When Android first came out, there was no way of quickly skipping down a really long list. For instance, if you had a really large amount of songs on your phone, you would have to tediously fling your finger over and over to scroll to the ‘T’s to listen to The Toasters. Later versions of Android resolved this issue by providing a UI control that allows you to jump.

How List Jumping Currently Works

In order jump further down the list, you must first start by scrolling. This is done by placing the finger on the list, and moving it up the screen. Logically this feels backwards, moving your finger up to scroll down, but it makes for a pleasurable experience because you appear to be moving a physical object. When you start scrolling, a little tab pops up somewhere on the right side of the list based on how far down you’ve scrolled. To skip to list items that start say, with the letter ‘G,’ stop scrolling and place your finger on the jump tab and start dragging down. As you do, a letter will appear in the center of the screen, defining what letter items in the list currently begin with. When you have reached your letter, you let go, and can go back to scrolling normally.

Why The Current System Is Flawed

Having used the current list jump method for some time now, I have noticed several flaws with the solution’s interaction.

1. There is no way of initiating a jump without first needlessly scrolling.
2. There is a half second pause in your brain every time you use it, because it changes the interaction from “moving finder up,” to “moving finger down” in order to scroll.
3. It is wildly inaccurate. There is no standard iteration of distance to find the next letter. Instead, it bases the distance you need to scroll on the number of items in that list that start with a specific letter. So, if you have a long list of ‘G’s, a short list of ‘H’s, and a long list of ‘I’s, it will be incredibly difficult to land on the ‘H.’
4. It is time sensitive. The UI control for list jumping is not always on the screen. It comes and goes based on the amount you have scrolled, and how long you have stopped. The control may vanish before you can find it with your finger.

One Way To Fix The Experience

In order to list jump with this interaction, a user would first pinch the list. This is the same interaction used for zooming out on images and maps. Next, a new view will appear, overlaid on the list, showing all the different letters of the alphabet. The user then selects a letter they wish to jump to, the view will vanish, and the list will jump to the first item that starts with the selected letter. At this point, normal scrolling can resume.

Why This Fix May Be Better

Only usability testing will define which implementation is better, but their are indicators of how this may be an improved experience.

1. It makes use of a widely used gesture (zoom) which maps well with the interaction.
2. It does not attempt to change the already established interaction of scrolling.
3. It is potentially more accurate and affords kinesthesia. The consistent position and spacing of each letter allows a user to master the interaction.
4. It is more obvious that the list does not contain items that start with certain letters.
5. It can be initiated without having to borrow from another interaction.
6. Fitt’s Law: The hit area for this gesture enormous in comparison to the current method, which will potentially make it a more reliable interaction.

Demonstration

How You Can Help Make This A Reality

If you would like to see this interaction come to your Android powered phone, let Google know! Find my feature request ticket, and ask Google to add this feature.

Try It Out Yourself

As requested by commenter Zach, I’m providing a download link to the AIR mock-up APK (requires the Adobe AIR Pre-release). Pinch the list to get the alphabet list, ‘J’ is the only letter you can tap, tap the list again to reset the list to ‘A.’

Download list_jump_1.0.0.apk

The use of QR Codes has increased recently as a simply way to transfer data from a computer to a phone. In the United States, Android phones have lead the charge. Many developers have used them as a way to link customers to their apps in the Android Market.

While this experience has worked great for the user that visits a site by computer, it fails when visiting a site by phone. You can’t point your phone’s camera at your phone’s screen. That’s why I propose a new standard for using QR Codes on websites.

When posting a QR Code on your site, always:

• Make your QR Code at least 100×100 pixels for easy scanning.
• Put the link in the alt and title parameters of the QR Code image
• Encase your QR Code image in a link tag that has the same link as your code.

By doing this, you will ensure that you are maximizing a person’s ability to make use of your QR Code. Those users that are visiting your website via their phone’s browser, will be able to click on the code with the same result as if they scanned it. Users that visit your site via browser, can still scan the code, and will be able to see what the QR Code is providing by hovering their mouse over the image.

Here is an example:

<a href=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”><img src=”http://flash-the-brain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/qrcode.png” style=”border: none;” alt=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight” title=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”/></a>

A very thought provoking image appeared on Astronomy Picture Of The Day yesterday. The boys at NSF ran the sun’s light through a spectrum to see what visible light the sun produces. As you can see from the image, there are swatches of color our sun doesn’t make.

This understanding might have a practical application in the Usability space. We as humans have evolved over the years to see color. But, humans may have difficulty discerning certain colors due to their rarity in nature. This may be something to take into account when trying to decide on the use and application of certain colors in the products we create.

Food for thought at least…

Becoming better at Interaction Design requires constant practice. You can’t become an expert at a field without 10 years of experience, at least according to Malcolm Gladwell. If that theory holds true, there aren’t many experts in the field out there since it’s only been around for about 20 years, and only gained real attention in the last five.

I myself still feel quite the novice to Interaction Design. My background is in Computer Science. While this has helped bridge the gap between design process and development process in a corporate environment, it hasn’t helped much with cognitive psychology or design research. For that, I ravenously devour books on the subject, and make it a point to design every day.

Designing every day doesn’t require a lot of time. In most cases, it’s just a few seconds. My popular tapestry is the office kitchen, since it’s in a constant state of disarray, and problems surface easily. Take for instance the milk for coffee.

Here we see the creamer cartons as someone placed them into the refrigerator. Which of these is the open one? It can be hard to tell. They’re all facing the same way, some are in front, others are in back, colors differ. In a few seconds, I can redesign this space to make it clear as to which of these cartons is the open one to be used.

If you truly love Interaction Design and it’s something you want to be, seek out small design projects throughout your day. Constantly analyse the world around you. Look for areas of difficulty or confusion no matter how small and trivial. Seek to make a space more functional when you leave, than it was when you entered it. Practice makes perfect.

My Nexus One Car Dock came in last week, and I’ve forced myself to use it over the last few days. Unfortunately, the experience surrounding the dock isn’t good.

What I expected from the car dock:

• To hold and charge my phone
• To make and receive phone calls
• To act as a navigation device
• To play music on my car stereo

To Hold And Charge My Phone

More often then not, your phone is an after thought to driving. Your phone lives in your pocket or purse, and there it remains until it is required. Mounting your phone to the dock often happens after you’re already driving, and you suddenly need directions, or want to listen to music, or make a call. The ability to easily mount the phone to the dock is essential. Google simply was unable to get it right. The main problem is with the clip system that holds the phone in the dock.

When you try and put the phone into the dock, the clip gets caught on the seam between the battery cover and the phone casing. The first few days of use, no amount of reasonable pressure could be applied to clip the phone in using one hand. Mounting the phone was a two hand job. It took me a few days to figure out out how to hold the phone to the mount, while simultaneously pushing on the clip.

Two handed mounting of a phone to a car dock is simply unacceptable (you’re driving remember). The ability to mount the phone with one hand is a learned process. This issue detracts from the initial experience with the dock, making it feel clumsy.

To Make And Receive Phone Calls

Sending and receiving calls while driving is risky business. Distracted driving accidents are on the rise, and many states are passing laws for banning hand held cell phone calls. In order for this car dock to succeed, it should make the process of making and receiving call easier. Again, I simply didn’t experience it.

Mainly, the speakers on the car dock are simply not able to produce audio loud enough to hear. I talked with my mom for over an hour while on the road last Friday. Over that time, I continuously fidgeted with the sound volume and positioning of the dock, but could never achieve the voice clarity I expected. The voice seemed to fade in and out of clarity, and couldn’t compete with the road noise. This problem is due to how volume works when mounted on the dock.

There are two things that are controlling volume; there’s the phone volume, and the device volume. The phone volume decides how loud it’s going to push out the sound to the device. The device volume is how loud your device is going to interpret the sound it’s being pushed. So, if you’re call volume (or navigation voice) isn’t set to max before mounting the phone, the dock won’t play louder, even if you turn your device to max. You have to unmount the phone from the dock in order to increase volume, since the dock obscures the Nexus One’s volume rocker, then remount the phone.

The docks speakers themselves, are simply inadequate. Because they face away from the driver, the sound has to reflect off your windshield and come back to you. Even at full power volume, on the phone and dock, I simply couldn’t clearly hear my calls over the sound of the road. What Google could have done is make the dock speakers full volume, left the Nexus One volume rocker open, and provided a stereo jack to send sound to your car’s speakers.

One last peeve is the “slide to answer” feature of the Nexus One. While the phone is docked, it becomes difficult to accurately slide your thumb vertically across the screen. My right hand thumb keeps wanting to go up, and to the right. This continuously makes me drop the button. I find myself watching the device, instead of the road, so that I accurately complete this gesture. A large and in charge dedicated answer button on the dock would have been a welcome addition.

To Act As A Navigation Device

One of the popular features of the Nexus One is it’s out-of-the-box ability to be used as a turn-by-turn navigation device. Google marketed the dock as a way to enhance this feature, and it’s clear that they felt this was the dock’s main purpose (however short sighted). I’m sorry to say that the dock does nothing to enhance this experience.

To start, the dock does not allow the holder to be infinitely rotated to the left or right. The cords running up through the inside of the mount, delivering power from the base, would eventually break if they allowed a full 360 degree turn. This creates an portrait/landscape issue when the phone is mounted on your dashboard. Right rotation is prevented by the stopper. So, rather than a simply 90 degree turn to the right, a full 270 degree turn to the left is required. Flipping between landscape and portrait views is cumbersome, and unforgiving. A different positioning of the stopper would have solved this.

Second, navigating to places with the dock is actually harder to do while docked. One of the great features of the Nexus One Navigator was the ability to create destination shortcuts on my home screen. All I had to do is tap the icon, and up launches the navigator and routes me to where I want to go. The dock buries my shortcuts behind another layer, the car dock home screen. Some customization, like favorites, to the car dock home screen is need.

Last, like the in call volume issues I described earlier, Google’s navigator suffers from the same volume issues as in call volume while docked. It still stands that obstructing the volume rocker, and not providing a stereo connection was a mistake.

To Play Music Over My Car Stereo

I commute a distance from home to work, my ability to play music, podcasts, and audiobooks while I drive is important to me. It’s clear that playing music while the phone is docked was never thought of by Google as a use case. Shocking!

What I expected was for the dock to have a 3.5 stereo jack, and to pass music audio to it via the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Device Protocol (A2DP). A reasonable expectation since that’s how they did it with the Desktop Dock. They don’t. If fact, it almost appears like they made no effort at all to think about the audio experience of the Nexus One while docked.

What you have to do instead, is insert your car’s auxiliary audio cable into the 3.5 stereo jack on the Nexus One phone itself. While this will send music to your car’s stereo, you can’t control the volume, since the volume rocker is covered up (as I stated earlier). Also, since the sound is coming in as analog, instead of digitally via Bluetooth, you get a whine and ticking noise from your car’s alternator as it charges your phone. Had they provided the stereo jack on the dock itself, it’s conceivable they could have added in some hardware to properly dampen the feedback, and provided a superior sound.

Last, there is no shortcut in the Car Dock Home Screen to the audio player. A media button would have been nice. Sometime to easily bring you to the music player, or Listen, or Pandora.

In Conclusion

Google’s Nexus One Car Dock only provided me with a kludgy and frustrating experience. Other than it’s ability to hold the device in a visible position, it doesn’t offer a single enhancement to the phone, and only serves to hinder it’s use. Even a few hours of use case testing would have discovered most of these issues. Chalk it up to more Developer Underpants from Google.

Video Illustration

There is nothing that I can write about this video that will do it justice. My mind is swimming with excitement and possibilities.

(via Engadget)

Anyone that knows me, knows I’m a huge fan of icons. When used properly, they can add so much to a design. Over the last few weeks, my friend and fellow designer has linked me to a wealth of icon resources that I’d like to share:

• 
  

  gesturecons.com

  Vector based icons created to aid in the design, development, implementation and promotion of multi-touch interfaces.

• 
  

  1stwebdesigner.com

  A roundup of free user interface icons packs, categorized, and linked for easy download.

• 
  

  famfamfam.com

  The personal site and web playground of Birmingham (UK) based developer Mark James.

• 
  

  fatcow.com

  1000 free icons that fatcow web hosting made available.

Recently, someone on YouTube posted a video of how your hand effects the signal strength on the Nexus One (via Engadget article). Based on the comments that came out of the article, I don’t think it illustrated just how terrible of an issue this is.

As my video illustrates, all it takes to lose two bars worth of 3G service on the Nexus One is for you to simply hold your phone. In low coverage areas, this can spell the difference between not having 3G, and having it. On top of which, a simple shift of the hand can cause drastic changes, like dropping a call or important data transfer.

I think this continues to show how much Google is lacking any kind of effective usability testing within their Android department. Sure, HTC put the phone through the ropes, but it boggles the mind to think how something this severe would have made it through.

Update (2/18):

I got a email from Google today about the problem. This is what they stated.

Thanks for your note. There are a variety of factors which feed into the quality of 3G connectivity on mobile phones, a number of which are dependent on the environment rather than the phone itself. For instance, a software update can’t address the experience of users on the edge or outside of 3G coverage areas.

We have taken note of your feedback and we are already working on this.

I really don’t see a software solution to this problem. It has everything to do with an extremely poor placement of the antenna. I empathize with the difficulty of where to put such things. They have to pay attention to growing concerns over radiation from these devices while holding them up to your ear. Which, is why they’ve started to place them at the bottom. It’s just, that phones should be single hand devices. In using them as such, people tend to cradle the bottom of the device with their palm, in order to free up their thumb to type on the screen. The default positioning of the hand on this device completely covers the antenna area.

I see no way of fixing this other than by moving the location of the antenna.

Google’s bread and butter has always been it’s simplicity, speed, cohesion, and reliability. While this has worked wonders on their search engine and services, it has not always translated well to their Android phone operating system. This breakdown is never more apparent than in their recent release of the Nexus One Desktop Dock.

The key draw of the Nexus One Desktop Dock is it’s ability to receive stereo audio over Bluetooth. If you were to connect the dock to your stereo system, you could transmit and control music from your phone without wires. A very exciting prospect. Unfortunately, Google utterly fails with it’s execution.

Who Reads Manuals, Honestly?

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to setup the Nexus One Desktop Dock. I mean, there’s only one cord for power, and another cord that’s for audio. Those cords can only plug into the port with the respective shape. Also, the phone is only going to fit into the device one way, standing up and facing forward. So, who’s going to read a manual? Nobody.

If history has shown us anything, it’s that people do not read manuals. They blunder along as far as they can go, then consult the manual when they hit a bump. And, herein lies Google’s Usability FAIL. When you first dock your phone, you are presented with the following screen.

This is the setting box you need to check in order to send audio via Bluetooth to the dock. Yet, the language for this setting makes no mention of this. This selection also sounds scary, and that by checking it you’ll silence your phone. There’s one more key point, the “Remeber setting” checkbox is pre-checked! If you do any of the following, this settings box will go away, and never comes back:

• If you press, “OK.”
• If you hit the, “Back” button on your phone.
• If you remove the phone from the dock.

So, you’ve done one of the above and you played a bit with the Clock application. Now, you want to try the Bluetooth audio streaming. You can’t find the dock when scanning for it in your Bluetooth settings because it’s not currently turned on. Suddenly you realize what that pop-up setting box was for. How do you bring it back? There’s nothing in the Clock application, that which appeared when you docked your phone, that will display the setting. Removing the phone from the dock, and pouring through the phone settings will not reveal a way to make it reappear either. And, guess what? It’s not in the documentation or support forum for the dock either.

As far as the user is concerned, they blew their only opportunity to get their dock to work.

So What’s Missing?

It turns out that there actually is an option in your settings to re-enable the dock’s audio. In order to find it, you have to have your phone docked, then you navigate to Home > Settings > Sound & Display > Dock audio.

This is something the average person would have no way of stumbling upon. It’s also a key component, completely overlooked, in order to use the dock.

They could have fixed this by:

• Not having “Remember setting” automatically checked.
• Provided some feedback as to where the dock settings could be found after you choose your setting.
• Documented how to find the setting in the manual.
• Provided a shortcut to the setting in the Clock application’s menu.

Until this happens, it remains a shocking usability blunder made by Google.

Update: April 8, 2010

It looks like Google has addressed this issue in great detail.

They removed the dock settings from the “Sound & display settings” area all together.

They added a “Dock settings” button to the Clock application’s menu. This is the application that launches when you dock the phone.

Last, they removed the scary “silences phone” language from the setting.

Good job Google. High fives all around. I’m going to assume that you’ve also fixed the documentation that ships with the phone as well.

For those of you that don’t already know, Apple Inc, release a new tablet computing product called the iPad. It’s hard to make judgment on a device when it’s on stage with Steve Jobs, and the whole energy of the release would make you want a pile of crap if it was sprinkled with gold.

So, I let it marinate a bit overnight, and have come to a conclusion.

What Apple Got Right

While I haven’t handled it yet, I feel fairly confident they got the form factor right. Everyone on the stage, and in the videos appeared to use it with ease, and handle it confidently. It certainly “looks” like the tablet computer we all dreamed existed.

The other aspect I think Apple got right, was the User Interface. Traditionally, as with Microsoft Tablets, software companies would just slap a few band-aids on a desktop platform OS and say “Done!” I like the fact that Apple is taking the path less traveled on this; requiring software companies to rewrite their applications to work differently with hand based interactions.

The polish. When the eBook application rotated like a giant bookshelf to reveal a bookstore on the back, I started feeling warm inside. Then, the purchased book floated up, the shelf rotated back, and the books all got out of the way to make room for the new book’s decent; I wanted the iPad to have my baby. Each animation is short enough to not steal from the action, and designed to provide some feedback as to what, or why something is happening. The polish that Apple applies to their applications is undeniably fantastic.

Lastly, the price. $499 for a base model surpassed all my expectations.

What They Got Wrong

There’s already plenty of posts out there that mention it’s lack of Adobe Flash support, multitasking, and camera. Although I agree with all of them, I don’t want to spend more time on that. Here’s a few more thing I feel are missing.

The first thing that came to my mind, was a lack of synergy between the iPad and the iPhone, or other mobile phone devices. The iPad is designed to be a light, and easily portable device. Whenever anyone travels, they all carry around their cell phone. I would have liked to see an iPhone pass pictures to the iPad. I would have liked to see an iPhone share it’s Internet service via Bluetooth DUN. I would have liked to see the contacts application in the iPad automatically dial a number on a paired iPhone. None of these were demonstrated, nor hinted to.

Using the tired iPhone desktop was a huge disappointment. Apple had an opportunity here, to truly rethink their traditional home screen. I would have liked to see something like Bumptop (see video below). Their lack of ingenuity and interaction with their home screen is in sharp contrast to the polish from the rest of their applications. Their focus on the singular application for everything, leaves me skeptical about the future of the iPad/iPhone platform.

Oh yeah, one last thing, the name iPad was a terrible choice.

Conclusion

Still, my opinion remains undecided. There are things to like, and things to hate about this device. Furthermore, it’s not even available to purchase yet, and I haven’t had my hands on one. It could very well be that many of the cons were simply not demoed due to lack of time or perspective. All will be revealed in upcoming months.