A typical newspaper article View large, or large without the overlays

When we look at a typical webpage, the amount of space supporting the reading task is incredibly small.

What is all the rest of the space used for then? Navigation (in yellow), promotion for other sections of the website (in orange), and ads (often animated) for things that have nothing to do with the article (in red).

They each have very different purposes. Ads are here for the understandable reason that they bring in money and often represent the main source of income for online publications. Promotions for other sections of the website try to get me to read more content on the site, which would make me load another page containing ads, earning the site even more money. Some sites take it to the extreme and split even short articles into multiple pages.

Next is the navigation, which is here to help me move to other articles or sections of the site. However, at this point, thank you very much, I am still trying to read my article, and I haven’t finished yet.

Navigation, internal promotion, and external ads. None of these help me read my article. Which, as you remember, is what I am actually trying to do.

Readability

Several months ago, I was shown Readability , an “experiment” from some folks called Arc90. Once set up, a single click could reformat almost any article on the web into an easy-to-read and clutter-free page, only showing content. Even better, I could once again assess how long the article was, and how much I had already read, by looking at the relative size and position of my scrollbar. This was a breath of fresh air, and I have been using it continuously ever since (together with Instapaper for reading later on the go).

Safari Reader

The same page in Safari Reader See large

Recently, Apple released the 5th version of their Safari browser. It includes a feature they call Reader, which:

“removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story” (from Apple’s Safari page)

Apple has used Readability’s (open source) code to build this feature and, on top of what Readability does, Safari Reader adds some nice touches: a smoother look, automatically loading multipage content at once, nice animated transitions and overlaid buttons that help the reading user (to print, change the font size, or send by email).

What Safari Reader has introduced is simply a reading mode for the web: when you enter it you get the best experience for reading, but to do anything else, you need to exit that mode.

By using a mode, Safari can focus on supporting a single task at a time, which enables it to improve the quality of the experience.

Reception

While Arc90’s little experiment did not create many waves, Apple promoting the same idea was bound to be noticed and reactions were sometimes slightly hyperbolic:

“Apple has essentially destroyed the web publishing model completely with the release of Safari 5. This is the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on the entire web economy” Jim Lynch

The reasoning being that the Reader feature would block ads. This is quite exaggerated since this feature requires the page to be loaded and the ads to be displayed before I can activate it, but there is some truth to it. It probably doesn’t bother Apple that this might slightly reduce Google’s income from online advertisement, given their competition in the mobile space.

However, Safari’s Reader mode needs to be manually activated every single time, requiring me to make extra effort, which I probably  won’t, unless I am forced to by poor page design or an unreasonable number of ads.

Conclusion

The mere existence of this feature is a sign that the reading experience on the web is often not satisfactory. By failing to recognise the main need of the reading user or by letting other considerations trample this need, publishers shoot themselves in the foot and are driving their users to bypass their primary income source.

As Lukas Mathis puts it:

“If your users are using a third-party product to make your product usable, you are doing something wrong”

I look forward to the day where websites are better designed and I won’t have to use any of these band-aids to enjoy reading long online articles. Until then, I’ll happily continue to use Safari Reader, Readability and Instapaper.

For more on the subject:

Arc 90's Readability (bookmarklet that works in every browser)

Apple: What’s new in Safari 5

Nik Fletcher: On this Safari 5 Reader Hysteria

Lukas Mathis: Safari Reader

Jim Lynch: Safari Reader: Apple’s Weapon of Mass Destruction

Daring Fireball: No, Safari Reader Is Not the Beginning of an ‘Arms Race’

The Guardian: How Apple's new ad-blocker could save the media (maybe)

Ars Technica: Apple's "evil/genius" plan to punk the Web and gild the iPad

Flow frequently uses ethnographic research methods to gain a deep understanding of the social and working lives of people who use different products and services in different contexts. The findings provide richer insights into service and product design requirements and opportunities for innovation, particularly when designing for global and multi-cultural audiences.

One of the key questions around ethnographic research is how its findings are transformed into design. One example of such a process was presented at a recent UX Brighton: ‘A Journey from Ethnography to Design’. The event included two speakers: Simon Johnson, User Experience Consultant at Flow and Miles Rochford from Nokia. Simon spoke about the ethnographic research and subsequent design that he completed for the Environment Agency. Miles’ presentation focused on using ethnography to design products for emerging markets.

The Environment Agency commissioned Flow to conduct contextual research and subsequently design an interactive map that will provide users with coastal erosion information – a national project that will affect 2.1 million houses on the coast. The key objectives were to establish what an erosion map should look like, how it should work and what sort of information should accompany the map.

Claire Mitchell, Flow’s Principal Consultant on the project and Simon started the project with a research phase that included ethnographic field observations in two coastal settings: Norfolk and Hastings. Simon spent two weeks documenting the lives of coastal communities, interviewing local people and immersing himself in their lives. Additionally, Simon interviewed eight professionals at Flow’s experience labs in London.

Ethnography enabled Simon to apply his empathy and humanistic values to drive the project. It was clear that his findings provided the Environment Agency with a rich understanding of the concerns, information needs and myths that people who live in rural coastal communities might have. Simon described how his research findings confirmed some of EA's current thinking, provided new insights and defined the subsequent design process and deliverables.

The research that Claire and Simon conducted described how emotive the coastline is, an institution in British history that invokes strong feelings and forms a strong part of a shared heritage. The implications were the need for the Environment Agency to communicate that it cares and to reassure people that action was being taken to protect the coast. It was also clear that people trust locals and distrust central government, erosion maps caused alarm and that a certain amount of local knowledge derived from  ignorance and/or myth. An example of a myth was the commonly repeated argument that the government was making money dredging ‘their’ sand.

The design approach focused on a simple website that addresses the needs of both professionals and locals. Claire and Simon decided that the design should answer core questions and myths, stick to plain English, use local materials and represent risks  without alarming local people.

Is it Ethnography?
After the presentation the audience participated in a lively debate, which had a particular focus on the true meaning of ethnography. For some designers ethnography was a new concept and their reactions during the Q&A sessions and after the presentations indicated that they found both Simon and Miles’ presentations truly thought provoking. Some felt that rapid ethnography with a specific structure and design agenda was different from “ethnography” and needed a new term associated to it.

Theoretical research has two main aims – the validation of existing knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. Flow uses research to acquire and validate specific knowledge, the context in which services and products are used.  Flow uses principles and techniques taken from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and psychology to inform design decisions. Our main aim is to design solutions that work outside of design studios, laboratories and meeting rooms. As a result, we often use appropriate research techniques to focus on specifically targeted contexts and activities. A term that is often used to describe this work is Design Ethnography.

Simon's presentation

_____________
Many thanks to Danny Hope and former Flow Consultant Harry Brignull for organising the event.

--Ofer Deshe

• Play/Pause
• Next Song/Fast Forward
• Previous Song/Fast Reverse
• Volume adjustment

On the back was a three-position switch to play music in order, or shuffled or to turn off the unit.

The second generation was just as simple as the first, but had more storage and less than half the size.

On 11 March, 2009 Apple released the third-generation Shuffle.

One of the key design decisions was to simply not have any buttons, apart from a button that switches between 'Off', 'Random' and 'Order'. All controls are now part of the earphones.

According to Apple:

The new iPod shuffle is amazingly small and even easier to use.

But is it easy to use?

Soon after the launch, forums, social media networks and blogs started to criticise the new Shuffle. Whilst some disliked being dependent on using Apple's earphones, others criticised the new interface. Physically, the control could be difficult to grab during sporting activities or for those with bigger hands, but more importantly, most of the functions are controlled via a central button that has no labels.

The lack of visual display raises a design challenge. Unfortunately, touch is a less accurate sensory mode than vision and typically slows users down. Apple could have designed an interface with elements that could have been recognised through tactile attributes such as feedback, resistance, size, weight, and/or texture. The father and grandfather of the current Shuffle are good examples of such a control. However, the solution was to include VoiceOver technology, a feature that speaks 14 languages and plays back track and playlist names. Although a minor issue, VoiceOver struggles with pronunciation. Perhaps in the future, additional language information will be included with each track.

One button, nine commands

Apple was once famous for the one-button mouse. Although historically some suggest that this decision was based on cost, it was often argued that one button is all you needed. The one button became a symbol of simplicity. In contrast, the new iPod Shuffle has a central button that accepts many user commands. In fact, this 'one button' handles 9 inputs:

1. click
2. click & hold
3. double-click & hold
4. triple-click & hold
5. triple-click and hold within 6 seconds
6. triple-click and hold after 6 seconds
7. click until a tone is played
8. click until you hear a name
9. click & hold until exit

There is no direct cognitive mapping between users' goals and the required actions. For example, why does 'double-click and hold' fast-forward a track, but 'triple-click' rewind? Moving to the next track is achieved by double-clicking. So how do you expect to move to the previous track? Did someone at the back just say "triple-click within 6 seconds of the track starting"? Correct.

 Poor learnability?

Ultimately, if the device is used frequently, many users will move from being novices to experts. However, if learnability is poor, some users will remain perpetually intermediate and potentially frustrated.

Learnability is inherent in interface features that allow novice users to understand how to use a device and how to attain optimal (level of) performance. Learnability is based on five main factors:

• Predictability: operation visibility - what elements of a user's knowledge from past interactions with this device can help to determine the outcomes of future interactions?
• Familiarity: guessability - to what extent can users' knowledge from other systems and real world objects could be applied to interactions with the device?
• Synthesisability: how does the interface help a user to asses the effect of past actions on the current state?
• Consistency: likeness in behaviour. In this context consistency is related to user inputs and the subsequent output responses.
• Generalisability: support for the user to extend their knowledge to other applications and devices.

In the case of the Shuffle, lack of visual display could slow down skills acquisition. The design is not based on familiar metaphors, and poor learnability may increase cognitive load. Many users will not be familiar with the Shuffle's interface, apart from iPhone users who use a similar earphone-based controller.

As a robust device consistency between actions and auditory feedback that arises as a consequence will be high and usage is likely to be frequent. Therefore, for many users learnability will eventually take place. It is possible that Apple plans to extend this interaction model to other devices. For those who mastered this control acquiring this skill will become generalisable and useful.

Does it matter?

So it might be difficult to learn. Arguably, it has beautiful industrial design, long battery life and impressive storage capacity. Apple could sell many of these fashion accessories to users who would simply click to play whilst sitting on the train, running, or going to the gym.

The best way to gain an in-depth insight would be to test the Shuffle with users. In the next few weeks we are planning to evaluate the Shuffle in one of Flow's experience laboratories and analyse its performance and user experience.

- Ofer Deshe, Principal User Experience Consultant

Thanks to Thibault Baradat-Bujoli for the original illustrations

We seldom discuss mediocre experiences with our friends. The ones which do get mentioned are the exceptional - both great and bad.

A bad experience is one where:

• My needs and desires are not provided for.
• The product itself doesn't deliver as promised or is confusing / hard to learn.
• The interaction (at POS and afterwards) is confusing, patronizing, inflexible, or unusable.

A great experience is one where:

• The concept is utterly relevant for me.
• The product itself exceeds expectations and allows me to focus on the task in hand.
• The interaction (at POS and afterwards) is simple, fast, accessible and structured appropriately for me.

Countless online communities & blogs have built up around recommendations and many ecommerce sites have integrated a recommendation network into their shopping experience e.g. Amazon. Many books have been written about the power of recommendation in marketing including The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. Terminologies have developed around the roles individuals play in such recommendation networks (Connectors, mavens & salesmen in the Tipping Point). If you want to know more you can get the books... suffice it to say that recommendations work best the closer the source is to you... or the most highly respected the source.

The power of a recommendation is undeniable - it creates buzz which is the marketing holy grail.

The first step in getting recommendations is to create outstanding experiences. In designing any product or service the 3 key questions are:

1. Is the product/service relevant for the target market? Does it address the real needs and desires and will it fit effectively into the context in which it will be placed?
2. Is the product/service marketed effectively to enable customers to fully understand its potential whilst retaining clarity? Is it intuitive, accessible and enjoyable?
3. Do the sales and post sales processes support customers' behaviour? Will they allow them to engage in the optimal way to ensure a great experience?

As a producer of such experiences the only way to ensure you are getting this right is to involve the end users throughout the design process from concept development through functional specification and visual design to marketing and post sales. See the Flow case studies for numerous examples across different industries and product types.

It's great to hear people being positive about something which went right to such an extent that they make conversation of it. Let's learn from some of the positive experiences out there. Please add a line or two on your great experiences.

Thanks to Pierre Lenfestey for the use of his artwork.

Emma Passey, Simon Pearson (National Express East Coast) and Ian
Worley (Flow Interactive) receiving the IT Excellence of the Year Award

On Thursday evening, 19th February 2009, I was privileged to be at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London for the HSBC Rail Business Awards to co-receive the Information Technology Excellence of the Year Award for the new National Express East Coast (NXEC) booking engine and website.

As any of you reading this who have used the NXEC booking engine know, it dramatically simplifies the process of finding and buying rail tickets online...not just on NXEC routes, but for any train in the UK.  We have blogged before about the intuitive user interface and its cutting edge use of AJAX technology as well as the positive customer feedback and improved business results for NXEC before.

We (and NXEC) have also received lots of accolades from customers and the industry about how great the new booking engine is.  So it fills us with a great sense of pride and accomplishment to receive this well-deserved acknowledgement from the Rail Industry for all the creativity and teamwork that went into making it happen.

It has been a long road, but the hard work and effort has paid off, not just because we won this award, but because we succeeded in creating a first-of-its-kind, innovative and successful new booking engine for trains that will set the standard for all that follow, in terms of business performance, ease of use and customer satisfaction. It is also a clear demonstration of how User-Centred Design makes a tangible difference to customers and business.

I just want to take a moment to thank the entire NXEC team from Flow:  Simon Hatch, Alejandra Obregon, Martina Schell and Kelsey Smith; our partners at Splendid: Paul Bishop, Simon Parbutt, Alistair Thomson and Karl Wortmann; the team at Atos Origin who built it:  Graham Bodman, Richard Phillpot, Ian Collier, Eleanor Waldron and Chris Rees; and the team at Tullo Marshall Warren (TMW) for bringing the marketing website together.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to thank Emma Passey and the entire NXEC team for their vision, passion and perseverance.  We couldn't have done it without you!

Congratulations to everyone. A well deserved award!

- Ian Worley, Director of User Experience at Flow Interactive

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Download Case Studies about this project:

• National Express East Coast Booking Engine Case Study (78k .pdf)
• National Express East Coast Website Case Study (92k .pdf)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the early 70s, Prof Geert Hofstede ran surveys with IBM employees worldwide and produced a set of four cultural dimensions which he used to categorise countries in terms of national tendencies. His four dimensions were:

• The Power Distance Index, which looks at how much people accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.
• Individualism, which considers how far people operate as part of extended loyal groups and families.
• Masculinity, which considers how far men's values are from women's in a society.
• The Uncertainty Avoidance Index, which measures a society's tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and diversity of approach.

It doesn't take long to notice that Hofstede's ideas have little to do with interaction design as such. They are focussed on management and communications and offer analysis at the level of general tendencies; they are not about use. But Prof Hofstede's name has become synonymous with cultural research in interaction design. He is quoted extensively. He is held up as evidence that tidy answers exist somewhere to untidy problems.

Interaction designers do need guidance on how to handle cultural diversity when designing technology with international reach. But that guidance may not be best in the form of metrics and measures. The OzCHI 2008 conference on Designing for Habitat and Habitus explored cultural aspects of designing. And every single experienced researcher came back to the same point: The best way for designers to understand the cultures they are designing for is to go get first hand experience.

Good listening

The OzChi2008 conference began with a workshop on 'Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture' . Participants discussed flexible and fine-grained ways of understanding difference in interests, values and use of technology. This understanding, it was agreed, did not come from metrics focussed on national characteristics.

So what did these researchers advocate instead?
The only common method in use was listening. The main goal of each researcher was to get to a condition of trust and respect where 'good listening' could go on. This might involve some understanding of suitable cultural gestures to adopt or avoid, like avoiding the 'thumbs up' gesture, which is rude in Iran or understanding that a head wiggle means 'yes' India. But it had more to do with interest in learning from others and a desire to get insight into other people's needs, behaviours and motivations.

Lesson 1: Embrace uncertainty. Look for the surprising contrasts. Welcome the destabilisation of an unfamiliar situation as a chance to learn about your own assumptions and cultural standpoints as well as others'. Get out there and challenge what you've read about a place or people.

Different cultures expect different behaviours

Lesson 2: Adapt your approach on the fly. Don't worry too much about method. Wherever you begin, it is likely only to be a starting point with plenty of adaptation to follow. So pick something that makes you happy but don't get too committed to any particular process.

Lesson 3: Listen well. Not only is it the best way to collect data, it also shows respect and builds trust. Check back often to see whether what you are hearing is really what the person you're talking to is trying to say.

Many cultures at once

The keynotes at the conference both had something to add to this. The next critique of Hofstede's legacy came from Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics at University of California, Irvine. Paul's opening keynote stressed that people are too complex to assign to a single form of classification. Any system that has neat boundaries is also going to be inadequate because cultures do not start and end abruptly. He gave examples of the way that emigration had spread out certain groups, like the well-documented diaspora of the Trinidadian Trinis and the way that they have integrated media into their lives so that they can keep in touch across distances. Instead of seeking to understand 'culture' at large, he advocated taking a view of people as sitting at the intersection of many different cultures, able to draw on those that suit the moment and behaving differently depending on the context in which they find themselves. These different ways of seeing could be regarded as looking through multiple lenses, each giving a unique perspective.

Lesson 4: Recognise the multiple perspectives at work. Explore the lenses that make up the richness of people's experience and give maximum flexibility to designs so that they fit into the many worlds that are relevant to and desired by potential users.

Human access points

Gary Marsden from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, offered an empirical take on designing. He has many years experience working in sub-Saharan Africa on digital technologies for use by remote communities. After years of trial and error he favours adopting robust, agile prototyping techniques to work with people who cannot imagine a product from drawings of an interface. He also advocates using 'Human Access Points' – people who can mediate between the designer and some of the target users.

Lesson 5: Get your assumptions out of the way. Let local conditions set the agenda for how something gets designed and built. (This may involve formally considering cultural differences, but it may be where the listening comes in...)

Lesson 6: Create a usable and robust prototype. This 'technology probe' will teach whether and how an idea can work. Other simpler forms of prototype may teach more about how your target group thinks about prototypes than about your research question.

Lesson 7: Use local talent to help interpret what you are seeing and hearing. Find someone with a foot in both camps to take on the job of mediation. Encourage them to do the design research. Design something that they can use as a step in designing for the wider community. Spend as much time with them as you can. (Gary called these people 'Human Access Points'. In other work I've done, the team called them 'cultural guides'.)

Designing for somewhere else

So if you're designing for a culture you're not familiar with, here's the best advice: read Hofstede's work and put it back on the shelf with everyone else's. Then engage in 'good listening' with the people you're designing for. Use cultural guides and technical probes to help bridge the communications gap. And keep your attitude and methodology flexible – the unexpected is where the most important ideas await. Talk to others who do this work and are interested in cultural perspectives. And, if in doubt, quote us all.

Ann Light was a co-organiser of the Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture workshop at OzCHI 2008. When she gets a moment, she consults to Flow on innovative approaches in user experience design.

1. Support multi-variable trade-offs

Some people prioritise the cost of the ticket whilst others prioritise the time of travel. The type of trip will cause a person to prioritise one of those variables over the other, but most booking journeys involve trading off these two factors. Successful travel booking interfaces help people understand how time and cost influence each other.

For a holiday maker, the choice of location, duration and hotel make the activity even more complex. "I can go to Rhodes from Manchester on the 16th for 300 pounds, and stay in the four star excelsior for 7 nights, or Cyprus from Gatwick on the 19th for 312 pounds and stay in the 5 star Grand for 6 nights." These are really complex decisions, made in conjunction with family or friends, so you'll need to pull out all the stops to design an interface that really helps.

2. Present a well-defined proposition

Trying to be all things to all people is very expensive. Players with a tightly-defined target market will always do better at serving their market than generalised players spread thin over lots of markets.

Know your market and offer a proposition that appeals to that market - whether it's group travel, business travel, family holidays, design hotels, skiing etc. Then build a site that profoundly and accurately addresses those people's behaviours and needs.

3. Fight "search fatigue" - catch people early in the decision process

People are overwhelmed with choice in the travel market. On average, people in our research visited 22 sites before deciding to go with a provider which they visited 2.5 times. By making site that supports people early in the decision making process and helps them fast track the exploration and decision process, you create awareness in people's mind and they are more likely to go with you.

4. Surface the right information to help people make a decision

Choosing hotels is hard. People find it difficult and stressful to make decisions when their criteria are flexible and the field is large.

Good pictures, features, location with map, star rating, Trip Advisor rating, price per room/night (not per person), hotel name and short description are what matters most when sifting through lists of hotels. Enabling people to get this information without having to 'pogostick' is vital.

5. Focus on selling the experience not the product

Beyond the basic factors above, there's a whole list of things that users want to know before they make a decision. Focussing on the experience of staying in a hotel, rather than the generic factors, makes it easier for people to make that final choice.

For example, a hotel in Paris is not just a "3 star hotel in the city centre". It's a fantastic base in the vibrant Place de la Sorbonne, it's ideal for food lovers with 6 gourmet bistros, it captures the image of Paris with its view of the Eiffel Tower, it's ideal for families or ideal for romantic getaways. Understanding what a stay there will be like is what will help people to decide and to buy.

6. Be transparent and honest

Trust is a major sticking point for travel sites. In our research, users rarely trusted the price shown and were always prepared for some last minute surcharges.

Travel sites want to show low prices (excluding as many elements as possible), because they believe it help buyers get started. The flip side: a slippery and arduous booking process repels buyers (one where surcharges slowly build up, and cross-sells appear in your basket uninvited).

Would giving the real prices transparently build reputation and trust that exceed the pulling power of a low offer? No one knows for sure. We do know that removing some of the automatic cross-sells does produce a short term loss of revenue. But whether it offers a long term boost in loyalty, no one has yet had the guts to find out.

7. The seducible moment comes after the sale.

When people go into low-cost flight booking mode, they are very task-focussed and don't really care about anything else. We think that's a learned behaviour coming from the situation that a) the good flight deals go fast b) they need to concentrate to make sure they get rid of insurance etc.

Low cost flight booking is like bargain hunting, and trying to up-sell users during the booking process is like taking the bargain away from them. The seducible moment for up-sell is not really during the flight booking process, but after. Most travel sites are stuck in the business model of trying to up-sell during the booking process.

8. Ensure localisation is an actual part of the design phase.

The most planned and least actualised design stage is LOCALISATION. Lack of effective internationalisation and localisation is costing travel sites money.

There's a myth that Europe offers a unified culture with different languages, but it's not true. Language, rating systems, research, booking and payment behaviour vary significantly from country to country.

A simple example: some cultures will tend to assume that a rating of 1 is the best rating, others that a rating of 5 is the best. (The solution is to use a visual rating scale which is less ambiguous).

To maximise adoption, conversion and revenue, travel sites need to research, and test internationally. Using design skills from a range or different countries helps too.

A market opportunity: Design the next generation of travel sites.

People have very quickly learned how to dodge the failings of one website by jumping to another. In our research we have seen that people have no loyalty, there is no trust and that means that online travel companies will always have a major element of uncertainty in their future.

But the development of the web shows that people are open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. So we urge travel companies to innovate based on these design tips. Come up with the iPhone of the online travel industry. The opportunity is there for the taking.

Thanks to Louise, Peter, Karl, Lola, SimonJ, Ofer, Claire and Alejandra for the research and insights.

I'm working on two WPF applications at the moment. For both, we have to decide whether to use traditional File/Edit/View menus or an MS-Office-style ribbon. It's not an easy decision...

A piece of the Ribbon, from MS Excel 2007

Pro: It appears to be built on a sound theoretical basis and Microsoft tell us they've researched it to death with hordes of real users. They also say they're planning to use it more widely.

Con: Key players on both the teams I'm working with are against the ribbon. They say "I use Office all the time and I really don't want one of those things on MY software."

Con: Jakob Nielsen raises an eyebrow that a number of the best new applications of the year use ribbons. He points out that Microsoft have not always come up with the best interface innovations in the past. Pro: But he grudgingly admits that maybe "the Ribbon has legs".

Con: Some surfing around yields plenty of blogs posts from frustrated ribbon users.

Pro: The techsmith team implemented a ribbon on snagit 9 and say their research showed it worked well.

Con: And a couple of bits of software that allow you to replace the ribbon in MS Office 2007 with a more traditional menu bar. That's a sign that there's a potential market of people desperate enough to pay to get rid of the ribbon.

So what's going on?

Good if used with UCD

My analysis: The ribbon is a decent piece of interface, but like most things in UX, it's hard to design it well. And to design it well you really have to understand your users' needs, behaviours and work practices.

That's because the ribbon tries to show commands grouped together based on what users are most likely to want to do. So in Word 2007, for example, there's a tab for mail-merge, and one for page layout and one for referencing, whereas in Word 2003 those features are pushed lower down in a more generic menu structure. If you get the groupings right, your users will always find the selection of controls they need right there in the ribbon. But if you misunderstand what they need to do, they'll get an irrelevant list and you'll get complaints.

Microsoft have got a lot of it right, but a bit of it wrong. And with Office's massive user base, an angry, vocal minority is still a million people or more.

Three ways to get Ribbon design wrong

1. Choose groupings that don't mirror real-world workflow. If you group menu options together in ways that don't reflect the way that people really work in the real world you'll cause frustration.  PowerPoint 2007 Beta 2 had some problems with this.
2. Make groups the wrong size. If a group isn't properly broken down it could end up displaying too many icons on the ribbon at once, making the ribbon hard to scan. Making groups too small means people might have to hunt through have too many tabs with not much on each.
3. Options that move about too much. If the same control appears in different areas of the Ribbon for different tabs, it becomes hard to know where to look to find what you want. For example, in PowerPoint 2007, the shapes gallery appears on several tabs in different places. If I'm in format mode, I'll find my shapes on the left. But on the home tab, I'll find them on the right. This makes the core activity of drawing a shape surprisingly hard to engage in. I think this sort of thing is what makes some people complain that they "can never find anything" in Office 2007.

The shapes gallery appears on the left of the format ribbon and the right of the home ribbon. This makes it a lot more effort to locate a key feature in PowerPoint 2007

This last point is, I think, the key issue that makes me feel uneasy about the Ribbon. As humans, we're not very good at remembering which mode or state a machine is in. We need to look at indicators and control panels to see it. But we are quite good at remembering where a given resource or tool sits in our environment. This is because of the way things behave in the real world. Our frying pan doesn't magically reposition itself on the hob just because we pick up some bacon. It stays put in the cupboard and we know where to find it.

So with interfaces, we might well expect that the controls we want will be in a fixed place. Remembering what mode a piece of software is in, and remembering a different control layout for each mode, is just too much. If we look up at the Ribbon and (fail to) see controls in unexpected places, it causes cognitive friction.

The opposite of dockable palettes?

Dockable windows or palettes are by definition always there, regardless of what mode the application is in. That's very different from the spirit of the Ribbon, which is supposed to be all about contextual relevance. Can the two co-exist?

Snag-It 9 seems to have included dockable windows in their interface. And even Powerpoint does actually have a few non-modal dialogs (windows you can leave open all the time while you're doing other things) - the format shape dialog, for example. So perhaps it's ok.

Proceeding with caution

I think I'll suggest using a Ribbon for the applications I'm working on. We'll need to look carefully at sensible task groupings, and make sure that features don't jump around too much. Then usability test it a lot.

If I find any specific reasons why the Ribbon doesn't work, I'll post.

In concept design projects, we help our clients to envision how people will use technology in the future. But people who are experts in particular subjects (like their current customer experience or business process), are often less comfortable imagining or describing how things might become. Sometimes, Flow uses client workshops with graphical facilitation to help everyone get a solid grip on abstract ideas.

Augmented conversations

The idea of a graphical facilitation is simple to say, but harder to do: Draw everything that's being said in real time on gigantic sheets of paper. For maximum effect, paper the whole room, so that all ideas remain immediately available throughout the workshop.

An extract from a large mural created during a workshop

Here's some rationale...

• People have new ideas through conversation. Well managed conversations provide inspiration, as well as tests and checks that can help new ideas take shape.
• Conversations about complex things stop working well unless they are recorded as you go. A visible, running record of the ideas helps the team reach agreement and accept new ideas as building blocks for the next iteration of the discussion.
• Images are a very powerful record. Most of us can scan images quickly and find things again efficiently. They're also very information rich.
• Some concepts are more easily expressed in terms other than words. Mathematicians and physicists use mathematical notation. Architects use sketches, models and blueprints. Describing a building or a law of physics in words alone would be exhausting. Expressing complex, interrelated ideas behind a vision of the future will always be easier in pictures.

Visualising the presentation of a new system

The effects of thinking in pictures

I asked a couple of Flow's user experience consultants about using graphical facilitation.

"The future is unfamiliar territory, and that can be unnerving. Real time graphic output helps make everyone comfortable," Simon Hatch told me. "In a recent workshop, there was visible, engaging output even before we broke for lunch on day 1, and that really helped people feel they were making progress."

But as well as helping people see progress, the imagery on the walls helps people to think more effectively.

"It enables us to uncover and unpack things in a different way," explained Stuart Penny. "Seeing everyone's words represented on the wall helps each team member to absorb everyone else's ideas. And thinking in pictures reduces the effort of working an idea through and visualising its impact and consequences."

Smaller scale

Images are a great way of summarising and communicating the contents of a meeting too. We've been experimenting with writing up some of our meetings using images. You could see it as putting doodling to constructive use!

For fabulous drawing talent, we like to work with Cognitive Media.

After last year's success, Flow was asked to come back to Seedcamp to mentor on the product and marketing day. I got the opportunity to go and talk with a range of people about how they conceptualise and design new services.

The keynote panel for the day focussed heavily on usability and user-centeredness - in that order. It seems that for most people, the route to user-centered thinking still sparks the notion of usability testing your service/product after build, squeezing it in at the end. Since the cost of changes to software can tend to increase exponentially as you get closer to launch, making changes at the end is not a great way for young businesses to conserve their limited cash.

Soup.io: One of Seedcamp's winners

But from usability, the discussion branched out into the notion that a user-centred approach to strategy early on in the process is much more valuable. This was really valuable for the competing teams. The feedback made it clear that most young entrepreneurs weren't thinking or developing around customer needs. In conversation most said the one thing they didn't have was a differentiated picture about who their users are or how a usable interface might look.

I worked with five of the finalist teams to see if I could help!

Social, efficient, usable

This year's winners seemed to follow a consistent theme: publishing better content, with less effort, and tying it into your social networks. That certainly seems like the mood of the moment on the web.

My favourite

A company called Uniki didn't make it into the final seven. But they were a personal favourite of mine, as an interaction designer. They've created a system to allow gestural interfaces for projected screen. So you can stand near a data projector, wave your hand and turn an on-screen page.

A uniki user gestures at the projected image of an old book to turn the page