I’m guessing the fear is that if Bridge isn’t on by default and the preference for controlling is too obvious, then no one will use it. Maybe it would be wise to consider the negative vibes this generates towards the app…

I love standing a problem / argument on its head. Leave it to a blind guy to take a different tack that helps us see a universal humanist approach to accessibility. I’m still not sure how I feel about mandates (I worry about getting bogged down in the web’s infancy) or specific tech like screen readers, but I do think we’re getting closer to having the technology pieces that will help us build a richer and more accessible web (I’m thinking of the ocr stuff that Evernote does, the amazing video /image recognition research, the speech to text capabilites that Premiere has and the emergence of XMP).

In the past I’ve described the issue as the “users as aliens” effect. I realize this is a bit of an esoteric metaphor, but its intended to relate that our deepest insights into software design / engineering come from within. My best insights come because I, like other users, am a human being. I am more alike other people than I am different and I therefore have insights into the expectations, frustrations and joys we all experience when using technology (any tool really).

Now the absolute best form of usability testing is dog-fooding. Become an actual user and you’ll quickly experience the pain points and frustrations of repeated normal use and gain deep insights into what users want. As a bonus you’ll be much more apt to understand and recognize issues reported by users. This is far more valuable than setting up arbitrary tests in a lab, watching users be “facilitated” through an activity and asking them a few questions. In fact, in this all too common scenario, as the pcworld article notes, you end up with a lot of false positives–wasted time and wasted money.

I’m a huge advocate of simplicity, but that isn’t the same as “idiot proofing”. I’m reminded of observations I’ve made of some of my less tech savvy friends and family of late. In such situations I can watch them in their natural state, struggling to solve a problem with software. More often than not they are foiled by the rather rudimentary user interfaces and arbitrary rules the software imposes on them. They are making sophisticated assumptions about how things should work based on their experience in the physical world and the problem is the software can’t handle it and limits their behavior for seemingly no reason.

There’s a huge distinction here–people are actually too smart for the software they’re using. That’s a radical departure from the view that people are idiots who must be protected from themselves (reminds me of the age old social contract theorist–Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau–debate). Its a great reminder that we rush to believe people are “idiots” who need to be protected from themselves. Sure they are sometimes intimidated and overwhelmed at first, but aren’t we all when doing even mundane activities for the first time. Wouldn’t it be better if we used our knowledge of being human rather than our deep understanding of operating systems and user interface conventions to create solutions for people (this is a challenge to myself as much as anyone else). Anyways, there’s plenty to chew on. Go read the article and feel free to come back and leave a challenge or affirmation.

That’s pretty powerful stuff. Now if only I could get the same experience when using a development IDE–I’m talking to you Eclipse; you big, nasty brute with a face only a mother nerd could love.

I’m clicking both to see how smart the installers are…

*Update* For any MS chaps who stop by – after installing, I’m now being asked to download / install the latest version of Silverlight 2 every time I visit the page linked above.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo

More from oblong:

Link tweeted by Rands:

*Update* I went to Quantum Solace today and there’s some pretty sweet software depictions in there that seem to be a blend of multi-touch Surface like capabilities with the ability to “toss” data to different screens (similar to some of the spatial stuff you see in the oblong video above). It’s time for reality to start mimicking art.

If you’ve got the time to kill on a video, this preso from Adaptive Path touches on the topic a bit as well (starts around at the 15 minute mark)

Of course the bit about the the brain being holistic and self-organizing immediately brings to mind the way popularity is distributed within human social networks.

As it turns out, there’s a pretty substantial body of academic work that looks at visual design, communication and learning through a Gestalt lens. One interesting idea is that the parallel processing employed by the brain lets sense impressions be related between disparate senses (synesthesia). So for instance an activity such as typing may appear to be mostly tactile, but is actually mostly visual. Through visual learning we shape our expectations of keyboard interactions and then if possible / needed we map our visual interactions to other senses like the sound of a key being pressed or the feeling of the keyboard (actually all of these stimuli reinforce each other and are used in parallel).

To me this explains why the iPhone’s lack of tactile response is more than made up for by visual and audible cues (the audio is actually a bit over the top for me and I turned it off after the training wheel stage).

In fact visualization is so important that we may actually map our other sensory input to our visual mental model. When we listen to music or read a book we often envision ourselves inside the story or a visual narrative of our own devising. So in some respects most learning may in fact be visual. This has obvious implications for rich media. It’s the core driver behind video on the web and things like screencasting, slidecasting, and annotated screen capture.

And that brings me to what I like to call jingtations–annotated screen capture citations created by Jing. It’s my belief that taking a snapshot of an article fragment and then annotating it by highlighting passages or adding arrows and callout commentary is often a superior way to quote and communicate with people. A jingtation provides context, narrows focus, adds emphasis and provides stylistic relief. It takes someones original thought, adds emphasis, then wraps it up in a visual bow for easier digestion. Its something we all ought to explore, regardless of the tool used, as we seek more efficient ways to communicate clearly and concisely with each other.

Now I’m guessing our connections to tech are highly subjective and I might not be as nerdy as Sam and therefore less in tune with my virtual desktop, but I’d posit we’re a hell of a long ways from the uncanny valley. The iPhone is probably the most intuitive and enjoyable device I’ve ever used and its not too far up the food chain from an industrial robot. Regardless, it’s an interesting subject to reflect on as a both a tech contributor and consumer.

What’s your gut reaction to your computer, phone, television and the software applications that run on them?

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the evening was his discussion of Wabi-sabi influenced user-experience design. The philosophy is one of elegance through simplicity and utility, but aknowledges there is inherent beauty in such a design. One of his slides was diagram created by Peter Boersma which outlines the relationship between Wabi-sabi and user-experience design which provides a pretty good overview of topic.

Anyways, this was interesting enough that I thought I’d throw it out into the blogosphere for others to nibble on.