New Microsoft Phone

Microsoft has recently (November 8, 2010) released a new phone called the Windows Phone 7. The design of the phone is simple, to get you quick access to the important features on your phone, like missed calls new messages new emails and of course the phone. The main screen of the phone has only a few big buttons that display all the information needed for those simple features. These buttons, which Microsoft calls tiles, can be moved around, added or deleted and update in real time. The phone is written in a new language designed by Microsoft called Metro.

My Bed Room

I live in fox this year and my bed room has a few major design flaws. The biggest issue is that the light switch is all the way on the opposite side of the room from the door. This means that if you come in at night and want a light you need to stumble across the room to get to the light. This is really annoying. The second problem is the location of the outlets. The only outlet near my bed is about half way down my bed and the exact height of the mattress. I dont have a light next to my bed because there are no outlets near by. Also I use my phone as my alarm clock so I want it next to my bed. So I plug my cell phone charger into the outlet next to my bed. Like I said before the outlet is the same height as the mattress so the mattress bangs into the charger and sometimes unplugs it. Its like when the room was designed they didnt know that it was for a dorm because these problems are so obvious that its just lazy to mot make it better.

Twitter

I really like twitter.  I think its cool how you can hear what anybody has to say the moment they say it, so my problem isnt with twitter but its with the interface.  If you have ever used twitter then chances are that you have used the search bar.  For this example lets say you want to find Shaq O'Neill.  So when you type something into the search bar, like Shaq, and press enter you expect Shaq to be the first result.  Thats not the case however.  Twitter default makes you search for tweets that contain the word you searched for.  So instead of getting Shaq's page you get the most recent post that has Shaq in it.  If you want to search for people you have to click on the people tab.  Now if you  want to search for another person you type the name in press enter and it returns you to the tweet page.  If you are already on the person tab then your search should return people and not tweets.
An even worse problem is with the mobile twitter.  There are no tabs.  So if you want to add someone to who you follow then you better hope your near a computer because you cant do it from your phone.

gmail

I love how the school switched to gmail.  Gmail provides a lot more features as well as a better interface.  However there is one problem, changing your password.  If you have tried and failed or not tried yet let me walk you through the process:
1) Click on settings
2) Go to the accounts tab
3) Click Google account settings
4) Click change password

Why does it take 4 different pages just to do something as simple as changing your password?  Aren't steps 1 and 3 the same?  I actually couldn't figure this out for a couple weeks until I was fed up with it and hunted it down.  As much as I love Google (Chrome, Android, Google Maps) I can't understand why they don't want people to change their password.  It should be click on settings click change password, people shouldn't have to go through all these steps to simply change their password.

My Bed

This is an issue that I need to deal with every night.  The issue is that at the head of my bed there are about 5 inches between the end of my bed and the wall.  Every night I end up sleeping with only one pillow because the other one falls between the bed and the wall, and its really annoying.  There is a bar that runs parallel to the bed but it is too high up and doesn't help this problem at all.  My roommate was complaining about it the other day too so I know that it isn't just me

YouTube

The design that i want to look at this week is the design of YouTube.  I am a really big fan of YouTube except for one main thing the play/pause button.  The most important button on the screen is the that button and they make it hard to find.  If you have ever been down towards the bottom of the page (by the comments) and then needed to pause the video or shut the volume off, you need to scroll all the way up the page and find that little button.  My suggestion is that when you are on that page make a set of buttons on the bottom of the window that always stay at the bottom almost like the buttons at the top of the screen (back, forward, refresh).  If you put all the buttons that are on YouTube at the bottom you would not need to scroll all the way up to pause the video.

Speech Recognition as an Input Technique

The article I read is called Speech Recognition as a Computer Graphics Input Technique by Richard Rabin.  The article is about using speech commands to speed up input.  The article touches on a lot of advantages to speech vs keyboard input.  By using speech you will reduce the time it takes to train someone knew to the technology because they can learn just a few keywords to say rather than learning multiple steps.  It also helps because it will increase workers speed.  By saying commands rather than typing them it will not take as long to input them, especially with longer and more complex commands.  Speech input technology has been demonstrated and proven that it can work but as the technology improves it will be more accurate as well as have a larger more diverse vocabulary that can be understood.  Most speech input devices rely on keywords that prompt the computer to do something but in the near future they will use more continuous speech which will allow for a broader range of tasks to be completed.  Testing has shown that operators are initially skeptical about talking to computers but after a short adjustment period they have no problems with it and find it very productive.

Here is a link to the article: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/810000/801278/p179-rabin.pdf?key1=801278&key2=0110255821&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=103251167&CFTOKEN=61037135

My TV

My TV is designed pretty well on first glance.  However there are a couple things that make it very frustrating to use.  First is that there is only one component input.  We have a cable box and have it hooked up to the component input so that we can get high definition channels.  We would also like to have out XBox hooked up to be able to play in HD.  This is not possible however because in order to do that we would have to unplug the cable and plug in the XBox.
Which leads me to my next point of poor design.  All the input plugs are in the back of the TV facing down.  This       means that in order to plug in anything you need to get below the TV so that you can see where you are plugging in your cables.  And since the input is in the back of the TV it is a very hard angle to get.  The overall design of the TV isn't horrible but the input is which makes the TV very frustrating to use.

My remote control

        The remote to my tv is a pretty basic remote.  It can change the channel, the volume, the settings, and the input of the tv.  The thing that makes the design to this bad is the location of the buttons.  There are three buttons that control the volume, up down and mute.  This specific remote has the mute button on the top of the remote and the volume controls in the middle of the remote.  Wouldn't it make sense to put all the volume controls in the same area.  The remote does the same with the channel changing.  The "last" button is next to the mute button but the up and down controls are next to the volume controls in the middle of the remote.
         Another problem is the number buttons.  The buttons are not normal square buttons, instead they are the shape of the number.  This makes it more difficult because the 1 button is very skinny and the 8 button is much bigger.  All the buttons should be the same size to make it easier to use.
         One good aspect of the remote is that there is a little red light that goes on whenever any button is pushed. This is very good feedback, combining this with the physical feedback of pressing in a button makes it easy to tell when i have pressed a button.