The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘User Experience (ux)’ Category

Some links and references to IBM CUA: Common User Access which defines a lot of the UIs and UX we still use.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/02/04

Back in the late 80s and early 90s of last century, engineers Richard E. Berry, Cliff J. Reeves set a standard that still influences the user interfaces and user experience of today: the IBM Common User Access.

I mentioned CUA a few times before, but since an old client of mine managed to throw away their paper originals in a “we don’t need that old stuff any more as we are now all digital” frenzy, I wanted to locate some PDFs. And I promised to write more about CUA.

If anyone has printed versions of the non-PDF documents below, please donate them to aek at bitsavers.org or scanning at archive.org as they are really hard to get.

A few search queries I used:

The PDFs I think are most interesting:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in BitSavers.org, Development, History, IBM SAA CUA, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Software Development, UI Design, Usability, User Experience (ux) | 3 Comments »

Luke Wroblewski: From the Front Lines of Multi-Device Web Design | WordPress.tv

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/13

Very interesting video with the presentation by Luke Wroblewski: From the Front Lines of Multi-Device Web Design | WordPress.tv.

Not only about the various aspects of sign size depending on viewing distance, but also about various input methods, ambient light, statistics on usage patterns for various device sizes, etc, etc.

Recommended watching.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »

Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/10/30

Interesting:

A Dark Pattern is a type of user interface that appears to have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.

We developers have a big responsibility. Martin Fowler and Erik Dörnenburg (both ThoughtWorks) did a great presentation about that at the GOTO Aarhus 2014 Conference.

A quote:

“The developer who wrote that code is every bit as responsible as the person who told them to do it. You have a choice. You have a responsibility to ensure that your users are well treated and to reject dark patterns,” says Fowler. “We have a whole profession of people writing software and doing enormous things to change the way we live in the world.”

Please watch the video: Our Responsibility to Defeat Mass Surveillance – Erik Dörnenburg and Martin Fowler – YouTube.

–jeroen

via

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Usability, User Experience (ux) | 3 Comments »

Paletton and Kuler: very useful for creating colour palettes (via G+ Nick Butcher / Marie Schweiz)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/29

Combile Paletton and Kuler and off you go!

Nick Butcher: Have found this site useful for creating colour palettes. Paletton – The Color Scheme Designer

Marie Schweiz: https://kuler.adobe.com and you can get the swatches :)

#Color

Thanks Nick Butcher and Marie Schweiz.

–jeroen

via: Have found this site useful for creating colour palettes..

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, UI Design, User Experience (ux) | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Windows 8.x: Three keyboard/mouse ways to zoom in or out on start screen (via: YouTube)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/22

I love it that in Windows you can do everything both by mouse and keyboard.
Take the start screen: there are 3 ways (mouse only, mouse + keyboard, keyboard only) to zoom in/out in the start screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Usability, User Experience (ux), Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »

Designer’s guide to DPI

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/15

Designer’s guide to DPI.

On retina, Hi-DPI, Android, iOS, scaling, DP, SP, etc.

–jeroen

Posted in Android, Development, iOS Development, Mobile Development, Software Development, User Experience (ux), Windows Phone Development | Leave a Comment »

Michael Kaplan’s Sorting it All Out blog is back! http:///www.siao2.com (via Tim’s comment)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/14

A while ago, Tim mentioned that [WayBack] Michael Kaplan’s blog “Sorting it All Out” on MSDN was gone.

I amended my original post because of it (see below), and I’m really happy that Tim kept track of his comment, and just posted a new comment:

Michael Kaplan’s Sorting it All Out blog is back! [WayBack] http:///www.siao2.com

Back to the original edit I made as the new blog doesn’t (yet?) has all the content of the old blog:

Edit: Michael’s MSDN blog is officially dead, but there are the nice web archive and web cache virtues:

Michael also appeared on this 30 minute podcast episode: [WayBackHanselminutes Technology Podcast – Fresh Air and Fresh Perspectives for Developers – Sorting out Internationalization with Michael Kaplan

Michael Kaplan is a Developer in the Windows International group and the author of the popular ‘Sorting It Out’ blog that is dedicated it all things ‘-ization.’ That means Globalization, Internationalization, and Localization. This show is is brought to you by the CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A.

Some key points:

  • Use these languages for UI testing
    • English as it is common and slightly wordy
    • German because it is
      • more wordy (30-50% more than English) to test for clipping text, and used enough to warrant the energy
    • Turkish because of the Turkish i
    • Arabic (is right-to-left, cursive and has ligatures) or Hebrew (which is just right-to-left and cursive)
    • Thai because it has plenty of word-breaking issues and tests Uniscribe well
  • Push UTF-8 all the way through your system and back and avoid question marks and other

After that: time to catch up on Michael’s new blog (:

–jeroen

via: Delphi: a few short notes on LoadString and loading shell resource strings for specific LCIDs

Posted in Development, internatiolanization (i18n) and localization (l10), Software Development, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »

The “Just In Time” Theory of User Behavior

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/10

Abstract of The “Just In Time” Theory of User Behavior:

…the design of your software has a profound impact on how users behave within your software…

  • Encouraging the “right” things by making those things intentionally easy to do.
  • Discouraging the “wrong” things by making those things intentionally difficult, complex, and awkward to do.

–jeroen

via: The “Just In Time” Theory of User Behavior.

Posted in Development, Software Development, Usability, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »

Beveiligde gedeelte internetsite Belastingdienst: Makkelijker kan @BDzakelijk hiet niet maken…

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/01/25

Even lachen om de eisen van een nieuw zakelijk belastingdienst wachtwoord:

Uw wachtwoord moet:

  • anders zijn dan uw vorige wachtwoorden
  • minstens 3 karakters bevatten die niet in het wachtwoord voorkwamen dat u van ons hebt ontvangen
  • minstens 6 karakters lang zijn
  • niet meer dan 3 dezelfde karakters bevatten
  • minstens 3 letters bevatten
  • minstens 1 cijfer bevatten

Ofwel:

  1. het mag niet te complex (want dan krijg je herhalingen)
  2. het mag niet te makkelijk

Je komt daarmee uit richting een relatief kort en moeilijk te onthouden wachtwoord. Wat dan vast ergens genoteerd wordt en dus automatisch minder veilig is.

Iets als “WatWasDitEenGoedeUserExperience” kan dus niet (meer dan 3 keer een “e”)…

En dan komt daarna natuurlijk de password reset optie. Waar je “dus” niet je eigen controlevraag mag invullen, maar moet kiezen uit voor gedefinieerde vragen.

Controlevraag en antwoord opgegeven

Kies nu een controlevraag en antwoord. Bewaar uw controlevraag en antwoord goed. Hiermee kunt u zelf uw gebruikersnaam en/of wachtwoord achterhalen als u die later vergeten bent.


<select name="vraag"><option value="1" selected="selected">Initiële wachtwoord op de uitnodigingsbrief van de Belastingdienst</option>
<option value="2">Klantnummer van uw onderneming bij uw energiebedrijf</option>
<option value="3">Verloopdatum rijbewijs (dd-mm-jjjj) hoofdverantwoordelijke aangiften</option>
<option value="4">Pasnummer privé-bankpas van de hoofdverantwoordelijke aangiften</option></select>

De default is niet handig: stel je voor dat iemand de brief onder ogen krijgt. En de andere antwoorden zijn ofwel op te zoeken, ofwel met wat social engineering te achterhalen. Niet veilig.

De tekst boven de keuze suggereert dat je de informatie moet bewaren. Wat meestal een minder goede beveiliging oplevert, juist omdat bewaren (vaak op papier) vrijwel altijd impliceert dat ook anderen die informatie ooit te zien kunnen krijgen.

–jeroen

via: Beveiligde gedeelte internetsite Belastingdienst.

Posted in Usability, User Experience (ux) | Leave a Comment »

Reminder to self: you cannot repeatedly draw anti-aliased text without damaging the background

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/04/11

A small duh moment when I found this out myself the hard way: when repeatedly drawing anti-aliased text, it will alter the background on each draw.

So you cannot do that. Not in Delphi, not in .NET, not in Cocoa, nowhere (:

–jeroen

via: delphi – “Additive” text rendering on TCanvas? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, FireMonkey, Software Development, User Experience (ux), WinForms, WPF, XNA | 7 Comments »