Desk & Archive v1.0

As mentioned before, I wanted to show how reinvented user interface should look like in practice. That's why I created Desk & Archive, a file manager for workplace.

It reinvents desktop, tabs, item representation and adds some nice features to interaction.

It is shareware, so you can try it at www.deskandarchive.com. I will also further blog on that site about UI inventions that it makes.

How does the .zip survive?

It is a funny thing that anyone today uses zip format. Most of today file formats like office files, pictures, music and video are efficient enough that zip has nearly no effect on them. Also, communication and storage is efficient enough that no one should bother for some gains in file size.

And it is bother to use zip, though Microsoft did something to improve zip usability in Windows and make it more folder like. But even in Windows it is clearly not the same like other folders (you can't see thumbnails in it, Recycle bin is not supported, only most important commands from context menu are supported). And to use files in most applications, extraction is required (e.g. Picasa won't show you the pics in your zip).

So, how then zip survived? Well, there is one common workflow where zip is still useful. It is downloading pack of files from web. Unfortunately, it is not possible to download them as a folder, and zip does the trick. But is it really necessary to do such thing?

Well, I can think of solution from client side. Web browser downloads zip files, but before doing virus scan, it unpacks the zip into folder and deletes the zip file. So user is tricked that he actually downloaded folder.

On the other hand there is probably some server side solution. As it is possible to download folder using ftp protocol, there might be some server workaround for this. Though, as millions of sites already use zip to send folders, I guess first solution would be much more effective immediately.

Consumer vs business application

Having the same software for consumer and business market is something that most people think is OK, but it is not. Now it is not that only these two market segments exists, there should always exist some in between - like artists and students.

During 80s it was very clear: PC was a business machine. Consumers had Commodore, Atari or Sega and Nintendo, and artists had Mac. All of a sudden, in 90s things changed. Commodore and Atari went to near oblivion, so only PCs left and consoles. But consoles were too much single-purpose, so only PCs left as general purpose consumer computers. And it lasted until 2010. But then it was iPad. Steve Jobs saw how much consumers needed appliance that would just work.

But it caused the view that consumer applications are going to take over the business. Oh, how wrong is that. Even Steven Sinofsky, Windows division president said something like that.

First, there is general problem in motivation - consumers usually want to surf, and business users usually want to take away distractions. Surf started with remote control, and it is quite obvious that consumers want to face different and sometimes random content. That is part of the fun.

Second, businesses are not ready to trade-off flexibility for simplicity, consumers are. You can't say that you can't service the consumers because your IT doesn't support that. You can't expect to pay higher taxes because your IT doesn't support that. So, you must be able to do everything and even some marginal cases, which makes systems much more complex.

Third, security as in business software you must be able to audit, track and protect nearly everything. Consumers usually don't need it.

So that's it. You can obviously have the same platform for both purposes (like HTML or Java or .Net), but you need different applications and interfaces to succeed.

Design principles

There is just one design principle - think what will fit your end user the best.

Everything else are just lies. Guidelines at the best case. I will take just one case that I am most familiar with, but you can see many others in many places. During the design of Firefox 3 Mozilla launched idea that Firefox interface should be native to the platform that Firefox user uses (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS, Linux). But they went so long in applying this principle that Firefox 3 for XP looked very similar to Windows XP. Yes, to the system which look was nearly 10 years old! Fortunately, there was good feedback (including myself), and mistake was avoided.

But it puts us to the core of the problem - you can't follow design principle without thinking. Generally speaking, design principle is good because following it you are doing something that is good for end user. But as you can see in this case, that is just one side of the coin. At the same time you might be doing something bad for the user. You might go against another principle. It is very unfortunate that they are not mutually exclusive, and most people forget that. And that is why this is more art than science.

Google Syndrome - or Lack of Money Incentive Kills Innovation

I think one day, it will be called like that.

Let's face it, there are not many thing that in this world that were less inventive than Google search, and I would say that in IT there are no such things for sure. What would you say if someone offered you that bulky functionless mobile phone with black and white screen that were produced 10 years ago? And that is more or less what Google did... Just a few changes of side features in 10 years, nothing more.

It comes to my mind that some options that were previously in Advanced search came into Sidebar, and are more easily accessible. Yes they have also added Google Instant Search recently. Well they have added and removed some search results related features, but none of them proved to be useful. Currently you have +1 and site preview, previously there were tools to do something like wiki with search results, but they proved no value and were removed, and I don't see that +1 will have better value either. C'mon guys, even Coke had more changes in those years!

Now Microsoft holds for not so innovative company... And probably there is and reason for that, it has held monopoly on operating systems for more than 2 decades. But let's track even that Microsoft. At the beginning of 80s, it released MS-DOS. In the beginning of 90s it released MS Windows 3.0, its first usable graphical user interfaces operating system. In the beginning of 00s it released Windows XP, which was its first really stable system, and interface drastically evolved in previous decade from application oriented to document oriented with many new features. And now, at the beginning of 10s, Microsoft is to release Windows 8, that will totally break with most previous concepts.

That might lead you to think - is there are reason for that? And the answer is simple - no money incentive. Microsoft may not innovate and it would get a whole lot money in that case too, as people would still buy Windows, but there is a catch in that - they won't buy as fast... everyone will wait for new computer (and probably even postpone such shoppings). To Google innovation doesn't lead to more revenues. It can expect the same people to come in same volume.

But yes, there is a problem with that, as Google search will become obsolete one day. Probably Steve Ballmer thought that he can offer souped up Google search as Bing and present it as revolutionary technology, but users are not that stupid and it didn't pass. Even if Bing seems to become a bit better than Google, it is just not enough for ordinary people to think and risk to switch. But if Microsoft is to offer a really revolutionary search, then things might just change, and Google might be just wiped out. And while I am sure that Microsoft has something in test phase when Ballmer talks about this, something is more sure, and that is  Watson. It won Jeopardy, and it is shooting for some verticals like sales and healthcare where Google would shoot if he had technology. Probably it can't scale to so many topics and so many searches that web has now, but it is a matter of time. And Google is spending time thinking about Google +?

What is the problem with Microsoft Office Ribbon?

I had some issue with Microsoft's Ribbon interface (first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007). Actually, I think many people had more or less trouble using it. So I was thinking how to sum it up, what Microsoft did wrong, and where it placed its risky, but reasonable bets that might seem wrong but a necessary to obtain long-term viability of the product:

• Incompatible with previous knowledge - actually this is not up to Ribbon, but to its implementation in Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft just changed some of its classifications of Tools, as they are not classified the same way as they were in menus and toolbars. I think it was too much to change both things at the same time
• Visually chaotic - again, this could be implemented different way with same Ribbon technology, but it seems that at this moment Microsoft prefers this implementation. So, while I think it is a good thing that some icons are bigger, the way of their layout on Ribbon makes you feel disoriented. Over the time, your spatial memory will probably get used to it.
  
•  Non efficient for using rare options - menus seem to be better here. If you go for some option you just need at that time, and it is not a rare user pattern Ribbon doesn't do well. It doesn't come back to most frequently needed tools, but it leaves you on some special toolbar you might not really need. So, you must click to go back where you want. It hurts productivity. Even if you get used to it. And it will help you not to want to get used to it.

 

 But the real gain is in Easy access to a lot of tools, specially the ones that you had to go through dialogs to use them, and you have them at a touch of the hand.

Users don't need to be system integrators

As Jobs said, today.

It is something simple, and something that everybody should know, but at the end it is rarely implemented well. I remember when I was school age, I enjoyed tweaking every single visible and hidden setting to get the best experience. But now, I realize it takes time and it is just that someone didn't bother to make it right for me.

But there's more than what Steve said. Users don't want to install apps at all. Well unless they are more media than app (consider games, you will want new game because the old one will become boring after time). They want everything readily setup on their phone. And that's where, as said in my previous post, Nokia still has some advantages.

How Nokia sells phones?

Well, even with all bad reviews, Nokia is still company that sells most phones.

Obviously, the answer is that there are many different consumers. And not only staff that reviews phones buy them - many folks do and they might have different needs.

Some people want cheap phones - it could be because they can't afford better. But also, it could be because you don't want to carry 500 € device with yourself - possibly because you may lose it, drop and damage it, or in the worst case it might even attract someone to steal it and possibly even attack you.

But it is not really just that. If people pay more money, they want the thing that just works. Well, at least most of them, some geeks might want the thing that can be tweaked most. And Nokia performs pretty well here:

• GPS - well OVI maps are free for Nokia phones, and they are probably best mobile maps
• Camera - Nokia was performing well here, and Nokia N8 is just to claim the best mobile camera
• Phone quality - as a traditional mobile phone company Nokia was always on top here

So, many people want just this, and if Nokia does it very well, and is price competitive (except in US where it has poor relations with carriers), then it is logical that many people buy even Nokia top models that seem to have no chance to compete with Android phones or iPhones according to reviews.

Yes, I know that Nokia is less fun to use (with poor touch interface), and lags in applications... but how many people really care? General user pattern should be that your phone is your backup portable device - you use it if you don't have anything else. Yes, there are mobile games... But why would you use it if you have Playstation or Xbox or PC at your hands?

RockMelt search

You've probably heard of RockMelt, a browser funded by Marc Andeerssen, a Netscape founder. Well, before start, view video with its features:



Well, considering social features, it seems like a bit simplified Flock to me. So might be useful for someone, but not for everyone.

But most people got excited over its search, and it is one of highlights. Well, it has some features from my concept from two years ago, but if you read the critics to the design of browser at that time, you will see that it doesn't solve most of them, actually you still have two separate boxes which will finally confuse users and push them to use just one of them, actually omitting the features of the other one.

Cloudy weather

Computer cloud applications are definetly in fashion, however many people opposed that web applications should take over client side application. I think that there is a reason for that that many people are not even aware.

First of all, many people invest in applications while using it. The most obvious investment is if they create something while using it. And in general, data structures are not fully standardized. Sometimes they are (like email or images or video) and those are actually most widespread cloud applications, as you can see. Then there are mostly standardized formats, like office documents. Though it is likely that you can open such documents in another application, it is also likely that now and then some details might be not the same as in original. Finally, there are data that are not fully standardized. Like Facebook data. Actually there is no way to export such data.

Other than that, even if application becomes some sort of part of your life, your habit is a little investment. If you cannot use it anymore, you will feel a bit of deprived.

So, there comes cloud as a problem (and generally software as a service). If you own application, you can open your data. And probably you can install it even on another computer under certain condtions, so it can last forever. However, you cannot do the same if your application is in cloud. You depend on continuity of cloud application.

And there, problems turn from theory to reality. I had one such (data) loss. There was a site called Furl. It was the only bookmarking site that did full text saving of web page. The advantage was obvious. If you bookmarked something, you could access it forever. And you could search for the actual page content, not just tags or titles. Yes, it was all nice until... Looksmart management decided to sell the service to another similar service which did not support full page indexing and so everything you believed you had was lost. I would did much better if I stored my data in some Firefox addons (like Scrapbok), I wouldn't be able to access everything from every computer, but I would at least not lose some data. And now I see that another bookmarking service, Xmarks is about to be shut down. It is a good thing that you will have all your data also stored locally, so there won't be any data loss, but you will lose some functionality you got used to.

And you can say, so what, I will keep with big guys (companies), and they won't shut down. Well there are two problems with that. First of all, most of innovation comes from small companies, so if this prevails you can expect innovation to decline. And it is not good. But other than that, you're not really safe with big companies either. Wasn't there web app called Google Lively? Or will there be an end to Google Wave? Yes, they were in beta, but most people that used them invested something in them, and they will lose it. List goes on with Microsoft's Live blogging platform, though it seems that users will be able to export their data to Wordpress, will there be some problems with that we shall see. And even Furl I used wasn't really from small guys.

And problems don't end there. There was a promise of cloud computing that you will have just cheap and energy efficient machines as operations would move to the server. But web apps can't do that. You will have to have at least one good old fat client to backup things locally. Just in case, you need at least one full computer that has ability to do that, but probably you will do the trade off just in case if something is mobile.

So to put things simple, cloud is expanding, but mostly in areas where it offers some sort of new functionality to users - like backup where you are now able to backup to another geographically distant area and increase safety, and also in cases where it is economically viable and you can extract data whenever you want, or you can store it to local disk. Other than that, people are still buying applications, and probably will do that for a long time.

Possibly, you will really have a thin clients and lease some virtual machine, but that virtual machine just needs to be transfarable. It might add up things to the cloud. But then it will change mostly your hardware, not the way you use your computer.