Google’s good. But it could be better. Chances are that you’ve done a search where you haven’t found what you’re looking for on the first page. If so, then you’ve had to click on the unhelpfully numbered more-result pages:
Google's aging links to get more search results.Last summer, before Humanized got started, Andrew, Atul, and I did some consulting work. Andrew and I were in balmy California, while Atul was back in humid Chicago. We were all working on the same project, and we had a big problem: we needed to talk. A lot. About everything: documents that needed commenting and editing, new ideas one of us had brainstormed, what we were going to do the next day, and the weather. Unfortunately, our tools (phones, AIM, email, and a wiki) were inadequate.
CHICAGO, IL., 10 Apr, 2006
Monday, April 10, 2006 marked the debut of Humanized’s public website, www.humanized.com, which provides computer users and interface designers alike a resource for finding and understanding humane interfaces.
A key component of this website is the Humanized Weblog, where individuals concerned with making the computer experience better can read and respond to articles covering topics ranging from stoves to voice mail, computer preferences, software development, and more. “The goal of the weblog,” said Vice President Atul Varma, “is threefold: to serve as a place where consumers can come to find usability-oriented product reviews and advice; to serve as a repository where aspiring user interface designers can find educational material on design fundamentals; and lastly, to serve as a forum where user interface professionals can find and contribute to thought-provoking commentary on the state of the field today.”
About Humanized, Inc.
Humanized, Inc. is a small software company based in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to the promulgation of good human-computer interfaces. Humanized differs from many software companies by focusing on software usability, rather than software features. While the designers at Humanized believe that it is important for products to support the features that users need, they feel that many companies have sacrificed usability in a rush for additional product functionality. As a result, even though a user may know that their computer can do something, actually doing it has become difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone. Accordingly, Humanized believes that good interfaces make computers more pleasant and productive for the people who use them.
Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy starts, “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
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Here at Humanized, we use the “Over the Phone” test as a good rule of thumb for interface design.
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The kitchen is a great place to go bad interface diving. Who can resist taking potshots at undecipherable microwave controls? Do you know how to set its clock? Its power level? I don’t. And I’m not about to dig out the manual with buttered fingers. But today’s dive isn’t about the technological gizmos that we all know complicate our cooking lives. Instead, its about re-evaluating an interface that we all take for granted; an interface that is so ingrained in us that we don’t realize that it’s possible to even think about making it better. Today’s bad interface is The Stove.
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I thought it couldn’t get any worse than volume buttons. You know the kind: You get in your car, start it up, and get blasted by a wall of sound. And you continue to be blasted as you frantically search and then mash that tiny button again and again until the radio is once again at a reasonable level.
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I often get asked about the future of interfaces: “Wouldn’t it be great”, people say, “if we could just talk to our computers like in Star Trek? Aren’t voice recognition and talking computers the interface of the future?” A lot of people seem to think that all interface problems can be solved via voice. But I have a one word answer: Voicemail.
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