"Well, they're WRONG!" responded our usability expert when we told her that rounded corner for tabs used in our page makes that object feels less serious. 

The design team, which I'm part of, believes that we can push the envelope by abstrating the shape without making it less usable.

The user researchers, however, argues that we have to closely follow the real world shapes and implementation.

Right after she said that, maybe also because she was very passionate about it, I thought to myself "You're not the expert in visual design, so how can you make that kind of statement?" 

I have to admit that I became defensive because I am the main designer for that page.

Now that I've managed to see the whole thing more objectively, I respect her opinion because I'm sure that's based on her extensive research experince . I also agree that abstracting shapes could break the paradigm and confuse users. Risky.

The question that I have is that the physical world is different from GUI on the screen, so how can we adapt a convention from real world and make it appropriate for screen interface? We can use fancy rendering to make something on screen looks tactile, but no matter what we do, we're still working on 2 dimensional medium, not 3 where we can use our tactile sense to enhance our sensibility.

A silly example: consider the hand icon that we use to click on links and buttons. In real world, our hands are always much bigger than the buttons that we push. If the button is much bigger than our hands, most likely one finger is not strong enough to push it. So if we strictly follow this proportion, we'd have hand cursor that would cover 10% of our screen.

It does not make any sense. So the GUI designer, maybe through iterations, who designed it decided to make the hand cursor small enough so we can see what we're clicking, and big enough we can still recognize its shape. The shape of that cursor, does not look like a real hand, in case you haven't noticed. If you don't believe me, you can compare it with your own hands. It's cartoony, but again, enough to convey the message that it's a hand.

So I think the question that we need to ask as we appropriate real world object for our on screen interface is: "What makes this convention works and what do we need to adjust to make it work in 2D environment?" 

I was reading an interesting article at CNN Money titled "6 strategies to survive the real estate bust " when i noticed a different way of linking that they use.

They inserted links to different parts of the article (i.e. next page) in between paragraphs in addition to listing them out at the bottom of each page.

The interesting thing is that, before I drew the co-relation between these links to the ones at the bottom of the page, I noticed them, but I kept on reading. So I sort of read through them.

I'm not entirely sure what is the value of this kind of link. Perhaps even when users are interested in a certain article, they don't really read it. They probably do a hybrid of reading and scanning. So instead of reading the article, they just scan it more carefullly.

This could be beneficial, but I think it needs to be used carefully. At one point in my reading, I got confused because I was trying to digest a case scenario that involved number crunching, then the flow was disrupted by a link. The interruption distracted me from my task of calculating in my head, which I found annoying.

In conculsion, I think this is an interesting way of helping users to get the content faster, but it needs to be used where users can do careful scanning, not reading. 

Today John Maeda gave a presentation on simplicity, promoting his book with the same title, at Yahoo! campus in Sunnyvale. Luckily for people who can't be present physically for that presentation, there was a webcast.

So bunch of us from the Santa Monica office, watched the presentation in one of our conference rooms.

The presentation was not like what I expected, although it was as inspiring(if not more so) than what I expected.

I expected something very technical or academic from a very serious presenter since the only exposure to Prof. Maeda's work that I had was through using his "Design by Numbers" book and application.

The presentation was very lighthearted and refreshing. Prof. Maeda told many jokes, verbally and visually while sharing his wisdom without putting himself on a pedestal. 

There were many interesting things said and shown in that presentation, but one thing that really sticks with me is seeing simplicity not as the answer, but as a question.

It's not about making things work better of more productive. It's about life appreciation more than design or programming principles (although his law of simplicity would probably work very well in those domains also).

If anyone ask me how I would describe my impression of that presentation in one line, I would say: "Wow! That guy really knows how to enjoy life!" So simplify your life so you can enjoy it more.

Design has to do with visual style. A very subjective matter. One person favors blue, others like red. 

Often time, as designers,we consider one visual style as our style. "I create clean design" or "I create vintage design."

We, designers, don't have the luxury to cling to a particular style like artists simply because design always has a purpose.

End users decide the success of failure of our design. 

Luckily, in today's world we can get users' feedback from various sources: web logs, user testing, and other user research methods.

Listen to the users by allowing the data guide your design and detach yourself from the design.

The numbers don't lie. That's haow collective subjective preferences become an objective guidance that should not be ignored. 

"I just refuse to take offense," she said. Then she explained, "If a person is stupid or ignorant, it's his problem, but if  I let his stupidity offend me, it becomes my problem." I overheard this at a coffee shop last weekend.

We can't control how other people act and behave, but we can control how we respond to their action or behavior.

Just drop it.

This is also true in dealing with critics, clients or supervisors.

Whatever they say or do (or don't do), you're in control over your own feeling. You always have a choice on how to respond to what they throw at you. Evaluate yourself and take any valuable input that could build you up, but make sure that you don't let any negative emotion slow you down.

Refuse to take offense. Keep on running.

A great article that could improve the usability aspect of our page design as more complex interaction models used on the web: Communicating web 2.0 through design by Robert Hoekman Jr.

The main message that I learned from this article is to simplify the design, not only visually, but also in the way the content is articulated. Make it painfully obvious. 

Another important lesson is to look to existing convention that have been widely accepted by users (i.e. how components of desktop application works). This will create familiar feeling for users and help them gain confidence in interacting with our application. 

In the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a page. A very important page that get seen by literally millions of users.

As this project gets close to completion, I try to solve very specific UI problems.

I've tried few different solutions and none has solved those problems. So I asked around since there are many very smart people at Yahoo.

As I tried to get input and advice from my colleagues, i realized a bigger problem: I didn't really know what the problem was.

I kind of know what I wanted to achieve but I couldn't really pinpoint what it is exactly that I need to solve.

That's a very important lesson for me: before trying to find the solution, I need to find the problem. 

I studied design i college, I went to grad school for design, I have been working as a designer for 5 years, but now I feel like i just started learning design.

It's the same game, yet all the rules are different.

All my fancy moves don't work here.

I was esteemed as a great designer. i even believed that myself. Little that I know.

It's been a very humbling experience. 

My confidence has been shattered. I don't even know how to think for myself.

I'm re-learning everything.

How to communicate. How to work. How to design. 

Realizing where I really stand is the first step.

The next step is to build up my confidence.