It's the interface, stupid..
So, I was thinking the other day, as I was working on my laptop on the shuttle home (ok, yeah, we have it pretty good at Y! - shuttle with wifi, laptop, etc) that working on a laptop just isn't the same.
Sometimes, I think, obvious statements are made and then we move on, instead of examining what that obvious statement might hold upon deeper review. So, yes, it's quite obvious that working on a laptop is not the same as a desktop. But, what does that mean? What's interesting about that? Well, my thought the other day was focused on the laptop interface. Primarily the lack of a mouse. I generally hate working on my laptop if I need to use my mouse significantly at all. Am I weird in this? I don't think so. Touchpads suck. They're overly sensitive, they don't offer much range of motion and they're too small. That little button thing in the middle of your keyboard? That's not any better. Sure, you might get more range out of it, but it's so inexact.. I hate it. You might have gotten used to one or both of these devices, but the fact remains, neither one of them lives up to an actual mouse. So, here's the thing: you can buy a mini mouse to use with a laptop, but not many people do. As a result, those of us who spend time working on laptops experience a certain amount of interface pain, as a result of this develop. So, it stands to reason, then, that interfaces that are designed to minimize use of the mouse will be preferrable. Hmmm well, who has an interface that is really well optimized for minimizing mouse pain? Damn it!!! Google!!! Bastards/Geniuses!! Take a look at their homepage. When you go there, where's your cursor start?? Ahh, yup, right there, in the search box, where you need to act. WITHOUT having to use a mouse. So, I'm working on a laptop, I open a browser (easily done via keyboard shortcuts) and there I am, ready to go, if Google's my home page. But my homepage is My!Yahoo, so, what happens when I open my browser? Ok, honestly, I don't know where my cursor starts. I have to tab all over the place.. or pull out my laptop mouse skills. Argh! How about Yahoo.com? Oh look, that's smart, it starts off in the search box. That works. But, say that I don't really want everyone going to Yahoo.com searching right away. I want them to look at other stuff on the page. The challenge, it seems, is to make it easier for people to navigate this page without a mouse. How can I do that? Honestly, I have no clue. But it stands to reason that doing a better job of it would be a good thing.. Ok, so what am I saying here? When I think about how user behavior is changing, there are several areas that seem to matter, particularly on the web. A few key ones that I tend to look to:
- Speed, in every sense (site/app loading, getting where I want to go, figuring out the interface, incorporating it into my regular behavior..)
- Personalization
- Device agnosticism
- Connections/communication
There are more, of course, and we can debate terms and re-categorize ad nauseum. That's not the point of this post though.
The point is that to some extent, the adoption of laptops have probably favored Google and other similarly designed sites. Sites that are focused in their goal, minimize the reliance upon the mouse and account for the differences in speed between laptops and desktops are probably going to present a more favorable experience to a laptop user. As this shift continues to occur and we migrate to the next device form factor, mobile, I think this trend is obviously going to occur again. When Russ Beattie talks about making more sites and services mobile, I think in one sense he's talking about just thinking about mobile tie-ins. But, there's the "design for the interface" aspect of it too, which is maybe getting lost in the shuffle. As we design more services for more devices, I think we should all be cognizant of how maddening it can be to working on a laptop, without a mouse, and take that to heart.
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