6 ms·

Learning from "bad" UI (37signals on TripLog)

84 points by bdotdub 18y ago

auston 18y ago
I honestly believe a contextual UI for TripLog would be an order of magnitude easier to use. Gmail makes GREAT use of contextual UI elements.
dlytle 18y ago
Very nice article. I'm in agreement with the sentiments of TripLog's author; the #1 impediment to this kind of data entry is convenience. The goal here is to have users spend as little time as possible using the application. It could definitely use some improvements visually... but for that application, function should trump form if the two conflict.
- bdotdub 18y ago
  True, but I feel there are better approached to include both. Does anyone who has knowledge of the iPhone SDK know if you can make a regular window scroll? That would allow the "Latest Trips" to be slightly below everything, so its a quick swipe to check.
  - lpgauth 18y ago
    Not with a normal window, you can only modify the views inside the window but I guess you could create a new class but it's an overkill.
  - ardit33 18y ago
    Yes, you can have views that scroll inside a window. It makes perfect sense for long list of repetitive items (such as the list of videos in the youtube app). It would be counterintuitive to have controls that are hidden, and you have to scroll down to see them. Many users might not notice them. BUT, I still think that ui is poorly designed. The iPhone SDK, has a plethora of ready views and controls, or you can even make your own customized view, if you think what the iPhone SDK is providing is not good enough. So, I think the author of the app didn't want to go the extra mile, to create something that is both useful and appealing.
- jacobolus 18y ago
  And how does the gigantic spinning odometer thing improve function, exactly? Besides wasting space and leaving the rest of the interface horribly cluttered?
  - DougBTX 18y ago
    Because it means you don't have to bring up a key pad to enter numbers?
tialys 18y ago
Honestly, I think if the colors were just better picked it wouldn't look so awful at first glance. It's designed for speed, but that doesn't mean you have to make it bright and oddly colored.
bscofield 18y ago
I'm going to repost here what I did there, so sorry to anyone who reads both: I’m sorry, but I’ve read his defense – and this analysis – and I still say FAIL . If speed’s the primary concern, why would you use the scrolling widget to enter the mileage? That’s going to be measurably slower and less accurate than a simple text field that pulls in the dialing/numeric keyboard. My impression is that they’re operating entirely without user testing – their intentions are correct (make if fast, etc.), but they’re unwilling, unable, or too rushed to verify their decisions by watching people use various alternatives.
- dlytle 18y ago
  I agree with the criticism of the scrolling odometer widget; that part sounds like it would be better handled with the keyboard. I'm willing to cut them a little slack on the "lack of user testing" angle; it's not like there are many App Store enabled iPhones available for real-world usability testing. That will limit a potential test pool to people the developer knows well... because I doubt he'd be comfortable handing his iPhone to someone less than a trusted friend to provide feedback.
  - bscofield 18y ago
    Well, that's true. In this case, however, testing with novice users isn't exactly critical. The target audience here are repeat users, after all, so learnability is probably a lower priority than raw performance for a regular user. That means that the devs themselves could have tested, and I sincerely doubt that they would find the scrolling odometer faster OR more accurate than keyboard entry.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  My impression is that they’re operating entirely without user testing... So are lots of developers, I assume. At this point only certain selected individuals are allowed to transfer their iPhone app to an actual phone, right? (Unless they're using unlocked phones and the open development kits... which might have been a good idea. But let's assume they don't have the time or inclination to build an entirely separate app with a separate toolchain just to get an early start on user testing.) So for all I know that wacky scrolling widget will be quite usable. We should strive to suspend judgement. It was bound to invite ridicule, though, when viewed in a mockup. The odometer widget is such an obvious "duck" (to borrow a Tufte term [1]) that it's hard to avoid the suspicion that it was designed primarily for its looks, with usability as a distant second. It's also huge. It's hard to believe that's an efficient use of screen space. [1] "duck": a huge piece of distracting, nonfunctional decoration that's been applied to your graphics, generally for crass marketing purposes. Named in honor of a photo in Tufte's book depicting a roadside stand in the shape of an enormous bird.
youngnh 18y ago
with all the furor, it seems like its only a matter of time until someone actually redoes this guy's interface for him.
- marijn 18y ago
  Ah, you're giving people too much credit. Collective bitching is easy and fun, constructive work is hard.
  - sanj 18y ago
    Turns out he's not: http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6351/iphoneua8.jpg http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6351/iphoneua8.jpg http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6964/triploggw5.png http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6964/triploggw5.png http://ralovely.com/downloads/triplog1040.png http://ralovely.com/downloads/triplog1040.png
bprater 18y ago
One of the things I learned while playing Warcraft was the importance of scalable interfaces. When I first started, I was lucky to get my character to move across the screen in a straight line. I didn't know what a mod was, I just wanted to kill squirrels. By the time I joined a guild and we were raiding high-level instances, I had to have a screen full of mods that tracked every nuance of my characters (and raids) performance. Without them, I would have felt naked and nearly unable to play. As developers, I think we often forget that folks go through a very rough period of learning how to use an app to being able to quickly navigate it. Once they hit the latter period, there would be no harm in offering them additional power.
- 0x44 18y ago
  Blizzard does not offer additional power, it's only through the use of third-party add-ons that you have it.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    Blizzard offers the Lua scripting interface which facilitates the add-ons. It seems to have been a successful strategy.
edw519 18y ago
The one thing I noticed from the Flickr comments, 37signals comments, and the 2 threads here is that there's a lot of feedback from programmers to programmers. Fine. Lots of good data. Maybe even some that will go into product improvement. It's a necessary but not sufficient step. What we really need is feedback from paying customers, legitimate prospects, and monetizable eyeballs. We can critique each other's stuff all day long, but sooner or later, we need to get this in front of the users. There's a pretty good tradition here at hn called, "What do you think of my app..." There's usually a lot of good feedback, but don't get fooled into thinking this is anything other than pre-alpha. After reading all of this drama surrounding TripLog, now I'm curious what the real users think. (My customers always have additional and sometimes very different feedback from "hackers". One of their biggest differences is regarding the mouse. Some of them never want to touch it during heavy data entry sessions. Talk about something drastically changing the UI...)
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  I thought hackers despise the mouse more than anyone else.
  - edw519 18y ago
    Right. But they think everyone else likes it. I have a customer with 2 call centers, one on GUI and one on green screen. The green screen center consistently beats the the GUI center by 2 minutes per call every month. Drives him nuts. He can't move people from the green screen center to the GUI center or they quit in a week (too much clicking to get anything done). He asks me why it has to be that way. I say it doesn't, but whoever wrote it probably didn't know any better.
    - JesseAldridge 18y ago
      What's a green screen? You mean like a terminal with green characters?
      - kirubakaran 18y ago
run4yourlives 18y ago
Well, all I can say is that I hope to release an app with this much free publicity one day. I'm sure it's going to help his bottom line.
jamesbritt 18y ago
"When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user." The sort of thing that pains me, in so much as I will not always be a first-time user; my time as a first-timer is nothing compared to time being an experienced user. I'd rather have to spend a bit of time getting going it if pays off in being able to do things fast and reliably down the line. Ideally there should be ways to switch from the Newbie UI to the Old Hand UI, but most of what I see seems to forget that second part.
ojbyrne 18y ago
The one thing that stands out for me is that TripLog has inadvertently generated a ton of publicity (and maybe a bunch of people willing to offer free help). The next version will have a professional UI and sell a gazillion copies.
josefresco 18y ago
I'm begging 37signals to take a crack at an improved interface. Sure TripLog will get even more free PR but I'm really curious to see how they can improve it. Put your UI skills where your mouth is.
- alabut 18y ago
  They did demonstrate their UI skills, by deconstructing the logic behind what the TripLog interface was trying to do and showing the logical groupings of related info. Translating that into visuals is simply the next step - scroll down to sanj's comment or go to daringfireball's followup post for links to visuals the 37s discussion sparked - and unfortunately, many people see it as the only step.
noel_gomez 18y ago
wonder how many copies have been sold so far

84 points by bdotdub 18y ago

I honestly believe a contextual UI for TripLog would be an order of magnitude easier to use. Gmail makes GREAT use of contextual UI elements.

dlytle 18y ago

Very nice article. I'm in agreement with the sentiments of TripLog's author; the #1 impediment to this kind of data entry is convenience. The goal here is to have users spend as little time as possible using the application. It could definitely use some improvements visually... but for that application, function should trump form if the two conflict.

bdotdub 18y ago
True, but I feel there are better approached to include both. Does anyone who has knowledge of the iPhone SDK know if you can make a regular window scroll? That would allow the "Latest Trips" to be slightly below everything, so its a quick swipe to check.
- lpgauth 18y ago
  Not with a normal window, you can only modify the views inside the window but I guess you could create a new class but it's an overkill.
- ardit33 18y ago
  Yes, you can have views that scroll inside a window. It makes perfect sense for long list of repetitive items (such as the list of videos in the youtube app). It would be counterintuitive to have controls that are hidden, and you have to scroll down to see them. Many users might not notice them. BUT, I still think that ui is poorly designed. The iPhone SDK, has a plethora of ready views and controls, or you can even make your own customized view, if you think what the iPhone SDK is providing is not good enough. So, I think the author of the app didn't want to go the extra mile, to create something that is both useful and appealing.
jacobolus 18y ago
And how does the gigantic spinning odometer thing improve function, exactly? Besides wasting space and leaving the rest of the interface horribly cluttered?
- DougBTX 18y ago
  Because it means you don't have to bring up a key pad to enter numbers?

tialys 18y ago

Honestly, I think if the colors were just better picked it wouldn't look so awful at first glance. It's designed for speed, but that doesn't mean you have to make it bright and oddly colored.

bscofield 18y ago

I'm going to repost here what I did there, so sorry to anyone who reads both: I’m sorry, but I’ve read his defense – and this analysis – and I still say FAIL . If speed’s the primary concern, why would you use the scrolling widget to enter the mileage? That’s going to be measurably slower and less accurate than a simple text field that pulls in the dialing/numeric keyboard. My impression is that they’re operating entirely without user testing – their intentions are correct (make if fast, etc.), but they’re unwilling, unable, or too rushed to verify their decisions by watching people use various alternatives.

dlytle 18y ago
I agree with the criticism of the scrolling odometer widget; that part sounds like it would be better handled with the keyboard. I'm willing to cut them a little slack on the "lack of user testing" angle; it's not like there are many App Store enabled iPhones available for real-world usability testing. That will limit a potential test pool to people the developer knows well... because I doubt he'd be comfortable handing his iPhone to someone less than a trusted friend to provide feedback.
- bscofield 18y ago
  Well, that's true. In this case, however, testing with novice users isn't exactly critical. The target audience here are repeat users, after all, so learnability is probably a lower priority than raw performance for a regular user. That means that the devs themselves could have tested, and I sincerely doubt that they would find the scrolling odometer faster OR more accurate than keyboard entry.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
My impression is that they’re operating entirely without user testing... So are lots of developers, I assume. At this point only certain selected individuals are allowed to transfer their iPhone app to an actual phone, right? (Unless they're using unlocked phones and the open development kits... which might have been a good idea. But let's assume they don't have the time or inclination to build an entirely separate app with a separate toolchain just to get an early start on user testing.) So for all I know that wacky scrolling widget will be quite usable. We should strive to suspend judgement. It was bound to invite ridicule, though, when viewed in a mockup. The odometer widget is such an obvious "duck" (to borrow a Tufte term [1]) that it's hard to avoid the suspicion that it was designed primarily for its looks, with usability as a distant second. It's also huge. It's hard to believe that's an efficient use of screen space. [1] "duck": a huge piece of distracting, nonfunctional decoration that's been applied to your graphics, generally for crass marketing purposes. Named in honor of a photo in Tufte's book depicting a roadside stand in the shape of an enormous bird.

youngnh 18y ago

with all the furor, it seems like its only a matter of time until someone actually redoes this guy's interface for him.

marijn 18y ago
Ah, you're giving people too much credit. Collective bitching is easy and fun, constructive work is hard.
- sanj 18y ago
  Turns out he's not: http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6351/iphoneua8.jpg http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/6351/iphoneua8.jpg http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6964/triploggw5.png http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6964/triploggw5.png http://ralovely.com/downloads/triplog1040.png http://ralovely.com/downloads/triplog1040.png

bprater 18y ago

One of the things I learned while playing Warcraft was the importance of scalable interfaces. When I first started, I was lucky to get my character to move across the screen in a straight line. I didn't know what a mod was, I just wanted to kill squirrels. By the time I joined a guild and we were raiding high-level instances, I had to have a screen full of mods that tracked every nuance of my characters (and raids) performance. Without them, I would have felt naked and nearly unable to play. As developers, I think we often forget that folks go through a very rough period of learning how to use an app to being able to quickly navigate it. Once they hit the latter period, there would be no harm in offering them additional power.

0x44 18y ago
Blizzard does not offer additional power, it's only through the use of third-party add-ons that you have it.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  Blizzard offers the Lua scripting interface which facilitates the add-ons. It seems to have been a successful strategy.

edw519 18y ago

The one thing I noticed from the Flickr comments, 37signals comments, and the 2 threads here is that there's a lot of feedback from programmers to programmers. Fine. Lots of good data. Maybe even some that will go into product improvement. It's a necessary but not sufficient step. What we really need is feedback from paying customers, legitimate prospects, and monetizable eyeballs. We can critique each other's stuff all day long, but sooner or later, we need to get this in front of the users. There's a pretty good tradition here at hn called, "What do you think of my app..." There's usually a lot of good feedback, but don't get fooled into thinking this is anything other than pre-alpha. After reading all of this drama surrounding TripLog, now I'm curious what the real users think. (My customers always have additional and sometimes very different feedback from "hackers". One of their biggest differences is regarding the mouse. Some of them never want to touch it during heavy data entry sessions. Talk about something drastically changing the UI...)

kirubakaran 18y ago
I thought hackers despise the mouse more than anyone else.
- edw519 18y ago
  Right. But they think everyone else likes it. I have a customer with 2 call centers, one on GUI and one on green screen. The green screen center consistently beats the the GUI center by 2 minutes per call every month. Drives him nuts. He can't move people from the green screen center to the GUI center or they quit in a week (too much clicking to get anything done). He asks me why it has to be that way. I say it doesn't, but whoever wrote it probably didn't know any better.
  - JesseAldridge 18y ago
    What's a green screen? You mean like a terminal with green characters?
    - kirubakaran 18y ago

run4yourlives 18y ago

Well, all I can say is that I hope to release an app with this much free publicity one day. I'm sure it's going to help his bottom line.

jamesbritt 18y ago

"When we talk about “usable” or “intuitive” interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user." The sort of thing that pains me, in so much as I will not always be a first-time user; my time as a first-timer is nothing compared to time being an experienced user. I'd rather have to spend a bit of time getting going it if pays off in being able to do things fast and reliably down the line. Ideally there should be ways to switch from the Newbie UI to the Old Hand UI, but most of what I see seems to forget that second part.

ojbyrne 18y ago

The one thing that stands out for me is that TripLog has inadvertently generated a ton of publicity (and maybe a bunch of people willing to offer free help). The next version will have a professional UI and sell a gazillion copies.

josefresco 18y ago

I'm begging 37signals to take a crack at an improved interface. Sure TripLog will get even more free PR but I'm really curious to see how they can improve it. Put your UI skills where your mouth is.

alabut 18y ago
They did demonstrate their UI skills, by deconstructing the logic behind what the TripLog interface was trying to do and showing the logical groupings of related info. Translating that into visuals is simply the next step - scroll down to sanj's comment or go to daringfireball's followup post for links to visuals the 37s discussion sparked - and unfortunately, many people see it as the only step.

noel_gomez 18y ago

wonder how many copies have been sold so far