Hooman's Tech Blog

What makes someone leave a website?

2011-12-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a great slideshow on website usability:

Usability experts criticize gestural smartphone interfaces

2011-05-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

Think the gestural interfaces on your smartphone (in particular iphone and Android) make your device more usable?

Long time usability veterans Don Norman and Jacon Neilson disagree:

Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backwards In Usability

As much fun as it is to play with my Android interface, I have to agree...

Unity: The power of simplicity

2011-04-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

If you are a fan of Ubuntu, you probably know that the new version of Ubuntu (11.04) was released today. Perhaps the most significant change in this version is the radical move to use Unity; a new desktop environment that will be new to existing Gnome or Windows users:

I knew as far as usability goes, Unity would be great for new users. Much simpler desktop, type the application instead of visually searching through a hierarchy, etc.
But I thought the desktop was too simple for someone more advanced who knows all the shortcuts by heart, uses widgets, etc.

Nevertheless, I gave it a try and now only 2-weeks later I can never go back.

I have the same experience with Google Chrome. I missed some of the add-ons and features in Firefox so first I didn't bother with Chrome. Then I tried it and switched back. But now I prefer the simplicity of Chrome. Even now that Firefox 4 has far too many usability improvements over the previous versions, I still prefer the simplicity.

If you use Ubuntu, don't be afraid to try the new Unity interface. You may just like it. I would also recommend some of these Unity tweaks to help your experience a better one.

How to make your shopping cart suck less!

2011-01-10T19:40:00.000-08:00

Here's a user-friendly guide to make your shopping carts more user-friendly. You don't even need to know what words like "user-friendly" or "usability" mean:

How to make your shopping cart suck less!

How NOT to design a survey - 19 lessons from United Airlines!

2010-12-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

Based on my personal experience, the best way to improve my skills is by looking at examples. Specially when it comes to usability guidelines. It's much harder to repeat usability mistakes when I remember a real-world example.

19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build A Crappy Survey

While there are more than 19 ways to screw up the usability of a survey, this article is going to help you design a more usable survey. And it's far more entertaining that a list of guidelines...

Why HTML5 won't "kill" Flash

2010-06-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start by saying I've always been a big advocate of both open standards and W3C standards in particular. If you know me in person, you definitely know that.

On the other hand, I have always been against using Flash for design and here's why. I think Flash is good for videos and applications but I hate it when the user is locked inside nested viewports. Ideally, you should never see more than one scrollbar in each direction. Although, you can do Flash right. For example see how Picnik expands to fill the who browser view-port. But most developer don't bother and that's a big downside for me.

As for HTML5, I have to say I am a huge fan of both the definition and the multimedia features. But I don't kill it will kill Flash, and here's why:

1. While you can create very cool applications using Ajax, Flash still provides richer, more desktop-like applications. For example, there are some pretty cool image editors written in Ajax, but those that are written using Flash give you a better desktop image editor experience.

2. There is no standard codec for video that everyone can agree on. Maybe if Microsoft didn't exists, everyone else could agree on a standard and HTML5 could replace Flash for multimedia. But that's not gonna happen, is it? While both Google and Mozilla support the open-source VP8 codec, Microsoft has already stated IE9 will only support the H.264 codec. Now that is still being debated, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

You would think with the popularity of MP3, things would be better for audio. But according to W3Schools' HTML5 audio tutorial only Chrome and Safari support mp3 in HTML5 at the moment! Also note that IE9 is the only browser that doesn't support any of those codecs at all!

If things go on the way they are right now, we are back to the old days of multimedia where you had to support Real player, Windows media and Quicktime! If fact, that's the whole reason Flash got so popular for videos in the first place... Back then you would tell users to download the appropriate application, but now first you have to explain what a codec is and then tell them to install it!

Interesting enough, while I was writing this article, YouTube posted this!

I also recommend reading this Tech World article.

Hello World!

2010-06-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm starting a new blog specifically for tech related stuff, mainly web development and usability.

Hope you geeks* enjoy it!

* Not a geek? Then you're on the wrong blog. :-)