Ask Eric: Questions & Answers

November 8, 2001 – submitted by Martha Roden of the Fort Collins, CO

Question: I have attended three HFI courses (when our company still had a good budge) and love your information. I have read the research regarding what is an acceptable "wait" time for users when performing various tasks ... and the best way to provide feedback to let the users know that the system is still up an running, and hasn’t hung. But the data generally deals with people working alone on their own computers, initiating the tasks.

However, I have a situation that is a little different and I thought perhaps you could help me.

Our company develops collaborative software that allows two or more people to work together on the same drawing or document while they talk to each other by phone. People can perform a variety of viewing and reviewing tasks, including: rotate, zoom, pan (move around a page), measure, mark up (add graphic and text notes), and move from page to page.

Now, here’s the "rub." Because people are collaborating across the Internet, and because different people often have different Internet connection speeds, there is sometimes lag time between when one person performs an operation and when another person sees the results of that operation. For example, imagine an online meeting between three people, all looking at the same engineering drawing. Person A clicks and drags to move to an area of the drawing under discussion. Person A sees the movement immediately (in less than 1 second). However, person B waits 2 seconds before seeing the movement. And person C, with a slow Internet connection, does not see the movement for a full 6 seconds. Consequently, person C may begin doing another operation (like zooming into the drawing or writing a comment on the drawing).

We have no control over the types of machines people have and their Internet connections. Consequently, we find that response time for the most common viewing operations varies from "instantaneous" to almost 9 seconds. We always provide visual feedback for any operation taking longer than 2 seconds so the user knows something is going on, but we are concerned with the differences in response time.

When a user works alone, the viewing operations (zoom in and out, move, and rotate) rarely take longer than 1-2 seconds. However, when the user works collaboratively with others across the Internet, the operations can take of up 9 seconds because of Internet connection speed.

We are concerned about two issues during a collaborative, online meeting:

1. How long it takes for people to see the results of an operation when they have a slow connection (up to 9 seconds).
2. The impact on the effectiveness of an online meeting when people with faster Internet connections must wait for people with slower Internet connections to see results of any operation.

Do you have any data or opinions about these issues? I would appreciate any feedback you can offer.

Eric's response: This is highly problematic. Given the clear danger of conflicts, you will have to lock "ownership" of the interface controls to a given user and have this control passed from one participant to another formally (others can have pointing capability). This is awkward, but probably the only way given the technical constraint. It is also clear that this lag will impede the interactive process. User will compensate for this over their voice connection. Expect them to keep saying "are you seeing this?" But that is probably all you can do.

October 23 , 2001 – submitted by Daniel Chang of Malaysia

Question: I am planning to write a white paper on Information Architecture development on the challenge of content migration to multiple media such as Mobile Phone, TV, Print Publishing and Web (Multimedia platform).

Would the fundamentals of Web Information Architecture be different from other media? How could we manage the Information Architecture thinking and planning phase to adapt to this change?

Eric's response: Very early in the days of wireless, designers had the idea that we could surf the Web on a wireless handheld device. With the current handheld devices this turned out to be silly. Viewing little bits of a Web page is hardly satisfying or practical. The Web TV offering tried to surf the Web with a lower resolution TV display. Again, not a success from the viewpoint of usability.

Foremost, it is necessary to totally adjust the APPLICATIONS. A handheld device is better at answering a specific question, or communicating. One could walk up to a vending machine and use it to buy a drink (though I think a smart credit card does as well). But you are not likely to be able to shop for clothing through your handheld.

The flow and mechanism of navigation is different for different devices. The Web gives the ability to create complex home pages combining content and menu choices. The smaller device forces structures that drive the user through menus and then yield content.

The structure of the content must also be different on different devices. With the very limited display space of some interfaces, the user must be presented with much more limited types of material. Large images may be impossible. The content must be fragmented into small chunks and you must consider how to keep the user oriented. The most extreme case of this may be the voice response and telematic systems that have no display but use a voice output. The user must maintain context without the ability to rescan a display to remind him/her of the situation. You therefore have to break the content into small logical chunks and routinely remind the user of the context.

March 22, 2001 – submitted by Eileen Chong of Canada

Question: What do you think of pop-up information boxes?

Eric's response: It depends on whether you're working in a GUI environment, where pop-ups can be valuable, or in a Web environment, where they rarely make sense.

In a GUI environment (Windows^TM, not in a browser) designers can keep good control of pop-ups. For example, they can make the pop-up support a modal taskflow, so that the user cannot do anything else until the task is completed. Or they can make the pop-up a reference tool by setting it to stay on top. But beware. Many times I see designs where the user ends up with a whole series of pop-ups on a page. It would have been better to let the user navigate to a second page full of material. I understand the advantages of keeping the user in the context of the primary page, but it isn't good to give the user the extra work of opening and closing all those pop ups.

In the browser environment, on the other hand, pop-ups are usually a bad idea. You have very little control over them, and there is a real danger that the popup will drop behind the browser and be lost. Also, many users have built up a reflex to cancel any small window opening, under the assumption that it is one of those pesky interstitial ads. Therefore you need to have a really good reason to use a pop-up.

An example of where it is probably justified is with financial sites, where normally people key a ticker. If they do not know about keying tickers, you can select a link that provides a pop-up that finds the ticker symbol. They will not have to leave the research page for this minor lookup.

March 1, 2001 – submitted by Andrew Francois of Sydney, Australia

Question: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) promised to deliver better looking and easier maintained web pages and improved accessibility. This hasn't happened and is not the fault of CSS if approached from the standards set down by the W3C, but is the fault of the web browsers to follow these recommendations. With Netscape apparently dying and the "Microsoft web" becoming a real threat to the democracy of the web, what strategy does a web developer employ to reap the supposed benefits, still create visually interesting pages but still remain accessible to people still using a broad range of browsers?