Stefan Klocek wrote a great post challenging the often-repeated idea that “the best UI is no UI.” From Should you ditch your interface?:

For any particular interface in the system, ask:

1. Does the user want or need control?
2. Does the user get value from doing the work themselves?
3. Does the user outperform technology?

If you can answer “no” to every one of these questions, then put in the effort to eliminate the interface. If you answer “yes” to any one of these you should focus on improving the interface so that it supports the user better. If it’s not unanimously “yes” or “no” carefully consider how design can meet the conflicting needs. Get to know your users well. Design a solution that’s as sophisticated and nuanced as their situation calls for.

Stefan goes into great detail on each of those questions, so the post is well worth your time.

Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix, wrote a good answer on Quora to the question Why doesn’t Netflix offer “Advanced Search” on their site? It’s a great Product Management lesson:

Nothing is purely additive unless everyone uses it. If there’s an affordance to use a feature, the affordance is a distraction to everyone, while the positive value accrues only to the users and potential users. The net value of a feature is the value to the users of the feature, divided by the distraction of the affordance to everyone. Advanced search ends up being used by such a tiny fraction of users (sub 1%), that it can’t possibly pay for its cost.

This is a good way to decide if a feature is worth adding or not. The question isn’t simply “Can we do this?”, or “Will users like it?” The question is, “Will enough people use this feature to make it worth the development and maintenance cost?” In the case of Netflix, the cost/benefit calculation just didn’t work out on Advanced Search, so they wisely decided not to launch the feature. But Neil goes further to say this:

But let me share that what does work well is making simple search deliver the advanced results.

That’s an important point. Advanced Search solves a particular user need, but it solves it in an expensive way. The need doesn’t just go away though, so they spend their development efforts on developing solutions that meet that need for all users, not just those who might have used Advanced Search.

The lesson here is obvious. Instead of implementing features just because other products have it, ask what user needs are met with that feature, and then look for cheaper and/or simpler alternatives to meet those needs. Luke Wroblewski’s New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms come to mind as a good example of this approach.

David Lee in Pride Before The Fall:

If success without failure breeds pride, then failure can foster humility, drive, and true self-confidence.

There is so much truth in this statement, and I almost tweeted it without comment when I read it, but I realised that it’s not that simple.

The concept of “Humble Design” is a recurring theme on this site. I first wrote about it here, and then again here, and also here. The thread through all those posts is my belief that to be a good designer (or just a good human being), we need to be able to admit our mistakes and failures, and possess the fortitude to fix whatever went wrong.

The problem comes when we’re unwilling to admit that we’re anything less than perfect, or worse, when we lack the curiosity to seek out and recognise those instances when we’re wrong. So, with that said, I’d like to put an asterisk next to that David Lee quote. Terms and conditions apply. Failure only fosters humility, drive, and true self-confidence when one is willing and able to recognise and fix them.

(link via @mobivangelist)

Stephen Hackett’s Parenting Technology is a haunting piece of writing for The Magazine. I don’t want to give the story away, so I’ll just quote a couple of key paragraphs:

How many little moments have I missed in my kids’ lives by checking Twitter on my iPhone while they play in the yard? How many hours have I spent writing or hacking away on my Web site while I should have been reading books to Josiah?

Technology saved my son’s life, yet has left him with terrible scars. It allows me to work from the hospital on days when I need to, but distracts me from being engaged at home. Technology is wonderful, but terrible, all at once.

How we deal with that balance — with what technology wants — remains one of the biggest struggles of our time.

Back in May I posted my wish list for a mobile WordPress publishing platform. Since then nothing official has come out of WordPress to help with that list. But I’ve been using Tom Witkin’s Poster app for a while now, and it’s close enough to what I need that it has significantly increased the amount of writing and publishing I do from my iPhone and iPad.

Poster’s interface is clean and focused on what’s most important: writing. It has full support for Markdown and TextExpander touch — including some custom keyboard commands to insert commonly used Markdown attributes:

The built-in preview screen makes it easy to proofread and make sure you didn’t miss anything:

The only thing that is still missing for me is a mobile Safari bookmarklet that lets me send a piece of selected web page text — along with the page title and URL — to Poster as a new post that’s ready for editing. It would also be great to see Poster integration with apps like Instapaper and Reeder.

If you run WordPress and have stayed away from mobile blogging because it seemed like too much of a hassle, give Poster a try.

Links for Poster: Official site | On iTunes

Niti Bhan does strategic design planning and concept development in emerging markets like India and some African countries. She begins her article Developing a user centered methodology for emerging markets and the bottom of the pyramid by discussing what happens when companies in the developed world try to introduce products in lower-income markets:

So the value propositions of the products, services, and programs introduced for lower income markets—particularly in the developing world—are still based on elements of the value system prevalent in global consumer culture. There is a gap here, and it’s most obvious in the marketing messages, advertising and communications which tend to emphasize product benefits or value that may not be relevant—much less contextually appropriate—to the BoP [Bottom of the Pyramid] customer’s life. When the value proposition of the seller has little or no resonance with the value system of the target market, it will most likely be ignored.

Even more interesting, she questions the value of using a standard user-centered design (UCD) methodology in these markets. Her point is that it’s not just products that need to be tailored specifically for these markets, the methodology we use to identify user needs should be different as well:

UCD has emerged from the same operating environment as that of the majority of the producers and most certainly has been part of, if not partially the creator of, the global mainstream consumer culture in which we’re all immersed. Therein lies the rub. The process is not divorced from its context and thus, we found, it needed to be far more flexible as it evolved and was adapted to the challenge of conducting exploratory user research in slums and villages and townships across the developing world. For the human centered designer, more likely to have been trained in the heart of the most sophisticated consumer markets in the world, there were additional challenges when considering the new and emerging consumer markets at the BoP.

I see this in our work at Flow as well. We constantly have to adjust how we do usability testing or contextual interviews to make sure participants are comfortable enough for us to uncover their real needs/issues. Niti’s work looks fascinating, so I definitely recommend reading her post and checking out some of her other writing as well.

John Gruber wrote the following in the context of recent leadership changes at Apple, but it’s applicable to life in general. From Seriously, Apple Is Doomed:

What you want is to be (1) right more often than wrong; (2) willing to recognize when you are wrong; and (3) able and willing to correct whatever is wrong. If you expect perfection, to be right all the time, you’re going to fail on all three of those — you will be wrong sometimes, that’s just human nature; you’ll be less willing or unwilling to recognize when you’re wrong because you’ve talked yourself into expecting perfection; and you won’t fix what’s wrong because you’ll have convinced yourself you weren’t wrong in the first place.

I’ve mentioned before that the ability to admit that you’re wrong is an essential characteristic of a good designer. I maintain that some of the biggest product failures can be traced back to a refusal to recognize that the idea/design isn’t perfect.

“Design like you’re right, listen like you’re wrong.“

Christopher Butler shares a long and interesting agency perspective on responsive design in What We’ve Learned About Responsive Design. He shares tips, case studies, and some unresolved issues — including how to deal with larger display sizes:

So, the parting question for me is this: What about upward responsiveness? If we’re heading toward bigger displays with much higher pixel density, how will our designs adapt to make use of them? We’re all excited and sold on the concept of responsive design, but so far that has been limited to responding to smaller conditions. If we’re up for that challenge, than I know we can do better on the “desktop,” too.

So far we’ve dealt with that issue either by setting a maximum width for websites, or to live with acres of white space. Christopher rightly points out that we need to experiment more with ways to take advantage of larger displays without overwhelming users with too much content.

(link via @smashingmag)