The original Motorola Droid is not my favorite phone. I own it because I needed it for work and it was the first serious competition for the iPhone when it came out. Since then, many new phones have come out with wonderful features that I suspect could have been integrated into this particular generation of smartphone.

For me, the keyboard on the Droid is terrible. Most people complain about the lack of tactile feel, and I agree that it sucks, but that's hardly the sticking point for me.

Instead, the position of the Alt and Shift keys seemed flip. I find I use the keys about equally between capitalization and punctuation. However, it feels unnatural to me to have to stretch my thumbs out the the side to hit the shift key. Instead, I often hit the alt key instead when I need to capitalize a letter. And then I get frustrated and hit it again because I've inadvertently put a symbol in its place and then hit Del... erasing my entire line because I hit the Alt twice followed by the Del key. Not what I wanted.

I think the problem relates to the normal keyboard on a desktop. To hit the shift key, a person uses their pinkies, not their thumbs. However, on the Droid (or other mobile), you use your thumbs for all tapping; the other fingers are stabilizing the device, or as is the case of the pinkies, not being used at all. So if the usage model changes, so should the layout. Obviously, Motorola/Google didn't think this was a major problem and that people would probably get used to it. But what it really shows in a lack of thoughtfulness on their part. They have an extra blank space on each side of the keypad (where the red arrows are pointing); they could have extended the either the alt or shift keys to be larger and more accessible, for example, but only after having evaluated which set characters get used most often.

When messaging, I use a lot of contractions... it keeps the sentence structure proper (not using "u" and "ur" and things like that that) while keeping the character count down. So I need the apostrophe a lot. What a pain to type "I'll" as: Shift-I-Alt-M-L-L." The need to make a shift between the Shift and Alt keys makes the process very cumbersome. A larger keyboard with its own number row (or pad; does the ugly looking directional pad [green circle] ever get used? -- okay, sometimes, I guess) would have made life easier; put the key punctuation characters as shifted versions of the number keys instead. On top of that, you get the bonus of more easily being able to type numbers into a text field... you know, something that happens a lot on a TELEPHONE.

And don't get me into that overburdened space bar. The space bar simply should not have a double function. It should do one thing and one thing only, no matter what mode the rest of the keyboard is in. It drives me crazy to have shifted into alt mode while typing number and then have an odd dialog, unrelated to my need to have a space between numbers, popup when I hit the space bar.

There are some redundancies in the interface that I think could have been left out and made for better space. The Menu and Search keys are both duplicated on the 'hardwired' part of the touch screen (see in blue). In the case of the menu button in particular, if you select it, you get a task bar popup at the bottom of the screen. Meaning you have to move your finger to right around where the 'hardwired' touch button is anyway. So what's the point of a physical key? The search key makes a little more sense... but not in light of the fact that Moto could have used that space to make bigger Alt/Shift keys, or a better keyboard, or an "Fn" key for a third level of functions (if they really wanted to overload the modes on the keyboard!)

The take away here is actually deeper than my minor complaints about the keyboard. The fact is that Motorola is a very large company that, given the opportunity they had, blew it when it came to creating a useful and elegant design to compete with Apple's iPhone. The keyboard is simply under-designed. It's awkward and overloaded and uncomfortable to use. And there is little excuse for such a design failure when there were already tons of examples of keyboards out in the market (Blackberries galore!) to sample from, years of research to help, and tons of money invested into the project. This was simply a sloppy decision on Motorola's part.

Don't Move the Buttons, Please

You can often find this control set on many web comic sites. When you are viewing the most current comic, there is no need for Next/Newest, so they aren't displayed.

However, when you click on Previous, frustration ensues:

The Previous button is shift over to the left. The cursor doesn't move, so the next time I click, I actually end up pressing Newest, returning me back to the beginning. Awkward.

iPod Interface with Honda Fit Radio

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my Honda Fit Sport. I bought last year because I needed more room for camping and biking gear than my MINI Cooper S could provide (which was a wonderful car as well, just small (hence the name)).

I didn't exactly do a full test run of the entertainment system when I bought it. I was happy that it had an in-glovebox iPod/USB connection and that was good enough for me. Now that I've had time to use it, I have a few comments to make.

Here's a shot of the console. Overall, the controls are easy to access and big enough that I only have to glance over briefly when I reach up to change a song or station.


One thing I didn't notice at all but I think should have stood out to me was that there is no Pause/Stop (or even Mute) button. I have to hit the tiny power button up the upper left hand side of the console in order to turn the music off. There have been several times when I've wanted to silence the radio quickly but had to fumble around, 1) to remember that there's no Pause and 2) to look for the tiny button. It's been a bit frustrating.

You'll notice that this is not only a radio, and as I have told you, a USB music player, it's also a CD player, so many of the controls are overloaded to support all three of these modes. It's done pretty cleanly, I feel, other than that nagging problem with the lack of a Pause button, which is standard with CD and digital music players.

There's a little bit of dissonance with the iconic representation of the controls on the center volume wheel. Left and right Seek are obvious and traditional, but the Play button is on the bottom, and then there's a down facing triangle:


Which, as it turns out, is a down arrow that matches the up arrow next to a return/back icon:


As silly as this sounds, when I first saw the down triangle, I thought it was a misprint of the the normal right pointing arrow that usually represents play, and I had no idea what the up facing triangle and arrow u-turn icon meant.

So, other than the lack of Pause/Stop/Mute, I'm pretty happy with the radio interface. It's the USB interface, specifically as it applies to the iPod that I have a few extra issues with.

In this day and age, iPod owners almost inevitably have a large collection of music on their devices (I have a mere 1700+ songs on mine). I have about a dozen play lists on this particular device and I like to bounce around between playlists, artists and songs.

The Fit's console doesn't make this easy; the iPod features are accessed through the center Vol/Push/Select button:

A ring around the button serves as both the volume control and the scroll wheel. Pushing the button brings up a series of options that you normally see on the iPod (Playlist/Songs/Artists) and then pushing again on the selection delves deeper into the menu structure.


The big problem comes when there is a very large list to run through (say 1700+ songs):


Problems:
1) The enumeration is only two digits long. It goes from 00 to 99, then resets every hundred items. So, other than when the order happens to be alphabetical (and it isn't always), the user can't be sure of where he is in the song list. Halfway? Near the end?

2) One of my favorite bands is '30 Seconds to Mars'. The '30' means the band is alphabetized all the way at the bottom. In a short-ish list of 150 bands, I have to scroll nearly to the bottom to get to them. This is a huge problem when I'm driving, as you might imagine, and I don't like doing it -- even parked, it's a big pain. The scroll wheel is easy to use, but it's not fast and it doesn't have a fast forward mode on it. I have to continually roll it 360 degrees in short bursts to go down.

And there's no way to go from the top of the list to to bottom. That is, if my first band is say, Ah-Ha, I can't "scroll backwards" and get to 30 Seconds to Mars instantly (not that helps in anyway with the bands who are half way down the list from other direction).

On the iPod itself, Apple overcomes this problem in one of two ways: 1) allow for rapid flick scrolling (where the user perpetuates the scroll by continuing to flick the screen in single direction); it's still slow for long lists, but because it works by paging, the user can still find an artist fairly rapidly. 2) Selection by alphabetic hash: By popping up the alphabetic scroll bar, the user can get very close to anywhere in the list by going to the first letter of the band that is of interest. Even in a 26,000+ long list, it's easy to get to at least within a 1000 artists almost instantly.

3) When I have the system set to Random playback and then search through a Playlist, my only option is to play the first song in the list, then hit the right seek button to actually engage the random mode. That is, simply selecting a Playlist isn't good enough; I have to select the starting song as well, which isn't very random (and per point 2, even if I knew what song I wanted, it may take a bit of effort to get to).

There are a few other little hassles that get to me on occasion, but not so badly that I can remember them right now, so I guess they're all right.

I'll be trying to review more radio consoles as I get access to them. I already know that the Honda Pilot (with the navigation system) really is a pain to use, so that may be next.

The world around us

We interface with our homes as well as the web (in case you forgot). Here's a case in my own home, which frustrates me on occasion:


It's hard to tell exactly what this is, but it's a hallway closet door opening right into the hallway light. The architect/construction folks seemed to think it was a all right for the door to only open to 90 degrees from closed and smack into the light if there was any attempt to open it further. Every time I open the door, I cringe when I hear the door bang against the light. If I happen to not be paying too much attention and open the door quickly, I'm sure I'm going to break the lamp.

The hallway ceiling is very low, that's part of the problem. One solution would have been to install a canister light instead (and there is plenty of room above the ceiling for it; I checked).

What this article is really about is not necessarily that construction workers and architects are unthoughtful, but that there are multiple challenges that need to be overcome on large projects.

1) It's hard to see what the finally product will really look like until it's done. And in the case of an apartment, once the frame is up, things start to roll pretty quickly and small details like the placement of a lamp are often missed.
2) Cost is a factor. I might guess that someone actually pointed out the problem, but too late. By then, the lamp had already been purchased and taking it back and buying a new one was not in the schedule or budget.
3) Levels of indirection. Maybe the architect really did plan for a canister light or some other better solution (though considering the age and nature of the complex I'm in, I doubt it. Lowest possible bidder won out here). But the plans went through several hands and decisions where made. And in the end, construction workers really don't care about design; they just build according to what they're told or what the quickest, cheapest way it can get done

(side note: I'm really generalizing on construction contractors, I know. But I've met plenty of them and had work done by such folks and it's a rare few that actually think in terms of design and usability. And I treasure those contractors when I find them.)

The point is, usability and user interfaces exist more than on just the web or in a computer.

Resaurant Websites

I think this says it all:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

Password Confusion

This is a classic issue I see in many places on the Web. These particular shots are from the Turbo Tax website.

The problem is obvious. The user types in a password that they're happy with, hit enter, and boom! they get a messaging telling them "Oops. We know you can do better than that."

This site gives the user a double whammy. First it says the password is too short; then, if the user doesn't guess correctly, tells him or her that a symbol is needed. Sure, the user could click on password tips... but why the extra click? All of this could of course have been obviated by simply telling the user up front what the password conditions are. On the Turbo Tax page, there is plenty of space to put the tips in plain view (and at least Turbo Tax offered the tips; I've encountered some sites that don't even give their user that courtesy).

Get the arrows right!

Simple and obvious, from Citrix's job search website. The Previous arrow is pointing the same direction as the Next arrow. And -- as a side note -- the Preview button has an arrow, which begs the question, does it need one?

This violates the concept of Convention. Traditionally, in a left-to-right reading culture, a left arrow means to return or go back ("Previous") and a right arrow implies going forward ("Next").

Since the Preview button launches a new page (or updates the current page with a new format of the recently input data), there is no particular direction to apply, so no need for an arrow.