Hot answers tagged social-interfaces
27
Siri seems to be the spiritual but not functional successor to Clippy. A major difference is that people request Siri's help whereas Clippy imposed help upon you.
Another interesting thing is that Clippy is an Embodied Agent. For decades people have thought "How cool would it be if using your computer was like talking to a person". From that thought they ...
13
Breadcrumbs Rock!
And I think you have a personal bias against them rather then making a clear observation about their use.
I notice none of the big players (StackExchange, Facebook, Google, YouTube) use breadcrumbs.
StackExchange uses tags. Those are like breadcrumbs, but it's an associated way rather then structural.
Facebook uses AJAX inplace ...
11
I do not think this is a secret design. Actually, this is a principle that may be inherited from newspapers or magazines:
It would be impossible to read articles if they had not that three or four columns layout, just because your eyes would lose on which line you are reading and which is the next to read. This minimizes eyebal movements while reading.
...
11
The three lines represent a menu as several links stacked on top of each other. If not already a convention - it is very close to become a cross plattform convention representing a menu. Take a look at this image search on Google: mobile menu button, and see that this is the most used representation for a menu on a mobile device.
And looking closely this is ...
9
To me, the biggest problem with Clippy was that it was so damn patronising. As if it knew what you were wanting to do, and just had to help you. I did have it running, mainly because the animations kept me amused ( I am a simple person really ), not for the advice or comments, which I turned off.
And, as @Ben says, it interrupted you doing x to tell you it ...
6
Science: I've read a study last year, saying that the younger generation is unable to differentiate between communication channels: they do remember what did they send to who, but they just can't remember how did they send it.
A quick informal survey on 25-35 year old power users (geeks, hipsters, you know, what friends shall a developer have?) confirmed ...
6
The majority of responsive websites (such as Starbucks, Facebook or Path) use the three horizontal stripes icon. An alternative could be the grid icon (depending on how you decide to visualize your menu items) or the three horizontal stripes of different lenghts with a dot, representing “table of contents”.
This article lists some interesting solutions: ...
5
I think it depends on how you have organized your site's data structure. If your site presents information that is hierarchical in nature then breadcrumbs can help navigate 'up' a level to similar data from a leaf node.
of course, it's possible to organize some data into a hierarchical manner even if it isn't necessary.
Nowadays though, sites are trying ...
5
99% of the users didn't know how to use the features that were already there in the previous version, and had ZERO desire to learn something new and different much less get bugged constantly about how they were doing things that were wrong to begin with.
They knew what they wanted to do and were doing how they wanted to do it. In their minds, Clippy caused ...
4
It doesn't matter.
Pick a unique, easily-recognized icon. Put it in your interface in a place where people will click on it, guessing its approximate meaning.
Make it easy to discover, and safe-looking so people are willing to chance a click on it.
Make its meaning discoverable: When the user hovers, tell them it's for marking things 'interesting' and ...
4
Taking Clifford Nass' premise that human-computer interaction is —unconsciously— like human-human interaction, we can conclude that in designing human-computer interfaces we should use the same Human-Human interaction paradigms.
Some examples of this being a good approach are:
Apple's Siri, which has been a big hype in human-computer interacion.
...
4
In my experience breadcrumbs are useful on sites that have some depth in the page hierarchy. The trail shows where the user is in the site hierarchy. Not only that, it also reveals nearby possibly-related content. Third, it's good for search engines so they understand where in the site they are, and can show context of search results.
Use of a breadcrumb ...
4
If you need it to start, you need it ALL the time -- none of this "upon launch" nonsense. Not everyone will find your site at the same time, and what's a good intro before will be a good intro later.
The real question you should ask is "Do I need [X] to explain the service?" If so, you're going to need it all along, and it's just a matter of whether or not ...
4
If you're talking about a big pop up as soon as a user loads your site, I would completely advise against it.
Unexpected pop ups associate themselves to bad advertisement practices and would most likely frustrate users.
I would much rather see a well presented header with a "learn about us" button or an introductory video.
3
If you are only going to show it to them, then it is fine to show it. If someone has signed up with a facebook account, they would have already agreed to allow you to see their profile pic.
If you are going to make it publicly viewable, then it is not okay to do it unless you get explicit permission from them first. You could by default not show it and ...
3
Here is my opinion about the layout and why it works.
First, we as humans tend to read from left-to-right/right-to-left. We all know that.
Long line lengths are bad for reading, but that doesn't necessarily apply to youtube, unless you enjoy reading the comments while listening to the video.
Even if we take into account our reading direction, that doesn't ...
3
I don't suppose this is a question that will see definitive answers unless we wrangle designers for the sites you mention. In response to the three questions, I would venture "yes", "yes", "no", but I would also propose some other possible explanations not represented:
We're talking about user experience, of course, but a designer is a sort of user. We ...
3
While there some usability concerns around line-lengths, I think there are two main reasons why this layout is so popular.
Design control. Designers have much more control over how the website will look using the popular fixed-width, centered layout as page elements will not move around or change size at the mercy of the users browser window size.
Ease of ...
3
The scenario mentioned in mockup will work well in your case.
The comment is visible just after posting and will automatically hide after 5 seconds (can hide with an animation) and the link to number of replies can be highlighted.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
3
Clippy's problems:
1) Invasive
2) Visually unappealing
3) Lacked UI integration with any of the other Office features
To make it better:
1) Have Clippy be an obvious feature that can be enabled or disabled. Preferably the first time you run the program (and not with every new session).
2) Instead of randomly appearing and floating in the document, make ...
3
Clifford Nass says that Clippy behaves socially inappropriate, as it suggests the same help over and over again, effectively communicating that he "sees" the user for the first time.
So instead of improving its algorithms to make it more intelligent, he used a different social pattern: whenever a user answered "No" to his question "Was this help useful?", ...
2
Firstly, I'm not really sure why you want to avoid the existing thumbs-up iconography. You need to make your application easy to use, and that means employing common convention to ease users into understanding your product. Trying to seem original or keeping a distinct visual identity will just lead to confused, unengaged users.
Secondly, it's difficult to ...
2
You come up with an "impossible" request, which is to visually distinguish between two twin functionalities: like and interesting. This is something no graphic designer should be asked to do, nor should he accept, no matter how expert he may be.
My experience as a UX designer tells me that there is something seriously wrong with your requirements. The User ...
2
The only examples I could think of:
Some professional video editing software comes with a specialized keyboard. This may not only increase usability (color-coded and labeled keys may help to be more efficient), but also identification (This is the computer I do video stuff with. It is my ally).
There is a natural programming language that, instead of ...
2
I really can't make up my mind whether I think this is a good or bad question. No offense, because it is very interesting, indeed!
First of all. The question relies on some very controversial preconceptions. Namely that people treat computers as little humans.
Then it ask how we can achieve more of something we don't really know if we want (or consider ...
2
I don't like the use of tabs, because tabs imply different content in each tab. When you merely change the sorting, you see essentially the same content or data-set, only in a different way.
This might be a little old-fashioned, but sorting or filtering is intuitively controlled with radio buttons, or even dropdown box, in case the sorting is changed ...
2
I think this paper may give you the answers you are looking for:
http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37843.html
Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+
Abstract: Online social networks have become indispensable tools for information sharing, but existing ‘all-or-nothing’ models for sharing have made it difficult for users to target information to ...
2
Any system need to follow simple rules, without cognitive load of any kind - which make me think you're comlicating things. Tha last option is the worst, since we don't want one link to open two pages (comment page and link page). That would scare user off and possibly also make a few browsers thinking you're using dark patterns. Remember the endless popup ...
1
I was wondering if using something similar to soundclouds timeline based commenting system but for copy based posts is a sensible idea.
I think the point of having those in soundcloud is justified by the idea that it is really hard to refer to a certain point of time in the track just by the time in seconds. The system visualizes the comments' context.
...
1
Some Background
Integrating chat and email is a good idea if undertaken properly. You can either have someone chatting to someone else online with the instant messenger feature, or having someone chatting to someone else offline, and prompting the user to send an email afterwards, as email can be easily retrieved from an email client.
Think about Google ...
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