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Final Posting with a link to Synote Researcher download.

During the final meeting we discussed some of the lessons learnt when thinking about usability and the development of online applications.  Here Yunjia, who is working on all things Synote, provides his reasons for finding that usability can be improved when there is direct liaison with users rather than working through a project manager or other members of the team. (View via Synote with keyboard access)

Download the latest version of Synote Researcher from SourceForge.

 

Three in One – Recap, Results and Recommendations

It has always been difficult to have a full team meeting and our last meeting was no different, but by using the University of Southampton’s iSurvey system we have managed to get results to some of our questions. Moreover, through the use of face to face interviews, emails, calls and the blog we have gained an insight as to how to develop an Adaptable and Learnable User Interface for Analysing Recordings.  Synote, for the researcher, has been developed into a freely available open source downloadable application that can be used by any individual,  institution or organisation.

We believe that we have succeeded in producing improvements to the ‘existing user interface’ and adapted Synote as an “e-research tool, in order to make [it] easier to learn by non-specialist users.” (JISC Usability and Adaptability of User Interfaces) by using a co-design methodology with a very open approach to the project evaluation.  The final sample video to illustrate its use is being produced and will be made available.

The complete agenda for the last meeting was mentioned in the last blog, but under the main points I have also provided an overview of some of the ideas and comments made throughout the project and during the face to face interviews. There is a final summary available at the end of this blog.

A service becomes a download with a new name

There was much discussion during the lifetime of the project about having to make a new version of Synote whilst leaving the original system intact. Synote was designed for the annotation of educational recordings with notes and transcriptions.  The content has often been drawn from lectures, seminars, videos and audio available online.  Recordings are not usually held on a specific server for Synote users.  Users are required to use their own websites to provide the URL link to the Synote player.  Create recording pageDuring the project we discovered that some users found it hard to make a URL from an uploaded recording and so the new version includes the ability to upload a recording from a desktop computer, to link to YouTube recordings, as well as users’ own websites.

This also led to the decision that the researcher version should be a download rather than held on the University of Southampton server for public use, as is the case with the original version. This decision was made because of the type of sensitive data that might be used by researchers.  By having a download the software can be held on secure servers with increased data protection.

Finally, the fact that the new version had some enhanced features, meant that it needed an addition to its name!   iSurvey was used for voting and although the name ‘Synote Scholar’ was liked by many members of the team – Mike was the final arbiter with the name Synote Researcher winning the day as he felt that the name ‘Synote Scholar’ could equally be seen to apply to the original version of Synote and so didn’t make it clear that the new version was designed for researchers!

Synote researcher logo

Evaluation results related to the new interface design for learnability and usability.

co-design diagram

Millard, D., Faulds, S., Gilbert, L., Howard, Y., Sparks, D., Wills, G. and Zhang, P. (2008) Co-design for conceptual spaces: an agile design methodology for m-learning. In: IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning 2008.

Throughout the project we used the blog to act as part of the evaluation process – publicising storyboards, changes made and slide views of the changing Synote Researcher using the agile co-design methodology mentioned at the outset.  This allowed us to have an on-going conversation with users and other team members.  It resulted in an iterative approach being taken to the development process and was very useful when monitoring changes.

We used John Brooke’s System Usability Scale (SUS)  for a quick analysis of the views of users as to the usability of Synote Researcher. The results showed that there was an increase in the overall scores out of 100 from 48.50 to 67 with 4 out of 5 users agreeing in the second evaluation, that they felt “most people would learn to use this system very quickly” The score that brought the second evaluation down was the need for technical support to set up the system. This is not surprising and the download may need technical support.

More precise evaluations were undertaken via a series of face to face interviews designed to see if the changes made had ensured that Synote was easier to learn and use by researchers wishing to analyse and code multimedia data.   During the interviews users were asked to participate in practical exercises such as logging-in, searching for recordings, creating their own recordings and adding a transcript and synmarks or annotations. They were asked to comment throughout the meeting and offer a score of 1-5 for look and feel where 5 was excellent.

Player pageDuring the discussions background information about the possible use of the demonstrator was requested and how users views about the Synote service may have changed due to the redesign.   The evaluation of the original Synote took place in June 2011 and the final appraisal occurred during November 2011.  The interviews were also analysed using Synote Researcher with annotations and remarks as seen above.

web page scores

Average score for each page - red = original Synote, blue = Synote Researcher

The results for scoring the individual pages were based on the users who completed both interviews although we had an additional three external users who commented on the new version.  As there were some extra interviewees it was decided that an average of each score given for each page discussed would be taken over both interviews.  As can be seen all the scores increased and this was despite ideas for further changes and constant iterations.

As a result of all the requests it was felt necessary to revisit the original work packages to check all the elements requested at the outset of the project had been discussed and included in the design. Only one of the requested changes was not possible to achieve in the time available as this would have involved a redesign of the whole Synote system.

  1. pausing the playerGreater flexibility of movement backwards or forwards through a recording (e.g. by typing in new time) as at present can only move in 5 second ‘nudges’ or move time slider or change speed if recording format and player allow. – Now able to nudge the recording forwards and backwards by 1,5,10 and 20 seconds.
  2. A drop-down box listing frequently used tags (e.g. for coding name of speaker and category code) – These appear as you add a tag to the annotation.
  3. Foot pedal control of player – This has been achieved and tested using a Start-Stop HDP-3S pedal from HTH Engineering Inc.  The software has allowed us to allocate controls as per the original Synote keyboard shortcut accessibility options.synmark tags
  4. When manually transcribing a recording it is possible to also annotate this with the
    start time of the clip entered automatically but the end time needs to be manually entered. Synote allows a section of a created transcript to be selected and the annotation to be linked to that section with the start and end times of those sections to be automatically entered. It would make the system easier to use if it was possible to also do this without having first to save the transcript.. – This has been achieved with + and – keys plus an icon of the clock to indicate the inclusion of time as can be seen in the screen grab on the left.
  5. Facility to download the annotation data (e.g. to Microsoft Excel for statistical analysis and charts and graphs or for a report or into other annotation tools). At the
    moment the information requires copying and pasting – This has been achieve with a csv file with all the synmarks as can be seen in the picture above by the paper icon with the arrow at the top right.save as draft icon
  6. Making it harder to exit without saving and so losing changes made.-  This has been achieved with an automatic save as draft and additional save on exit.play button
  7. Allowing the user to control the recording playback when annotating by providing
    media player controls in the annotation window. (at present a user can annotate a
    recording and the annotation can automatically read the time of the recording but the user cannot easily replay a section of the recording while writing the annotation) – this has been achieved through the use of the right hand mouse button.text colour
  8.  Use of text font, colour, size and style for coding – this has been achieved as shown in the picture.
  9. Individual profiles provide a graduated learning curve to suit the preferences of each
    particular researcher allowing fine-grained control over a wide range of settings (e.g. whether the replay of the video should pause automatically while an annotation is being created). – This has partly been achieved by the viewing of icons and supporting text only when moused over or selected or the use of the right hand mouse menu within the transcript or synmark section.
  10. Redesign of interface to improve learnability – This can be seen when viewing all the attached images and downloading the software as well as the evaluation results.
  11. Organise recordings into groups and categories to make them easier to find and
    manage – This has been achieved through the groups menu and sorting mechanism within the recordings listings. 
  12. Ability to replay just the video clip from a search (at present plays from the start time
    and manually have to pause at the end time of the clip) – it has not been possible to achieve this in the time available as it would require a redesign of the whole Synote system.My synote

tags and a tag cloudIn addition to the changes made to many sections of the original Synote there has been the introduction of ‘MySynote’ – this is an area where the researcher can look at their own recordings, synmarks or annotations and tags used for coding as well as edit their profile.  It allows for the sorting of recordings and the viewing of the most commonly used tags as a tag cloud.

 Overview and discussion about the initial comments from interviews undertaken with the team and external evaluators.

Both Yunjia and I were very heartened to hear the comments made by interviewees including external evaluators who had seen or used the original Synote, and were now being introduced to Synote Reseacher.  Even those who were using the new version commented favourably on the improved usability and learnability.  Dr Sarah Parsons commented ” It feels a lot more intuitive and I think with some of those tweeks we have talked about in terms of labelling clear what a couple of those bits are would strengthen that even further,  it feels very accessible to me….”   Audio clip

homepage commentDebbie said about the home page “Thats easier. (pause) On the old one you had to find information you had to start searching you had to read the whole of the page of other information before you can necessarily find what you need to start the process. So this is much clearer.”

Changes to be made to the final iteration

The final changes as a result of the last few interviews are minor ones listed below

  1. Refine information on front page – Reducing and improving the presentation of the help slides.
  2. MySynote page to just have icons and names to match the list that appears on other pages.
  3. User Profile to contain registration / password information – the captcha is to be removed as this will not be necessary on the download.
  4. Users are going to be able to edit and delete their recordings.
  5. The Groups will work for sharing recordings with chosen users or setting up recordings in different categories.
  6. Legal statements will be added and a simple help file added.

Final Summary
We have been asked to

  • Recap – what you set out to achieve, what you didn’t achieve, why?
  • How successful have you been? What are your metrics?
  • Lessons Learned?

It is hoped that this final blog has covered all these requirements as it was hard to divide the list into three separate blogs without considerable repetition.  We set out to achieve a version of Synote that would suit researchers and be easy to use and learn.  We hope we have been successful as well as providing a unique application that can:

  • be freely used
  • work quickly and easily on any desktop with access to the internet
  • have web based data and multimedia for sharing research.
  • use the data presented for evaluation, appraisal and supervision
  • capture simultaneous conversations with similar timeframes
  • colour code annotations
  • tag themes and categories
  • use titles of annotations for sorting.
  • use a foot pedal to control the media player and other aspects of the interface
  • use keyboard only input and screen reader access (Equality Act 2010)
  • use speech recognition for re-speaking to speed transcriptions.

There is still the challenge of creating annotated clips from the recordings that automatically stop at the end of the clip – this was not possible to achieve in the time available as it requires a significant redesign of the Synote system

Rating our success through the use of various communication methods along with specific surveys plus interviews has provided us with a range of quantitative and qualitative data, despite the low number of users over the period of the project. The Nielsen Norman Group is often quoted as saying “The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.”

When it comes to learning lessons these can be summarised as follows:

  • Allow more time than you think for evaluations – interviews and transcriptions
  • Make sure you have at least one willing volunteer who is not working on the project on a day to day basis but is using it for research (in this case).  We owe Debbie a great deal of thanks as she provided us with several insights that would have been overlooked by those of us who had become over accustomed to the way Synote worked.
  • Have outside evaluators who are willing to comment on the old versions and trial the final iterations with a fresh look – Thank you Lucy, Ring, Sarah and Inga
  • Have some expert researchers (in this case) who are willing to share their requirements early on in the timeline and compare the development ideas with what may be offered by other software programs – Thank you Lisa H, Lisa R and Mary
  • Define your unique selling points so that you can persuade new users to adopt the new program – Thank you Mike, Lester and Gary 
  • Finally but most importantly – you need a good lead developer to change a program that has been developed by someone else, but also one who is willing to be endlessly patient and understanding when translating ideas into reality – Thank you Yunjia

 

Minutes for the 6th ALUIAR meeting, 15th November 2011.

Yunjia and Mike at the 6th ALUIAR meeting

Yunjia and Mike at the 6th ALUIAR Meeting

The 6th ALUIAR meeting provided us with the chance to showcase the final iteration of research version of Synote with the minutes as follows.

  • Apologies were received from Lester Gilbert and Lisa Harris, Lisa Roberts and Mary Gobbi was also unable to attend.
  • Outcome of Legal Discussions – we are awaiting some guidance from Diana Galpin as mentioned in a previous blog.
  • Overview of the present web site – overall the new look was well received and individual interviews are now underway – see notes below.
  • Foot-pedal experiments – these have been successful using the stop start foot pedal and software as mentioned in a previous blog.
  • Dates for user testing – three interviews have already been undertaken and transcriptions need to be analysed using the ALUIAR version of Synote.
  • AOB – see below
  • Date for next meeting – it is hoped this will take place on 14/15 or 16th December.

Under any other business Debbie mentioned some other options for coding conversations and data analysis such as AtlasTI.  Lisa Roberts provided us with a very useful link to reviews of all the desktop research tools that could be used for analysing conversations and some multimedia.  CAQDAS is a networking project which also offers training events on research software.

At this point it was felt important to perhaps look at the unique selling points of this version of Synote!   We collected several including the fact that it is possible to:

  • use if for free
  • work quickly and easily on any desktop with access to the internet
  • have web based data and multimedia for sharing research.
  • use the data presented for evaluation, appraisal and supervision
  • capture simultaneous conversations with similar timeframes
  • colour code annotations
  • tag themes and categories
  • use titles of annotations for sorting.
  • use a foot pedal to control the media player and other aspects of the interface
  • use keyboard only input and screen reader access (Equality Act 2010)
  • use speech recognition for re-speaking

There then followed a debate about a name for this version of Synote that will be released on Source Forge as a download for organisations or it could also be on a university server so that downloads can be monitored.

synote logos

Possible logos

Should the name be:

  • Synote Lite
  • Synote Research
  • Synote Scholar
  • SynoteXtra
  • Synote Extra

Please let us know what you think – voting is taking place!

 

So far three interviews have been carried out with researchers and the data will be made available on Synote with annotations – the majority of the comments coming out have been very positive including those from our external evaluator.  However, work still needs to be undertaken on certain icons, tooltips and compatibility with all browsers.

Final usability scores will be collected on the iSurvey version of the SUS evaluation form open to all the team.  Further interviews are planned in the coming weeks with final tweaks to the look and feel of this iteration taking place early in December when the last meeting will be held.

Terms and Conditions, Ethics, Data Protection, Licensing, IP – Legal issues

Help - advice neededAt previous meetings we have rather skirted around all the legal issues but having looked at the  JISC Legal website and chatting with Lisa and Mary it was time to ask for help that might address the issues specifically arising at the University of Southampton  … Diana Galpin very kindly came to our rescue.

The original version of Synote has some Terms and Conditions that were designed to cover all eventualities related to the use of the service as a way of listening to lectures or replaying videos and audio discussions.  The audio and video files were held on other people’s servers and Synote just linked to the output.  The ALUIAR version of Synote rather changes the scene, although perhaps not altogether.

Scenario One

Imagine, as is the case with some members of the team, that a researcher in the Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty at University of Southampton is interviewing patients and wishes to record the interview. The video has to be saved in a secure space but the annotations and transcription of that video can be viewed publicly or just shared with the team or kept completely private.  upload page

The settings in both the original and new version of Synote allow for this to occur and with the new upload system in ALUIAR the video can be hosted on a Southampton server that is within the faculty’s control.  All the legal aspects that surround the video need to be dealt with by the University and the ethics dealt with by the faculty involved.

The ALUIAR team need to ensure that there is a way of allowing those who download the code to be able to make changes to contact names and to ensure alterations can be made to the Terms and Conditions to suit individual faculty needs.

Scenario Two

A researcher in another institution wishes to use the ALUIAR version of Synote – they can download the code from Source Forge but the team need to add a caveat to the repository pointing out in a sentence similar to this one … “this version of Synote is not controlled or hosted by the University Southampton, who accepts no liability for the content and materials held herein.”

In the discussions with Diana Galpin it was felt that it would be helpful to have two downloads available, one for those based in the University of Southampton and one for other institutions.   It was also felt that it would be useful to make a guide regarding what can be uploaded, including limitations as well as a usage reminder – “you are using your own recordings” etc…

source forge screen grabFinally, IP management and source code tracking was discussed with the importance of acknowledging others’ code as part of the tracking process available in the open source repository.

We owe many thanks to Diana, as she has also offered to guide us as to the suitable wording that goes onto the Synote web pages and well as in Source Forge.

New Interface and coding analysis – 5th Meeting Agenda

title slide for data analysisThe next meeting will be held on October 13th from 2-3pm in the Access Grid Room, Building 32 level 3.

Apologies

Mary Gobbi.

Agenda

  • Feedback from meeting with Torsten
  • Data Analysis discussion  – Mary is unable to come to the meeting but as can be seen above and below she has kindly sent us her thoughts on a schema of data analysis for traditional transcriptions.
Qualitative Data Analysis Steps (Adapted from Creswell and Burnard)

Qualitative Data Analysis Steps (Adapted from Creswell and Burnard)

  • New interface presented by Yunjia  – Interview recordings from another project have been collected that will be used by E.A. to test the system along with any carried out by other researchers.  The evaluation phase will be discussed with times for meetings and further testing of the system.
  • Data Protection, Ethics and other legalities to be discussed
  • Foot pedal control
  • AOB and date of next meeting.

Suggested Solutions to Synote ALUIAR Issues – 4th Meeting

The 4th meeting of the ALUIAR team was set up to finalise the storyboarding of the ideas suggested in previous meetings and to present the outcomes from the data gathering plus options for some functional solutions.

Those attending were Mike Wald(MW), Garry Wills (GW), Seb Skuse (SS), Yunjia Li (YL), Mary Gobbi (MG), Lisa Roberts (LR),  and E.A. Draffan (EA)

Apologies

Apologies were received from Lester Gilbert,  Lisa Harris and Debbie Thackray.

Mike opened the meeting with a discussion document related to the functionality issues discussed at the outset of the project and comments collected from initial interviews.   Accepted ideas are in red. 

  1. Greater flexibility of movement backwards or forwards through a recording (e.g. by typing in new time) as at present can only move in 5 second  ‘nudges’ or move time slider or change speed if recording format and player allow.

Possible Solution(s)

a) Enter time into time entry box and player will move to that time

b) Change ‘nudge’ time from 5 seconds to 1 second

c) Add additional ‘nudge’ time of 1 second as well as existing 5 seconds

d) If in editor and transcript text is selected for the editor text box then move player time automatically to the start Synpoint time

  1. A drop-down box listing frequently used tags (e.g. for coding name of speaker and category code)

Possible Solution:

Implement drop-down box listing frequently used tags. E.g.

a)    tags they have used on this recording

b)    tags anyone has used on  this recording

c)    in alphabetic order

  1. foot pedal control of player

Possible Solution:

Find available foot pedal that works or allows pedals to be assigned to keyboard shortcuts – Research the issues – EA to contact Hagger about suitable foot pedals

  1. When manually transcribing a recording it is possible to also annotate this with the start time of the clip entered automatically but the end time needs to be manually entered. Synote allows a section of a created transcript to be selected and the annotation to be linked to that section with the start and end times of those sections to be automatically entered. It would make the system easier to use if it was possible to also do this without having first to save the transcript.

Possible Solution:

If there is text in the editor text box then when selecting create, automatically enter both the start and end Synpoint times into the Synmark start and end times

  1. Facility to download the annotation data (e.g. to Microsoft Excel for statistical analysis and charts and graphs or for a report or into other annotation tools). At the moment the information requires copying and pasting

Possible Solution:

Add csv export for Synmarks and Transcript to print preview

  1. Making it harder to exit without saving and so losing changes made.

 Solution: Already done this in the current version

  1. Allowing the user to control the recording playback when annotating by providing media player controls in the annotation window. (at present a user can annotate a recording and the annotation can automatically read the time of the recording but the user cannot easily replay a section of the recording while writing the annotation)

Possible Solution:

Add the javascript player controls to the Synmark panel

  1. Redesign of interface to improve learnability

Possible Solution:

This is related to the current interface work and can be seen in the PowerPoint slide show below. 

  1. Organise recordings into groups and categories to make them easier to find and manage

Possible Solution:

Add tags to the title field

If categories were to be used they would have to be hard coded and not all the categories would be suitable.

  1. Ability to replay just the video clip from a search (at present plays from the start time and manually have to pause at the end time of the clip)

Possible Solution:

Using linked multimedia fragments – not feasible in the time scale

Additional Issues NOT in original Proposal

xiii Users find it difficult to understand how to store and link to their recordings in their own web space

Possible Solution: (Yunjia is currently investigating this) 

Allowing recordings to be uploaded into database rather than only being linked to in user’s own web based storage area

There then followed a presentation by Yunjia to show the work already carried out on the uploading of videos and audio recordings as well as changes that are happening to the interface. A discussion followed and the ideas were accepted.  The website is not public at present but below are a series of slides to show how the system is changing.

There was no other business and possible dates for the next meeting have been added to the Doodle Calendar for October.

 

ALUIAR Story Board

A quick story board has been designed to demonstrate the basic functions for a typical student/user. The slides illustrate views from the current Synote website with the first of the improvements requested in previous blogs. .

Scenario 1

A researcher wants to go to a group that has been set up by their research group and view/listen to another researchers recordings. The researcher has already registered as their university login grants them access to Synote.

Slide 1:

This is only slightly changed from the original. The interface has been complemented on its lack of clutter and easy to use at this stage. But as mentioned by evaluators, written instruction is now given to show users what exactly it is they are searching for in the ‘Google style’ search function. It was also decided that there should be an FAQ.  For the ‘look and feel’ the heading is being designed to be consistent across all pages of the Synote website.

Slide 2:

The login page is also largely unchanged. There is now help for choice that need to be made about the username and password, which was requested in the co-design sessions. There will also be a “have you forgotten your password?” link, so that users who forget their password can have it reset.

Slide 3:

This slide shows the look of the homepage once the user has logged in. Also it is noted that sometimes users have gone to ‘watch/listen’ to a recording before logging in and have been redirected to the login page, after which they always returned to the homepage. Should the login be successful, the login should redirect you to the last page visited.

Slide 4:

This page shows the list of groups that have been created in Synote. This design is what the “Users” list will look like (without the “shared” column). It was also discovered that the search at the top was not specific to the users/groups in the list shown, but it was a keyword search for the entire site. This should be changed so that users may use it to search content that is specific to the list they are viewing.

Slide 5:

This page shows a specific group’s page along with all of the recordings that have been shared within this group. In the current version, if you select the title of the recording it took you to a page that showed more information about it. This has been changed to a “More info” link. “Replay” has also been changed to “Play” to make it slightly clearer to users.

Slide 6:

This is the “More Info” page for a specific recording. This demonstrates a view that the creator would have of this page along with what they can do to this recording. This has been shown to illustrate that the page has its uses, but the navigation has been modified so that users who do not need to visit this page, do not do it unintentionally.

Slide 7:

This is the recording player page. This demonstrates a typical layout and highlights where all the control will now be on the page. It is hoped that by grouping the functionality on a small banner at the top, it will help make the advanced functionality easier to find and use. This is chosen over having functions surrounding each of the 4 sections of the page. The bar and the search box can also be minimised up to the top of the page so that more room can be generated on the screen if required.

 

Scenario 2

An individual wants to go to one of the research recordings they have published so that they can make some comments (i.e. synmarks) to it. He/ She will need to access them via their own profile.

Slide 1:

This is only slightly changed from the original. Written instruction is given to show users what exactly it is they are searching for in the ‘Google style’ search function. Once again there is the FAQ (as above) and the heading is consistent across all pages of the Synote website.

Slide 2:

The login page is also unchanged for the most part (as above). There is help for the username and password and the “have you forgotten you password?” link so that users who forget their password can have it reset.

Slide 3:

This slide shows the look of the homepage once the user has logged in. Also it is noted that sometimes users have gone to ‘watch/listen’ to a recording before logging in and have been redirected to the login page, after which they always returned to the homepage. Should the login be successful, the login should redirect you to the last page visited.

Slide 4:

This shows a view of a user’s profile, including their details, functions they can carry out on their profile and a list of all the recordings they have published. Next to each recording are the functions that the users may take for each of the recordings. This has changed from the original system in that all the information about a user and their activity is all accessible via their profile page.

Slide 5:

This is the recording player page. This demonstrates the view the creator will have of their own recording. All the functionality required to edit the recording can be found in its respective section of the page. The bar and the search box can also be minimised up to the top of the page so that more room can be generated on the screen if required.

Slide 6:

No changes are planned for the way Synmarks are made at present.

Scenario 3

This is just the beginning of the journey for the researcher wishing to find his own recordings (1), make some annotations (2) and link to a video (3) – the upload system has yet to be story boarded.

Slide 1

Slide 2

Slide 3

Tension between simplicity and complexity

A blog about “The Dirtiest Word in UX: Complexity” may not sound like something related to our work on Synote, but it came to me via the JISC  Rave-in-Context group discussion list.  There are nuggets of interest around usability and learnability and the acronym stands for ‘User Experience‘ design.  Scroll down the page and you will find an interesting comment:

“Removing that layer of confusion to make the user’s goals easy to achieve means making things simple and clear. However, removing confusion doesn’t always mean removing complexity—it’s somewhat of a grey area. Sometimes complexity actually isn’t such a bad thing.”

Later the author writes…”Comparing the context and purpose to other sites reveals more about the apparent simplicity of Google. Google is a search engine whereas Yahoo! and MSN are Web directories—two different types of tool that require two different approaches to the UI.[2] Donald Norman explains why these other tools seem more complex than Google:

“Why are Yahoo! and MSN such complex-looking places? Because their systems are easier to use. Not because they are complex, but because they simplify the life of their users by letting them see their choices on the home page: news, alternative searches, other items of interest.[3]”

 

There is then a discussion around the concept of ‘Adjacent in Space and Stacked in Time’ by Edward Tufte

 

adjacent in space and stacked in time

“Adjacent in space is taking elements of an application and positioning them all on the same screen. Depending on the information and number of features an application has, it can make the screen appear more, or less, complex…

Stacked in time is splitting the functionality up into several screens or layers, like a story being spread across pages in a book rather than crammed into a single long page… ”

The discussion for us is possible around another point…

“Using techniques like onboarding to simplify an experience are important, but should be carefully implemented. There should be consideration for the posture of the application or website. If the user is going to be using it often and for longer periods of time (sovereign), then the onboarding help should be able to be turned off or gradually be removed as the user grows. If users rarely visit and only for a short period (transient) this type of interface would continue to be helpful, rather than a hindrance.”