UI Guesses for Google Chrome OS
Google's ChromeOS, might be vaporware, but the idea of a Google built OS is an interesting thought experiment in design. Knowing that Google is engineer friendly, have a business based on search, and a tendency toward minimalist design, leads me to the following guesses:
- The paper paradigm is antiquated. Navigation will be dead, this will be a search driven OS. That means that they're gonna do something with the desktop, as in forget you had one. An analogy: If your current desktop is like the Yahoo homepage (cluttered, full of everything), a ChromeOS desktop will be like the Google homepage: a search bar.
- Apps? What apps? You're not gonna be able to run photoshop on this. You don't need to. This isn't designed for people who need apps. It's designed for people that do email, web, and word. All of which can be done in the cloud.
- You're not gonna see ads all over the place. Think Gmail ads, not google search ads. Small, inline.
- Local storage won't matter – the goal here, is to store all you data in the cloud. Besides, this is gonna be for netbooks, what data do you have that can't be stored in the cloud? Think about the difference between the Palm Pilot and the iPhone. On a Palm, you had to sync all of your data to bring it with you. The iPhone can store it all (even your music) in the cloud. ChromeOS will operate the same way. I'd expect to see a 3G modem, similar to the Kindle, built into devices.
Finally, for all those calling it vaporware, I say this: Google has yet to disappoint. The Android OS had a similar lack of information too. I have faith! :)
Design Says to Shovelware: ‘I Need More Whitespace’ — a Design Critique of TIME
I took two lessons from Time’s Q&A with Bill Keller. The first, outlined in Dear Bill Keller, was intended be a short reaction to the piece, that turned into a 1600 word article.
This post outlines the second takeaway, and will be 1000 words. Pictures are worth 1000 words right? :)
Take a look at the comparison between the print and online layouts of that article below.
click for a larger version
The print layout is clearly, superior. It’s far easier to read, offers a summary of what the article is at an eye’s glance.
- Multiple Pages The online version requires the user to click to a second page to read the whole article. Yet, the print version fits handily on one page. WHY!?
There is no newshole online! Stop making it difficult for us to get to the end of the article! - Ads Admittedly, the print version shares a spread with a full page ad, but the content remains ad free. The online version feels cramped. There are two, small, intrusive ads, that serve to distract from the content.
- Styling is Gone This is a great example of why shovelware is bad for design. The print version nicely separates out questions, credits, and answers with font styles. The online version? Nothing. Someone just copy-pasted the content out of a text document. It’s much harder to read than the article, let alone tell that it’s a Q&A.
- The Sidebar is Distracting Even if Google is my homepage, there is far too much content presented to draw me in. The sidebar is full of irrelevant stuff that distracts me from the article. The clean, minimalistic design in print is far more eye-catching.
The Takeaway
- Use subheads Give the reader entry points. Especially online where people are used to reeading short blurbs of text are are prone to skimming as they scroll.
- Don’t forget the rule about one piece of dominant artwork It's amazing how truly good design never changes. Presenting one place for the eye to center on that sums up the content is a design trait that goes to the way we think – regardless of the medium.
- Leave some whitespace Clutter on the page makes your content hard to read. Just because your CMS allows you to dump in your content and move on, it doesn't mean you should. Giving this article the same amount of design time in both print and online would have helped a lot. I'd bet that the amount of design time for the web could be much less.
A Web Design Critique of Google News
I recently critiqued the redesign of Newsweek, and was pleased to see the positive response. I sorta promised that this would become a regular feature for me, so I'll try to hold to that.
I'm only looking at homepages. Critiquing a whole site is a lot of work. I'll do it someone wants to pay me though :]
After leading a webinar for CoPress on homepage design, I've done a lot of research into mainstream homepages – what works and what doesn't. For the second go at this, let's look at Google News.
A Web Design Critique of the Newsweek Redesign
Newsweek’s redesign/relaunch today revealed a much cleaner, more web friendly site. Many improvements have been made, and you can tell that they’re thinking hard.
However, there’s still room to improve. The essential problem with the site is that it still feel liks a newspaper site, not a online newsorg. Check out the embedded PDF for a look at the annotated homepage of the site and a few quick, overall notes below.
- The design is nice and clean with a solid red motif, but the widgets are sorta hard to tell apart, they don’t really have a bottom.
- I know that Newsweek is a partner of MSNBC, but promoting that connection so heavily may not be so smart. MSNBC should get equal billing (see: Slate and WaPo), or be totally integrated.
- The choice to push the blogs so heavily is interesting (They have a widget and a nav bar). Not bad, just interesting. I’m curious to know if that works out.
- Serious Fun is all kinds of UI hell. The side arrows to mean neutral is just down right confusing , and it’s got very prominent placement on the F pattern of user reading. I’m all down for turning polls into something more of a game, but rethink the UI here.
- Props for having links to other newsorgs. That’s a valuable service that Newsweek is developing. The fact that you get to the other site through a frame is, again, interesting. Cheers to experimentation.
An Economist Approach to the Newspaper Industry
You should really hear my brother and me argue.
It sounds sounds a lot like we disagree on everything, but sit and listen to us, and you realize that we often have the same point of view, just different ways of expressing it.
My brother is the guy who got me inspired/angry enough to write You Can’t Make Abundancy Scarce. Phill Baker (who has no online profile to link to), who studies economics and engineering at UPenn and was assigned a massive project – to write a 80 page paper on an industry effected by technological change.
I’m pretty certain that his decision to write on the newspaper industry was in part to piss me off, but in reality, I’m glad he’s doing it. It’s interesting to see how an economist approaches the industry from a macro perspective.
He’s asked me to publish the paper when he’s done, mostly to see what the “industry insiders” think. I’ve agreed, so look for it in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, we're in the process of another email exchange, in which I play futurist and defend us blogging “ilk.”
What follows is excerpts from his email (small edits), interspaced with my responses. Any emphasis or links are my own.
Uh, yea, definitely, as to the last point you made. It's interesting b/c this is a 'classic' example of how success breeds failure under the pressure of technological change. There's some fascinating literature in that topic, but the poignant example is Kodak: they were so focused on being a film camera company, that they completely missed digital. They thought they were in the business of film (they were a pretty sophisticated chemical engineering company), whereas they should have seen themselves in the photography business.
Where we differ is the extent of the change. So the business model has lost its exclusivity and newspapers missed the boat. Now they're facing established competitors in their markets with serious competitive advantages and the benefits of network effects through first mover status (e.g. if the NYTimes had been craigslist, we wouldn't be hearing of the end of newspapers).
Newspapers are not going anywhere. Print will not disappear, there's simply too much demand. 15% profit margins (20% is a bit high, actually the industry average is about 17%), should disappear (they can be maintained at the cost of cutting everything in the paper, but that'd be stupid). Circulation will likely stabilize in the next few years as the cannibalization of the print edition by the internet edition faces diminishing returns.
What's fascinating is that their business model has been co-opted by search. I don't think, and the research backs me up here, that display advertising online will ever come close to replacing the lost advertising revenue that was enjoyed in print. The 'national' papers, or those that are big enough to scale and aren't trapped under burdens of debt due (some serendipity comes into play there), will likely find stability first as they can portray themselves as the replacements to the four TV networks. At the head of long tail, they'll be able to differentiate themselves from commodity news through designer websites, cool visualizations, (hopefully) good journalism and (hopefully) their brand names.
- Agreed. Ads will very likely not be able to fund the entirety of a newsorg in the future. I can say this with maybe… 90% certainty.
- Newspapers enjoyed a profit margin of 20% and higher.
- The issue here is largely mindset. Newspapers are used to thinking of themselves as …newspapers. As they realize that they are really just a specialized subset of the tech sector, they'll come to have a revenue model that is more inline with the industry. Which is to say, one that relies on multiple sources of revenue.
- We really agree on your last three points here. Newsorgs need a great UI, ability to inform using data, and to maintain a solid reputation.
MobileMe Reviewed
I've just gotten my hands on a full MobileMe account (thanks Ramon!) and I thought I'd take the opportunity to compliment and complain.
Features Not Working
As of this writing, the following features of me.com are not working.
- Backup software (download link redirects)
- According to the System Status: Homepage & Groups is currently not operating
- Still experiencing system slow downs, especially when accessing account settings.
MobileMe got off to a rocky start. The dotmac website stated that they system would be offline from 8pm-2am beginning Wednesday evening (Jul 9) to facilitate the transition. The presumption was that me.com would go live at 2am, which did not happen. Me.com went through periods of service and through Friday (the day of the iPhone 3G launch). The system became fast enough to be usable on Saturday (Jul 12, the date
It's so shiiiinyyy
Let's get this clear, me.com is pretty. Really, really pretty. It almost feels like a desktop app. You can use keyboard shortcuts just like a desktop app (replace ⌘ key with the ctrl key and you already know the keyboard shortcuts). You can drag and drop just like a desktop app. Windows slide down just like a desktop app. In case you didn't get it, it feels like a desktop app!
Switching between modules requires a load time, but actions within any one of the modules doesn't seem to incur a load time at all (very cool).
Based on SproutCore, MobileMe feels quick. Yet, there are still a few remaining speed issues. I've tried to upload over 5GB of photos to my iDisk via the desktop interface and the transfer has taken 9+ hours to get half way; reading another 9 hours to complete. (This upload later failed; twice.) Accessing the 'account settings' section of the web interface is hit or miss. Sometimes it pops right up, sometimes it just displays "loading" for eternity. No doubt, these are both symptoms of a freshly launched app, nonetheless, they are annoying.
iDisk
iDisk web interface.
The iDisk webapp works much as you'd expect. It's the same column interface that Finder has. Clicking on a folder reveals the files and directories contained. I haven't figured out the pattern yet, but sometimes the app displays a loading icon you click on a folder, and sometimes it doesn't. Also, the app gives no indication that you've clicked on an empty folder. In contrast, Finder tells the user that a directory has "0 items," the iDisk webapp has no visual indication, and frequently left me watching the computer screen hoping something would load.
The interface does not allow for previewing of files. Click on a jpg and the app will tell you that it's a jpg, but it doesn't display a thumbnail. The system also does not recognize RAW files. It would be nice to have a 'quicklook' like functionality so that a user didn't have to download a file to see what it is.
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| .jpg: no preview | .nef: not recognized |
Preferences for iDisk are extremely simple. You have the choice of displaying a 'Simple Folder Layout' - only Documents, Public and Movies are shown in iDisk home. The app behaves as you'd expect it too, and in someways is more responsive than the desktop plugin. Which is continually having connection issues. It seems that my iDisk can't stay connect for more than several hours at a time – no big deal until I try to transfer several gigabytes of files.
Deleting files on the iDisk via the desktop takes a very long time. But, the process is fast on the web app, and the changes are reflected nearly instantaneously on the desktop side.
In addition, I was surprised to see the webapp lacking two key features. 1) It is not capable of uploading directories, even though it can upload multiple files. The help instructs users to compress (zip) their directories first – what a poor solution. 2) Even though Contacts and Mail have instant search, iDisk does not. erm… makers of Spotlight – HELLO! I'd like to be able to search my files online too please. K, thanks.
I was impressed at the integration, but constantly frustrated by webapp limitations and the glacial communications times when using the desktop interface. iDisk is not ready for large file transfers but with luck, Apple will fix the bugs and speed will increase in the near future.
Gallery
Gallery web interface
Gallery is the me.com interface for hosting your photos. Think of it as the web based iPhoto.
The frontend is the same that users have come to know and love. It's extremely fast, good looking and offers a variety of options to viewers.
Uploading to Gallery
Uploads are very quick and the interface not only allows the user to upload multiple files at once, but has the option to add more files while an upload is in progress - nifty!
It's possible to sync Gallery with either Aperture or iPhoto but, in my opinion, there is one glaring sync error. Apple gives MobileMe users 20GB of storage to divide between email, iDisk, Gallery, and Backup. 20GB may seem like a lot but when all of these services are taken into account, the space goes fast. Ideally, MobileMe could offer users a complete cloud storage solution for all data. 20GB is simply not enough to accomplish that.
Following that logic, Apple should allow Gallery to use photos placed in the Pictures folder of iDisk. Not only would this ease the storage constraints, but it would simplify the interface between the two apps.
It's worth noting that Gallery has no photo editing capabilities or instant search. I don't think these are features that many users will miss, but as search is a key Apple technology and web-based photo editing is becoming more popular, it would have been nice for Apple to through those features in.
And that is as far as my complaints with Gallery go. It is otherwise and extremely well designed and extremely responsive app.
Calendar
Calendar web interface
Entering info into an event is a bit different on the web than in iCal.
Calendar isn't quite as slick as iCal, but it's still the slickest calendar interface I've seen to date. It has all the simplicity of gCal with fewer pages loads. (Less pages loaded means the app is faster.)
Notably, Calendar falls into the class of MobileMe apps that could use instant search and curiously doesn't have it.
While Calendar has no trouble syncing your iCal calendars, it does not import your subscription calendars. I can't fathom why this is, but it sure is annoying to not have holidays visible.
Aside from the different info panel (see photo, right), Calendar does maintain an interface virtually identical to iCal. This means that Calendar shares the same flaw that I find with iCal - it has poor support for ToDo items. As a simple list, ToDo is horribly uncomplicated and hard to use. There's no way to attach a todo to an event, one can't postpone todo items, and there is no method to group tasks with multiple calendars. Nonetheless, Calendar does what it's supposed to do elegantly and without trouble.
Contacts
Contacts web interface
Contacts should be the simplest app in the suite. Or at least, it makes sense to me that a simple database interface would be ease to do. …so of course, it fell to the bottom of the maintenance list.
My first sync (on Friday) caused some of my contacts to duplicate. I'm not sure why some duplicated and some didn't, but it was sure annoying and not what I expected from a first class sync app. Once I got that problem taken care of, I headed over to the webapp and tried dealing with my contacts there.
As with the rest of the me.com apps, Contacts online is very similar to contacts on the desktop. One glaring thing that is missing the smart contact groups. Normal groups show up online fine, but it's a strange thing to be missing when the instant search works so well. (whoohooo! instant search!)
One strange bug I encountered was that editing a contact name didn't always update the name in the contact list.
I won't say that Contacts is bad, far from it - it looks to be a promising web interface. But, it sure is buggy.
Mail web interface
Let me start by saying this. I really prefer desktop apps for email – I want the ability to search and write messages while offline. To accomplish this, I use Apple's Mail.app. But, I've used Yahoo, AOL, gmail, Comcast, squirrel mail, and a host (20+?) of other email webapps.
Let me say this, for all it's simplicity and flash, the new MoblieMe email app sucks. I like the instant search, but aside from that, there are a lot of serious flaws.
Mail doesn't import other email accounts. The reason I so like Mail.app is that I can have a ton of email accounts in it. I've got 6 active right now. They all do different things and I don't want them confused. Now maybe I'm unique in that respect, but I still want Mail's web interface to show those other accounts. I was quite surprised to find that it didn't. After all, gmail does it.
Mail doesn't support smart folders. Not too much of a surprise in light of Contacts not supporting smart groups, but very disappointing. But, Mail has instant search!
New Message opens a popup. Really Apple? really? Didn't you learn anything from AOL's mistakes and Gmail's success? Lets keep everything in one window, mhhhkay?
New Message doesn't auto-complete the "To:" field. Granted, I ran into this problem when I clicked on the address book, but that doesn't indicate that auot-complete wasn't working. This seems to be an obvious feature that everybody uses.
I count myself lucky that I don't depend on me.com as my primary email. The webapp is easily the weakest in the suite, and needs quick updating.
Other nifty things
In general, the help provided is very good. Clicking on a help link or pressing [ctrl+?] launches a new popup (appropriate in this case) which loads faster than OSX help windows do!
I did all of my testing in Safari Version 3.1.1 (5525.20), so your mileage in a different browser may vary. I'm very interested to know how IE deals with me.com.
You can set me.com to remember who you are for 2 weeks at a time, a good security measure.
This is way improved over dotmac.
It's possible to setup your own domain name to point to your homepage. That means you can get your iWeb site to live at its own URL.
Users can set how they divide storage between their email and their iDisk –very handy!
Aside from where I specifically mentioned, the me.com is fast. Load times are negligible and speed should only increase as Apple works out the kinks.
Syncing a computer with MobileMe is similarly speedy, I could be mistaken, but it seemed snappier than the dotmac sync.
What I really think...
I'm horribly disappointed with iDisk. I really expected better from a cloud storage solution. For now, I'm sticking with Wua.la. I don't doubt that Apple will work out the kinks, but right now, it's broken.
Gallery, Contacts and Calendar are really nifty apps that are well done, but have several bugs.
Though usable, Mail needs a lot of work. Stick with gmail, Yahoo, or a desktop client.
Now for the million dollar question. Is it worth $100 a year?
- Do you need to host a website or share you pictures online, but have little technical know-how?
- Do you already have a dotmac email address?
- Do you want a really slick way of showing off your photos and videos?
- Do you need a really simple way to sync two computers?
- Do you want a set-it-and-forget-it strategy to get an offsite backup of your most essential data?
If you answered yes to any of the above, give me.com a serious think. Note I didn't ask if you need a way to get your calendar, or contacts, or email, or photos, or data, online. There are free solutions for all of these, they're just far more manual than MobileMe.
I really appreciate the approach of MobileMe. And incase you didn't catch it, the interface is slick! I trust that once all of the bugs are worked out, life @me will be really sweet.
A totally arbitrary rating, for those that need a number: 7.45/10
Update
AppleInsider raises an interesting point that I completely missed. MobileMe is marketed as a push solution for all your devices, and it fails at this goal. Though changes made on an iPhone are apparently recognized instantly by the cloud, changes made on a Mac still need to be synced. That is not a push solution, not at all. I suspect that the next version of OSX aliviate, if not fix this issue with support for exchange built into all the necessary apps. Nonetheless, it is a severe disappointment to not have push now – as was promised. Syncing is a 2nd class solution, especially when it duplicates my contacts!
Update 2
Check out this for a great look at how Apple is fixing the problem.
Simplicity
Back from Italy. Should be able to post more regularly now. Photos to come shortly.
Great comic/post on another blog that deals with Apple, Google, and your company.
One word: so true.
