We come across a lot of bad design in our everyday lives, both online and offline. For most people, it tends to go unnoticed as they browse the Web, shop for groceries, drive their cars or dispense your own butter on your popcorn at the movie theater. That is, until something goes wrong and whatever you were using doesn’t work as expected.

As designers in the interactive space, we’re blessed/cursed with the ability to see all these nonsensical things that confound and disturb, even when we’re not at work. Things that range from tiny to massive. Why does that door handle look like you can pull it to open, when in fact you have to push? Why are parking and other wayfinding signs so difficult to understand? Why does the ATM have so many buttons when we only use 3-4 of them at most? Why was an offshore oil rig equipped with an emergency shutoff valve that can’t be manipulated underwater?

These kinds of questions can drive you mad if you focus on them all day, but it’s precisely that itch, the nagging urge to question the way things are, that make us great at what we do. Any of my friends can probably attest to the times we spend together where I’ve gone bonkers at some of the poorly designed creations people are subjected to on a day-to-day basis.

Of all the ill-conceived, hacked together solutions I’ve seen in my time, AMC’s “Butter Flavor” dispenser at their Yonge & Dundas theater here in Toronto has got to be the most infuriating and, at the same time, hilarious example of bad design I’ve ever come across.

To some, this machine looks relatively innocent, maybe even novel or clever. “Great! I can pour my own butter flavor, letting me douse my stale theater corn product with all the buttery goodness I desire,” could be the first thing that comes to mind.

Upon further inspection, prior to usage, it becomes clear that there’s not one, not two, but three buttons to dispense butter flavor from the same nozzle.

When I see creations like this, I can’t help but think of how it came to be. What went through the heads of the people that created it? What was the original goal of the object, and how did it evolve over time?

Most importantly, which button came first? I imagine the machine had fairly humble roots, offering a single button to start the buttery flow. Just press the button under the nozzle, right? That is, until the nozzle unleashed scalding, buttery horror on the very arm you used to turn it on in the first place.

AMC must have realized the engineering snafu after several complaints, and re-engineered the machine, placing the button well to the right of nozzle, well out of range of the simulated butter. Of course, a fundamental principle of usability is proximity – objects that are close together are perceived to be more related than elements that are farther apart. This button likely confused more people than it did alleviate butter burns.

The final button, placed on the front of the machine, served to alleviate the burn issues of the first button, and the usability issues of the second. Finally, a perfect solution, right? Except for one problem – the other two buttons remain, offering users a confusing array of possible options. Beyond the obvious hygenic issues at play, the fact that this machine exists at all in this current state and some of the decisions that went into its creation lead me to believe there’s some trouble at the helm of AMC’s design team (if one exists at all).

But all the buttons dispense butter, so what’s the harm, right? To me, this is a perfect metaphor to what we commonly encounter in many poorly conceived Web experiences. Creators of websites without clear design principles or (worse yet), any expertise at all, design without clear affordances or paths to completion and then implement bandaid solutions when users complain or sales are less than expected.

Eventually, the site is a cobbled together mess of overlapping functions and navigation elements that were designed with the best of intentions, but just result in a lousy experience for their customers. It reflects poorly on the brand, and is an embarassing indication of the state of the affairs inside the company.

When we design experiences on the Web, we carefully consider the goals of the business and the users, and design the best experience at where those needs intersect. A usable website is the table stakes of a great Web experience. If you can’t get your users to use something as desired, then how in the world will you ever surprise and delight them?

It seems the screens we shared of an alternative home screen for the iPhone created some buzz. We had no intention of taking it any further than a blog post but we figured this was something worth seeing through.

We got in touch with Jay Freeman a.k.a saurik. He’s the guy behind Cydia, an application for jailbroken iPhones that allows you to browse and download apps outside of actual app store. He’s crazy smart, passionate and geeky – three things we love here at T+L. Jay is going to be instrumental in making this happen.

If you haven’t already figured it out, getting this on your phone will require you to jailbreak it. That may not be an appealing option for many, but for the 2 million plus out there who have already done it and for those that are comfortable with doing it, this can be a reality.

The app and the underlying technology to make it happen are still in development so what comes out the other side will differ from what we originally proposed. The biggest change will initially be that it will render only on the lock screen. We went down this road for a number of reasons, primarily because of its relative ease of implementation, though there’s nothing easy about it. Jay is creating a framework to write custom lock screens called Cydget. Our concept will act as the guinea pig.

No word on an actual release date yet due to a last minute crash bug, but from what we hear it’s not far off. We’ll make an official announcement once it’s available. You can follow @teehanlax,
@gteehan and @saurik if you’re looking for more detail since we tend to tweet about this stuff more frequently than we blog about it.

I’d have loved for this post to be the introduction of our latest iPhone application. An application that introduces a new default optional home screen. A screen that doesn’t require you to scan for red dots with numbers inside of them. Instead it would display information and notifications of things that are new and relevant to you. We’ll all have to keep dreaming for the time being. Unless you’re willing to jailbreak your phone it simply isn’t possible to develop and implement this type of hostile UI takeover using the iPhone SDK.

Until then (we’re doubtful that sort of freedom will ever be available) Here’s how we might design a new home screen.

You can see from the screens it’s essentially just a scrollable list of applications and notifications. We envision it behaving in much the same way that the list view does in the Calendar application. By default it may track things like missed calls, unread emails and calendar events. But what if users could allow other apps to feed into this screen as well? If I’m a Facebook junkie I’d be able to tell the Facebook app to include certain feeds on my home screen. If I was a frequent traveler I may include the Tripit app to show me my upcoming trips. The options would only be limited by what apps you have installed.

Update: The demand for this has been too great to ignore. We’re building a working version of this. More details and screens to follow. You can follow us at twitter.com/teehanlax

A scrollable screen of the stuff that matters to me.

Application preferences would allow users to include certain feeds on their home screens.

Jon had mentioned (as did Drew in the comments) he’d like this info without having to unlock the phone. I agree. If only development were this easy.

3beat

Lately, one of the hot topics around our shop has been how to cut the cable. At least 5 of us have canceled our cable contracts, added OTA HD, or both. For me, it’s been an interesting project and I thought I’d share the experience.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while ago when I was explaining my plan to get off the TV grid. Someone said to me, “it makes sense that you’d do that, you interactive guys think TV is dead.” But I don’t. I love TV and I think it’s far from dying. According to the recent Neilson 3 Screen report (pdf), TV is thriving.

<blockquote>”Viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices continues to increase and has hit record levels.”</blockquote>

What is changing is how consumers access and consume TV shows and movies. To me, that’s the real issue because it illustrates how networks need to adapt in order to meet our changing consumption habits. If they ignore the new reality they risk a similar future as the music industry and will become irrelevant. Networks must reinvent themselves mostly because that’s exactly what consumers are doing.

After years of dishing out big bucks to Bell ExpressVu I finally got my act together and canceled my $100/month satellite service. I’m no longer tied to a traditional source for my entertainment needs. My path to freedom took three simple steps.

First, I re-configured my existing home network to automatically collect and organize content. The main computer in my home is a G5 tower and it handles the bulk of all the data coming in and out of my home. It’s not an actual server, but that’s basically what it does. This box moves content around, modifies it, and then parks everything on a 2TB network accessible storage device. I also upgraded my Rogers Internet connection to the 10MB Extreme package. I’m reasonably happy with it now that my system is optimized to deal with throttling. For the most part, bandwidth caps are no longer a concern. To monitor the content I want and access it the moment it becomes available, I use TVshows and Ted. And apart from my newsgroup client (Thanks Chris Erwin), I use Transmission for the heavy lifting.

Next I had to get the content from my network onto my screen(s). I opted to integrate a 40GB AppleTV into my home theatre as my media server. Some people have asked why I didn’t use a Mac Mini, and the simple answer is cost. The secondary purpose of this project was to reduce the amount I pay for home entertainment and the AppleTV integrated perfectly into my existing home network for around $150. Plus, I’m storing all data on an NAS device so I didn’t need the larger capacity version, and I really didn’t want another box to maintain.

I patched my AppleTV to run both Boxee and XBMC. The process was remarkably simple and easy to do – with all the code, how-tos, and decent video walkthroughs at my fingertips. From start to finish I was up and running in about 20-mins.

I’m a huge Boxee fan, but I actually find I use XBMC more often. I use Boxee to watch Internet channels like the Revision3, Make and TWiT – thanks to the simplicity of the repository and apps service. But I rarely use Boxee for movies and TV shows. Instead, I rely on XBMC with the MediaStream skin which pretty much makes it an AppleTV version of Plex. (UPDATE: Andreas correctly points out that XBMC for AppleTV is “not ‘like Plex’, it is Plex that is like XBMC”. Sorry for the confusion). It’s easy to configure. Simple to use. And looks absolutely stunning on a 50″ screen (thank you teamrazorfish). I also love how it indexes any new content it finds on my networked drive, scrapes IMDb and IMDbTV for names, titles and plot summaries, and then downloads things like artwork and cast details in the background.

The last part of the puzzle I wanted to solve was how to get local TV station programming for things like news and sports. Thankfully, most stations now broadcast over-the-air ATSC signals (which is uncompressed HD) and all you need is the equipment to grab them. I removed my satellite dish and mounted two Channel Master 4220 antennas. I aimed one at the CN Tower and the other at Buffalo, NY. Now I have access to around 15 crystal clear HD channels.

My 50″ Panasonic plasma is a commercial unit and doesn’t have a built-in tuner so I needed to find an ATSC decoder box to convert the OTA HD signal. After pouring through various forums I considered the HD HomeRun. But decided that the Samsung DTB-H260F was the one for me. Unfortunately it’s not available in Canada. Fortunately I found one on eBay (incidentally, the only thing I use eBay for these days is to buy/sell second hand geek toys). I think this unit was taken off the market because of a beef with the MPAA because it allows straight pass-through of the HD signal to any recording device. Newer ATSC decoders – especially ones with built-in recorders – down rez the HD signal to SC for storage, the uprez for viewing, resulting in a degraded HD signal and something I wanted to avoid. With my setup I grab uncompressed HD signals over-the-air, my Samsung box takes the signal data to create the channel guide and passes the unaltered 720p/1080i signal through to my home theater receiver which then uprezes it to 1080p and passes it to my plasma. And voila, free HDTV programming.

So, why did I do it? Mostly because I could. I’ve always hated being tied to someone else’s schedule, especially one that defines when and how I can consume media. I tried time-shifting with Bell ExpressVu and even that left me annoyed. With my new home system I can watch whatever, whenever and however I want. I can watch it on the TV in my living room. I can watch it on the computer in my den. And I can watch it on my iPhone in the backyard. I’m the one that decides. And that’s what networks can’t wrap their heads around. They insist on creating systems that define the habits of viewers instead of delivering an experience that their customers want. If they don’t switch gears they are doomed. TV will live. Networks will die.

And this brings me to one last point… Hulu. Guys, open up access. Track viewer habits. Analyze the metrics. Then sell it back to your advertisers. People might not love commercials, but they definitely watch them. Mostly because they’re too lazy to do anything about them.

I’m pretty sure that what consumers hate most is paying bundled rates for channels they don’t want, restrictive scheduling practices, and not being in control. Listen to your consumers. Learn about what they’re doing and change the way you do business. Set up your network distribution properly and no one will ever need a Tivo or PVR again. This is a new era of media consumption where the viewer controls their access. Figure it out and we all win.

Got a minute? Take our Free TV survey.

Resources:
Make an AppleTV Patchstick
How To Install AppleTV Patchstick
Boxee Setup on AppleTV
XBMC Setup on AppleTV

Software:
Transmission
TVshows
Ted
TVNZB

Over The Air HD Info & Equipment:
Free TV in Toronto
Digital Home Forum
Save And Replay Equipment Sales
Sensuz Equipment Sales

(UPDATE) OTA Station Listings:
US – FCC database search
US – Transition Plans by City
Canada – Available OTA stations

p>. Follow *3beat* on Twitter.

Paul Watson posted a nice solution to quickly browse home screen layouts or safari windows on the iPhone.

Check it out.

I’m not sold on NYTimes.com new feature, TimesPeople, a social tool designed to share your activity – reading, rating, commenting – with other NYT members. If you’re a recent reader of NYT, you’ve probably noticed a floating bar appear above the content that prompts you to sign up for it.

Here’s an excerpt of the description from the FAQ:

…when you recommend an article, comment on a blog post, or rate a movie or restaurant, these activities will become visible to other TimesPeople users in a special toolbar at the top of every NYTimes.com page. You’ll also have a personal page that keeps track of your TimesPeople activities and lets you browse your network of readers.

The problem, as I see it, is that I’m not solely the selector of what information gets disseminated. And that is what is really at the core of the social web; It’s not automation, spewing every action I take for friends to consume and filter through themselves (unless you have a sophisticated filtering mechanism like Facebook’s wall). It’s about happenstance, finding and sharing that amazing article, restaurant review or inflammatory comment that you know certain friends will appreciate.

And the legwork (registration, adding friends, etc) to do that in a new tool is just not worth the time it used to be. Why not leverage the friend network I already have on Facebook? An app on Facebook that does the same thing would involve less investment and probably have more reach. I’m on Facebook more than I am on the Times, which would be the only place I could see my friend’s browsing activity using this tool. Ed. note: There is a Facebook application that works with TimesPeople.

Regardless, I’ve always had respect for the New York Times and what Khoi Vinh’s team has been doing for online. I wish them the best success at it but as a daily reader myself, you won’t see me signing up anytime soon.

Kids, this is what happens when you outsource your online advertising.

• Notice the misalignment on the “Learn More” button.
• The line spacing, or lack of, is atrocious
• What’s with the motion blur on a parked car?
• The crunchy pixelation by the Ford logo in the upper right.

Ford would never accept a print or TV ad that looked like this. Why is it acceptable to do it online?

At one time quality was job 1 at Ford. Apparently no more.

UPDATE: We think that this may be a backup GIF for a Flash ad. Still no excuse.

Go looking for a lost package, you’ll end up on this page:

When I clicked the “Lost item” link, I ended up here:

Oh, the irony! But the best was yet to come. Since my only option was to go back to the “Main page”, I hit the link with keen anticipation.

I could have sworn the browser I was using, Firefox 2.0.0.11, was “sufficiently current.” It was released, what, a couple of months ago? But hell, it’s only got a 36% market share. Hardly worth supporting.

Oh well. If you’ll excuse me, I guess I’d better go digging for a copy of Netscape.