Linja blog

Linja employees sharing posts about user experience, innovations and inspiration

Windows 8 preview

Microsoft posted the first preview video of Windows 8. The demo seems to run quite smoothly. Icons are out and tiles are in, as we’ve seen on Windows Phone 7. A lot of attention is put on touch screen usage, which has been lacking in older Windows versions. Switching between multitasking applications by sweeping in from the edge sounds like a good gesture. Also the ability to run apps in split screen without fiddling with traditional windows is nice.

--AOK--

User experience pitfalls illustrated

Two instructive stories (5 minutes each) that illustrate a typical user experience failure, why such errors keep happening and how easy the fix can be once you understand the problem. It's fascinating to watch the narrator (Jared Spool) and illustrator (Jason Robb) tell the story together using an animated live sketching technique. Bad Swipe - how a bad error message can be costly, both literally and in terms of user experience:

Mind the Gap - a story about a typical pitfall in online shopping user experience:

LS

Windows Phone 7 - First Impressions on User Experience

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User Experience:

·         The Metro interface design - new UI paradigm
Content is arranged on a large canvas (Panorama) that is only partially visible at a time. Requires more horizontal panning and exploration of content. Fast and responsive feel.

·         Highly stylized and minimalistic design focusing on typography and layout
A fresh and novel approach to the looks of graphical UI’s on mobile devices. Reminiscent of top fashion magazines or airport sign-systems. Clear and spacious use of text and typography. Using cropping of elements to hint scrolling and that content continues off-screen.

·         Transitions and animations
Screen views are not static and moving between views is smooth. Gives the impression of a continuous flow between views rather than loading of separate screens. High attention to detail.

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Features:

·         Task-oriented approach rather than app-oriented approach
Tasks performed by the user are grouped together instead of having to know a specific app. E.g. Peoples Hub combines phone/address book data and social media network feeds.

·         Integration to the Microsoft ecosystem
Office suite, Outlook e-mail, Bing search and maps services, Zune music and video store, Windows Live and Xbox Live accounts

Technical and UX Issues:

·         Localization
Currently doesn’t support non-Anglo-Saxon characters. How well will the text and layout-driven design scale to other languages?

·         No copy & paste

·         Limited use of landscape screen mode
How well will the current UI design translate into landscape orientation?

·         No multitasking for 3rd party applications

·         No Flash Player integration in browser

·         Difficult at times to discern active screen elements from passive ones

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Windows Phone Marketplace:

·         Apps Marketplace + Zune Music Marketplace

·         Not as much content as in Apple App store or in Google’s Android Market (Wikipedia.org, 15.02.2011)
Apple App store: 400,000+ apps (10+ billion downloads)
Android Market: 200,000+ apps (2,5+ billion downloads)
Windows Phone Marketplace: 8000+ apps (-?- downloads)

·         Downloading and installing content easy and seamless

·         Marketplace somewhat messy to navigate at first
Marketplace has several overlapping sections (Main, Apps, Music + Videos) with their own Panorama views. Will the UI scale with the content?

[NG]