Wrong direction

In Milan, like in many other cities, public transport tickets have a magnetic strip on the side that is used to check their validity by means of electronic readers.

Even now, some years after the introduction of the new tickets, a lot of people still insert their tickets in the readers in the wrong direction, and can’t pass the turnstiles until they get it right. The technical reason for that is the magnetic strip placed on one side of each ticket so that it can be read by a machine, but it’s a poor design choice forcing people to pay attention to a puny detail such as this.

What is even more frustrating, is that there exists a trivial solution to this problem, and it is the one that has been adopted in Paris: tickets there are symmetrical, and the magnetic band is placed in the middle, so that it can be read in any direction.

A ticket for public transport in Paris: as a side benefit, it is also quite small if compared to the ones we have in Milan

They did a good job, because they left behind an old convention (having a magnetic band on the side, which probably makes sense with cards you have to swipe) and chose a less common placement, putting less constraints on the experience.

Better not to forget it: Nielsen on users

Here’s an insightful excerpt from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, September 21, 2009:

Users don’t care about design for its own sake; they just want to get things done and get out. Normal people don’t love sitting at their computers. They’d rather watch football, walk the dog — just about anything else. Using a computer probably rates above taking out the trash, though.

Are our passwords safe?

I can’t tell how many times I registered on a website since I started surfing the Internet, and I bet it’s the same for you. We’ve been through countless registration forms, and we had to choose a username/password pair for each of them.
But I, like the majority of you, tend to use the same credentials for more than one place, sometimes.

I know it’s a good practice to avoid using the same password for too many services but, hey, we’re human beings, and we’re not so good in remembering things. However, maybe I’d be more reluctant to use my favorite password (the one I use to register on countless websites) if I knew that it would end up in clear text on some database, where some malicious DBA can easily see it.

That’s why I think it would be better if registration forms included an indication (maybe just an icon) about whether the password you’ll supply will be encrypted before being stored on the website database.

Maybe times are not mature yet…

Back?

I’ve been a bit absent, lately and now I’m considering wether to resume blogging or not.

We’ll see…

The importance of packaging

Your experience with some products starts as soon as start you tearing the shrink wrap around them.

This is what happened to me last week. I just bought a MacBook and I had been second guessing my choice since I pressed the “Submit” button on the order form.

A few days later, when I received the package from Apple, I was quite curious to see if my new laptop was worth all the money I paid for it.

The feeling I had when I opened the box was impressive: it was not because the package itself was nice to see, but because there was nothing between me and my laptop. I opened the box and the only thing I saw was my shiny new MacBook, without any additional clutter.

It was totally different from what I was used to: the previous laptop I bought came in a bulky cardboard box and I had to get rid of a ton of “READ THIS FIRST” papers before even being able to see my PC.

Even if it’s not sufficient by itself to make a good product, packaging certainly made a huge contribution with my experience with my new MacBook.

Although I was impressed by the stylish package, being logged in a couple of minutes after opening the box is what contributed most to my good impression.

For those of you that may be questioning, I’m not an Apple fanboy: I’m still spending most of my time on PCs.

Update: I just returned my MacBook to buy a new MacBook Pro, so I’m still waiting for a package from Apple.

Bittorrent video streaming on Bitlet

We recently updated bitlet.org to add support for video streaming via bittorrent.

The applet allows you to watch videos while you are downloading them and doesn’t require the installation of any third party application, except for Java.

Although still experimental, you can try the new feature by visiting this page.

Maps for public transport users

Even if modern trains are getting more and more friendly to passengers, many of them are still terribly lacking if we consider this aspect, at least in Italy.

As I’m writing this post I’m travelling through Tuscany on the railway. I’m not familiar with the landmarks, the train doesn’t announce its stops and it’s dark outside, making it impossible to read the names of the stations until it’s too late to jump off.

If you have ever been in such a situation, you do certainly understand how annoying it can be.

This is where mobile maps come to help: you just have to take a look at your phone and know instantly where you are.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could see stations, timetables and trains as well? Although it is one of the most challenging projects we can conceive, something like an interactive transport map certainly has the potential to be a killer application.

The only drawback… is that you’d certainly end up being distracted from the conversation with that pretty girl sitting next to you.

A new use for margins

While I still read books on my way to work, I recently started reading online articles and blog posts using my phone as well.

This morning, while I was reading a column on Alertbox on iPhone, I noticed with pleasure a small detail: the left and right margins of the page have more than a merely aesthetic purpose.

As anyone who ever used an iPhone will certainly know, you usually slide your thumb along one side of the screen to scroll the page you’re reading.

Now, look at the screenshot below (red margins were highlighted later): because of the empty space at the sides of the page users are able to scroll without hiding text under their fingers. That’s relevant if you have the habit of scrolling and reading at the same time.

I don’t know if Alertbox is styled like that by chance or by design, but I appreciate the result nonetheless.

As a side note: Alertbox is one of the most mobile-friendly websites I read. As such, it’s perfectly readable even on the small screen of my Nokia E71.

Pagination directions

Although pagination is a widely diffused pattern, some times it can still be a bit confusing, when it comes to blogs.

Most blogs (and many news sites) have a couple of links at the bottom of the page, newer and older posts or articles. Of course, there are two opposite ways to arrange those links: put the newer link on the left and the older one on the right, or just the opposite. What I consider to be annoying (and confusing), is to find both alternatives used inconsistently across blogs and websites.

For example, the Google Blog puts the Newer Posts link on the left,

while the Worpress Blog places Newer Entries » on the right

Confusing, isn’t it? What is the right way to show those links?

Pagination by itself is quite clear: most web users have long become accustomed to Google search results pagination,

and Yahoo’s Design Patter Library states it clearly:

• Present links in the following order: ‘Prev’, page links, ‘Next’.
• Display a left arrow after the label ‘Prev’.
• Display a right arrow before the label ‘Next’.

In other words, previous goes to the left, while next goes to the right.

The problem with blogs and articles is that it’s not clear what should we consider the “previous page”.

Is it the one with the older (previous) posts? Or, since articles are listed starting from the more recent ones, the page with the more recent posts?

I think any answer would be debatable, and that’s the source of all the confusion. What would you say?

Itsme: is the desktop metaphor really over?

Last week a friend of mine, knowing my increasing interest in interaction design, forwarded me the poster of a talk held in University of Milano-Bicocca about a new project named itsme.

Since I always welcome any excuse to visit my alma mater and one of the speakers has been my professor during my studies, I took half a day off work and went to attend the seminar, filled with curiosity.

According to its creators, itsme tries to move away from the desktop metaphor towards a new one, focused on “stories and venues”. Trying to sum up the ideas behind the project (I suggest you to visit their site for the full story), stories are linked to the purpose and motivation behind the actions we perform on our workstations. Venues are a sort of virtual place that collects all the files, documents, media, contacts  and information in general which are related to a story.

I really like the idea, because it can be an effective way to organize heterogeneous information, which is something we all try to do. Advanced computer users need to catalog a huge volume of data in a way that suits their own needs, and each of them ends up developing a unique set of tricks, expedients and conventions to make this task easier.

But that’s a challenge that becomes more and more overwhelming with the growth in complexity and diversity of the information to aggregate (think about audio messages and IM, for example). That’s where a decent support for venues would make a serious difference. And that’s why I like the general idea behind itsme.

There is one point that leaves me perplexed, though.

Although it always sounds cool to be radical and challenge the status quo (as Seth would say), I wonder if leaving totally behind the desktop metaphor is really a good idea after all. The vast majority of computer users are familiar with it and, although often ineffective for some complex activities, it’s adequate for a lot of the simpler ones.

Certainly they considered augmenting, rather than replacing, the desktop metaphor with stories and venues. I’m curious to know what led them to choose the latter option.

Wasn’t it possible to implement their vision on top of existing Operating Systems? Frankly, I doubt it.

Moreover, I am curious to learn how (if) they are planning to handle sharing and collaboration: the speech and all the material I saw sounded pretty vague about this subject.

Just a note: the project is due in 2010. If itsme were a web 2.0 project it would be an eternity, wouldn’t it?