: First Impressions

Many IT geeks are now discussing the latest mobile OS from Microsoft (Windows Phone 7) as well as its pros and cons. Most people haven't touched it yet, but the hands-on videos imply a lot about what this operating system has to offer.

After years of Microsoft's stubbornness of designing complicated interfaces containing dozens of toolbars, tabs and menus, the company is now redesigning its solutions from scratch in a simpler and user-friendlier way. Have you ever compared Apple's remote control versus a Windows Media Center remote? This is what I'm talking about:

Apple remote does everything it is supposed to do (only with 6 buttons). That was the magic behind Apple's best-selling iPods and iPhones. Now it's Microsoft's turn to correct its interface design strategies!

All these years, Microsoft has attempted to be part of the mobile industry by introducing Windows Mobile, which was a continuum of the older Windows CE. Users were able to surf the web, create or view documents and files, listen to music or watch videos, take photos and a lot more. However, in less than two years a revolutionary device such as the iPhone sold more units than all various phones loaded with Microsoft OS. This clearly conveyed a message: Users were frustrated of the complexity of those smart phones and were demanding an easy-to-use device.

Microsoft is now learning from its flaws. They redesigned the whole OS and here's what they come up with:

This device has lots of similarities with the iPhone (and its Android-based rivals): Momentum scrolling, side tapping, large icons that no longer require a stylus, on-screen keyboard (that only slides in when needed) are a few examples of the original elements of the iPhone interface that Microsoft has embedded in this operating system. Some people might refer to this OS as a ripoff of Apple's OS and to some extent that's true. However, Microsoft was aiming at designing a function-oriented phone rather than an app-oriented phone (e.g. the iPhone). I'm not going to get into this field as my objective is to discuss the interface, not the functionality factor.

Although Microsoft did its best to design a simple and polished OS, but I still think it's quite cluttered, especially when it comes to particular apps such as photos. Having a photo as a background, showing tiles of photos on top of it alongside text with different size doesn't provide a clear and eye-catching sight. Sooner or later, the interface would get boring, not to mention the annoying transitional effects when switching between pages or panes.

Another thing that bothers me is the home screen (or as Microsoft states, the "Start screen"):

When I first saw the snapshot, I posed a simple question: Why there's a lot of unused space on the screen? It might seem cool, but having only 7 or 8 tiles on the home screen means users have to scroll all the time to run various apps, especially if they are of the heavy-duty users who carry around phones loaded with dozens of apps. Another feature that might seem promising is the dynamic nature of those tiles (their content changes all the time). I haven't used the phone by myself, but I reckon Microsoft is overdoing it, and that might make the phone's home screen more clogged up and bothering.

I also spotted that from time to time the phone doesn't respond well to commands. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for a command to be captured. That might make users uncertain of whether they've tapped properly. The transition animation also makes thing worse. Thus, a user tapping might require a second or two of no response, followed by a 2-3 second transition animation and then having the application appeared. I'm sure most people won't like to face that all the time. On the other hand, this phone is still a beta version, so such judgement might seem premature.

To sum up, I still believe Microsoft is not doing professional and original work when it comes to interface design. They've learned the lesson, but they're still scrambling to come up with well-designed interface solutions. Windows Phone 7 is not an iPhone-killer OS, but it's definitely a good starting point for Microsoft to realize that for the majority of users, interface is everything!

Popups

I'm now working on a website, containing dozens of forms, tables and reports. I usually opt to design simple pages with controls that appear once they're needed and disappear at other times. The essence of web browsers clarifies the difference between websites and applications: A website has one current page being shown to the user, and that's it! Every element should be placed in that page, and that's what makes web design a challenging job. Knowing how to form all the elements to make a website eye catchy yet practical is truly a tough thing to do.

Imagine you're designing a form, desperately thinking of creating lists of values for users to pick (any value such as date, state or city name. Those Oracle users know I'm talking about LOVs! My colleague suggested me to use popups, and I did so, yet the results are not satisfying.

Whenever I'm using a website, I don't really wanna be bothered by disturbing popup windows. Popups really don't belong to the web world. They might be a temporary solution to fulfil users when it comes to lookup tables, announcements, messages, etc., but they are really annoying. They spoil the personality of websites which is to provide a single page of information, media, links or any other element to the user, letting him/her to interact with it and decide where to go and what to click.

Popups should be replaced by a more compatible alternative. The rampant growth of popups would destroy the web. That's why most modern browsers today provide an option to block popups! That might seem a good solution for ignoring them, but what if web developers like me rely on popups to convey important information?

Simply Google!

I always remember the first time I've opened Google's homepage. All I could see was its colorful logo, a textfield to type in something, and two buttons (Search and the famous "I'm feeling lucky!"). Many other websites were also quite simple at that time. However, the advances in the web design caused many websites to change, but Google is still as simple as it was.

Every now and then, I visit archive.org, a great project aiming at archiving books, articles, webpages and a lot more, and most importantly, it's free! Now, have a look at Google in the late 90s. This is what Google looked like in 2006 and that's what Google looks like now.

A few weeks ago, Google made its webpage even simpler. Whenever you open it, all you see is the logo, the text field and the world-known pair of buttons it provides. Now if you move your mouse pointer, a few more options would appear (the dedicated fade-in effect is actually a brilliant idea). What do we learn from this?

When it comes to search, what people want is to do it quickly. What matters is the results, their accuracy and relevance and the speed of their retrieval. Designing an eye-candy website with lots of features won't work. Take a look at Yahoo. I was a fan of its old-style homepage. Although people were referring to it as a cluttered website, but I liked it, as it was simple and easy-to-use. It didn't require a fast connection. I was on a dial-up at that time and Yahoo was one of the fastest websites I was able to navigate through. If you take a look at its webpage today, you might see an advanced homepage that is leveraging a lot of AJAX features and stuff, but it's not simple anymore. I reckon this is one of the reasons of Yahoo losing its image and position as a leading company in the cyber world.

This is what us, web developers, have to learn. Designing a website is not as easy as it seems. We have to distinguish between simplicity and weak (and primitive) design. Simplicity should be studied by putting ourselves in our website users' shoes. Web developers should think how users might be able to use their website conveniently and effectively, without being confused or lost. This is not an easy task and it requires lots of knowledge and skills. People come with different IT background, many of whom might even be using English as a second language. The designed website should satisfy both experienced and novice users, and this is not easily obtainable!

Google was and is an amazing example of a website that could achieve such objective. Microsoft has learned the lesson and has recently done a great job with its Bing, but there are still many other websites that need to be redesigned in order to be more productive, yet easy-to-use. Like what? Ebay and Amazon! These are two examples of websites that are most likely to confuse their first-time users!

Simplicity Helps to Focus!

Yesterday I came across one of David Pogue's blog posts, introducing an experimental service called Readability. The idea is simple: You add it to your browser's bookmarks menu or tab, browse the web and whenever you're interested in reading something (particularly an article), click on the added bookmark and you'll see a clear printer-friendly version of the page you were visiting. This helps readers to focus on reading rather than being distracted by logos, unnecessary clutter and ads in particular, especially those animated flash ads that keep blinking, bouncing, vibrating or making sounds, begging you to click them! Advertisers might not like this idea, but I think this feature is what that has always been missing in many browsers. One might not like to use this tool all the time, but when focus and deep understanding of an article is necessary, the availability of such feature is inevitable.
The idea has been around in other forms indeed. For instance, you might have seen the little lamp icon on top of some YouTube videos, mostly those uploaded by official sources such as celebrities, TV channels or governments. What that lamp does is also quite obvious: You click it, and the screen turns dark, so you can pay more attention to the video being played.
All these attempts clarify that sometimes interfaces should let people focus on an area of the display without being distracted by piles of graphics, text and animated icons that are most likely to be ignored by the user. I like Pogue's idea about unnecessary stuff such as animated ads that make him hostile! I do agree with him: Animated ads provoking me to ignore them! They offer nothing but trouble. I, as a user, should have the right to decide what I want to see or where I want to click and go, so animated or buzzing ads won't make me change my mind. They may attract the first-time visitors, but I reckon most professional internet users gradually start hating and ignoring such ads. Readability is a great tool, helping a lot to deny distracting ads and get to the point.
Isn't that amazing? Years ago, good web designers were those who could create web pages with lots of elements arranged together and people tended to love websites that had lots and lots of images, text and video all in one screen. Despite having faster connection speed today, people now seem to prefer simple websites that use minimal graphical elements, but in a proper way. However, simplicity in design is not an easy concept. In other words, it's the art of making things simple, yet elegant and good-looking!
Speaking of David Pogue, it's worth watching one of his videos in which he commenced a speech called "Simplicity sells", covering lots of key points mostly by making fun of Microsoft! In case you opt to watch the video on YouTube's own page, don't forget to switch off the lamp that I mentioned earlier!