Archive for October, 2009

Why designers should care about HTML5

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Concurrently published on the quite excellent HTML5Doctor site.

After a while on the fringes of our collective consciousness, HTML5 is finally getting the attention it deserves. The development community (as typified by the SuperFriends) has come together to debate practical elements of the spec, argue over the inclusion of controversial elements, and assess the timeframe over which we can unleash HTML5 in the wild.

However those of us more accustomed to the world of Post-Its, sketches, and .psds – the designers – haven’t been so vocal. Perhaps we’ve been distracted by the bright lights of CSS3 and those surface thrills we’ve longed for. (Rounded corners! Gradients! Transparency!) Or, alternatively, we’ve been in the thrall of @font-face and looking forward to the coming age of passable web typography.

Understandable. But it’s time designers got excited about HTML5 too.

Partly, it’s just good practice. Whatever your flavour of design – visual, web, interaction, user experience – knowing the native technology makes you better at your job. Just as composers should understand the capabilities of the orchestra’s instruments, designers need to understand the language of the web.

But there’s more to HTML5 than simply keeping our skills sharp. It could make a big difference to the way we design for the web.

Semantic elements

Information architects (and, by extension, user experience designers) should be excited by the new HTML5 elements – <nav>, <header>, <aside> and so on. While they won’t immediately revolutionise today’s web, they’re an investment for the future. Doing useful stuff with information is the central theme of IA, and therefore its practitioners should be at the forefront of the new experiences that machine-readable semantics will offer. HTML5 allows us to mark text up in a more meaningful way than a sea of <div>s, meaning we’ll soon see applications appearing at a sub-page level. We’ve started to scratch the surface – think about the Operator toolbar or customisable UIs à la iGoogle – but we’ll need detailed design thinking to work out how to bring the benefits of semantic richness to the end user.

APIs and other extensions

While it’s clear that some of the HTML5 APIs are far from perfect right now, when they’re refined they will offer us intriguing new opportunities and challenges.

Designers of location-based services should of course find the geolocation API invaluable. [I stand corrected. See isgeolocationpartofhtml5.com.] The contentEditable attribute gives us further power to make the web truly read/write without resorting to JavaScript and custom interfaces. New input types (eg type=”search”) can provide extra visual cues about input function, although of course this depends on the solutions chosen by the browser manufacturers.

Until now, it’s been easy to consider our domain as bounded by the viewport and the web server. But HTML5 is another step toward seamlessness: the merging of desktop, offline and online. For instance, the drag and drop API could see the line between online and desktop experience blur further. Local storage could allow for a web-like experience in areas of poor connectivity. This convergence is clearly a good thing, but we must also design how to expose those hidden seams at the user’s request. Users should stay in control of how their locations are published and what data is synchronised to their machine.

<video>, <audio>, <canvas>

There is of course something of a reported schism between the standards world and the Flash world. Some see the advent of these new media elements (particularly <canvas>) as heralding the death of Adobe’s poster child.

I don’t think this is either likely or desirable. Neither technology is perfect. Flash is, of course, proprietary and thus subject to the whims of a third party that stands between browser and user. <canvas> has known accessibility problems. But the two can live in harmony, if we play to their respective strengths. Some current Flash applications might be better suited to <canvas>, particularly those based around dynamic visualisation: graphs, animations, infographics. Some applications will benefit from the powerful capabilities of Flash: games, heavily interactive widgets.

This aside, there’s clearly a user experience benefit in not having to rely on an external plugin to play rich media elements, and it will be interesting to see the uptake of the <video> and <audio> elements. Although it will initially be down to browser makers to define the interface elements involved, we will need to figure out how to integrate them into everyday web experiences. The good news is that they can be styled in the same way as any other HTML element. If your visual aesthetic relies on slanted images with box shadows, it’s trivial to apply this to video too.

That said, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room: the thorny codec issue. I’m sure we’d all agree that the sooner it’s resolved, the better.

What can designers do?

Only the most patient and detail-oriented designer will relish the idea of reading the spec in full and arguing the finer points on the WHATWG list. That’s just not the way designers roll.

But as a community it’s important that we start talking about HTML5. If you’re new to HTML, now’s a great time to learn. HTML5Doctor and A preview of HTML5 give useful guidance on the differences between HTML5 and its predecessors. Above all, designers should get chatting with their developer friends: there can’t be many left who no longer have an opinion on this technology. How do they see their practices changing? What can we do today to prepare our sites for the advent of HTML5? How can we build on its strong points to make the web a better place?

We don’t yet know what we’ll accomplish with HTML5, but then it’s not often that the vocabulary of the web changes this deeply. However, one thing is clear: if we prepare now, we have a great chance to bring innovation to our users’ online lives.

Posted in development, web | 1 Comment »

Q&A: getting into user experience

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

For the past few years I’ve given an annual talk at UCL to students of the HCI with Ergonomics M.Sc. It’s always a pleasure to share my questionable world view with impressionable minds, and I look forward to the sessions in much the same way as one secretly enjoys a visit from a drunken uncle.

In an effort to make this year’s session a little more interactive, I pulled out an old Knowledge Management set piece:

1. Distribute post-its
2. Ask everyone to write one question they wish they knew the answer to (preferably about the topic at hand).
3. Stick the post-its on the walls. (It’s surprising how much people group them, despite your invitation to use any of the three free walls)
4. Ask everyone to read each post-it.
5. If they too want to find out the answer to a question, tell them to mark the post-it with a question mark. If they think they have an answer, mark it with a tick.

It’s not that surprising to find that a room of similarly qualified students share similar concerns. What’s more interesting is that many of them can also help to answer each other’s questions.

The purpose of this exercise is of course to show that networking and collaborating is valuable, and not just a case of awkward conversation and limp handshakes. However, having made this slightly facile point, I realised that most of the posted questions were damn smart and deserved to be shared more broadly. So here are a few that were particularly interesting, and some proposed answers from myself. I’ll throw a few more up later this week.

Please contribute in the comments if you have any opinions, particularly if they differ from my own.

Is the graphic design of a site more important than usability when initially attracting users to the site?
I say yes. Research shows users form an opinion on the credibility of a site within milliseconds of visiting it. To form a valid opinion on usability takes use, which may not happen if those impressions are negative. However, the line between the two is of course blurred, and a site can successfully convey usability through layout, visual design and information hierarchy. There are plenty of other factors that have an impact too: load times, content and proposition spring to mind.

How many hours do you work a week?
Define “work”. I’m paid for 37 hours, and most of that is spent on billable client work. But add in commuting, writing articles and conference talks, mentoring, and reading about my field and it would exceed 60. Yes, I’m aware that’s a little unhealthy. Good thing I enjoy it.

What’s the most useless skill you think we’ll learn from this course?
Probably rifling through academic papers to find an authoritative source that proves or disproves a detailed HCI argument. Truth is, not many people in industry will care. It’s more important to judge the the problem at hand and make the right design decisions based on context. HCI theory can give a strong advantage here, but you’ll need to state your case with something more real: usually how your client will make more money by following your advice.

How much do you get paid?
Not telling. But here are some approximate London figures: £25,000 is fair for a graduate-level position, rising to £35–40,000 with a couple of years of experience. Senior people should be looking at £60,000 and up (seven years and above, probably managerial responsibility). Freelance rates typically range between £275-£400/day.

What are the best design tools in HCI?
Thinking, conversation, sketching, software. In that order.

Can you be a good UX designer and a good programmer at the same time?
You can be good at both, yes. But who wants to be just good? Deep specialists tend to better than jacks-of-all-trades, and only extremely rare superheroes can be world class at both. I do, however, strongly recommend that all designers learn to code to a reasonable standard, and that all developers learn the fundamentals of design. Speaking each other’s language is the easiest way to ensure good designer-developer relationships, and one of the easiest ways to become substantially better at your job in a short time.

Do you need to draw well / be arty to be a user experience designer?
Some drawing talent helps, but sketching well is a skill that can be learned and that comes with practice. Its main value is when communicating with clients – a well-crafted sketch can simply convey more information than a poor one. However, it’s more important to develop a designer’s mindset. As Jason Santa Maria says, “sketchbooks are not about being a good artist, they’re about being a good thinker.”

To finish, two questions I don’t feel fully equipped to answer. How would you answer them?

• What’s the most interesting HCI related job out there?
• How do I get into the user’s head?

Posted in design, user experience | 5 Comments »

The behaviour you design for

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

I’m working on a site that’s grown from no deal to big deal. Earlier design oversights have created user coping strategies so ingrained that I mustn’t disrupt them with my new design work.

Another reminder that you get the behaviour you design for.

Photo: Tim Bradshaw

Posted in design, user experience | 2 Comments »