I am currently a software engineer at Google, where as a member of the Android platform team I build frameworks and user interfaces.
The blog here at dsandler.org is mostly historical; you can find more recent posts on Google+.
Bad UI Clinic Session 73
Always use mnemonics when choosing the shortcut-keys for your commonly used
menu items. For instance, in the following example, N means
“Old (read) message”, and O means
“New (unread) message”. The principle of least
astonishment hard at work!
figure 1 menu options with “good” mnemonics.
Mailbag.
Dear Sir,
As a TiVo enthusiast, I must take issue with your 2/22 7:38am diary
entry.The beauty of TiVo lies in its ability
to manipulate the arbitrary, rigid network program schedules to make them
confirm to the user’s personal viewing habits. If Friends is on at 8 but I
don’t want to watch it until 10, I no longer risk missing the episode where
Joey tells Ross that he loves him. In the realm of live events, or even
scheduled events of historical significance, the user is the one that chooses
between live or Memorex. In the Olympics/Oscars case, this decision is made
upstream at the network level…the user has no choice but to watch the tape
delay.This is a crucial distinction, and one that bears noting.
Thank you for your time,
–Anonymous
Inevitably, the sour grapes are pressed into drink once more.
I think I’m experiencing foo-like symptoms.
Use Perforce? Do you use the reviews feature? Use Outlook? Here are some custom fields for p4
review messages.
I was so excited to watch Sarah Hughes’ outstanding program and
very-emotional victory … until I remembered that the bastards at NBC are
tape-delaying the whole thing, and it had all happened two and a half hours
earlier. (Fun game: Look away from the “LIVE” in the top-left corner of your
screen, and instead search for clocks in the camera shots; then, do the math
to figure out your time zone’s Olympic tape delay!)
There’s something thrilling about experiencing something extraordinary
along with everyone else in the world. There’s something depressing about
experiencing something extraordinary along with the rest of the West Coast,
in our usual Law & Order time-slot.
I can just barely remember when the events were televised whenever they were
occurring, and — like so many of life’s great moments — you were
either there or you weren’t. You could catch it on the highlight reel, or on
your VCR, but nobody ever claimed it was live. TV was just a little more
honest.
Now, however, it’s a TiVo world.