Fitts’s Law and Usability of Gmail

Fitt’s law (Simplified):

"Put commonly accessed UI elements on the edges of the screen. Because the cursor automatically stops at the edges, they will be easier to click on. [And then] Make clickable areas as large as you can. Larger targets are easier to click on."
The law is rather simple (or, one might argue, too simple to follow all the time). This is basic common sense. Human Interfaces of computer system typically are a subject matter of Fitts’s law.

A FEW YEARS AGO I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to attend a workshop with Mr. Aaron Marcus. The veteran man is an industry expert on usability and the designer of the original Nokia cell phone’s user navigation system. Cell phones were a niche product in early 2000's and not much data was available to ascertain how users would react to such an operating system of such a hand-held device.

Mr. Marcus had a variety of ideas and principles to talk about at the workshop on the subject of Software systems and their usability aspects. He began his presentation with some of the photographs that he had captured in the fruits and vegetable markets of Africa. He argued that the rural ladies selling these goods were very less likely to have got primary education. However, looking at the grouping and arrangements of goods that they were selling – lemons, figs, chewing sticks and others – one could observe that all of it adhered to some of the basic though indigenous design patterns. The largest objects were kept at arm’s length; groups of smaller objects were kept at the centre; there was a hierarchy around freshness of the goods; and finally, the whole arrangement was then utilized in bargaining and negotiations. There may not be primary education, but there was some common sense.

Mr. Marcus argued that the same basic senses also drive ergonomic of products and systems.

More recently, a few days ago when Scott Adam smacked Google design team for their unintuitive and flawed design of their web-based emailing system Gmail, there was a lot of hue and cry from die-hard Google fans. Dilbert blog was swarmed with protesting comments, unthoughtful that they were in most cases.

Last week, Jeff Atwood picked up the similar thread and did an interesting study with illustrations by citing two examples from Gmail, and one from Facebook. The point is well made. The eject button is surprisingly lost in the woods of the so called Google Operating System. As one of the friends put it, to log onto Gmail after pubs on weekends is asking for trouble – the arrangements and margins between buttons leave no margin for error and your mailbox could be messed up pretty badly when you notice next morning.

A recent illustration by National Geographic Magazine argues that the success of Google Orkut social networking website in India and Brazil was primarily based on is simple design. While the larger user-base in these geographies use low bandwidth connectivity, it is also to be considered that these are non-native English speaking users where simpler layout of the website design shall work better. A lesson the rest of product team at Google may be overlooking.

Mr. Marcus had concluded that in the years to come, the primary selling point of products would be ‘emotional’ triggers and attachment towards that object. “I love this watch”, shall supersede form and function, utility and usability, value and cost of the watch. And that indeed is coming out to be true, for here we are, with Social Media, declaring our likes and dislikes and associating our choice of products around it.

• See also:
• Go here for the clomplete post: The Opposite of Fitt's law
• Go here for NGM survey of Social Media tools
• Go here some of the best Usability tools that employ eye-tracking for current rich media contents of Web 2.0
• Go here for a very interesting series by Smashing mag on Story-telling as User experience. Note that while there is no direct relation to Usability per say, it has the final inkling from the user's side.

Read More

"The Right Thing To Do" - Harvard Lectures on Moral Philosophy

PROF. MICHAEL SANDEL OPENED HIS FAMOUS CLASS ON "JUSTICE" and Moral and Political Philosophy at Harvard University, USA, with the following (cautionary) address:

If you look at the syllabus, you would notice that we read a number of great and famous books. Books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and others. [...] We will read these books, and we will debate these [philosophical] issues, and we will see how each informs and illuminates the other [school of thought]. This may sound appealing and interesting enough, but here I have to issue a warning:

To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of Political Philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know. There is an irony: the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. [...] Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.

But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also revetting, is that Moral and Political Philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story would lead, but you do know that the story is about You. Those were the personal risks.

Now, about the political risks: one way of introducing a course like this is to promise you that by reading these books, and debating these issues, you would become a better, more responsible, citizen. You will examine the presuppositions of public policies, you will hone your political judgement, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs. But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political Philosophy, for the most part, hasn't worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that Political Philosophy may make you a worst citizen rather than a better one. Or at least, a worst citizen *before* it makes you a better one. And that is because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. And you see this going back to Socrates [and his dialogue with his friend Callicles who tried to talk him out of philosophising]. [...] Philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and settled beliefs. Those are the risks - personal and political.

And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is skepticism  It's an ideal. [It goes something like this] we didn't resolve, once and for all, either the cases or the principles we were arguing about when we began [with the case studies]. And if Aristotle, Locke, Kant and Mill hasn't solved these questions after all these years, who are we to think that we can resolve them? So, maybe, its is just a matter of each person having his or her own set of principles, and there is nothing more to be said about it. No way of reasoning. That's the evasion of skepticism. To which I would offer the following reply:

It is true, these questions have been debated for a very long time. But the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they are impossible in one sense, they are unavoidable in another. And the reason they are unavoidable, the reason they are inescapable, is that we *live* some answers to this questions everyday. [...]

The aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, and to see where it might lead...

[Transcript-ed from the actual lecture. Emphasis added. Official transcript could not be resourced.]

Prof. Michael Sandel's class has commanded one of the highest enrollments at Harvard Business School of a thousand plus in a given semester at times. It is one of the most famous of all management classes at Harvard where Sandle is teaching since '80s after returning from Oxford, England. Recently, one such series of lectures was video-recorded and has been placed into (international) public domain [see details below] where one can virtually participate in the proceedings of Prof. Sandel's lectures. It is as much relevant as it is rewarding.

The foundation here is primarily of Western Philosophy. However, when one gets familier with the contents, it may emerge that many of the fundamental ideas debated by Utilitarianism with/against Categorical moral principles in these discussions have also been acknowledged, contemplated, and commented upon by eastern scholars at India's ancient established "Business-Political" schools such as Taxila. Folklore has it that (management) gurus like 'Chanakya' (sometimes, also 'Kautilya') of these times were entrusted with the mentorship of the princes. Where, arguably, Utilitarianism is more akin to Kutil-niti (Diplomacy) and Arthashastra (Economics). Categorical moral philosophy can be referenced with Chanakya's tactics on Raj-niti (Governance).

[Edit: P.S. A follow-up post may appear on this blog after studying the available lectures.]

• See also:
• Related post: Kantian ethics and the German case of torture
• Go here for more on Michael Sandel and his online classes at Harvard website.
• Go here for more on Utilitarianism, go here for Deontology, and here for Socratic dialogues.
• Go here for more on 'Chanakya'.

Read More

The Purpose of Business

"EVERYONE LIVES BY SELLING SOMETHING." Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish traveller and writer, once concluded. In the knowledge industry of the modern era, the selling could be of — an idea, a change, an example (PoC), an influence, a model. The logical outcome of which is value creation. Which further translates into profit or benefits of various kinds at different levels of its hierarchy.

Peter Drucker had a different view. Creating profit didn't seem to him to be the main goal of an enterprise. While advocating for Not-for-profit organizations, Drucker observed that there are obvious limitations to making continuous profit-making business models. According to him, to be responsible and relevant in the society, a business model could make profit that is equal to its cost of capital. However, if the goal of the business model is to create a customer, that could possibly provide a sustainable model for existence of a business.

Taking this argument a notch further, FT columnist Michael Skapinker suggests that, like leaders and people, business indeed is in the business of gaining respect:

Some are lucky enough to fulfil the highest of Maslow’s [top need from his psychology theory of the hierarchy of needs], self-actualization, at work. All sorts of people find true fulfilment at work – software developers, recording artists, even auditors. But it is a lot to ask from a job. Others, perhaps most people, hope for work that is reasonably interesting, and indulge their true passions – singing, hiking, wine-tasting – on the weekends.

The best businesses are good at providing a sense of belonging. But belonging can be transient. Businesses succumb to competition and disappear. Or technological innovation makes them redundant. No doubt the photographic darkroom was a companionable place to work; so was a travel agency. There is less need for them now.

I suspect it is Maslow’s second highest need – respect – that people most crave from work: respect not just from their colleagues but from the world [...] and it gets us closer to what business is for: making profits and serving customers by doing something we can be proud of.

[Emphasis added.]

• See also:
• Go here for more on Maslow’s psychology theory of the hierarchy of needs.
• Go here for the full article at FT.

Read More