If you are subscribe to my Google Reader share, are one of my Twitter friends, or are connected to me on FriendFeed, then you might be sick of this topic already, since I've been kinda blabbing and sharing and tweeting ever since I found out about this when I came into work this morning, but... DUDE! Ubiquity is AWESOME!!!!
In case you, like me, have never heard of the Ubiquity project from Mozilla Labs before, let me enlighten you with this here little video:
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
The reason that this tool is so cool is that it brings together the speed of command line work with the user friendliness of the graphical interface. With a few key strokes you can do the work of tons of mouse moves and clicks. What's more, the key strokes are completely intuitive. There's no memorizing a huge list of things just to make it work. I don't have to memorize the word "Twitter", I use it all the time, and if I start typing "Twitter" in the Ubiquity command box it guesses at what I'm trying to tell it before I'm even done. So, two letters in, I'm done with the "Twitter" part of the command and I can start telling it what I want it to tweet.
The interface for Weather is another great example of how easy to use this interface is. I called up the Ubiquity command box and started to type "we" and it knew I wanted weather. Then I typed Oakland (where the bestest daughter in the whole wide world is right now), and it immediately gave me the weather for Oakland, California. I decided to see about Oakland, New Jersey, though, just for a twist. *Poof* the weather info changed as I added in the state. Very nice.
There are lots of commonly used tools built into the application already. On the downside, non-programmers find themselves stuck with the options that someone else picked when they wrote the command. On the upside, however, with just a little bit of work you can learn how to edit existing commands or write your own, so you can make commands go to the sites that YOU want.
The first thing I plan to do with this? Create a command for mapping here in Israel using http://mapa.co.il, since Google Maps are less than useless in Israel. (Apparently, in Israel we have no streets.) I shall post code and a general review of the coding experience here when I'm done.
Oh, oh, oh, you know what else would be nice? A command to blog things just like you can email things in Ubiquity. Yeah, that would be awesome. Who wants to write that one?
Showing posts with label usability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label usability. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Good User Interfaces
I have a friend who loves to complain about the user interfaces in current technology. He has a million great things to say about how things should be made, and he says them with a cantankerous grumble. I adore him for so many reasons, but this is definitely one of them. He opens my eyes again and again to my own tendency to develop for geeks like me instead of the person on the street who really should be getting a better thought out and better built product. Because of him, I also notice even more when someone does something really right.
A couple of weeks ago he and I were in an elevator and he hit the wrong button by accident. He grumbled and hit the correct button and then said, "You know, if elevators were made correctly, I'd be able to cancel that wrong choice. I should be able to hit that button again and make it turn off."
Today, when I got into the elevator at work, someone else got in, pressed the wrong button, noticed the mistake and pressed the button again to cancel the request. Then they pressed the floor they really wanted. Oo! I was so excited I had to twitter it right there in the elevator.
It turns out that all new Mitsubishi elevators have that functionality. Way to go Mitsubishi.
Another one of my friend's pet peeves is that you have to save files. Why should you have to do an action to save a file? It should be automatic, right? Why would I create a file if I didn't want to save it? Well, it's getting to be automatic in some places like Google Docs for instance. Well, today I found another really cool app that deals with the saving thing right along with at least a dozen other major UI annoyances.
Skitch is unfortunately a Mac only application and it's still in beta, but it looks absolutely awesome. They get so many things right. They have a great way to share things, to snap screenshots, to draw and manipulate images, and you don't have to save your file from a menu or a keystroke. You can just drag it to where you want it to live, or drag it to an email to share it. Very, very nice.
A couple of weeks ago he and I were in an elevator and he hit the wrong button by accident. He grumbled and hit the correct button and then said, "You know, if elevators were made correctly, I'd be able to cancel that wrong choice. I should be able to hit that button again and make it turn off."
Today, when I got into the elevator at work, someone else got in, pressed the wrong button, noticed the mistake and pressed the button again to cancel the request. Then they pressed the floor they really wanted. Oo! I was so excited I had to twitter it right there in the elevator.
It turns out that all new Mitsubishi elevators have that functionality. Way to go Mitsubishi.
Another one of my friend's pet peeves is that you have to save files. Why should you have to do an action to save a file? It should be automatic, right? Why would I create a file if I didn't want to save it? Well, it's getting to be automatic in some places like Google Docs for instance. Well, today I found another really cool app that deals with the saving thing right along with at least a dozen other major UI annoyances.
Skitch is unfortunately a Mac only application and it's still in beta, but it looks absolutely awesome. They get so many things right. They have a great way to share things, to snap screenshots, to draw and manipulate images, and you don't have to save your file from a menu or a keystroke. You can just drag it to where you want it to live, or drag it to an email to share it. Very, very nice.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Computing Everywhere?
A friend of mine hates the state of computing today. He points out that it's developed by geeks for geeks, and the rest of the world has to bend to our twisted way of thinking. Really, computers should be more than just ubiquitous, they should be invisible. They should bend to the needs of humans, not the other way around.
One of the areas where this is actually making strides forward is in the area of always accessible data. As my friend would say, "Why should I have to manage three or four address books? I shouldn't! The computer, my home phone, my cell phone, and all of the apps on them should be able to get what I need from one central place where I keep that data." So true.
APIs for cross-application development and mashups are getting us closer to that kind of thing, and tools like OpenID and OAuth are also moving us in the right direction. But, what about that data thing? How can I have my data in one place?
One possibility is the advent of serious online storage solutions and wifi based file sharing through applications like *Fring. There's a blog article about just that at the Fring site called "Is Fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?". Yeah, I think that it can be.
We're still a long way from where my friend dreams, but I truly believe that we are in the midst of an evolution that is heading in that direction. One side of me says that we shouldn't be too impatient because all of these things are moving forward one step at a time, but on the other hand, it's precisely the impatience of developers and entrepreneurs that is pushing us forward in this evolution so quickly.
The next time you look at the design of an application you are working on, ask yourself: "How is this going to tie in with the computing needs of the user at home, on their smart phone, in the car... and everywhere else they are computing?" And "Can we make it work together with a single data source and invisible syncing?" Because if you can deal with those two issues now, you are going to put your app ahead of the curve and make it that much more invaluable to your end user. Which might just be yourself. (or me!) ;)
*Just so you know: I work for Fring now. :)
One of the areas where this is actually making strides forward is in the area of always accessible data. As my friend would say, "Why should I have to manage three or four address books? I shouldn't! The computer, my home phone, my cell phone, and all of the apps on them should be able to get what I need from one central place where I keep that data." So true.
APIs for cross-application development and mashups are getting us closer to that kind of thing, and tools like OpenID and OAuth are also moving us in the right direction. But, what about that data thing? How can I have my data in one place?
One possibility is the advent of serious online storage solutions and wifi based file sharing through applications like *Fring. There's a blog article about just that at the Fring site called "Is Fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?". Yeah, I think that it can be.
We're still a long way from where my friend dreams, but I truly believe that we are in the midst of an evolution that is heading in that direction. One side of me says that we shouldn't be too impatient because all of these things are moving forward one step at a time, but on the other hand, it's precisely the impatience of developers and entrepreneurs that is pushing us forward in this evolution so quickly.
The next time you look at the design of an application you are working on, ask yourself: "How is this going to tie in with the computing needs of the user at home, on their smart phone, in the car... and everywhere else they are computing?" And "Can we make it work together with a single data source and invisible syncing?" Because if you can deal with those two issues now, you are going to put your app ahead of the curve and make it that much more invaluable to your end user. Which might just be yourself. (or me!) ;)
*Just so you know: I work for Fring now. :)
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