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Posted by Richard Ziade on August 29, 2006, 03:03PMMicrosoft vs. Google (Again)
Yesterday everybody was talking about Google Apps For Your Domain. Google's new collaboration service that ties together Gmail, Gtalk, Calendar and Google Page Creator. Many observers, along with Google itself are quick to point out that this is not a competitor to Microsoft Office. People are framing it as a complement to the Ofifice suite that brings the power of collaboration to the platform.
Of course, while it may not compete with today's iteration of Office, it's clear that both companies are headed down a similar path. Microsoft's Office Live and other Live offerings attempt to bring the centralized, collaborative benefits of Live to Office.
While Office is great, it's still a pain to pass around documents through email for revision and editing. It's still a pain to set up your own Exchange server for small businesses. It's still a pain to make files centrally available. So the need to elevate Office from isolated desktop platform to a more centralized collaborative platform is clearly there.
As I read over the details around Google's offering, I can't help but think how hokey the whole thing is. Enteprises live inside of Microsoft's Office platform, especially Outlook. The idea of somehow mashing together Google with Office is is going to be difficult for a lot of people to stomach...or even bother with.
This battle is for Microsoft to lose. This is not about technology or who can house the largest data center to run all this stuff. We all know that both companies have the will and the means to do that. The winner here is going to be the one that makes this happen for end-users in a seamless fashion.
Microsoft has it all wrong with Sharepoint. Why? Because it's a destination. Nobody wants to go elsewhere to handle their stuff. They live in Office and they want to stay there. Google is going to face a similar problem. Users don't want more web URL's. They will only tolerate a slight shift within their current work environments. What this means is that Microsoft needs to augment Office in a subtle, unobtrusive way and simply "turn on" these capabilities. If they do that, Google doesn't have a shot.
Microsoft's biggest enemy is Microsoft. Their culture isn't about subtle augmentation. It's about caking on shrink-wrapped products on top of products. They already have the eyes. Everybody uses Office. Everybody uses Outlook.The spies have alread infiltrated. Why send in more spies in the form of Sharepoint or the absolutely confusing Live platform (is it Office Live? Or just Live?).
Microsoft's DNA is about product offerings: PRODUCT NAME - YEAR. Outlook 2003. Sharepoint 2007. SQL Server 2005. They build software. Price it. Sell it. You install it. Configure it...and then hope your users will adopt it. If Microsoft keeps ignoring that their hooks are already in, that will be Google's opening.
Microsoft can learn a hell of a lot from Apple's success. Apple's products are secondary to the overall experience. The iPod/iTunes synergy is a clear example of this. Apple attacked all the problems with an entire platform rather than bolt-on products here and there. Buying music. Organizing music. Making music portable. The goals override the "pieces" that help you get there. Microsoft already owns the experience today and they need to leverage it. Google is aiming at the shortcomings of the Office sweet from across the ocean. It's a bold move but Google's got the right culture, right now, to make a serious attack.
A final thought, I don't buy the "this isn't a Microsoft Office competitor" line for one bit. These applications are getting richer and more powerful, through good'ol Javascript & AJAX by the day. They're going to keep getting better. This isn't Google just making the world better. It's a stealth move that is exploiting a weakness in the current platform to sneak into the workflow. Once in, all bets are off.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 28, 2006, 09:47AMLawyers Are Like Programmers (Or Vice-Versa)
With apologies for the title...
I was mired in reviewing, commenting on and drafting portions of a contract this past weekend. While I bask in the world of technology and design (I couldn't imagine being anywhere else), work often demands that I dust off my law degree and play lawyer for a little while.
As I was reviewing an old contract and folding in agreed-upon terms, it dawned on me how similar contract drafting is similar to writing software (bear with me on this). I've often been forced to justify my law education in light of my sharp left turn after law school. But oddly, the parallels are there.
You don't learn the law in law school. Most exams are open book. It's not really about memorizing and regurgitating information. Instead, it's about thinking a certain way. It's about gaining an ability to understand, deduce and optimize rational arguments. It's also about foreseeing weaknesses in your adversary's arguments.
Just before I dove into the contract, I was coding and I couldn't help but notice a few parallels:
- Define Your Words And Reuse Them. In contracts, you'll often see something like "Seller, as referenced in this agreement is defined as..." and from that point on, a capital 'S' Seller is referenced with clarity. In code, rather than "restating" portions again and again, we create functions that allow for reuse throughout. Much of contract writing is made less painful with this sort of "re-factoring."
- Use Your Words Efficiently. In the law, the less you say the less room there is for ambiguity or (re)interpretation. Think through your words and sentences so that they're airtight. You don't want to leave loopholes. In programming, the more efficient and tight your code, the less likelihood of bugs and errors.
- Write The Outline First. Depending on how complex your contract/program is, if you're starting from scratch, you'd be a fool to start writing out of the gate. Instead, step back and lay out the landscape. Draft an outline n-levels deep that accounts for all the pieces of your code.
- "Exception" Handling. Any lawyer will tell you that a primary role of a contract is that of a reference document for when things go bad. If all is well in a business relationship, the contract is seldom ever referred to. But when things go sour, every word or phrase may be picked apart. As such, it's wise to think through how scenarios would play out against your contract. When coding, a similar premise applies. How much load will this object have to withstand? What if a particular transaction (which is dependent on an outside service) fails? What if the database goes down? Good code insulates itself from or gracefully addresses these "bad scenarios."
Adobe's Tasty Links
Adobe (yes - Adobe - the entire company) has a delicious acocunt and they've decided to share it with us all. All sorts of great links on PDF, Flex, Photoshop (tons of Photoshop) and others. Very nice. Other corporate behemoths should take notice. This is smart.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 17, 2006, 09:58AMThe Grossly Under-Rated Power Of Thumbnails & Icons
Delicious just did a design refresh of their home page and it's now got some really delicious (heh) thumbnails. The world seems to have gone thumbnail crazy. Arc90's link thumbnails tool is by far the most popular on Arc90's lab.
I'm a big believer in icons, thumbnails and any other sort of bite-size visual cues to help people digest information. The biggest digestion challenges come when the information comes at you in big, sweeping globs. It's hard to know what the hell is going on. As a result, we're forced to make that strange squinty-face and read stuff. Reading takes time and some focus. You can't step back from that glob and start to get a sense of what's going. With simple visual cues like icons, colors, bolding and such, we put the user's brain on a faster track.
Here's a simple example of using thumbnails for lighter information digestion. Below is a screenshot of iTunes, focused on my collection of Radiohead albums:
Here's the same view on Microsoft's new Windows Media Player 11:
Now I know that this distinction isn't groundbreaking, but let's keep the user's goal in mind. It is without a doubt easier to scan through my seven or so Radiohead albums in Windows Media Player because a well-recognized grouping - by albums - has been visually reinforced, not only by spacing out the various albums but by providing me with a familiar visual cue for each album: the album cover. In iTunes, I have to read. And reading takes more work.
So get out there and start thumbnail-izing and icon-izing. It's a powerful way to provide your users with cognitive shortcut to digesting your information.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 14, 2006, 11:49AMHow To Create Groovy Vector Art
How To Create Groovy Vector Art. 'Nuff said.
The Little Design Tweak That Changes Everything
As we labor over how a product is designed, we'll often get mired in the larger pieces. Move this element here. Reorganize those elements there. Designers make wholesale changes hoping to create an intuitive user experience.
Very often, after that design's been set out into the wild, we're quickly humbled. Feature set X, which took months to develop, is almost never used. What's most frustrating is that failure of adoption has little to do with how good or valuable that feature may be. People simply aren't using it because of poor or confusing design.
Virtual desktop software has been around for years. It essentially expands your desktop space beyond your display size to allow for more workspace. It is by no means a new invention. Yet to this day, virtual desktops are still relegated to the realm of the tech savvy. One reason for its niche status is that many people simply don't need multiple desktops. However, if you've ever played with these tools, you quickly realize they're a bit, well, hokey.
And then along comes Apple to reinvent what's already been invented. Spaces is a new virtual desktop feature that is to be bundled with their Leopard operating system update. If you spend a couple of minutes watching the movie, you'll quickly realize how much more accessible Spaces feels than your typical virtual desktop.
What struck me was not now much better Spaces was in terms of features, but actually how feature poor it is. It's simply four tiled desktops with simple navigation. No Advanced Options. No configurations. It's a slight update to the existing concept, yet it may well be just enough to introduce it to a much broader audience. Good design can do that. The features may well not be needed, but the right design gives your products a chance.
Windows Live Writer
This entry was submitted with Windows Live Writer. A new blog editing tool by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I've just started playing with it so I'm not sure how reliable/useful/powerful it is. It looks somewhat promising.
Update: After playing around a bit, the app caused some minor issues, but after some tweaking it seems to work pretty well. Stay tuned...
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 8, 2006, 09:33AMUncivilized Design
Kathy Sierra recently declared: we can't leave innovation up to our users. Amen. A while back, I asked if innovative design can come from users.
Interaction design is dominated by the user today. And rightly so in some ways. It's far easier to leverage some knowledge or conventions they already know. For example, everyone knows what tabs are for. If the user approaches an interface for hte first time and sees tabs, they'll know exactly what to do. Easy win.
For me the really exciting stuff doesn't happen when we take agreed-upon conventions off the shelf and implement them. Customs and conventions are borne out of seeds of innovation that originated somewhere. As Kathy astutely points out, "the world never needed GUI's."
User-centered design is implicity conservative. It seeks to leverage the already understood cultures and norms. Most designers work within design civilizaiton. Where norms and customs and implicit social contracts pervade. Civilization is necessary because it allows us to thrive and function, but it is inherently predictable. Creativity exists, but it exists within civilization.
For me, the real excitement and satisfaction around design comes from introducing something that is outside the customs and norms and seeing it embraced. Something plucked from less-ventured territory. We'll typically see resistence to this approach. But if and when something unique is embraced, it's incredibly gratifying. It's magnified by the knowledge that you, as a designer, were somehow able to bypass common customs and conventional thinking and appeal to something very basic and fundamental to how people think and feel. There are few things more difficult to attain, and more gratifying than that achievement.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 7, 2006, 10:54AMFive Things I Don't Like About the iPod's Design
About a month ago, I finally took the plunge and bought a 5th generation iPod (60gb). I've never owned an iPod before. I've owned many non-Apple mp3 players and have had mixed results. Now that I've finally taken the plunge, I'm pretty happy I did. You don't need me to tell you that the iPod is a well-designed, sleek little portable music player. The world has already placed their vote.
With all that said, I'd like to throw on some protective gear and highlight what I think are some incredibly nagging and downright lousy aspects to the iPod's user interface. Yes. That's right. I'm going to criticize the iPod's highly-regarded user interface. Say a little prayer for Rich...
- I Really Need To Play Next. The iPod just asks to be touched. Even if I'm just listening to music, I like to peruse my collection. Albums. Genres. Artists. As so often happens, I'm ready to play the next track - after the one I'm listening to ends. Yeh, I can stop the current song, but I'd like to queue songs without interrupting the current song. This is especially useful for parties or in a car where you want to queue stuff on the fly.
- Why Is Shuffle So Far Away? If I've queued up a playlist or an artist's entire catalogue, I'll often want to go into shuffle mode. To do that today, I have to navigate back out to the Main Menu to hit shuffle. Why can't I just toggle? Maybe hold down one of the buttons to turn shuffle on or off?
- A Recently Played Mess. Maybe I'm an edge case, but this one absolutely kills me. I'm an album-centric user. I think in albums, not a la carte songs. Very often, I want to get to my new albums. So I navigate the Recently Played playlist and click into...a rolling list of songs. My four albums are now one big playlist. Very painful. I'm left sifting through the album or artist name to find my new albums. There are many ways to fix this. It could be a simple setting on the device or a flag on the playist itself in iTunes.
- The Alphabet Is WIldly Overrated I cannot put into words how sick I am of seeing the same eight artists show up first when I navigate to the artists listing on my iPod. So often, I'm thinking more about browsing than finding. Why can't I resort by genre? Or recently added?
- Show Me More As I Navigate. I have a fairly large music collection. I can't always connect the album name with the artist - at least not immediately. As I highlight albums, show me a little more about it. A nice little thumbnail and the artist name would be fine. In many places, the iPod does a poor job of providing context to the user. It's a navigate-through-pages type of experience, which has its shortfalls.
Now, I know that I'm a power user compared to the typical iPod user. Apple's designers aren't stupid. While the iPod's interface may seem a bit over-simplified and the amount of interface controls are quite minimal, its paid off for them. These design constraints actually broadened Apple's potential audience. That said, I don't think that's a good enough reason to not provide some of the additional power I'm seeking. A Play Next feature is pretty self-explanatory, for example. Also, many of these capabilities can be added but effectively hidden away from the more novice users.
With all my gripes, it's hard to argue that there is a portable music player that is better than the iPod. I've messed with devices from Creative, iRiver and others and they all fall short...until now. My brother recently picked up a Toshiba Gigabeat S and I have to say...the interface of that device is outstanding. It's incredibly intuitive and addresses many of the gripes I've outlined above. I'm going to keep my iPod because it's good enough for me and I already invested in some accessories. But I encourage anyone looking to buy a high capacity portable media player to take a look at the Gigabeat. It is very sweet. CNet recently did a head-to-head roundup between the Gigabeat and the iPod and the Gigabeat was selected as the superior device.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 3, 2006, 09:17AMThe Elements of Design
Boxes & Arrows Christina Wodtke provides a thoughtful article on applying good elements of writing to design. A fresh perspective on design.
I would chime in with one semi-counterpoint. Unlike prose, which delivers a strictly linear experience for the reader/user, web applications are interactive and thus non-linear. The user's actions (or interactions) mold the experience over time. We "navigate" through an application. This is where I think things diverge.
Great interactive experience marry the two worlds: the draw and appeal of good writing coupled with the satisfying and gratifying feeling of using a well-designed tool. It is part creative work, part utilitarian invention. This is partly why I find interaction design so challenging and rewarding.
Posted by Richard Ziade on August 2, 2006, 05:32PMGoogle Search AJAX Widget
I must've somehow missed this one. Google's put out an AJAX search widget for their search. Pretty cool. Not sure I like the different category listing though.
Link Thumbnail Craziness
As you gracefully glide your mouse over the links on basement.org, you'll notice that you'll get an oh-so-subtle preview of where that link will take you. It's the Link Thumbnails tool from the Arc90 Lab. No, I didn't manually create thumbnails for each link. It does some sort of cross-service craziness and whips out a thumbnail automatically
I've set it to default to all links. Let me know if you find it too annoying. Credit goes out to Joel Nagy of Arc90 for the excellent work here. Very impressive stuff.