Interesting Usability Links

The first one is about User Expectations with Mobile Apps.
The second is about Accessibility First - for a Better User Experience

Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On

This is a really good paper, definitely worth a read. This is my favourite part of it:

"If we are going to solve the world’s most pressing problems, we must put the power of the Web to
work—its technologies, its business models, and
perhaps most importantly, its philosophies of openness, collective intelligence, and transparency. And
to do that, we must take the Web to another level.
We can’t afford incremental evolution anymore.
It’s time for the Web to engage the real world.
Web meets World—that’s Web Squared"

Amazon MP3

Last Thursday, Nina and I were looking for music for our Playing with Justice Concert. After determining the set list, we decided to purchase them from the Amazon MP3 website. This is by far the worst place I have ever purchased music.

Firstly, the download failed. Ok no big deal, that kind of stuff happens all the time. Was there an option to re-download though? No! After spending ages searching to re-find the download option, we had to contact the Amazon customer services, who then 'reactivated' the link. Tried a second time, download fails again, re-download link no longer available. Contacted them the third time, this time only 2 out of the 8 songs purchased downloaded and the link once again de-activated.

At this point, I decided to give up and download from iTunes. This is a major flaw in their system design as it does not count for download failure. There is no mechanism in place that allows you to track whether the download was successful or not (not even their player) and therefore ensuring the download link is not disabled.

This is such a waste of Oxfam money and I won't be using their store again. I'll stick to iTunes :)

Do Androids Dream of LEGO MINDSTORMS?

The Lego Mindstorms Android App is too cool.

GWT Development Notes

General

The module XML file contains definition of the GWT module, the collection of resources that comprise a GWT application or a shared package. The default XML inherits the core GWT functionality required for every project. Optionally, you can specify other GWT modules to inherit from.

In the module XML file, you specify your application's entry point class. In order to compile, a GWT module must specify an entry point. If a GWT module has no entry point, then it can only be inherited by other modules. It is possible to include other modules that have entry points specified in their module XML files. If so, then your module would have multiple entry points. Each entry point is executed in sequence.

UI Components

Whenever possible, GWT defers to browsers' native user interface elements.
This means that GWT buttons render appropriately in different browsers and on different client operating systems. The benefit of using native browser controls is that they are fast, accessible, and most familiar to users. Also, they can be styled with CSS.  

Root Panel:
A Root panel is the container for the dynamics elements of your application. It is at the top of any GWT user interface hierarchy. There are two ways you can use a Root panel, either to generate the entire body of the page or to generate specific elements embedded in the body. The Root panel works by wrapping an element in the HTML host page. By default (that is, if you don't add any placeholders in the host page) the Root panel wraps the body element. However, you can wrap any element if you name it and then, when you call the Root panel, pass the name as a parameter.

Debugging
One benefit of using GWT in your AJAX application development is that you can see the effects of your code changes as soon as you refresh the browser running development mode 

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/doc/1.6/tutorial/buildui.html (part 3)  

Natural Balance Foods Website

As I'm on a bit of a health food obsession at the moment, I went onto the Natural Balance Foods website and presented with the website I think overall it is pretty good. The background image doesn't interfere with the text or the information. The menus and options are clear and the user experience is generally good as you are able to find all the information you need:

I only have 2 qualms with the website. The first is that it takes forever to place the order, sending information back is such a slow process. The second is the inconsitency of the field layout for the start date and expiry date of the credit card details (as shown below):

This really threw me. Other than those 2 issues I quite like the web site :) 

MGMT Website

As fantastic as MGMT are as a band, and it's a pretty cool idea trying to engage their fans into designing their website. There are some really cool pictures and art work people have come up with, however this isn't very practical and from a usabilty perspective is very poor!

You visit the home page and are presented with the following page:

 Although the image isn't too bad, it's still fairly noisy and makes text difficult to read, especially when you are looking at events (which has the same background) for concert dates. As this is the most important aspect of a band's site, the information should not be difficult to read.

You move away to the 'Music' part of the website, and boy is this an eye sore. You would probably get eye strain from trying to read what's on there and the whole fan art aspect of it means that the site is inconsistent.

If you then move on to the 'fan art' section you are presented with a gallery of art people have uploaded, by selecting you can change the backdrop....great....however there is no option (or easy way if there is an option) of turning off the fan art element of the site.

Yes it's a nice concept but it makes for a very poor user experience.