Usability – designing for people

This Acer TravelMate 8100 notebook computer has at least three design faults that make an otherwise perfectly respectable machine a bit of an ergonomic dog and a real pain to live with.

1. The power button is located in a position where you are most likely to place your thumb when you pick up the machine. As a result, it is all too easy to unexpectedly and abruptly power off the machine.

2. WiFi and Bluetooth buttons are prominently placed at the front edge, exactly where fingers and palms of hands will apply pressure at any time during normal use. As a result, you will find your WiFi disappearing without warning, usually when you least want it to.

3. Air inlets on the under side of the casing get blocked if you place the Acer on a non-flat surface, such as your lap. As a result, the machine does not get the cooling it needs, the fan starts screaming at max RPM, power consumption goes up and the whole thing starts to overheat.

All of these faults give you a bad feeling about using this machine and worse, can result in lost data. I don’t have anything against Acer notebook computers; they are quite good value for money, but fundamental design mistakes should not appear in a consumer product like this, particularly when the manufacturers go through countless design iterations as new and updated models get churned out on a regular basis.

Most people will not look for or notice design faults like this, but they will notice the irritations caused by them. This reflects badly on the manufacturer, its brand and future products – all bad for business.

Make mistakes once and learn, just don’t keep on repeating them.

Sometimes we get a convergence of technologies and something comes along as a result which does a familiar job in a vastly better way than what has gone before.

The humble tape VCR has improved very little over the past 30 years; its replacement is long overdue. Digital (Personal) Video Recorders – still commonly referred to as PVRs – record video digitally on to a hard disk and offer a whole host of benefits over the mechanical tape-based analogue VHS machines that went before them.

DVD players are actually responsible for the demise of the VCR, but the recordable DVD formats offer only limited advantages for recording.

DVRs have been around for a few years now and the market is maturing. The two front-running Freeview PVRs are still the Topfield TF5800PVR and Humax PVR-9200T. You also have the choice of Sky+ for satellite subscribers and Virgin Media V+ for UK cable users.

So why are these machines so much better than their predecessors? Here are some benefits:

• Record two channels simultaneously while watching a third or a previously recorded programme
• You can record everything of interest to you and watch it at a time of your choosing
• Pause or ‘rewind’ live TV
• On-screen programme guide with one-button press to set a recording timer
• No tapes to find, machine stores all of your recordings internally
• No degradation of stored and frequently played recordings
• Instant play/resume of your recordings, no tape winding delays
• If the tuner/decoder is built in to the unit, you get maximum quality digital recording
• Most PVRs can store/play photos and MP3 files
• Receive DAB Digital Radio stations which can also be recorded

Any disadvantages? Apart from cost – good PVRs still cost about £200 in the UK – the only down side is that if you are not reasonably disciplined, it is easy to fill up the hard drive, even with the 100-200 hour recorders. Overall, it’s still a win-win situation.

What to look for in a hard disk video recorder

Make sure the tuners/decoders are integrated. This makes a huge difference to overall ease of use, simultaneous record capability, recording quality, flexibility, etc. Recording with separate hard disk recorder and video source is clumsy even with some of the kludges that manufacturers have come up with to get around the limitations.

With Freeview PVRs, make sure the unit has two built-in tuners, the hard disk is at least 160Gb, and it does have a dual record and watch capability; you will be surprised how often this is useful.

If you have an HD TV set, look for the ability to ‘upscale’ and output via HDMI. The analogue SCART connections on most Freeview boxes is poor 1970’s technology and won’t give you the best result with HD viewing equipment.

When we talk about usability, we are usually referring to information architecture, navigation structure , interface details, and so on. Mature PVRs show that consumer electronics products can make a step-change in utility and overall usefulness.

Of course, when scrutinised in more detail, the PVRs I have looked at could still be more usable, but that’s another story…

There is no doubt that YouTube has revolutionised video sharing over the Internet. Regardless of which site cracked the technicalities first, the real revolution here is the fact that now anyone can upload video clips in a variety of formats, have them published on a decently navigable web site and, even more crucially, viewed by people without the need to download and install obscure plugins, drivers, codecs or any other cumbersome software. Assuming the ubiquitous Flash is present, there’s nothing else to install, nothing to configure, just click and view.

The whole process of video sharing took a huge leap forward in ease of use, if not quality. YouTube content is the real star, of course, but this still shows the enabling power of usability which in this case, helped to set video sharing free.