Interface details in Google+

In 2010 I discovered the book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? By behavioral psychologist Susan M. Weinschenk. I was intrigued by the idea of learning some psychology to provide better on-line experiences. I have to say the book was really disappointing, Dr. Susan Weinschenk gives cheap advices such as:

If you gift something on your web site people will feel obliged to give you something back

or

Use a picture of a hot girl to gain attention.

The other day I found a quite inspiring post on UXmatters.com titled Using Neuroscience to Inform Your UX Strategy and Design by Lori Kirkland. I was more than happy to change my mind on the use of neuroscience in web design! The article analizes some web sites and mobile apps using SCARF theory.

SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others is a paper by David Rock where social interactions are analyzed from a neuroscientific point of view. The author states that the human need for social interaction is as necessary as that for food and water. Starting from the need for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness the author provides some examples on how it is possible to minimize conflicts and improve cooperation in different environments such as work or school.

Going back to Neuroscience in web design, Lori Kirkland explains how Amazon emphasizes user sense of Status by providing personalized reccomandations on its home page. Customer reviews give a sense of Relatedness with other people. Fairness is conveyed by transparency in showing prices and the amount of saved money for each item.

I believe Certainty (that is the ability to predict the future) and Autonomy  (sense of control over events) are fundamental when designing interfaces as well. Think about the bad feeling you have when clicking a link that triggers an unexpected reaction, as it happens with some intrusive banners. At the same time you have a sense of Autonomy whenever an interface allows you to easily accomplish all the tasks without need for manuals or support.

In conclusion Neuro Web Design book is a waste of money and time, I’d like to meet the 20 customers that gave 5 stars to the book on Amazon. On the other hand I’m glad to discover that neuroscience can inform user experience and web design. I hope to find more on this topic.

The other day I realized that Iphone and Ipad have the HTML <input type="file"> disabled. It means you can’t upload any file from your IOS device to a webserver through a web site or a webapp. I guess that’s one of the reasons why most online services need a proprietary app (ex. Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, etc.).

Picup offers a workaround to the file input issue, It offers an external upload service to be used on web sites. The problem is that the flow is not smooth at all:

1. Users need to install Picup.
2. When they click on the upload button on your web site (you need to write Picup code to replace the input button with a link to Picup app) the app opens.
3. On the app a messy, not-customizable, interface asks to choose a file.
4. The file is then uploaded to Picup server (I don’t like my users to upload files on a 3rd party server).
5. When the upload is done users are sent back to Safari and they can proceed filing up your form.

Exluding Picup as a viable solution, the most elegant option is to develop a native app for Iphone and for Ipad, luckily phonegap allows web developers to easily write native apps,  adding the file upload feature seems quite easy.

IOS6 (expected in autumn 2012) is supposed to implement the file upload feature in Safari. Maybe Apple walled garden is loosing some stones.

Luis von Ahn is an associate professor in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the inventor of CAPTCHA and RECAPTCHA, CAPTCHA is a annoying method used on many websites to check if a form is filled by a human, it is based on the recognition of distorted letters. RECAPTCHA is a much more interesting project, it transforms CAPTCHA in a crowdsourced books digitalization project. Instead of computer generated letters, users are asked to decode distorted words coming from old books.

In TED talk “Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration” the researcher presented duolingo his new crowdsourcing project. The goal is to let the crowd translate wikipedia pages. I found the web site very nice and professional, it’s easy to use and you can really learn some spanish, english or german with a step-by-step approach.

I already knew many interesting crowdsourcing projects, most of them are disguised as videogames, check Reality is Broken for some examples. What I found amazing in duolingo is the idea of giving away a program to learn languages in exchange of free translations and I love the way the 2 tasks are perfectly integrated.

Watch TED talk “Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration”

Try duolingo