Everyday interactions

I've been using OSX since tiger was released and of course we all know it's a beautiful operating system. I just wanted to point out one little feature that most people probably use and don't notice. It's good to celebrate the little things.

When you drag a file over a folder and hold it there for a second, a preview of the contents of that folder opens up allowing you to easily drop your file in there if you decide this is the place for it. However, if this isn't the folder you want your file to live in, then you can drag the file outside of the preview area and the folder then closes instantly, which leaves you free to explore the other folders available.

It's such a beautifully simple interaction you just wouldn't notice it.

When you ask someone to click a 'play' button on a video, you can bet they are expecting the video to play. Don't then load a lightbox and make them click another play button to watch the video. Instead, open the lightbox and auto-play the video.

A lot has been said, both good and bad, about the latest version of the Twitter iPhone app and while I can certainly see some of the bad points they added one feature that I really like.

Changing the 'Mentions' tab to a 'Connect' tab and adding Retweet, Follow and Favourite notifications in there was a great idea. It's really nice to discover when someone favourites your tweets and it helps you to keep track of what tweets are positively received. It's also now much easier to know who is following you and find out a little put about them.

So regardless of your opinions of the app as a whole, surely you can see some good things came of it?

With the new design Facebook intriduced a side menu and a shortcut menu at the top, which allows you quick access to friend requests, messages and notifications. While it might seem logical to make those options easily accessible, the way they have done it is just wrong.

Why the Facebook app is wrong (in my opinion)

I'll admit I'm very OCD and don't like to leave notifications present and this is where Facebook lets me down. The hirearchy of the mobile app is so wrong, there are endless ways to get to the same content and seemingly each different method takes you to a new level in the app structure, I've often found myself hitting the back arrow numerous times and cycling through the same content until I get back to the top of the tree.

What makes this particulary frustrating is that I can be reading a message, and have a notification that is telling me the message I am reading has been updated by someone else. Instead of just showing me the update in the current screen, I have to activate the message popup and click the notification to then reload the message before the notifcation bubble goes away. Doing this on a particualrly active message board really gets tiring.

Has this bothered you in the Facebook app, or am I just too much of an OCD?

Last week I noticed you could add snow to your YouTube video and drag a snowflake to swipe through your video.

And just now I've opened the brilliant Hailo app to spot they've added a Christmas hat to their little map pointer man.

It's a lovely way to put your customers in a good mood when they're using you during the holidays.

Have you seen any other Christmas additions?

There have been a lot of gushing tweets about the re-design of the Path iPhone app in the last week. It is a beautifully designed app (even though I won't ever use it, but that's another post).

The post menu is particularly nice. Opening the menu displays a number of options allowing you to choose the type of story you would like to share. As with a lot of iOS features it is hidden by default and would need people to explore the app to find it. However, the Path designer have tried to over come this by animating the menu opening during the first view of the app after registering. Doing this draws attention directly to the menu and by showing the animation it teaches viewers how to get it back when they want it.

Mobile devices exploded onto the scene in 2011 and are only going to get bigger in 2012 and with them came a whole new learning curve for designers.

The smaller screen space has meant that not every feature can be placed on the screen at the same time. This has led to a lot of features ring hidden only to be displayed after an arbitrary gesture. To get this hidden information across tooltips have become common place within many apps.

To use tooltips effectively thy should only display in the context where they are necessary and they should be easy to dismiss, otherwise they can get in the way of the experience just like this example from Path.

After registering, Path suggests that you connect with friends, however, I wasn't ready to yet and looked for a way to dismiss the tooltip and actually explore the app. Sadly, I discovered their gentle nudge to connect with friends was actually a demand because I couldn't dismiss the tooltip.

If you're going to use a suggestive tooltip you should make sure it is easy to get rid of. Path could have easily just added another step into their registration process that asked me to connect with friends of skip. However, they disguised this extra step as a tooltip, which I had to annoyingly accept and then instantly take a step back to the home screen I wanted to use.

This didn't give me the best first impression of them.

I recently discovered a nice little bookmarking service called Whimventory that is set up to allow you to create wish lists from multiple websites (especially good at Christmas time).

It is a simple little application and you should check it out. However, their registration process highlights a great example of how not use inline form validation.

The registration form is nice and short and shouldn't take a minute, however, the live form validation makes it take far longer than it needs to. As you as you activate a form field you get a list of errors telling you what you haven't had a chance to input yet. These errors only go away when you move to another input field with satisfactory information.

This constant validation check makes you stop and check that everything you input is accepted by the form before beginning on the next element. There is a saying in the UK which states 'you are innocent until proven guilty' and would be great advice to take note of on this form. Errors should only be displayed after some incorrect information has been entered and the active input has been left.

Live validation will always increase the initial time it takes to fill out a form because people will generally stop to check the validation before moving on. However, beginning with errors and then constantly validating after every key press is a sure fire way to make filling out a form far more painful than is necessary.

This has always bugged me so I thought it was about time to point it out to others. I use the wonderful twitter app on my iPad and for the most part marvel at the wonder of the interaction design.

However, unfollowing people on there always annoys me. When I click the nice and clear unfollow option on someone's profile I am then presented with the exact same option again, which I have to click to confirm.

Now I understand that for certain functions like deleting lots of work it can sometimes help to ask for confirmation just in case it was triggered in error. However, unfollowing someone isn't exactly life threatening and it's really easy to undo the action (just click on e massive 'follow' button you are left with) so I don't understand why they feel the need to ask me again. They don't even change the label, I just have to click two different unfollow buttons to complete the action.

Very annoying!

Rant over :-)

Since launching last year Fab.com has established itself as a big player in the flash sales market. Not only are they undeniably cool but the design and UX principles that they display are beautiful. They're fast becoming a "How do Fab do it?" kind of company.

One example of their genius is how they have chosen to implement variable rewards within their site. Variable rewards are a powerful persuader when done right. Because they are unexpected they're far more exciting and it also means you are likely to visit more just in case you get one.

Another thing Fab have done well is putting a time limit on their offer. By giving me only 24 hours to take advantage of this offer they make customers browse the site for products they could be persuaded to buy with this offer. Without this urgency it is unlikely the offer would be as successful.

How could you employ variable rewards on your site?