IBM Keyboard Usability

Posted on March 11th, 2007 in Usability by Puneet Sarda

I have started paying attention to everyday things in my life and see how they work to make me better at what I do. Are there ways to optimize them, tweak them in simple or complex ways so that some small quirk of mine can be addressed.

So I found this extra IBM USB enhanced keyboard in my colleague’s cube and asked her if she was using it or was it just lying around. Fortunately, she wasn’t and I thought I would like to try it out as I was bored of using the one I had for a year now. One of the reasons I liked it was the number of shortcut buttons it had and they were preprogrammed to open specific folders/applications. So I download the drivers for this guy from IBM and install it. I expected to find the drivers package to contain some software which would allow me to reprogram the keyboard buttons to applications I prefer rather than the defaults.

Keyboard(Click to enlarge)

However, what really impressed me was the label printing feature in the software. Once I had programmed each button, it allowed me to print of a label indicating what each button was for and then slide it into the label slot. I have seen keyboards which come with programmable keys but this one went just one step further in helping me not having to remember which one was for what. It simply prints it in a right size with the instructions to tear the appropriate section and stick it into the slot.

Now that’s what you call designing with the user in mind.

The Power of Abundance

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 in Design, Usability by Puneet Sarda
Remember 2001/2002 when we used to have 6 MB capacity for our email accounts from Yahoo or maybe 10 mb from Hotmail. We used to screen every email, every forward and every attachment to decide if it was worthy of being in the inbox or could be trashed right away. Many of us used to save all the attachments to our local drive and get rid of the emails. Even though it was slow to download them on a dial up it was worth it if the forwards were good. And it was necessary anyways or else your account would full up. The capacity progress bar would go from green to orange to red and you knew it was time to clean up.
Yahoo Mail in 2001
And then came Google with Gmail with 1 GB of email space!! Something no one had ever imagined. We were amazed wondering if they can really do that, do they have the capacity to store so much email. Gmail was by invitation only so soon people were selling invites on Ebay, friends were requesting each other to invite them etc… And if you were one of those who want to never delete an email…there was archiving for you. Within a year Yahoo announced that it will raise the capacity to 1 GB and paid accounts will have 2 GB. Hotmail, Inbox.com etc joined in later.

Gmail Capacity in use today for one of my accounts
Suddenly we all got used to so much of email capacity. We could now store thousands and thousands of emails without worrying about … well anything. They are going to be there as long as we want. Sheer abundance of space had changed our very perspective to email… we began to use it much more, realized that it appeared much more convenient that it did before and we could stick to one or two accounts instead of having to manage 5-7 accounts just because of capacity issues.

Abundance showed what its really capable of in a way it never has. Email capacity got transformed from a luxury, a sacred and scarce resource to something that we no longer concerned ourselves with. We now had the time and energy to concentrate on the actual details of the email, on our businesses and personal lives. Imagine the number of man hours saved each year by stopping people from having to worry about email capacity. With reference to my post on “The Feels Good Factor”, email had now turned into something that felt good to use, something that did its job and bothered you no more with unnecessary concerns.

Technology should be enabling and that is what email became. Enabling us to focus on the problem at hand rather than the mode of communication used to talk about that problem. The providers did end up installing huge servers to address the new capacity needs but to make the business going fine did a few things to stop the users from going crazy with the large capacity they had. One was to restrict the attachment size to 10 MB thus stopping us from emailing large movie or music files. If you wanted to share video or music you had YouTube and Google Video among the other numerous options. The other was the ability to archive emails. That saved quite some space on the servers and yet the users always had access to all their emails.

What other technologies you believe brought abundance to your life and helped you stop worrying about them? And in what domains do you feel abundance needs to step in and relieve you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

The “Feels Good” Factor

Posted on February 17th, 2007 in Design, Usability by Puneet Sarda

There are a number of things we do just because it “feels good” to do them. Recycling waste, smiling at your colleagues at work or catching up with friends on a weekend are just some of the examples. These and many other activities might have other reasons why you would do them but if you think about it for a minute… you do feel good after having completed them.Isn’t it a good experience to share a favourite movie scene or hum the lyrics of a mutually admired song? You can spend quite sometime recalling your college days and make jokes about your professors, discuss some of the cool ads you have seen lately or the tasty food you had last time you were at a restaurant.

The point I want to make is that People talk about what makes them feel good. And they don’t mind talking about it over and over again. Actually if it’s something that makes them feel really good…you will have a hard time stopping them from talking about it. Even people who crib all the time do talk about the few things that make them feel good.

But how many things out there really make us feel good. Everyday we interact with so many devices, gadgets, websites, applications and tools. But do you end up talking and I mean talking with full passion about even 25% of them. Probably not. With technology creeping into every nook and corner of our life, there should be many such experiences which make us feel good by making “life easier” but that does not seem to happen. We all have devices that do a lot but don’t most of them end up making you feel like you aren’t doing a lot just because you use the device for your basic needs. And the countless “frustrating” experiences you have as you use the different softwares on your computer.

I believe a product should be designed to make the audience feel good about using it. To make the experience enjoyable, something they recollect with pleasure and share with their friends and family. Google and Ipod have been talked to death about this so I thought let me pick some other examples.

Kayak.com is a simple example. It finds airlines from about 15-20 sites and brings them on a single page with options to restrict based on cost, arrival/departure time, number of stops etc… So you no longer have to search on so many sites to find the best deal and you can make ur decision quickly. It saves you a lot of time and you feel great not good about it.

Windows Live Map Search is another example. If you instal their virtual Earth plugin, you can navigate cities in 3D using your arrow keys or your XBox controller. You can fly like a superman over streets. But more importantly, you can travel around in a city just as if you are driving around. So if you are going to a new place, this gives you the opportunity to familiarize with roads and landmarks so your real trip would be much more comfortable. Feels Good :)

Feels Good is the extra gesture you did for the user without he asking for it. He probably wasn’t even thinking about it but now that you offered he loves it. Its the perk of using the product and the perk goes a long way in making a loyal customer.

What was the last thing you used that made you feel good and what about it made u feel good? what made you feel worse? Post your experiences in comments.