Category: Computer Software

I had almost forgotten that the administrators of the WordPress.org website had to reset all passwords a few weeks ago. Until yesterday, that is, when I needed to sign into the site’s support forums, and couldn’t.

My password’s been reset! — Now what?

You can’t miss the notice about the password reset: it’s placed right above the forums’ login form.

Clicking on the link in the notice takes you to the announcement on the WordPress News blog.

It explains the reason for the password reset and, in the second paragraph, tells users that …

[t]o use the forums, trac, or commit to a plugin or theme, you’ll need to reset your password to a new one.

The link in that sentence leads directly back to the login form.

What’s problematic is that neither the login page nor the announcement make it sufficiently clear just how you request a new password. In part, this is the result of using inconsistent terms to refer to the corresponding process.

Consistency makes instructions easier to understand

Between the login screen and the news announcement, the authors used three different terms to describe the same thing:

• “request a new [password]”
• “recover your password”
• “reset your password”

The third one is especially confusing: Didn’t the site’s administrators already do exactly that, namely “reset” all passwords?

In most cases, users will want to “recover” their password, because they have forgotten or misplaced it. In this particular situation, however, that term doesn’t quite have the right feel, and “request a new password” seems like a more appropriate choice.

Aside from using this phrase consistently in all references to the global password reset, it would take just a few extra words in the instructions on the login page to make it perfectly clear what the user needs to do next:

On June 21, 2011, we reset all passwords, so you’ll need to request a new one by using the Password Recovery form below if you haven’t already.

When you first need to recover what you need to know to recover what you need

It’s not just the instructional text that leaves some room for improvement: the same applies to the password recovery process itself.

When I entered the username that I had stored in my 1Password vault, and clicked “Recover Password”, the site complained that “[t]he specified user does not exist”.

After trying a few other user names, as well as my email address, which all resulted in the same error, I decided to simply register a new account.

Alas, now the site complained that my “[e]mail [address] already exists” in their database.

And so I’m caught in a catch-22: I can’t recover my password, because I can’t remember my user name, and I can’t create a new account unless I would want to maintain a new, additional email address.¹

For most of us, our email address is the one “digital identifier” that we use most often and, thus, is the easiest for us to remember. It’s a nasty flaw that the WordPress.org password recovery process does not allow you to use your email address to identify yourself.

Just give me something to identify you

Here’s an example for a more user-friendly way to help users deal with “Login Credentials Amnesia”.

The Captcha nuisance aside, Twitter’s password recovery form accepts both username and email address, and it even uses a single text field for either one.

The instructions on the page are more reassuring than WordPress.org’s, as well: Instead of the latter’s curt “To recover your password, enter your information below.”, the Twitter form not only tells you what to do now — “Please type …” –, but also explains what will happen once you’ve completed that step, namely that “Twitter will send you password reset instructions …”.

Admittedly, the target audience for the WordPress.org site is more tech-savvy than Twitter’s and, thus, more experienced with properly guessing what tech writers really mean with their instructions.

Nevertheless, whenever a user is faced with a serious problem, it’s a welcome courtesy when the options that are available to solve that problem are as helpful, accommodating, and forgiving as possible.

Shortly after Apple released FaceTime for Mac as a public beta in October of last year, I took a closer look at its user interface. Judging from the web searches that this article pulled in — “edit facetime contacts”, “facetime remove favorite”, “resize facetime mac”², etc. –, quite a few users must have been stumped by how FaceTime works.

Between the public beta and the final version that was released in February 2011, the Apple designers have modified a few details in FaceTime’s user interface, thus warranting a second look at this application.

Consistent single-clicks in the Contacts list

In the public beta, it was difficult to predict what would happen when you clicked on an entry in the Contacts list. Depending on the data stored for that person, FaceTime would initiate a call, take you to the person’s details, or request that you add more information via Address Book. Now, clicking will always open the person’s details view.

As a means for navigating the Contacts and Favorites lists, the beta supported the up, down, and right arrow keys, but there was no key command for leaving a contact’s details view. Now you can also use left arrow to move from a contact “up” into the Contacts list and also further into the new Groups list.

Additionally, you can leave any Edit mode via the Escape key now.

Editing contacts in FaceTime

FaceTime’s major new feature is being able to add, remove, and edit contacts right inside the application. To add a contact, you click the new “+” button above the Contacts list, and fill out the form that pops up.

Initially, you will only see one field each for phone numbers and email addresses, but as soon as you start entering data, another field appears instantly, as do Delete buttons next to existing fields in the same category.

A Delete Contact button has been added to the contact details as well.

This button comes with a major caveat, though: FaceTime still synchronizes its Contacts list with Address Book’s database. Any and all edits that you perform in FaceTime will also be applied to what is stored in Address Book. I wonder how many users will find out about this the hard way when all they want to do is prune the Contacts list in FaceTime.

I could only find a single reference to this link between the contacts lists in FaceTime and Address Book: It’s this one sentence in FaceTime’s help file:

I think the confirmation dialog box for deleting a contact should contain a warning which points out to you that, when you confirm the deletion, the contact will also be removed from Address Book. The lack of such a warning is a major, and dangerous, oversight, in my opinion.

Viewing contact groups in FaceTime

FaceTime now displays the contacts groups you defined in Address Book. Clicking the new Groups button above the Contacts list takes you to this view.

You cannot add or remove contacts from groups in FaceTime, nor can you add, remove, or edit groups themselves. Using the “+” and Delete Contact buttons while you’re “inside” a group will add or delete a contact completely. This may well be a cause for further confusion for some users.

Adding favorites more easily

In the beta, you could only add a contact to your list of favorites by clicking the Add to Favorites button inside the contact’s details. In addition to this button, the Favorites list now also features a “+” button as a convenient shortcut.

Note, though, that this button exacerbates the (or at least my) confusion about the Groups’ “+” button, since it does not create a new contact, but adds an existing one to the list of Favorites.

Searching your contacts

The release version provides a search field, which you can summon by selecting the Find command from the Edit menu.

The search field is only available when viewing the full Contacts list, but not in Favorites, Recents, or Groups. The menu command, which shows or hides the search field, is disabled and enabled accordingly.

Which begs the question why the search field isn’t simply shown all the time, as that would also make it easier to discover this feature.

Safer silencing

You can mute FaceTime while it is running, so that it won’t ring when someone tries to call you.

In the beta, you would mute the application via an On/Off switch located in the preferences panel. There also was a menu item labeled “Sign Out”, but this would not only mute the application — it would also discard your entire account settings.

In the release version, the menu item has been renamed “Turn FaceTime Off”/”Turn FaceTime On”, and its behavior now is identical to the switch in the preferences, so your settings are always retained.

Unfortunately, it’s still the same at the core

While the Apple engineers and designers have modified these details in FaceTime’s UI for the better, the application still presents numerous interaction “surprises” and feels decidedly un-Mac-like.

The use of iOS widgets — e.g., for removing list entries or for navigating hierarchical lists — in FaceTime seems forced. They make for less-than-optimal interactions when compared to their native OS X counterparts. The most confusing aspect of FaceTime for the Mac is it’s not-so-obvious integration with Address Book, though.

To initiate a FaceTime call on an iPhone, you start out by opening a person’s entry in the Contacts app. Then you press the FaceTime button, which is located in the same place as the person’s postal address, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.

In other words, in iOS, FaceTime does not stand alone, but is just one of many means to reach a person via the central contacts directory.

I wish the designers had used the same approach for FaceTime for Mac: place the FaceTime button on the contact’s “cards” in Address Book; limit the FaceTime application to the video window; and link the latter to the former via a “Open Caller’s Card in Address Book” menu command or some such.

That would likely have eliminated the evident confusion that some people have over how the Contacts list in FaceTime relates to Address Book’s.

FaceTime’s fundamental flaw

In its current implementation, Apple’s video chat service has a fundamental flaw that goes deeper than user interface details: In FaceTime, you don’t call a person; you call a person’s device.

FaceTime does not display a contact’s availability on the service, nor does it indicate if a specific device — a computer or phone represented by an email address or phone number, respectively — is even capable of accepting FaceTime calls.

Just imagine what the FaceTime experience across platforms could be like if the system would track which of a person’s email addresses and phone numbers can technically accept a FaceTime call, and on which of these devices that person is currently logged in.

Instead of having to try out several communication channels, you’d just click a single button to initiate a call to a person, and FaceTime would take care of getting you in touch with the desired person.

A common way to refer to an intersection is to use the phrase “it’s at [street A] and [street B].” When I recently heard such a phrase in a podcast, I tried to find that location by entering the exact term on Google’s regular search page.

I was pleasantly surprised when the intersection’s geolocation showed up in the top-most spot on the results list. Which made me wonder how smart Google, Yahoo! and Bing are in understanding this particular kind of location search.

As my initial search term I used “van ness and california san francisco”³ in two ways: first by entering it into each website’s regular search field, and then by entering it into the destination field on the respective map search page.

Additionally, I performed a number of tests with further randomly picked locations to find out just how reliable and robust the search algorithms work.

Google

Although Google finds 2.44 million results for this search, the top-most one is, indeed, the intersection I am looking for. A small map gives a preview of the area, and the site also completes the street names by adding “Ave” and “St.” Clicking on the map preview opens the location in Google Maps.

The direct search on Google Maps finds the same location and points it out on the map via a marker.⁴ A snapshot from Google Street View provides a first impression of what that intersection looks like in real life.

Google’s regular search failed to recognize a search for an intersection in only a few cases. Whenever this happened in my testing, the search contained a street name that has a more general meaning, like “University [Avenue]” or “Harmony [Road].” Adding the missing “street type identifier” — “ave,” “road,” “st,” etc. — reliably fixed the problem every time.

As for the algorithm’s robustness, even something as tricky as “california and berkeley berkeley california” (that’s “California Street at Berkeley Way, in Berkeley, CA”) could not trip the Google search engine. It immediately found the correct location.

Yahoo!

Yahoo!’s regular search finds almost as many matches as Google’s, but fails to recognize “van ness and california san francisco” as a reference to an intersection.

Judging from the inclusion of results that match the search string when replacing “california” with its abbreviation “ca,” the Yahoo! search engine interprets that word as the state, and not as the street that I am looking for.

Yahoo! does find a number of locations along Van Ness Avenue and previews these on a small map, but these matches are obviously based on the location’s names instead of their geographical position.

When you click on the small map, you’re taken to a bigger map view on Yahoo! Local, which further confirms this assumption: The original search term has now been separated into a search for businesses whose names contain “van ness” and which are located in “San Francisco, CA” . This is clearly not what I wanted.

Even when I define my search more precisely by adding “avenue” and “street” to the term, Yahoo! presents similar, and similarly unrequested, results.

Regardless of the specific location, Yahoo!’s generally performs a literal search, so that it will match results based on entities’ names, descriptions, or addresses. The results will not, however, find a street or intersection as such.

Disappointingly, even Yahoo! Maps failed to make sense of my original search term: An error messages stated that “We could not find the exact location you asked for so here’s the center of San Francisco, CA instead.”

This time, adding “avenue” and “street” to the search did result in a perfectly good match.

In contrast to Google’s map page layout, Yahoo! does not display further information about the location it found. Instead, about a quarter of the actual map view area is taken up by ads (which, thankfully, can be hidden together with the map search form).

Locations with less ambiguous street names, like “austin and franklin san francisco” work just fine in Yahoo!, but the search algorithm is not as robust as Google’s. Case in point: “california and franklin san francisco” immediately finds this intersection, whereas “franklin and california san francisco” fails.

Bing

In essence, Bing behaves like Yahoo!.

Its regular search fails to properly interpret the search term as a street intersection. The matches it does list are based on “van ness” being contained in these matches’ names or addresses. Only such local results are displayed when you click on the map preview to transition to the Bing Maps site.

Bing Maps properly deals with intersection searches. Like Google, it expands the street names to include “Ave,” “St,” etc.

During my random testing, its robustness was better than Yahoo!’s, but not quite on par with Google Maps’ yet.

As an example, the search for “college and harmony fort collins” is too much of a challenge even for Google Maps, but extend it to “college ave and harmony rd fort collins,” and the site immediately finds this intersection.

For Bing Maps, that latter search string is still too challenging, even when you click on the “Locations named…” link under “SEE RELATED.”

What’s in a map view

As I had mentioned, this observation started out with me hearing about an intersection in a podcast, and asking myself “What if I search for that intersection by describing it just the way that humans normally do?”

When technology, such as a search engine, is capable of understanding our goals and wishes even when we communicate them in a way that feels natural to us — i.e., in the same way that we communicate among us humans –, then the experience does have a touch of magic to it.

It’s when machines force us to think in machine terms, that this magic immediately goes “poof.”