As a result of building software, testing, working with PC manufacturing partners, and owning personal computers, I have no fewer than 19 laptops, desktops, and netbooks in my home. Which prompts a number of problems … not least of which is “Daddy, can I have one?”

So a couple of weeks ago I took two netbooks that I received from Disney when working on the Disney Netpal project and slapped Ubuntu Linux, netbook edition, on them. And gave them to my daughter (14) and older son (10) … and sat back and watched.

The results have been unbelievable.

Sure, they’ve found and used the games. But they’ve also discovered how to install new software via Ubuntu’s Software Center. And the results are amazing. My daughter has downloaded the GIMP, and is playing with making, mixing, and editing images. My son is downloading games and other applications. They’re changing the desktop images, customizing their machines, and having a lot of fun.

The most fascinating thing for me, however, and the key to their whole computing experience is in how iPad-like Ubuntu can be. Think of iPad. Simple, tap, download, use, right? How could it get easier? That is almost exactly how my kids are using Ubuntu.

Of course, Ubuntu is a full all-purpose operating system with a user-accessible filesystem and all the grotty power of Linux, if you choose to go there. But on the surface, using it like a waterstrider bug walking on water … these kids are installing applications, creating documents, customizing their computers, and more. And if you ever tried to install the GIMP 5-6 years ago, that’s quite an accomplishment.

The OOBE (out of the box experience) of Ubuntu is impressive. Right from the desktop, it’s completely usable. With zero instruction, my kids were able to find games, open folders, use all their programs, and get new ones. That’s all enabled by a shell that basically displays all the computer’s functionality in an easily explorable way.

Here are my kids’ desktops:

I’m pretty impressed with Ubuntu … even for kids.

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One of the discount usability movement’s basic tenets is that we need a drastic expansion in the amount of usability work done in the world, and to make this happen we need more people to take on usability assignments.

via Anybody Can Do Usability (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox).

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That’s why they call it beta, I guess.

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The problem? Some drafting software that was accidentally copied on to all computers in a lab during an upgrade.

The BSA came calling – rather like the RIAA – and demanded more than twice the MSRP … almost $650,000. It’s almost like the local “business protection association” run by burly men with bent noses and Italian accents.

But here’s the kicker:

Because the incident was not a budgeted item, the school division has to identify areas of cost savings in its system. In particular, Choo-Foo said the division is looking at some of its licensing agreements. “We’re moving more into the direction of freeware and shareware that’s available, and finding products that still meet our needs.”

The BSA won this battle. But it’s likely going to lose the war …

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I’m trying out Zinio, the digital magazine reader.

When you download their software for the first time, get a free issue of a magazine. I happened to choose BusinessWeek.

But the edition is not this week’s …. it’s June 2008′s.

Gee, thanks.

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A French blogger, Ozh, posted images of WordPress’s admin interface on his blog in December. I just saw it now, but wanted to see the images in a single presentation deck so that you can flip through them and see the differences at a glance.

So I grabbed the images, combined them into one PDF, uploaded it to SlideShare, and voila:

5 years – hard to believe. I saw WordPress when it was at the very first version, in 2003, and first used it at the second version in, in 2004.

I had been blogging much earlier, actually, before the word “blog” was invented. As far back as 1999, although I prefer my 2001 version, which was built on a content management system that I cobbled together myself using PHP … using not a single graphic:

But I’m not really a developer, and WordPress has been the best tool for blogging.

Thanks, Matt!

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I annotate images and PDFs every day, multiple times a day. And most tools currently in use for it are expensive or user UNfriendly, or both.

So I couldn’t have been happier when I found Skitch. Skitch is a dead-simple utility that allows you to edit image files, quickly annotating them with circles, squares, text, and arrows in a variety of sizes and colors.

Oh, and did I mention it’s drop-dead gorgeous? Seriously, if I can say this without losing all my card-carrying guy credentials, how many apps have an icon that beautiful? Here’s the good part: in this case, the beauty is not just skin-deep.

I happen to use Mac OS X’s built-in utilities for screen captures, or in some rare cases, Snapz Pro X. But Skitch can handle that as well.

One feature that has completely saved my Canadian bacon is Skitch’s history. In the course of a day of architecting software, creating wireframes out of pieces of this and pieces of that, I go through a LOT of screenshots. Being a bit of a neat freak in terms of my desktop, I tend to delete them just as quickly as I create them … sometimes too quickly. But fortunately, Skitch has a memory, and I’ve been able to retrieve images from Skitch that would otherwise have taken me multiple minutes to re-create.

An interesting add-on: Skitch is trying to make sharing screen caps a social activity: sharing them. I’m not too sure how big this will become – it seems a bit of a stretch – or if they are simply angling to be acquired by one of the big social networking sites. In any case, since most of my shots are work-related, I can’t post them to a public site.

OK. A picture is a thousand words, so a movie must be at least a hundred. As soon as YouTube finishes crunching my screencast, I’ll embed a quick video here of Skitch in action …

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Everyone agrees that software should be user-friendly. But what does that actually mean? I’ve been architecting a LOT of desktop software in the past few months, and I’ve been revisiting some of my ideas about usability.

While it’s true that there are a million different factors involved in creating software that people love to use, the five key measures that Nielsen and Schneiderman created stand out in my mind:

• Efficiency
• Learnability
• Errors
• Memorability
• Satisfaction

Efficiency
Can users do what they want to do quickly, simply, and without a lot of fuss? Or do they need to fight your software and perform circus contortionist acts to do what they want to do?

Learnability
Have you designed your software, menus, buttons, and tabs so they are easily understandable, even for a first-time user? Or is a first-time user completely lost and unable to proceed without a manual or a training session?

Errors
This is strongly related to learnability – how many errors do new users make? Do they continually make the same or same kind of errors? If they make an error, how easy is it to reverse, correct, or undo the error?

Satisfaction
How do users feel while they are using your application? After? Is it frustrating? Do their stress levels rise? Does the software give them a feeling of competence and power, or ignorance and failure?

. . .

As mentioned previously, there are a million other factors that influence software usability. And it can be hard to measure – there’s usually not a binary yes/no answer.

But if your software scores high on these five attributes with users, chances are you have strong usability. And, chances are people will like the software well enough to use it, talk about it, and maybe even purchase upgrades for it.

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“The Virtual Classroom gives hotels a low-cost tool (travel expenses are eliminated), for providing advanced or customized training,” said Kelly Gray, Newmarket’s Director of Educational Services. “Web delivery also affords hotels enhanced “speed-to-market” capabilities. For example, upgrade training for users at 400 different sites can now be done simultaneously, while traditional methods would take months.” (link)

Happened to see this as I was looking for classroom software …

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UI strings are the messages that you see in an application … what it tells you. Obviously, the better these are written, structured, and presented, the easier the application, and the better your experience with it.

Four things are really coming to my mind as I’m going through this. Three of them are directly related to UI strings. They enhance usability when …

1. You know what the software will do before you ask it to do it
2. The software does exactly what you asked it to do: not more, not less, not different
3. If something goes wrong, the software tells you in simple terms what happened, why, and how to fix it (this can be hard!)

The fourth thing is not really about UI strings, but an aspect of the application itself: revocability. Revocability, of course is the opposite of irrevocable (as in: can’t be undone).

The connection to UI strings is that if you know something is revocable … you’re less hesitant to try it and see. And that makes you a more confident and therefore happier user.

The overall goal of UI strings is giving the user the right amount of information at the right time. And the only way to know if you’ve got it right is to do usability testing during and after launch.

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