Products with great potential let down not by a lack of innovative features but from a lack of user accessibility. Today alternatives are just a Google away and it is not sufficient for a product to be technically outstanding, it must be intuitive, low fuss and easy to use. A development team must nail the user interface and user experience so consumers can access the technology. I firmly believe many companies are still missing the mark here, simply because their team composition is stacked heavily with “scientific and technical talent”. A balanced team is in my opinion critical to success.

The challenge then is to ensure technical teams and managers hire talent from a range of intelligence pools, don’t hire just tech-heads (your Einstein’s).

User interface design tips:

1. Use colour, nice colour (engineer defaults like grey are not friendly)
2. Multi-media and artist types can provide good advice on colours to use
3. Users are people, think about how you are communicating with them

So why do so many companies get graphical user interface (GUI) design so wrong?

I attribute a large part of  my success directly to two key factors:

•  Working with a great team (they can build anything I can think up)
• Functional user interface design (building things real people can use)

One of the biggest mistakes I see on a regular basis is where companies bring together a group of super smart people and say “Here’s a piece of work, go for it” expecting to get something miraculous and assuming those smart people know exactly what to do because they have been given a task (sometimes even with requirements). Now I am not saying this can’t work, what I am saying is you typically get the solution you are after with a user interface designed to be used by Engineers. Now this is ok if your target market is Engineers, but there aren’t too many companies making money selling software to Engineers other than Microsoft.

What is so different about Engineers and standard users: 

• Engineers care about technology, users care about outcomes…technology is a tool
• Engineers care about details, users care about the experience
• Engineers seek precision, users seek ease of use

Bar-humbug I hear echoing in the minds of Engineers who have come across this blog post. Well try this test, ask a colleague to write a quick “hello world” program. It doesn’t matter what language you use – C, Java, .Net.  A good Software Engineer should have it done in a few minutes if that. Now take a good look at what you get and almost without exception I can guarantee the Main Window is “white” and the “text” is black (their default values). If there is a menu system, drop-downs or anything flashy (from your over achievers) it will almost certainly be “grey” (again the default system value).

What does this prove…quite simply that with Engineers you basically get exactly what you asked for, no more no less. A bit like a judge interpreting the law impartially, Engineers interpret requests and requirements in a similar fashion. They assume you want the hello world program to say hello which of course it does probably with as few lines of code as necessary. But would you say hello to a friend passing on the street in such an emotionless and dull fashion? No.

Now if I showed my wife (who is an artist) the same hello world program the first thing she would say is “That isn’t very cheery, why don’t you make the text BLUE and the background LIME GREEN.” And that’s my point and the thing the Engineer missed completely, people sit in front of computers and the majority of people (who aren’t Engineers) expect User Interfaces to be FRIENDLY and that means using colour (even for Hello World).

It’s a bit ironic that I lecture anyone on colour as I am actually colour-blind but here’s the thing, because I have to pay attention to colours to notice them, I notice their impact on people more than most.

Now let’s go a step further here and look into the psyche of our Engineer (this is getting deep but I studied some psychology at Uni and recommend it to EVERY software engineer, your end-users and colleagues are people after all). Surely the intended outcome of the “Hello World” program is to say something real like “HELLO WORLD, LIFE IS GOOD AND I HOPE YOU ARE WELL!” in a big colourful (read non-default) font and maybe with a nice background (or something like that). But that’s not typically how Engineers think. As a former Software Engineer myself I know the thought process is more like:

• Why has someone asked me to do such a lame task
• Ok, I’ve got my Java IDE open so I’ll use Java for this task
• How flashy does this need to be (flashy meaning should I do simple text I/O or bother with a graphics call, nah I’ll stick with text because they would have asked for graphics if that was important)
• Compile, done
• Overachiever – does heaps of other really clever stuff except change the colour OR WORSE picks the most horrible, gaudy colours known to human kind

Am I wrong?  

The very first thing I had the team change in our current software was the colour scheme, I kid you not! Almost everything was grey and boring. Everyone on the team now knows I hate grey as a colour theme and if I see grey screens, dialogs or backgrounds I get mightily upset. It is amazing how different the same application looks just by moving to a user-friendly colour scheme.

Well I’ve ambled on for quite some time so I will finish here by re-iterating “change some defaults” when creating and designing GUI’s, it is so easy. Please:

1. Use colour, nice colour (grey is not a nice colour)
2. Multi-media and artist types can provide good advice on colours to use
3. Users are people, think about how you are communicating with them

While there are many choices, some of which are free, as a hard core ICT dabbler I only considered the really serious options from commercial vendors. They are: 

• VMware Fusion 4
• Parallels 7

So began two weeks of research and testing to pick the best Mac Virtualisation platform for me. It didn’t take long to identify the two key contenders were Fusion4 and Parallels7 and my timing was perfect with new versions of both products just released. Overall verdict:

• VMware Fusion 4 wins for me  (based on cost, cross-platform support & reliability)

Interestingly Parallels is winning the on-line review race at present based on the 20 or so reviews I found and read. Most reviews claim it runs graphics faster and integrates better with the Mac. I can certainly confirm I get a better Windows Experience Index with Parallels (4.6) on my Mac versus Fusion (4.3). But one should never trust reviews alone….and that has cost me $89 as I rushed out and purchased Parallels7 before I had trialled it or Fusion.

My experience with Parallels7 : 

• 5/5 Ease of install, setup, use & features
• 5/5 Graphics Performance (although initial trouble with Adobe on Mac)
• 5/5 Integration with Mac OS
• 2/5 Reliability (one crash on Mac, unworkable for me on PC)
• 2/5 Cost per Mac $89 + $49 per PC

My experience with Fusion4 : 

• 4/5 Ease of install, setup, use & features
• 4/5 Graphics Performance
• 5/5 Integration with Mac OS
• 5/5 Reliability (rock solid on Mac & PC)
• 5/5 Cost for Mac $49 + VMware Player free for PC   

So what let Parallels down. Well one of the key benefits of virtualisation is that when you set up a virtual machine it abstracts the guest OS from the hardware, therefore you should be able to run the same VM almost anywhere. For me I want one VM I can run on my Mac and Gaming PC, therefore the VM must support both a Mac OS and Windows 7 host OS.

Parallels 7 VM worked pretty well on the Mac but I had one lock-up just shutting down a basic Windows VM. My main issue however was trying to move my VM to a Windows PC. First Parallels re-installed Parallel Tools when switching from Mac to Windows (the Fusion VM didn’t need to do this). But my main problem with Parallels is that the Mac generated VM had severe graphics driver problems on the Windows 7 host OS when loaded with Parallels Workstation 6 (trail version). Basically I couldn’t re-run the Windows Experience Index tool which crashed out with graphics driver issues and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 refused to run. Parallels Tech Support suggested a few things, one of which was to uninstall and re-install Parallels tools. This was interesting. If I uninstalled Parallels Tools, everything worked including the Windows Experience Index (which then dropped from 4.6 to 1.0) and Adobe worked. However as soon as I re-installed Parallels Tools the problems re-appeared with the Windows Experience tool and Adobe problems.

At this point I’d had enough and decided to try VMware Fusion which was a pleasure. Fusion was rock solid on the Mac and the VM moved seamlessly to my Windows Gaming Box. With Fusion on the Air I got a slightly lower Windows Performance Index but that is more than off-set by the quality of this product and the free VMware Player ran my Mac generated VM seamlessly. And WOW what a price difference. After my testing I purchased Fusion4 on-line from VMware at $35. So for $35 I can create VMs and run them on multiple home Macs and PCs. The same thing costs hundreds with Parallels. My only other criticism of Fusion4 is that I like the safe mode in Parallels, the ability to say start my VM and discard any changes automatically when it is shut down. This is great for random testing of new applications. Fusion does this through Snapshots but novice users probably aren’t going to get it.

That’s it. If you just want Windows on a Mac. Fusion or Parallels will do it for you and impressively well. For me I now own both products and currently use Fusion4 95% of the time.

Time for a new laptop but what to buy?

It is amazing how far technology has come. Only a few short years ago personal laptops were almost luxury items and now very capable machines can be had for just over $500.

Why bother with a NetBook when you can get an UltraBook for a few dollars more and then do just about everything that once tied you to your desk or study PC. I kid you not!

But with so many choices how do you narrow the field…

I started by looking at my needs and goals (other than just wanting a new toy). The new device had to be:

Bring on the MacBook Air 11″. What a marvel of engineering. Just like the iPhone4, the Engineer in me appreciates this technical and aesthetic masterpiece from Apple.

I chose as follows:

Read on for the detailed review.

After spending too many hours wandering the isles of IT stores my selection was narrowed down to any of the dozen or so $500 Windows laptops, or a MacBook. I ruled out the MacBook Pro as too large and heavy (no benefit over my work laptop) so that left the Airs.

So why choose a $1350 Air over a windows box half the price….same reason you buy the expensive phone or car. You have to live with it every day and thus judge by quality long after the price is forgotten. The MacBook Air screams quality and is just plain cool. Every time I pick it up I smile.

The Air is perfect for research (read web browsing) and unlike my wife’s iPad2 you don’t have to hold it up! Two other amazing wins – the Air is silent and cool. If all I was doing was web browsing and blogging I’d still be happy with the Air. No more half cooked legs or turning up the TV so I can hear it over case and CPU fans.

Now the Air is a beast of a little machine. I threw some photo slideshows together with iMovie and Premiere Pro, the Air ate them up. Final rendering did result in heat and a little noise from the CPU fan but that is to be expected when at 100% load for an hour. Given I was working on something the size of a NetBook yet doing the stuff normally reserved for my Gaming box, who cares.

So why not choose the 13″ Core i7 model with 256Gb disk? Simple…..cost. As with any project, understanding your needs can save you a fortune. I already have and Gaming Box and heavy duty laptop, I wanted an iPad size device with a keyboard that could do most of what my other machines do. The MacBook Air 11″ has exceed my expectation on all counts. Yes I’m missing the extra RAM and bigger disk, but since owning the Air my device usage breakdown looks like this:

The 11″ Air represents some of the best money I ever spent. After more than 20 years using PCs I’m keen to see what all the fuss is about with Mac and their Apps, and of course next I need to get my favourite Windows Apps on this machine!

iPhone Apps I use daily:

iPhone Apps used regularly:

iPhone Apps used sometimes:

Rarely used:

YouTube is wonderful to see exactly how something is done, but I also like to print tutorials in case the host site disappears. So here is a collection of the stuff I’ve found really useful.

This post will be updated from time to time depending on what I find…

A cash prize of $7,000 plus a trip to a major games studio in Canberra was on offer for anyone who could create a game-playing bot (the game was Unreal Tournament 2004) that passes the “Turing Test for Bots”, that is say the bot AI had to convince a panel of five judges that it is actually a human player.

So how did I pick the bots from the humans…..read on as I describe the strategies I used and explain what gave the bots away or convinced me a player was human.

I had three main tests to see if I was playing a bot or human:

1. Was opponent’s behaviour consistent?
   Bots in particular show inconsistent behaviour. ie- Poor use of map but excellent aim with weapons. Thus the “Hopping Bot” was easiest to spot as it stood in one spot hopping up and down when it had nothing to do (not very human because unnecessary movement gives away your position) and yet it had remarkably good aim while hopping if it saw you. 

   Also human players tend to target the opponent who is the greatest threat, not whoever is closest. (ie- first shoot the guy who appears to be very good, not the guy running away). If you play well you will consistently take out the greatest threat first (ie- good players show very little respect for average players because they know they can take you out whenever they want no matter what weapon you have).

2. Did opponent’s learn?
   Did the opponent learn how to use the environment to advantage and/or learn how I play. I LEARNED in the practice session I could use the force fields (walls and floors) to my advantage. If I went up a grav-lift and then stayed on top of the force field above the lift, no-one else could use that grav-lift (because the force field was closed with me standing on top of it, thus blocking them.) As well as learning, human players tend to do similar things in a game. I would collect my favourite weapon, then I picked my favourite spot in the game, would find an opponent, shoot them to make them follow me, then ran to my favourite spot knowing the opponent couldn’t catch me because of the force-field trick described above. Bot players would get confused and give-up to go shoot someone else. HUMAN players got annoyed, but they knew exactly where I was and would find an adjacent location to shoot be from. I would then jump down and apply test (i) again, just to make sure it was a human (ie- their behaviour was consistent with regard to use of the map vs shooting ability when put under pressure from someone shooting at them.)

3. Did opponent anticipate my behaviour?
   One human player got extra tricky and learned what I was doing (ie- going to same spot so I could block him with a force field). On my third attempt to trick him he actually beat me to my favourite spot and was waiting there to kill me. Anticipation of where someone is going or why they are doing something is a very human trait because it requires understanding other peoples motivation (ie- they want to trap me, they want to collect their favourite weapon, they are in trouble and want to get away, they prefer to snipe so are heading for a snipping location).

Well that is about it, hope it proves useful…..