OneNote strengths

Although EverNote has managed to surpass Microsoft OneNote in some areas, OneNote is still strong in formatting text, etc. OneNote’s ability to automatically tabulate content as soon as it detects a table like structure is severely missed in EverNote. The default colors and fonts on OneNote goes nicely with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite to the extent where a note entered in OneNote is no different to a document typed in Microsoft Word.

EverNote strengths

The latest version of EverNote is as mighty as you want it to be. Write once, access from anywhere in the world (which requires a registration on the EverNote server) is the best feature you can cheer upon. The new user interface is very simple and user-friendly. Unlike the OneNote UI which is a candy jar in its appearance, the new EverNote UI has a unique touch and a soothing green shade to it. Once you start working on it, you wouldn’t want to go back to another note taking tool ever.

The bottom line

Many note taking tools roamed but none prevailed to be the best among the rest until the days of OneNote. The introduction of OneNote damaged every other note taking tool’s reputation and took note taking to another level with sophistication and novelty. The lessons learnt from OneNote’s arrival have been put in to practice nicely with the introduction of EverNote 3. The next big thing will be to see how Microsoft strikes back with their next version of OneNote. Or will it be just Microsoft Notes?

On Facebook the main navigation is on the top of the page and it show links to Profile, Friends, Inbox, etc. This is fine as long as you are on the home page or on your own profile page. But often users visit other people’s profile pages for obvious reasons. What happens here is that (naturally) users associate the top navigation with the current profile owner. In other words, even when not in your own profile page people tend to associate the top navigation bar with the person they are looking at. So in order to see who’s friends with the currently profile owner, users click on the ‘Friends’ link on the navigation bar. Consequently the association between context and task has been broken and hence the user is mislead.

In experience design word such as ‘my’, ‘your’ and other subjective terms are used to prevent this misleading when the same action can be performed on different objects of the same class. Although this won’t make everyone aware of the current context; it will at lease reduce the confusion among the majority of users.

Apparently everyone is in a hurry to give their site a new look and Mozilla falls no short. Check out the new Firefox Add-ons site with the hip search bar and pretty inner pages. Although the previous website didn’t have any serious usability pitfalls in its design, the new look-and-feel is very compelling to use. I love the fact that they’ve decided to show a couple of thumbnails on the main page and provide a clear rating and reviewing panel on the convenient right-hand side of the page. Furthermore that green color search box somehow invites me to explorer more. Another good example for effective use of color to uplift the usability of a design.

It is also worth mentioning the drop-down categories list on the left hand side of inner pages that is so well designed that it is not one of those “hover me and I’ll show you myself” kind-a-design. A note to all you AJAX loving, “I’d do whatever the dudes do” web designers, learn from the pioneer.

I experienced this as I was installing the Windows Live Mail program on my laptop. After I started the setup program I notices two very interesting messages appear on the setup dialog box that actually made me smile.

The first one showed up as the setup was taking longer than expected to download the packages from the Internet:
“Sorry, this is taking a little longer than expected. Please bear with us just a few more minutes”

And the second one showed up when it was installing the downloaded packages:
“Installation may take a few minutes. Feel free to do other things while you wait.”

This way of acknowledging the user is very important for a better human-computer interaction. I think the traditional 3 limits for response times have to be altered to facilitate the sophistication available on modern hardware. Nowadays, the time limit for keeping the users attention on a given context is way below 10 seconds. This value continues to shrink down if feedback is further delayed from the machine. You may have heard people say ‘my computer is so slow’ if the software has lack of appropriate feedback. Software installation packages that download certain parts of the package from the Internet are notorious in breaking users’ patience. This eventually leads the user disliking and discontinuing the software. The move towards providing friendly messages certainly help people to bond with their software better than they are now.

Imagine a situation where you have to edit a page and preview it in rapid successions, using the edit post link is the shortest path to take. The conventional way of login in to the WordPress dashboard and clicking ‘Manage’ and then clicking ‘Pages’ effectively involves 3 clicks; as oppose to using the edit post link involves only 1 click. So whenever you need to edit a post or a page, just login to WordPress and go the relevant page and click the edit post link.

Note that not all theme developers use this tag – therefore downloaded and third-party themes may not have this link present.

Factors like legibility, etymology, syllable structure, familiarity, significance to real-life objects and events; easy pronunciation, the letter count and the shape of the name when printed on paper are often overlooked by many software professionals. Most software names are coined just by looking at few of the above mentioned factors and the trademark value. Although trademark/brand¹ value is very important in the highly competitive modern day world, it should not be given 99 percent weight when naming a software package.

However, careful craftsmanship can lead to a unique name even if the words constituting the name are unrelated and out-of-context. The Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are best examples for unique names that have super-brand attributes. But constructing such names are often time consuming and tricky. It leads to a lot of iterations in changing the name which is not healthy for the brand’s wellbeing.The bottom line is that software packages must be named judiciously. The name must be non-ambiguous. It should be a description of the software package’s usage. The name should bear the characteristics of the software. If a puzzled user asks the question ‘what does your software do?’ after seeing the name, then it’s time to consider re-naming.

• A trademark protects any sign or symbol that allows your customers to tell you apart from your competitors. You can register a name, logo, slogan, domain name, shape, color or sound.
• The brand name is a company-specific name for a particular product or service, usually used to differentiate that product or service from competitor offerings. French: nom de marque.

2 – The Name Cartoon source: http://wesclark.com/ubn/name_cartoon.jpg

When I started designing this theme, I didn’t have any expertise on WordPress. The principles of blogging were completely new to me. I looked into many other blogs to figure out the essentials of theming. Ironically most themes were structurally the same except they looked different in presentation. But is this commonly accepted structure really usable? This is what I discovered.

File Away
Some details presented on blogs are unwanted or rarely used. The archive for example has no significance to an average user. Since majority of users end up in a blog post by getting referred by a search engine, there is very little chance that someone visiting to read a certain blog post would drill down the archive to read other posts.

Attention to Detail
Only posts matter. Everything else is inferior. Even static pages have less significance unless information presented on static pages can draw more interest than posts. Having a mechanism to list and summarize the most recent posts can be beneficial.

No one dare to spare time on the archive. Give it less attention. Have a page that list all post titles that is groped monthly or yearly. This actually depends on how much you write; but reduces confusion and the hap-hazard nature of the archive.

Prevent making countless categories. Use a small number of categories to group different areas of interests. Make use of the new WordPress tags to brief your visitor about the post. By the way, that tag cloud makes no sense to many people. But it’s a good way of showing your intents. So use it judiciously, don’t throw it on the face.

Least but not last, avoid the top ten design mistakes when creating your blog. Remember, usability guidelines applicable to a regular websites are applicable to blogs too.

1 – current theme as at 20^th November, 2007

I despise Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). Even cooperates are uncomfortable with the extra burden. In my opinion WGA is an annoyance to users. The simplest update or hot-fix available on the Microsoft website requires a validation.

There have been numerous gigs on “what if Microsoft made …” – the most circulated being a notable urban legend with a comment made by General Motors in response to the Bill Gates’ COMDEX address where he compared the auto industry to the computer industry. This post is about what if Microsoft made automobiles with WGA.

• You need to validate your vehicle with WGA after purchasing.
  • Without validation, you may only drive for 300km. After the 300km limit the vehicle will immobilize. The vehicle will start again, but you may only drive for 10mins. You have to start again to drive it for another 10mins and so on.
  • You will be prompted to validate every time you start the vehicle until validation.
• After a successful validation a new dashboard indicator appears. This tells you that your vehicle is a genuine product.
  • The dashboard indicator blinks every time a new update is received to tell you that your genuine vehicle received an update.
  • These updates may occasionally restart the vehicle to apply themselves regardless of the speed or other critical aspects of your drive.
• You need to re-validate if you decide to change tires, lubricants, filters, wipers, or battery water.
  • You have to buy all those components from Microsoft or otherwise your vehicle is considered non-genuine. However if you decide to upgrade to a high performance component (ex: high-performance air filter) the validation process might think you are cheating. You need to call and convince customer support that this is the same you that bought the vehicle from them.
  • If by any chance the revalidation process fails, the vehicle will run for 10mins and immobilize. This time, certain functionalities will be disabled.
• Engine modifications are strictly prohibited. If you install/replace any engine part, a convincing call to the customer support division is a must. Chances are that you may have to buy a new license and re-validate it to drive your already purchased vehicle.
• If the validation process has a bug or an error in the program, then the vehicle will refuse to start until Microsoft fix the error and you perform a revalidation manually.