Using a single push button to start and stop a car’s engine has become fashionable in recent years, especially with premium brands. One of the reasons behind this design change away from the usual starter key twist may be found in marketing, what with such a button conjuring up images of the engine start buttons found in classic sports cars. Combined with state-of-the-art electronic keys that wirelessly unlock the car, however, placing such a button in a prominent location on the car’s dashboard may also positively impact usability.
A key aspect of toggle push buttons is that the user knows exactly what will happen based on the current state of the function that it controls. In the case of the car engine, the relationship between state and function is straight-forward:
engine is not running ⇒ button will start engine
engine is running ⇒ button will stop engine
In other words, as long as a push button is controlling a single state, its toggle function is unambiguous. But what if more than one function is hooked up to a single button?
The little toggle button that could not
MAMP1 is an awesome tool for website development under Mac OS X. It comes with everything you need to run a full-featured self-contained web server environment locally on your Mac. All it takes to install the software is copying the MAMP folder to your computer’s Applications folder.
And all it takes to start both the included Apache and MySQL servers, is clicking a single button in MAMP’s control dashboard. Implemented as a toggle button, this single control is used not only to start, but also to stop both servers. And there’s the rub.
When I upgraded the MAMP installation on my iMac to a new version, I must have made a mistake when I copied over the old database configuration files: Clicking the Start Servers button successfully launched the Apache web server, whereas MySQL failed to start. Clicking the toggle button a few more times didn’t help, even though its label still said “Start Servers.” So how could I stop the Apache server now?
The MAMP application also features a Server menu with separate items for starting and stopping the servers, but the Stop item is grayed out unless both servers are running. The only work-around I could find — without resorting to methods outside the MAMP application — was to check the “Stop Servers when quitting MAMP” option in the preferences.
Give me more controls!
A single toggle button controlling multiple functions will only work properly if those functions always change their operation states coherently and concurrently.
A bit of lag between the state changes is perfectly OK, but as soon as there is even a remote chance that multiple functions may end up in multiple, different states, additional controls are an absolute necessity.
In the case of MAMP, it would be nice to see two separate buttons for starting and stopping the servers. The very least would be enabling the Stop [Server] menu item as soon as one of the two servers has properly launched.
For a while now, Adobe’s Flash Player has been taking an almost constant beating. The reasons: numerous security holes, unresolved accessibility problems, and general performance issues. Judging from related online discussions and blog posts, many users now respond to these issues by disabling Flash and similar plugins in their browsers.2
Let me see what you got — Flash or not
On these people’s machines, content that requires a browser plugin may not appear at all. Web designers must take that into account unless their clients don’t mind losing site visitors and, thus, (potential) customers. This is especially important if core functionality like site navigation has been implemented in Flash.
The obvious work-around is providing a pure-HTML alternative. The link to such alternative content needs to be placed in a prominent location so that it is easy to find.
An example for how not to handle this is the website of the Berkeley Center for New Media. If you visit the site with a Flash-blocker installed and activated, all you see on the site’s home page is the header banner and a Flash placeholder.
Once you load the Flash item, you will see that it contains the entire site navigation. Unless you have the Flash Player plugin installed, this website remains completely inaccessible to you. Even though a pure-HTML version of this navigation menu is available!
Links to the “Non-flash (html) version of this page” are listed in both the About and Miscellaneous menus — inside the Flash item.
Please accept my apologies for being really blunt here, but: placing the link to the non-Flash version inside the Flash version, is just too dumb for words. It’s like placing the spare key to a safe deposit box inside the box itself, making it perfectly useless if you lose the original.
Said “HTML version of this page” is delivered in the form of a rudimentary bullet list. The bar at the top lets you jump to a sub-section on the page, but the sub-sections themselves lack “Back to Top” links. And although all of the links look identical and most will take you to sub-pages on the site itself, a few links have other websites as their destination.
As for navigating the other pages of the site, the only option you have is to click the top banner image, which leads you back to the site’s homepage. When you follow that route, the home page always defaults to displaying the Flash version even if you had previously switched to the pure-HTML version.
Site navigation and Flash animations don’t mix
If you take a look at the HTML code behind the navigation page, you’ll find a comment stating that “[t]hese files are an example of Dual Design, created in 2005-2006 by Guy Boo and Ken Goldberg.”
According to the Dual Design webpage, the idea is to generate both HTML and Flash versions of the navigation menu from a single XML file containing the links and their labels. The goal of this setup is to “combine the design of Flash with the practicality of HTML.”
Thanks to the Dual Design software, a webserver will serve either the Flash or the pure-HTML content based on the web browser’s query, which includes information on whether that browser supports Flash content, or not.
Unfortunately, Flash-blockers like ClickToFlash intercept the Flash data stream. I.e., even though Flash content is blocked from being displayed, the browser will still inform the server that it does support Flash. Consequently, even when you have decided to block Flash content and would prefer the pure-HTML page, the server will still provide the Flash version.
Admittedly, this is a niche problem that the developers probably had not taken into consideration, what with Dual Design having been released four years ago.
Fact is, from a developer’s technical point of view, Dual Design is an example for neat web content implementation.
From a usability engineer’s point of view, though, it’s a failure: except for gratuitously animating the links into place, it does not add anything to the user experience. Having that Flash menu at their disposal, however, has obviously convinced the developers that it wasn’t necessary to implement a proper navigation scheme for the site.
A navigation scheme which is visible and accessible on all pages; which makes it easy to grasp the site’s general structure at a glance; and which provides visual clues about the current page’s location within that structure. Oh, and, of course: which doesn’t require any browser plugins, either.
One week ago today, Apple held a press event called “Back to the Mac.” One of the highlights of this presentation was a first sneak peek at the next release of the Mac OS X operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion.”
Among Lion’s new features is FaceTime for Mac, an application that lets you make video calls to other Macs as well as iOS devices that are equipped with a “FaceTime camera,” like the iPhone 4 or the iPod touch.
What you will read below, though, are a few observations about very odd design decisions in FaceTime. This is not about FaceTime’s iOS-inspired appearance, which is acceptable since a number of Apple applications, like Logic, Final Cut, or iTunes, sport a non-standard look-and-feel.
This is about how FaceTime behaves.
The unpredictability of a FaceTime call
FaceTime compiles its own list of Contacts from, and keeps them synchronized with your Address Book database. Contacts in FaceTime only list phone numbers and email addresses, because that is how other FaceTime users are identified.
To make a call in FaceTime, you click a name in the Contacts list. This single click can trigger one of three actions: If the selected contact contains…
… no phone numbers or email addresses, FaceTime will ask you to add the required information in Address Book. Unfortunately, there is no button to go directly to the contact’s Address Book card from FaceTime. (Are they really using “FaceTime” as a verb here?)
… a single phone number or email address, FaceTime will initiate a call.
… multiple phone numbers and/or email addresses, a dialog panel comes up so you can pick which number or address to call.
Technically, the FaceTime application cannot predict whether an email address or phone number can actually accept a FaceTime call until you try placing an actual call to that contact. If the call fails, FaceTime notifies you that the contact “is not available for FaceTime.”
Unfortunately, the same message is used when you call someone who can take FaceTime calls, but just happens to be unavailable at that moment. Hence, it takes a successful call to verify that a contact is, indeed, reachable on FaceTime.
The only way to track successful calls is in the application’s Favorites list: A camera icon that is displayed next to each contact initially displays a question mark. That question mark disappears after you successfully called that person.
The Contacts list does not display any such visual cue, though.
Adding Favorites the hard way
You can “favorite” contacts via the Plus button in the Favorites panel or through the Add to Favorites button in a contact in the Recents list.
Clicking the Plus button in the Favorites panel brings up the Contacts list, and you “favorite” a phone number or email address by clicking it. After each selection, the list disappears and you’re taken back to the Favorites panel.
Contacts that are listed in Recents can be handled more conveniently, as they provide an Add to Favorites button. Click the button to bring up a contact, click a number or address in their details panel, and the new favorite will be indicated by a blue star next to it.
Interestingly, the Add to Favorites button is not included in the Contacts list, and neither are the blue stars.
Overall, adding or removing entries from the Favorites list seems unnecessarily tedious. This process would be so much easier if you could click a star next to a number or address right inside the Contacts list to toggle it on or off. And this could even be implemented in addition to the two processes outlined above.
Search the Contacts list? Well, kinda.
If you want to jump to a specific name in the Contacts list, you can do so by typing the name’s first few letters. What you type will be matched against the full names, starting from the beginning.
If the full name you are looking for includes a first name or an academic title, you need to include that in your “search.” Hence, you cannot search for someone whose last name is “Jones” simply by typing “Jo.”
Consequently, it is often quicker to manually browse the Contacts for a name. If you have several hundreds or even thousands of addresses, though, this shortcoming in FaceTime may cause you quite a bit of grief and anger.
It boggles the mind why, if so many design ideas were adopted from the iPhone, the FaceTime developers did not to also bring over the simple and effective search field that is found in the iPhone’s Phone or Contacts applications.
Keyboard shortcuts? Yeah, a few.
Besides scrolling with the mouse, the Contacts list can be navigated with the Arrow keys. The Arrow Up and Arrow Down keys step through the list, one contact at a time, or take you to the first and last list entries when used in combination with the Alt key. There does not seem to be a way to scroll page by page, though.
Pressing the Return key when a name is selected triggers one of the three actions explained earlier for mouse clicks. As soon as you are taken to a contact’s details, however, you’re stuck. While you can use the Arrow keys to select an email address or phone number in the details panel, hitting Return at this point doesn’t do anything.
To get back to the Contacts list, you must click the Contacts button — neither the Escape key, nor any combination of Arrow and modifier keys show any effect in this situation, either.
The disregard for keyboard shortcuts is not limited to the Contacts list, but is evident throughout the entire application. It’s no surprise, then, that activating Full Keyboard Access for use as an assistive technology is pointless, as well.
In its current version, a mouse or trackpad is an absolute requirement for using the FaceTime software. As a sad consequence, for people with physical disabilities, for whom FaceTime would be a wonderful communication tool, the application may be literally inaccessible.
To add insult to injury, a few useful keyboard shortcuts that do exist remain undocumented: pressing Command-1, Command-2, or Command-3 will take you to the Favorites, Recents, or Contacts lists, respectively. These shortcuts could have been “advertised” in a View menu, inside tooltips for the buttons, or via the online help. Instead, you can only find them via trial-and-error or by sheer coincidence.
Forcing iOS behavior down Mac users’ throats
Mac OS X provides a wonderfully simple and effective UI element for maintaining lists. It has intuitive Plus, Minus, and Pen buttons for adding, deleting, or editing list items; re-sorting items is as easy as dragging them around with the mouse; and the delete and re-sort operations even work with multiple items at a time.
And yet, the FaceTime developers decided to adopt the iOS way of managing the list of Favorites. Before you can delete or re-sort Favorites, you need to activate an Edit mode, in which the list looks and feels exactly like a list on an iOS device.
The only apparent difference between the implementation in FaceTime for Mac and its counterpart on an iPhone is that, in the former, you can “arm” multiple items for deletion. Clicking the Delete buttons will still only delete the contact that it is associated with.
As expected by now, pressing the Backspace or Delete buttons does not do anything in this panel, and pressing Escape fails to leave the Edit mode. Press Return, however and you place a call to the selected contact — what doesn’t work in the Contacts list where it should, will work just fine while you’re in Edit mode in the Favorites list…
Similar usage idiosyncrasies are found in other places, e.g., in the form for creating a new Apple ID (whose credentials you use to sign into FaceTime) from inside the FaceTime application.
This form does support jumping from field to field by hitting the Tab key, but the currently selected field is not highlighted properly. While a blinking cursor in a text field provides a decent clue, the popup menus leave you guessing. Note how the popup menus open without the respective field being highlighted at all:
The [Secret] Question field is skipped when tabbing, so, again, you have to resort to the mouse or trackpad to access a specific UI element. This also applies to the actual selection, as there is no keyboard support inside the Question panel or for leaving it.
Had the developers opted for a popup menu for the Question, interacting with one UI element — the popup menu — would have sufficed; now it requires interactions with three — the Question button, the list of questions, and the Cancel or Done button.
By the way, did you notice that you can resize the FaceTime window? Although the resize widget’s familiar diagonal stripes never appear, you can drag the bottom-right corner of the FaceTime window.
Temporarily pulling the plug on FaceTime
According to the FaceTime webpage, “[w]henever someone tries to reach you, the call rings through on every Mac you own even if FaceTime isn’t running.” While this is handy, you may sometimes want to prevent others from reaching you so you can focus on your work, etc.
To “silence” FaceTime, you can use the Sign Out command found in the FaceTime menu, and this command even has a handy keyboard shortcut. When you do sign out, though, your account settings as well as the entries in your Favorites and Recents lists are lost — a consequence that the Sign Out alert fails to mention.
A better option is to toggle the FaceTime On/Off switch which is located in the preferences panel, and only in the preferences panel.
This dichotomy between “harmless on/off switch hidden inside the preferences” and “command that throws away your data and is easily accessible via menu item or keyboard shortcut” does not make sense.
It rather feels like a design error in that the FaceTime On/Off functionality is the one that should have its own item in the FaceTime menu, and the sign out command should be hidden in the prefs.
Facing the future of OS X software
When I see the “beta” label attached to a piece of software, I expect that application to be essentially complete in terms of features, looks, and interactions. Betas are for crushing remaining bugs and for applying that final splash of polish to minor details in the UI.
When Apple offers a public beta, that usually is what you get, so what about all these weird details in FaceTime? Those gaping holes in the list of keyboard shortcuts are easily fixed and may have resulted from rushing this public beta out the door.
FaceTime’s adaptation of many UI elements and interactions from iOS, however, cannot be dismissed as mishaps. This is especially true for the Favorites list, which would easily win Most Irrational Design Decision of the Year, if such an award existed.
Who knows, maybe Apple decided to implant these designs into Macintosh software to support users of iOS devices who want to move from a Windows box to a Mac, and who may appreciate that the newly encountered Mac feels reassuringly similar to their familiar iPhone or iPod touch.
Would that be an acceptable rationale for almost totally stripping a high-profile Mac OS X application of it’s “Mac-ness,” though? No, definitely not.
Mind you, I really like the functionality of FaceTime, but — truth be told — for the first time since Mac OS X was introduced some ten years ago, I am getting worried about the future of my favorite OS’ look and feel.
Here’s hoping that the big cat with the furry hairdo will show that these worries are unjustified.
Update 2011-06-11: FaceTime was officially released in February 2011, and some user interface details differ from the public beta version. You can find out more about this in “A Minor Face-Lift for FaceTime“.
