http://is.gd/elE7y

Fascinating article from @sixrevisions about how proximity/grouping/etc effect #ux

A link went around the office this morning about a Dabbleboard, an online white-board tool.

While the tool itself is nothing out of the ordinary, comments were made about the way they have integrated mouse gestures into the application.

For example, drawing the first part of an oval will cause the app to draw a complete oval, thus negating the need to keep going to the toolbar and selecting the “draw oval” tool.

Doing this:

Draws this:

Neat, huh?

So, gestures: are they the future?

For more experienced users, or in instances where users have been trained to use a system they can certainly boost productivity, but I’d be very wary about unleashing them on the general public, where they may fall into the hands of novice users.

For example, I have “active screen corners” set up on my Macbook: when I move the cursor to the top-right of my screen it reveals the desktop, the bottom-left shows all active windows and the bottom-right shows the dashboard in all it’s widgety glory.

Configuring active screen corners:

Showing all active windows:

I find this setup allows me to navigate through my open applications and my dashboard widgets quickly and easily. I’ve been using that setup for so long it actually feels restrictive when I’m on a computer that doesn’t run like that. It’s become instinctive. For me.

However, when my wife tries to use my laptop she gets herself into a bit of a muddle with it: windows whizz around & disappear seemingly at random and she doesn’t understand why it’s happening. She used to think she had done something wring, or worse that she had “broken it”, but after explaining to her what’s happening and why, she now asks me “how can you work like that?”.

The gestures are a very personal preference, and while they make perfect sense to me, for her they create make the user experience a frustrating one, and longer sessions usually result in her proclaiming how much she hates Macs.

It’s a fine line between a feature that aids productivity and one that is unpredictable, unintuitive or so twitchy it just gets in the way.

For experienced or trained users, gestures can be a great productivity enhancement, just make sure they’re appropriate for your users, that it’s obvious they’re enabled and that their effects are clearly sign-posted!

And having said all that, I admit I’ve never quite got my head around Opera’s mouse gestures. They’re weird, and it feels like they fight against the natural shortcuts within the O/S.

Maybe I need a training course in how to use them?

http://is.gd/9AK6Y

Includes overview and links to tools, resources & reading material

#ux

http://is.gd/5c4iR via @sixrevisions

#ux #accessibility

One of the most interesting things about the article is the video footage of people using the JAWS screen reading software.

Typically, when we think about website accessibility we tend to focus on providing assistance for the visually impaired. However, the users in this BBC article demonstrate a number of different forms of disability, including visual impairment, dyslexia, cognitive problems and RSI-like motor dysfunction.

The article’s videos serve as a useful reminder that there are other types of disabilities we need to be considering. They also demonstrate some practical considerations for designers and developers to make the most out of the JAWS software.

Article extract:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced a new standard to make sites more accessible to older and disabled people.

Version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) will apply to text, images, audio and video.

It also covers web applications and is said to give developers more flexibility than the old guidelines.

According to the consortium, WCAG 2.0 should also be easier to understand and use

Full article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7789622.stm

Complying with accessibility guidelines can seem like a massive undertaking. However, addressing 5 simple problems can make a huge difference to your site’s accessibility.

Essentially these are:

• poorly described images
• badly labelled links
• no alternatives to media
• reliance on javascript
• user controlled text

The article outlines quick fixes that it claims addressed 80% of issues.

These might seem like pretty basic fixes, and any web UI developer worth their salt will have been working within these parameters for years, but sometimes its worth reminding yourself of why you do the things you do…

(Source: http://boagworld.com/accessibility/quick_fix_accessibility/)