Assignment 2 - UI Critique

Good Example 1

Ribbon interface of Microsoft Office Suite

The purpose of the Microsoft Office’s interface is to provide way to users to interact and create with the productivity tools in the suite. As a suite of software, although every piece of them serve for different purpose and produce totally different things, all software in the suite share the same design language. The iconic “Ribbon” (the main tool bar navigation of Office suite software) classify each tools you need in the software into categories. This shows a very good consistency and standards that is shared among the suite to reduce efforts spent on learning for users. It also helps to maintain an aesthetic and minimalist design that the content would not be too crowded nor hidden.

Good Example 2

Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse

The purpose of this interface is let user control the very portable mouse device through some simply input. The operation you can do with the interface is quite simple. Rather than usual operation (right click, left click, scrolling) which is totally identical to conventional mouse, the Arc Touch Mouse also allow users to turn it on and off. User turn the mouse on by bending it to a curved shape and turn it off by bend it flat again. This match between users real world practice a lot because when people trying to mouse, they want it to be a mouse like curved shape so that will actually be a very natural movement to bend the mouse from flat into curve in order to use. It also has great error prevention that it only allow bending towards 1 direction, so users is really hard to bend it the other way and break it eventually. Moreover, at the state of curved and flat, user need to apply quite a bit of force in order to bend it, so it can barely turned on or off eventually.

Bad Example 1
Analog buttons UI of games on smartphone.

The purpose of this interface is to provide smartphone users a way to interact with the game like playing games on a console. This kind of interface can create gamers a kind of familiar way to play game on a touch screen, because pressing button to perform corresponding action is most usual way to interact with games in non-touch screen environment. Which make it to some extent handy to user since it speaks the user’s language. However I think the problem it brings is much more severe than the benefit it provides.

First of all as the buttons are on screen, users will easily find out that contents, even the buttons themselves,  on the screen being covered by hands when their fingers trying to move around the screen in order to reach those buttons. This results in bad visibility of the system status.

Also, as the buttons are all analog, it has no physical shape you can touch or feel, plus they are usually covered by your hand, it is very easy for user to press on the wrong button or mispress. This shows this interface has very weak error prevention as well as not giving user sufficient feedback.

I think the correct way to prove this is to come up with a totally different way to interact with games on smart phone rather using the conventional way and design games base on that. For example use more tab, swipe, rather than having user to press the analog button. Or make use the sensing device such as gyro, accelerometer to create new ways of control.

Bad Example 2
MBTA ticket machine

The purpose of this interface is to provide customer ticket purchase and card refill services. The machine’s interface is simple and straight forward, satisfying the principle of having a minimalist design. However, the issues of the experiences is huge as well.

First thing you will notice is that the card reader for Charlie card is located very far away from the screen. Which usually make user take a while to look for it when they see the instruction of tapping Charlie from the screen. This demonstrate the recognition problem of the machine. However if you are owning a Charlie ticket instead of a card, the place you can insert the ticket is located below the screen this time, which is totally not somewhere next to the card reader as people would have expected. Also for payment methods, the input of cards, coins and bills are all located at different location. This shows it does not have a good consistency and standard to the design.

I think the builder should rearrange the location of different ports. For example, move card reader to the left hand side of the screen so after user see the “tap your card” message, they can recognize where they should tap right away. 

Assignment 1 - Ideas of Interfaces

1. New Game Controller

Most of the game controllers nowadays look like the one on above. It’s not very comfortable to hold and also most of the buttons are only accessible through thumb movement, which can be really tiring upon long time usage.

The idea of this project is to design a game controller that is more comfortable to hold and decrease the dependency on thumb movement so user can have a much more enjoyable experience when playing games for a long time.

2. Week Time Table View of Course Registration

Registration of courses through myNeu portal is absolutely a nightmare. You need to open different windows to look for CRN numbers of courses. You also need to keep track of which period of time in a week is occupied. Adding a week view of student’s time table of existing course can save user lots of time figuring out whether the course fit into current schedule or not. 

Also during course selection, it pop up to show whether the course has conflict with current schedule.

3. New File Explorer for Windows

Even up to the latest version of Windows10, the current file explorer looks bad and not very user friendly. The ribbon on the top copied from office is almost useless on desktop. The general looking is still old and unpolished that does not fit into the modern flat style of Windows 10 at all.

The idea here is to design a new file explorer for Windows10 that is e aesthetically fitted into Windows10’s modern style as well as more efficient to use for user. The key feature is the explorer will conclude tab, which give user an easy way to switch between file location’s as well as increase the consistency of browsing experience between local and web.