A while back ago I worked in a company that had IP-phones. Didn’t use it much since we had cellphones, but it had easy access to the weather forcast for all our main offices. Every now and then I would check the office in Brasil, daydreaming, since our office was in Oslo, Norway. And every now and then it would fail with the error message “XML Error [4]: Parse Error”.

So I guess all the bickering about following web-standards actually do comply =)

Anyway: Cool to see that different gadgets gets more and more connected.

Mother Tab
What I call Mother Tab is really a new way to open (ctrl-t) a new tab in Chrome. The tab won’t be empty, but it has 5 main UI modules:

1. a most visited webpages grid
2. a search form
3. a recent bookmarks
4. a recently closed tabs module
5. a bookmark area

The purpose of this is to streamline interaction by providing the top web destination and the most recent ones at a glance when users open a new tab, following the idea that “users want to go somewhere” when they open a new tab.

I find it very useful, although I would have liked to be able to set my own default grid. But I count on the fact that in time, the statistical record of visited websites will be at least as good as Firefox 3’s new location bar suggestions. But here’s a screehshot:

Particularly interesting the placement of a bookmark bar, which is a good way to introduce the next novelty.

Moving Controls from main window to Tab

This move seems to be beneficial in several respects. Firstly, it reduces the overhead of controls and options, removing from main view extra clutter. Secondly, and consequently, it allows increasing the useful real estate, so that more content is shown with the same window size. Thirdly, and referring to the Bookmark bar mentioned above, it brings access to both “favorite” bookmarks and full bookmark list again following the principle that if you ope na new tab you wish to go somewhere. Finally, it just looks neat

In conclusion - and leaving aside the supposedly great technological innovations relating to javascript and crash control - after a very short usage, Google Chrome looks like a very good product. What remains to be seen is whether and to what extent the dev community will embrace it and create plugins and extensions matching those of Firefox…..

I wonder how come in all those years nobody at finn.no thought that it could be very useful to have the ordering form automatically filled with the user’s data stored in the user’s profile, so as to make the ordering of prospects an easy one-click process! After all, it seems the perfect little scrum project….go figure…..

Enjoy

POS payment terminals: A visual reivew (PDF, 3.7 MB)

GPS navigation for cars still have a way to go before perfect. A while ago, as a passenger from Oslo to Lista in Norway, I got to examine a TomTom GPS screen real estate a bit more thorough, and found an odd detail. Whenever driving South-West, the arrow in the lower left corner of the map pointed towards South-East (and the label saying SW). Driving South-East, the arrow pointed South-West (label saying SE). In addition, the car was indicated by an arrow without any labeling. This one always pointed up.

It took a little while to figure out. It seemed from the suns position that the arrows north and south direction was always correct, but th east and west always mirrored.

The solution was really simple, The arrow in the lower left corner pointed north, and the label on this arrow explained the direction of the unlabeled arrow illustrating the car.

My guess is that this error didn’t show up in any usability testing since it wasn’t crucial for it’s regular functions. You have no problem getting from A to B with this little flaw. Only when having too much time on my hand, I saw the error.

One easy fix would be to label the arrow in the lower left corner “N” for north, and maybe label the arrow indicating the car with the actual direction. Other suggestions?

The ordering puzzle is illustrated in the screenshot below:

Now, I must admit I didn’t find a logic behind the ordering, as most densely populated areas are mixed in with areas with most properties out for rent in a seemingly random fashion. Perhaps the ordering is driven by clicks……but that’s just a guess, especially if one considers that if that was the criterium, it’d mean that the county Østfold gets more clicks than Oslo on the rental market, which seems quite unlikely!
What is sure it’s that it took me quite some time to find the county i wanted to check….

Did you get perplexed? I certainly did! My first reaction was plain puzzled at the sight of a join form. After recovering my wits though, I begun scanning the page form something that made sense, and after a much longer while that I wish to remember, I saw this:

Now, the key system feedback was really hard to find ,and I cannot imagine the reason why it should be so hidden. I won’t suggest improvements to the UI, but I wanted to share this “complaint”: all in all, I’d say Technorati fails on login failure

Of course, I must mention a couple of things. Firstly, you don’t really need to look at my screenshot, as you can just visit the website. Secondly, my own blog isn’t the best, neither design-wise nor usability-wise (however, I will improve on both as I have some time :-D).
But I’d expect a lot more from a project spinning off the Norwegian National Broadcasting service, and whose positioning I understand to be rather on the cool side of the spectrum. The posts themselves may be excellent, that I don’t know. But, frankly, at a glance, I was put off by the messy design….

The spring frost (april) in Ljørdalen made this lovely pattern on my car’s hood - thought I’d share it

It has not much to do with *user* experience but it has certainly to do with experience!

PS: Sorry for the loooong post title!