UI Hall of Fame/Shame

1. UI Hall of Fame/Shame Aditya R Sharma Human Computer Interaction 4th Oct 2006

2. UI of the Olympus M:robe 500 • Touch Screen based MP3 player • Features a camera, can be used to store and browse pictures

3. UI Effectiveness: • No physical controls other than a power button on the device, have to look at the screen to operate. • No way to adjust the contrast or color balance of the screen. • The screen gets totally washed out in bright light and is rendered pretty much unusable outside in sunlight. • To click pictures using the camera, you need to tap the touch screen, (lack of any physical button to do that), makes it very difficult to keep the camera steady while clicking pictures. • You can listen to music while doing other things around the GUI but play controls aren't available on all screens It could use volume controls and simple playback controls (play/pause, FF/Next, RW/Previous) built into the main unit, one of them could be used to click pictures.

4. Efficiency: • Processing power not up to the mark, Takes roughly 10 seconds to boot, 5-6 second delay between most screens • Lack of a back button on any screen, increases navigation time • Waste of screen space, takes forever to go through a long play list • Displays just 6 thumbnails per screen while browsing pictures, it can take a while to page through a collection of hundreds or thousands of pictures • Like the ipod, u need software (m:trip) to load songs

5. Utility • Should have either incorporated at least a medium grade camera or none at all, method of clicking pictures makes it worse. • Despite being a perfect candidate for watching movies, as a document viewer or an image editor with such a large, high-res screen, the MR-500 isn't capable. • You need to carry both the dock and AC adapter to charge it - a lot of stuff to carry around compared to a single USB cable for the iPod

6. PicToChat • Software built within the portable gaming system Nintendo DS • Used to chat/communicate with other DS users within 100 feet

7. Effectiveness • The layout provided is very effective, the character layout is very similar to the standard keyboard layout and the overall appearance, buttons and layout of the window is very similar to a paintbrush program • Allows user to send quite elaborate/expressive messages. Other than numbers/alphabets, one can send letters with accents over them, Japanese letters, a very wide range of special symbols and smileys. • The best feature is that the user can draw images using the stylus, and thus send messages with images or a combination of predefined symbols and user drawn images. • The characters on the keyboard layout might seem very small, but the small tip of the stylus makes it very difficult for a user to make a wrong choice. • Terrific positioning of several key aspects such as the send button, keyboard, and pencil and eraser size buttons

8. Efficiency • Drawing messages with the stylus on the screen provides a very quick method to send messages. • Allows actions like clear screen, provides shortcuts via the A,B,X,Y and the 4 arrow buttons to switch between keyboard layouts, select characters and erase characters. • Allows the user to copy a previous message sent by himself or someone else, and then allows to manipulate it, (tic-tac-toe, hangman, pictonary are very popular games with kids at DS Wi-Fi hotspots)

9. Learnability • The resemblance of the layout to a standard image editing software makes it very easy to learn how to use the software. • The layout provides a whole lot of options in a very compact and intuitive layout while still not appearing cramped and looks very graceful.