Android goes dairy, but will Apple prove lactose intolerant

Last week Google announced the latest version of its Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich. The week before Apple released its latest OS, iOS5, to the public (and winner of the most fun name goes to...). There's already a number of great articles listing the features of both systems (Android: here, iOS: here), so Ithought I'd focus on some of the biggest changes and main areas of competition.

Voice control
Let's start with the big one. First a little history. Even if you haven't upgraded to iOS5 yet, your iPhone already supports voice control (for at least everything from 3GS up). That's right, it's already there. For all of Apple’s talk about intuitive controls and gestures, they hide a lot of functionality behind hard-to-guess actions. To access voice control hold down the home button for a least 3 seconds. The control will appear and you can give it a range of different commands, all of which result in you phoning your friend in South America. It even works through the lock screen, meaning your pocket can call South America too (sorry Kate).

The current iteration of Android also supports voice control, though in a very different way. Through the UI are dotted microphone symbols. Tap one and start speaking to see your speech converted to text, and in many cases automatically trigger actions. This can apply to search, visiting a URL in the browser or even dictating whole paragraphs of text in a document. It's not the slickest of tools but it does the job fairly well.

Both operating systems have seen upgrades to voice control. Android’s is the less showy, but I suspect most useful. Dictation is now a lot faster with the system only lagging by a syllable or two at most. It's not public ally available, but I'm definitely looking forward to trying it out.

Apple’s is the all-singing, all-dancing, look at me I'm amazing update, and it's called Siri. Activate Siri in the same way as old voice control (this is my main bug bear with the whole voice approach from Apple. I can open an app and start typing faster than doing the same thing by voice because of the 3s button delay), only now the phone will carry out a much larger range of actions from making appointments, tweeting, adding reminders and more. It will even answer questions you put to it, often in genuinely amusing ways. And yes, it will still phone your friend in South America even through the lock screen.

I've not used Siri yet as its only available on the iPhone 4s (cunning move by Apple there) but at the moment it feels like a gimmick. Sure it's a gimmick that's worked to shift millions of new iPhones, but I'm not convinced, yet, that it marks a major shift in the way we use our phones.

Camera
There’s been some friendly back and forth between Google and Apple on camera speeds (for 'friendly', see 'Christians and lions') with Tim Cook from Apple recently taking a swipe at the delay on Androids between successive snaps, and even in starting the camera in the first place.
Both are now claiming vast improvements in this area, Apple introducing a hardware update of an 8MP camera with 1080p video to the iPhone 4s and a load time of "Oh look that's pretty I'll just start my phone camera and take a picture of it before the moment is lost to eternity. Done", whilst the Android software update will reduce the lag between photos to approximately "Awww, sure would be nice to get another shot before it changes and I spend my life living in a permanent state of regret. Done".

Who wins? Who cares. Anything’s got to be better than my iPhone 3GS (for those keeping track, I've now learnt German and Spanish while waiting for the damn thing to load. With Christmas coming I'm expecting to have Japanese and Mandarin under my belt by boxing day)

Lock screen
It's the turn of Android to have the gimmick, and Apple to have a major security hole. Google have brought out facial recognition. Yup, you can now just look at your phone and it will unlock. A brilliant security update that is totally uncrackable unless, oh I don't know, you hold up a photo of the phone's owner. Office hi-jinx, here we come.

Apple has a similar security issue. It seems you can access Siri through the lock screen, meaning anyone can make phone calls or send email from your phone. Office Hi-jinx 2: This time it's War, here we come again. To top it off someone's worked out you can use smart covers to unlock a whole iPad2 device post iOS5 update. Office Hi-jinx 3: Close of Business.

Notifications
Apple has borrowed heavily from Android here, with notifications now displayed discreetly at the top of the screen and in a pull down menu. Didn't see the pull down menu? Ah, that would be another one of Apple’s 'intuitive' controls then (just to be clear, I like a lot of what Apple do, but their smug attitude is not one of them and opens them up to these kinds of cheap pot shots. Which helps me as I can't afford the expensive pot shots).

I really like the new positioning of the messages but have yet to use the pull down menu. Maybe I don't get enough notifications to make it worthwhile...sniff... (excuse me while I have a manly cough). Anyway, it's a definite improvement.

Android's update here is much smaller, mainly because they got it pretty much right the first time. You can now clear notifications individually, which is going to come in handy just as soon as I start getting more notifications...sniff...

Widgets
Here's one of the areas where Apple and Android differ greatly. Apple only lets you place apps (or more accurately links to apps) on your device home screens. Android also lets you add widgets which show feeds of content from the widgets, like the latest tweets, Facebook posts, or calendar events. How does it manage this? Proper multitasking that lets apps run in the background, something Apple have been adamantly against, allowing only certain processes, such as gps, to keep running even when an app is 'paused'.

Google have improved their widgets even further with the new version of Android allowing you to resize them to show different quantities of content, something I'm going to find very handy on my tablet (yes I'm the one person in the world who bought a Xoom).

The Cloud
Let's end with the other big one. Once again we'll need a little history, and this time some geography as well (get those colouring pens ready). Android devices have had a suite of cloud tools since the beginning: namely Google docs, email, calendar, contacts and reader, syncing seamlessly with their desktop equivalents. For a while now they’ve also had support for music in the cloud, as long as you used the Amazon mp3 app and were in The States (go and watch this. I’ll wait. Damn that man is talented). Google have their own cloud for music too, through it’s also US only and private beta. To make things more confusing, Amazon recently announced the Kindle Fire, a tablet based on Android, which looks to support a full media cloud, though whether this translates to the Amazon app on other devices remains to be seen. Basically, Android is awash in clouds, but they only handle certain types of media and only in certain countries (colour these in blue on your map).

Apple on the other hand announced the iCloud back in spring and immediately rolled it out for apps, allowing you to download the same app to different devices (or re-download to your own) without having to go through iTunes and syncing to a computer. Now with iOS5 they’re released the full cloud with iTunes Match (sync music you ripped). Only iTunes Match isn’t live yet. And the full cloud only works in the US. In the UK we just get the option to re-download music, which as underwhelming as it sounds, makes me very happy. I’ve got more than an iPhone’s worth of music, and having to re-sync with a computer to change it was extremely frustrating. It’s still frustrating if I want ripped music, but at least I can now get the stuff I bought from iTunes a lot more easily.

Want’s really going to confuse the public is when all these clouds are fully up and running and people start asking why they can’t move music from their Android HTC to their Apple iPad. It’s all fun and games until someone loses 64GB of data.



So, that’s it. Like I said, not a comprehensive review, but a few of the highlights. It’s clear Apple and Google are learning from and trying to one up each other, and health competition is good for everyone. There’s no clear cut winner here. Different operating systems are going to appeal to different people in the different ways, but at least now we have a decent choice. Let’s just not mention RIM….

Apple's Emperor's New Clothes Moment?

We've recently witnesses a great presentation from a major brand on their new device that wowed critics. Who'd have expected it to be the one from Amazon with their Kindle Fire and not Apple with their new iPhone announcement.

I'm not an Apple fanboy but I do have an iPhone 3GS which I really, really like. I stop short of loving it due to a number of minor issues (I'll blog about them another day) but I was still planning on upgrading to the all singing, all dancing iPhone 5 when it came out. But it didn't.

When Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage yesterday to talk us through Apple’s new offerings, the majority of bloggers and pundits were expecting him to reveal 2 phones. A major upgrade to the iPhone 4, namely the iPhone 5, and a cheaper, feature-lite phone, probably called the iPhone 4S.

What we got was a single new phone, the iPhone 4S. The outside looks the same as the iPhone 4, but apparently the inside is all new. ‘Cos we all know how much Apple fanboys care about the inside over external appearance (I know, cheap shot). So, what can this phone do that the older model couldn't?

Camera. The camera is now 8MP, with a 3264x2448 pixel resolution and able to capture video at 1080p, so on par with existing phones such as Motorola Droid Basic, 3 and Bionic, and the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation, and LG Optimus 2x.

You can now take your first photo in 1.1 seconds. Mr Cook accompanied this particular feature with a shot at the slow camera on Android phones. Well Mr Cook, with my iPhone 3GS I could become fluent in French in the time it takes the camera to load. And I'm *really* bad at French.

AirPlay. AirPlay mirroring to Apple TV device. That's the 2 people with Apple TV happy then.

World Phone. It's now a "world phone", supporting both GSM and CDMA. Finally.

Siri. This is the big one. Siri is a voice assistant that responds to your instructions. Book appointments. Get directions. Set an alarm. Now, I know it has its problems, but the voice recognition on Android that's been out for a while now is pretty good. Without using Siri (fun fact, Siri means ass in Japan! I <3 Masi Oka) it's hard to see what it has over Android. Now I'm willing to be proved wrong and find it's the greatest thing since Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman sat down and thought “You know, I've got a great idea for a show”, but right now it's not got me rushing to an Apple store. Or even ambling. Mainly I'm shrugging.

That's pretty much it.

Essentially, Apple have brought the iPhone up to spec with other manufactures current handsets and little else. Oh, you can now make calls with it as they do something clever with the antenna. You know, like having them work.

The best part of the whole presentation was the iCloud, and we were told about that back in the Spring. At least we've got a release date. 12th October. Yes, I'm going to pay the £25 to get my entire music library on there. No I'm not going to tell you want’s in it. It's all cool stuff, honest. Okay, you can stop laughing now.

In short, it was a disappointing launch and a underwhelming start to Tim Cook’s tenure Apple CEO.

Apple are notorious about security, so you could argue we've no one to blame for our disappointment than ourselves. That's a fair point. What I would say it that it's been almost 18 months since the iPhone 4 launched and the disappointment reflects the fact we all thought and expected Apple to have made major advancements to one of their major product lines. It's simply so much less than we've come to expect from them.

As to the secrecy, it's worth noting that rumours that we'd see just one phone and it would be the iPhone 4S started emerging 24 hours before the actual presentation. Unusual for an Apple launch. A cynic might suggest Apple deliberately wanted this to leak to lower our expectations in time. But that would be very cynical...

We're now left with some big questions. Will this affect the Apple share price? (My guess yes, but it'll drop slowly and stay low for longer than we usually see with Apple) What about the wider audience who can't afford the expensive iPhone? (The reason we thought there'd be a cheap version. Tough luck kids, you'll have to get the new, cheaper and potentially more feature packed Android instead) Who will buy the 4S? (Why upgrade when we're all now expecting the iPhone 5 in the New Year)

So was this Apple's New Clothes Moment? Did we finally get a peak at just how little has been going on beneath the surface? That Apple expect us to pay high prices for a phone that does little its competitors can't already, and it should have been doing a generation back? That it harks back to the notorious major iTunes announcement that turned out to be the Beatles?

After all that, I'm going to say no. We've heard enough bits and pieces on the iPhone 5 to expect a major overhaul is still coming and that, as they're famous for, Apple aren't going to tell us about it until it's good and ready. But this is one of those times when the legendary Apple security most definitely worked against them. We'd better see what they've been working on soon, and it better blow our minds. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. Three times is enemy action.

Everything you wanted to know about UX (but were afraid to ask)

Given that there are scores of books and websites dedicated to User Experience (UX) there's no way I'm actually going to live up to the promise of the title, but it got you reading this far. And that's the first lesson of UX: get your audiences' attention. Now comes the hard part. Keeping it.

So what is it?

(With apologies to Red Dwarf)

User experience (UX) is about how a person feels about using a product, system or service. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system. User experience is subjective in nature, because it is about an individual’s feelings and thoughts about the system. User experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience

"So what is it?"

User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

Don Norman, inventor of the term http://www.nngroup.com/about/userexperience.html

"So what is it?"

A person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service

ISO FDIS 9241-210:2009. Ergonomics of human system interaction - Part 210: Human-centered design for interactive systems (formerly known as 13407). International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Switzerland.

"So what is it?"

Making sure your audience want to use, can use and enjoy using the website/app/game you're providing.

Me, now

What it's not

UX is not about being "Cool"

UX is not about being "Innovative"

UX is not about having a "Dazzling design"

UX is not about being "Risky"

UX is not about being "Edgy"

All these things can be part of a great UX solution, but they aren't the start of it. If a client tells you they want to see something completely new, something never seen before, UX is not at the forefront of their mind.

How do I test for UX?

If you've already got a website/app/game that you're looking to improve, the first part of testing is really easy: use it yourself. Then ask your friends. Then ask strangers. Ideally who have never used your product before. Here's the hard part: listen to what they tell you.

It's far too easy to blind yourself to poor UX. You know your own product. You know how it's supposed to work. You know why people should be excited about using it. They don't. And unless you're planning on going to every user and explaining it to them face to face (believe me, there's been projects where this has felt like the best solution), your webiste/app/game needs to speak for itself.

It gets a lot harder if you're starting from scratch. Some good starting points are:

• Competitor research. See what your direct rivals, or similar companies but in a different field, are doing
• User research. Go out and talk to your potential users. What would they be looking for in your product? How would they expect it to work? When and where would they use it?
• Focus groups. As a general rule, don't. It's far too easy for a single person to hijack the group.
• Card sorting. If you're building a website, particularly a big content site, it can be worth holding card sorting exercises to find out what content people would expect on the site (give out blank cards) and the top navigation (ask your test users to group the cards into piles of topics that go together). You can also start with pre-written cards and a pre-written nav, to check if your test users understand the terms and group them in the way you were expecting.

Beyond that there are numerous objective and subjective tools and techniques to assess your project which I won’t list here as there’s a fantastic list by Jacob Gube on Mashable.

The key word with UX is holistic. Ultimately you need your IA, design, content, and front and back end development to all work together to provide the best experience possible for your users.

Okay, but what does it really mean for me and my users?

Let's look at 2 examples: Ain't it Cool News and a Facebook fan page.

Ain't it Cool News

Ain't it cool is fascinating because at first glance the site is terrible. The design is uglier than the Hound in Game of Thrones (told you I'd crowbar a reference in), the spelling is appalling, and everything ends in an exclamation mark! Or five!!!!

But, and it's a big but, people flock to the site. I'm not sure if they'd say they love it, but they keep going there. Why?!?!?! (sorry, can't stop myself now) Because, as the old adage goes, content is king. The site houses rumours, opinions and breaking news on all the big film, and increasingly TV, releases. Everyone goes there to find out what's coming up and if it's going to be any good. The site search might be terrible, but most of the time it doesn't matter. It's a real time resource. If you don't see the posts within 48 hours of them going up, it's old news. Everyone else will already have it. All you need to see is what's new in film, what's new in TV, and what's the big story from Harry himself. All of which is readily catered for. In garish orange.

Facebook fan pages

There's a lot to cover here, so I'm going to stick to some of the main UX questions you need to ask yourself if you're running a fan page for a brand:

• Where are people going to see my posts?
• Answer: Mostly in the news feed and their friend's timelines, not your fan page
• Where are people going to interact with my posts?
• Answer: Same as above
• Which posts are the most popular?
• Answer: Depends how you're measuring popularity. Photos and video tend to get the most impressions. Regular text posts, particularly in the form of an open, and usually silly, question generate the most comments and likes
• How do I get people to my new app?
• Answer: Remember, existing fans going to your fan page go straight to the wall, NOT the tab new fans see. Drive traffic by promoting the app in your posts. Also, make sure that the app posts interesting content/updates automatically to the ticker
• What permissions should I ask for on my app?
• Answer: Your drop-off rate increases dramatically for each new permission you ask for. Only ask for what you really need
• How can I contact my fans?
• Answer: The only way is though a status post. You can't contact them in any other way, unless they've signed up to an app. If you want their email address, ask for it as an app permission, but make sure you don't spam.
• How can I solicit and use UGC?
• Answer: Soliciting is easy. Just ask your fans to post photos and video to the wall. Re-using is just as easy, but it's the legality that gets tricky. I'm not going to even attempt to navigate Facebooks Terms and Conditions, a feat akin to rowing up the Amazon in a leaky canoe with one arm tied behind your back and smeared in honey. What I will say is that if you want to be really, really sure you can use something your fans have created, get them to upload it via an app and ensure you have very explicit T&Cs as part of the app.

I'll come back to fan pages more thoroughly in a later post, but hopefully this gives you a sense of the sort of UX questions you should be asking, even if you don't agree with my answers.

For further reading there's a very thorough discussion of all the steps involved in an e-commerce site by Lyndon Cerejo on Smashing Magazine (Part 1 and Part 2).

Last question. What’s the difference between IA, UX and design?

Sign in to Amazon and take a look at a product page, oh I don’t know, say this one (All hail the Moff). See that orange “Buy now with 1-click” button? (You may need to turn on 1-click using the link just under the “Add to basket” button”) Press that button and you’ll instantly have agreed to buy the product and arranged for it to be shipped to your default delivery address by first class post. It’s a brilliant fusion of technology, IA and design. A seamless user experience. So which member(s) of the team decided what it should do, what it should look like, and the fact it should be there in the first place?

There’s no simple answer to that question. There are lots of different job titles and skill sets out there that are increasingly blurring the lines between the different disciplines involved in creating websites, apps and games and ensuring they look great and work properly. So where does that leave UX?

The short answer is there is no single answer. You could assign the UX responsibilities across the whole team or to one specific member. You could bring in a UX consultant or architect. You could let everyone get on with their own individual roles and trust each of them to tackle the UX elements they have control over. You could have a different set up for each different project. It’s a logistical, and political, minefield.

The important thing is that an understanding and appreciation for UX is embedded throughout your team. How, when and who should own the UX on a project I’ll leave to another post, once I’ve figured it out for myself.