Web applications, usability, and me

08 Feb

Posted by Scott as Web 2.0, interface, opinion

As part of a personal project, I’ve been shifting more and more of my day-to-day computing to the Web. Aside from the project I mentioned in the last sentence, there are a number of other reasons why I’m doing this. Reasons that I won’t go into right now.

But one thing that I’ve noticed (and which I’ve known for a while) is that the Web isn’t your computer desktop. And a number of developers of Web applications have realized this too. They’ve created some simple, but fairly intuitive interfaces. They’re easy to learn, easy to adapt to, and are easy to use after only a short period of time.

The quality and overall effectiveness of the user interfaces for the Web apps I’ve used vary widely. Some are good. Others, not so much.

I’m going to take you through a short tour of some of my favourite Web applications, and look at why I find their user interfaces to be effective.

Picnik

Picnik is an online image and photo editor. It’s not The GIMP or PhotoShop, and it doesn’t try to be. It offers a good subset of the functions that I use most in an image editor: cropping, resizing, red eye removal, and colour adjustment. There are a few other functions, too, but not all that many.

The interface consists of a set of tabs. Each tab collects a set of similar functions — for example, the Edit tab contains functions like crop, resize, rotate, and sharpen. All functions are within a click or two. You don’t need to hunt through menus.

Admittedly, some of the options are hard to figure out at first glance. Like what? Under the Create tab, there’s an option called Touch-Up. Until you look there, you’re not really sure what the touch-up functions can do for you.

Google Docs

Both Aaron and I use Google Docs quite a bit. In fact, it’s about the only suite of applications that I use on the Web (more on this later).

Many people pooh-pooh Google Docs because it lacks features — either compared to comparable desktop applications or to its online rivals, like Zoho. But Google Docs applies the 80/20 rule — 80% of people use about 20% of an application’s features — quite effectively.

Sure, you can’t create complex layouts in the word processor, and you can’t do sophisticated operations in the spreadsheet component. Let’s be honest, though: the folks who use Google Docs will rarely, if ever, need anything like that.

Admittedly, Google Docs does have an interface that’s very similar to a desktop application — whether it’s a word processor like OpenOffice.org Writer, a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel, or a slide application. The difference is that Google Docs uses a subset of the comparable desktop functions. And I hope it stays that way.

LooseStitch

For me, the starting point of any writing project is an outline. On those occasions that I collaborate with someone on a project, I make the outline available to them (for viewing or editing) with LooseStitch.

The LooseStitch interface looks something like a spreadsheet. Assuming, of course, that spreadsheet has one column and one or more rows. To use it, you just click on a row and an editing box appears on the right side of your screen. Just type your outline item in that box. It can be a word, a sentence, or a paragraph or two.

There are a few other features, which you can read about in a post that I wrote about LooseStitch elsewhere.

The effective user interface

For a Web application, this will depend on the type of app. The most effective interface for, say, a task management app will different from a Web-based word processor, which will be different from a image editing app.

Earlier in this post, I commented about the the wide variation in the quality of interfaces for Web apps. The most effective ones, in my opinion, didn’t try to shoehorn the desktop UIs that we know and love (?) into a space that fits into a browser window. With the usual mixed results.

I believe that a good Web app should do one thing and do it well. Creating a suite of complex applications, or trying to make a Web app the online equivalent of a desktop program, is the wrong way to go. There are exceptions to this, though.

Obviously, the interface should reflect the simplicity of an application. The interface should be simple and uncluttered. And it definitely doesn’t need to mirror an existing desktop interface to be useful, usable, or effective. In fact, the only Web app that I use which does come close to looking like a desktop application is Google Docs.

Thoughts? Feel free to leave a comment.