RSS feedWith the idea that if you can live for the next 20-50 years, you’ll effectively live forever, comes a whole range of significant questions for human kind. Such as…
How do we provide the resources for all these people? Food, air, housing, even land itself. Will we need to restrict how many children can be born? Will we have a maximum legal age, like in Logan’s Run?
What happens to prisoners who were given a 100 year or more sentence, with the courts assuming they wouldn’t live any longer or would be too old to cause trouble? A life sentence suddenly carries much more weight, especially with never to be paroled. Will our jails just keep filling up with lifers? What happens when a psychopath gets out after 100+ years, is perfectly fit and after revenge? Do we automatically extend jail terms each year by the planet’s average life span? Or by that time will we have found the psycho gene and have deleted it from those in prison?
With life being suddenly more valuable and no longer inevitable, will we start taking less chances in life? Less risk, less danger, less experiencing of life itself. What will it be like for a children, who grow up in a world where living forever is just a part of being human?
Will we see the end of the lifetime warranty? What will this mean for a life insurance policy? Less risk, but longer life. Where on earth am I going to keep all my memorabilia, my personal stuff I’ve kept from my life experience?
And do we really have to put up with Rove McManus living forever?
Why oh why don’t Outhink spend time on the user interface for SpinXpress for Mac OS X? Not more time, but at least some time!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome tool for sharing digital media, and it’s free, so you can’t really complain about it. But it’s ugly. Like really really ugly. Ugly in the way it looks, and more importantly ugly in the way that it works. Ugly to the point of making you only want to use it when you absolutely have to. So ugly that it makes me want to actually pay them for a good looking and nice to use version, instead of having to use the free damn ugly and user unfriendly version.
The main problem for them is that it’s written in Java, most likely for source sharing with the Windows version. But code sharing isn’t an excuse for a shoddy user interface. Shoddy interfaces are usually due to shoddy development practices or a lack of user interface engineering experience.
Let’s start with the first thing that appears when you open the application, a little window prompting you to sign in. The text all over this window seems to be just randomly placed and aligned, with some text right aligned with the window edge and others centre aligned, spacing between each seemingly randomly selected. The “Not a member of SpinXpress2 yet?” text for example is right aligned between the “Forgot your password?” text and a button, which are bother centred, with all three having different font sizes and different vertical spacing. It just looks dumb and amateurish.
The “LOG IN” button, what should be the most significant button in the window, is butt up against the right edge. And buried under the gaudy orange and green logo and tacky “GET SHARE PUBLISH” text, in the top left of the window, is a very small unlabelled button, that you miss if you’re not looking for it. It’s actually a second login button. The “LOG IN” text that appears on the right is some kind of link to this other button.
And why “LOG IN” in capitals? If it’s a text prompt, why not “Log in” or “Log In”. Speaking of “LOG IN”, nobody uses “LOG IN”. Ever. It’s either “LOGIN”, or most sites these days use the more user recognisable “Sign In”. There’s a “SIGN UP HERE” pseudo-button underneath it, so it doesn’t make any sense.
Now I’ve run the application previously, so my email address is already in the Email field, but it’s disabled. Why? Why can’t I enter a different email here to log in as someone else? And if there’s a reason, then why doesn’t it tell me? Or failing that, why put it in an edit box, make it static text!
But my favourite part of this window is the almost a quarter of the height of it that is just blank at the bottom. It makes you think you’re missing something.
So instead of logging in, I decide to check the preferences to see what else I can do. Surprise! Not only isn’t there a preferences dialog, but there isn’t even a menu bar, so you can’t even quit the damn thing! Later I figured out that the red traffic light on the window title bar actually quits as well as closing the window. Very un-Apple guidelines.
And strangely, behind this window is a floating graphic with a thermometer in it. It has no window controls, so you can’t close it, resize it, hide it or move it. Once you’ve signed in, sorry, logged in, the thermometer continues for a few seconds until the main window opens. Why? It only takes a few seconds. Just change the cursor or something. A better idea might be to open the main SpinXpress window, and login from there and show a thermometer from there. You can only ever login as your original email address, so why not just take me straight to my workspace?
So now we come to the main window. The first time in, a large window text pane will appear on every single page you look at, asking if you came here from Ourmedia, and explaining what SpinXpress is all about. Problem is, it takes up most of the window, and hides what’s underneath it, including most of the FAQ. A menu bar has now appeared as well, but all you get is a really badly thought out File menu.
This window is slightly better layed out, but it looks like it’s using WebKit or similar to layout each of the right hand content panes, which is probably why it looks so ugly. Text regularly gets painted over by graphics, doesn’t fit in the pane correctly, and looks like a badly designed web page.
The left hand pane (or it a web frame?) at times changes the background to almost the same colour as the item text, a shade of blue, which means you can hardly read it. Why they thought a menu needed to be blue in the first place is completely beyond me, let alone the background being the same colour! And considering the right hand pane looks like a web page, these left pane items look like hyperlinks, so they’re a little disconcerting when you click on them, no knowing what to expect them to do. It would be nice if the font was slightly smaller though, so you can actually see the text without the tips of the descenders being clipped by the item underneath it.
I then clicked on Share Media, Groups, New Group in this list, and it prompted me to set up a new group. But it wouldn’t let me cancel it, either with clicking on another menu item, using the standard cancel keys, or via the menu bar. At this point you are locked into creating a group, regardless whether you want to or not. You can however at this point hit OA-Q to quit.
I could go on for hours detailing all the problems with the user interface, many of which are simple no brainers. So it begs the question, is anyone testing or running any kind of quality assurance on this thing before it goes out the door? Certainly not for the Mac version. And this is the scary part. What developers don’t understand about user interfaces, usually corresponds with what else they don’t know about the platform they’re developing for. Mac developers know that the Mac UI is an integral part of Mac software development, as much a part as say accessing the file system, interfacing with the help system, managing NIBs and other resources correctly, writing to the Foundation and AppKit frameworks etc. Mac developers know about the user interface guidelines.
But then so do Windows developers and even Java developers. The Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines came out in 2001, and in the edition I have here, page 62 talks about Layout and Visual Alignment, none of which seems to have been adhered to in the Mac version of SpinXpress.
But does it work? Yes, it seems to work very well. But then I haven’t tested dropping the network from underneath it, force quitting during a transfer, or entering crap into various dialogs etc. So yes, it seems to work quit well, but who knows… And anyway, it’s free so I’m not complaining. 🙂 Yet.
I hate resolutions, particularly new years’ ones. If I want to change something, I should have the psychological strength to do so when I want to, instead of only when the year clicks over from 2007 to 2008. Anyway, I made this resolution around new years, so I guess it’s technically a new years’ resolution.
Since we started Bonny & Clyde, I’ve pretty much stopped all my blogging, especially my videoblogging. Well, part of the reason was B&C, but I think some of it was also a concern about the effect on my consulting clients at the time, with the general language and outlook of my blog and some of the shit I’d openly blogged about from some idiots in the videoblogging space. There see, I’m still doing it. Doh!
In conjunction with Phoebe growing up, moving house again back to where I used to video heaps of stray cats, the end of B&C, and a bunch of other secret news over the next few months, I figure it’s time to begin videoblogging again.
Yeah right, we’ll see if that happens.
Does Background Music Impact Computer Task Performance?
Summary: The effects of music on performance on a computer-mediated problem-solving task were examined. Participants completed the task in anonymous dyads as they were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Results indicate that those in the Classical music condition performed better on the problem solving-task than those in the Punk music or No Music conditions. However, those listening to the Classical music offered more off-task comments during the task than those listening to No Music. Implications for website designers are discussed.
“The current study looked at the distracting effects of pop music on introverts’ and extraverts’ performance on various cognitive tasks. It was predicted that there would be a main effect for music and an interaction effect with introverts performing less well in the presence of music than extraverts. Ten introverts and ten extraverts were given two tests (a memory test with immediate and delayed recall and a reading comprehension test), which were completed, either while being exposed to pop music, or in silence. The results showed that there was a detrimental effect on immediate recall on the memory test for both groups when music was played, and two of the three interactions were significant. After a 6-minute interval the introverts who had memorized the objects in the presence of the pop music had a significantly lower recall than the extraverts in the same condition and the introverts who had observed them in silence. The introverts who completed a reading comprehension task when music was being played also performed significantly less well than these two groups. These findings have implications for the study habits of introverts when needing to retain or process complex information.”
The Psychology of Behaviour at Work: The Individual in the Organisation
Research into the role of music in the work place. “…score in a reading comprehension test were significantly higher in a ‘low information-load music’ condition than either a slient condition or a ‘high information-load music’ condition, where ‘information load’ was measured by tonal range, repetition and rhythmic complexity.”
Joe Gillis: Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
The Power of Non Verbal Communication
U.C.L.A. Psychologist and researcher Albert Mehrabian illustrated the impact and importance of non verbal language in his 1967 investigation of how people communicate. Mehrabians research shows that 7% of the meaning of communication comes from verbal elements (or words), 36% comes from vocal elements (tone, pitch, rate, etc….), and 55% comes from non verbal elements (posture, expression, etc….).
The Ethics of Erasing a Bad Memory
Questions of withholding bad news, wiping out bad memories — plastering over wayward cracks in our minds with chemicals — are answered thousands of times everyday, without ever being asked.