A further discussion on gesture operation (natural user interface)

With regard to the use of the ipad, Nielsen Norman Group (a user experience research company) interviewed a number of users and got a 93-page report (free download). Then, Nielson, the company's analyst, wrote an article on the report, and in the commentary on the text, some thought it would be radical to push the new interface, which Nielsen Norman Group opposed. So, two of the company's analysts Don Norman and Jacob Nielson again to discuss the issue.

There should be no conservative criticism of the emergence of a new natural user interface, but some of the problems that come with it need to be noted that gradual reform is the right path. For example, gesture operation, although bring a simple interface and interesting operation, but in the actual application process, the designer often ignores some usability problems, causing the user experience to suffer. If gestures are not easy to find, they will not be used, or even cause obstacles to operation. At present, there is no uniform standard of gesture operation, which also causes the user's confusion.

The following article, the Ignorethecode website (gesture operation: the restoration of the command line interface), is a reference to the Norman Group's two-bit designer article (the original link, possibly due to internal server problems, this link is not open.) ）

Nonsense, the text is as follows:

With regard to gesture operations, Don Norman and Jakob Nielson wrote:

Nielson wrote an article on the ipad Usability study, which sparked some comments, and some commentators said it was reasonable to experiment with radical new interface technology on a new platform. We agree with this statement. But the experiment should be done in the lab. After all, many new ideas will fail, and the farther away from the good experience they are, the more likely they are to fail. Sometimes, a radical idea can become a wonderful breakthrough. In that case, the design can be listed. But it is important to note that any radical breakthroughs are rare in any principle. Most of the progress is achieved through continuous, small additional improvements. Bold exploration should be done in-house, or in a university lab, and not on consumers, unless consumers who participate in user experience tests prove their viability.

They went on to point out that many of the "modern" user interfaces violate some well-known, validated interaction design principles, including visibility, discovery, provision of recovery, and reliability.

At the end of the text, they wrote:

New devices are fun to use: gestures give users a sense of dynamism relative to boring touches and clicks. However, lack of consistency, the ease of operation, and the extremely easy to trigger unrecoverable operations, have compromised the availability of the entire system. We urgently need to go back to the basics and develop usability guidelines for these systems, which should be based on the solid principles of interaction design, not the ingenuity of a company in human-computer interaction, or the ingenuity of some developers.

The natural user interface based on gesture manipulation can be a huge step forward, it will make computers more acceptable to people, and the interaction between people and devices will be more interesting and more satisfying. However, it may also be difficult to use to make people tired and angry. Simply turning to the natural user interface does not promote a device; The interface must be available. Adding a bunch of gestures does not make the user interface interesting or usable; it should not be an alternative to the established principles (we still need to) do usability tests to find out what is feasible and make changes where it is not feasible.

Simply declaring your user interface "fun" and "natural" doesn't prove your interface is available, and when your users are using the software, it's not fun to know how to operate at a loss.

1.Android Many important features are not visible, and unless you have something on the interface, I often feel annoyed.

2. They mentioned "hidden gestures" and the cancellation of the visible menu. Obviously, on the visual menu, WebOS does better than any other system. Android and the IPhone are doing the wrong thing. The IPhone doesn't have a menu, Android uses a hardware button to trigger the menu, which means you never know when a program will have a menu. The hardware button is always there, regardless of whether the program requires it.

3. When I used an IPhone app to record my shopping list, I found that every time I went shopping I would sell a few things. Finally, I found that when I put something in my shopping cart, I often accidentally crossed the IPhone's screen and randomly removed the items from the list. This touch removal function can be turned off, but as a default operation, the program will behave unreliable, the user is not aware of the situation of the error, and for users, this effect is not easy to find, and can not be restored.

@ Jimmerlin translation, reprint please indicate ifanr.com translation link

If you're interested in gestures, in addition to a previous Ted video about six sense, the latest exciting speech comes from John Underkoffler, who is the designer of the human-computer interface in the Minority Report, in a Ted speech, Is it the future of the computer UI that he demonstrated his latest research, an interface called G-speak Spatial operating environment? Is it true that in 5 years, we will be able to operate the computer as shown in sci-fi movies? Here is the video.