Re: What is an app Re: Kick starting the Web App UX debate

On Mon, 06 May 2013 23:16:42 +0200, Scott Jenson <scott@jenson.org> wrote:

> On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile <
> chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>
>> +1 ; I think at our level what matters is:
>>>> * how the content/service provider wants her Web-based experience to  
>>>> be perceived like
>>>>
>> I think the issue is more complex. One of the traditional strengths of  
>> the Web is that the user gets a say. Authors tend not to like that, so
>> the successful way to make it work tends to allow the author a lot of  
>> control over the default presentation, in ways that still let the user
>> adapt it easily to their particular situation if necessary.
>
> I'd like to understand this more. Other than resizing a browser window  
> and zooming the text what *else* do users do?

Well, zooming the entire content. Normal browser tools work up to  
somewhere between 200% and 1000%, beyond that people use specialised tools  
up to about 2 characters / screen.

Using a screenreader to provide voice feedback, instead fo looking at the  
content at all. This isn't such a big deal for the way things look IFF the  
developer has built stuff with common controls, but messing with  
"behaviour" - the email I didn't write yet - plays merry hell with all  
this.

Changing the colour scheme to high or very high contrast. (Microsoft has  
put this into CSS - presumably because it is a pain point with real  
customers. If I were speculating I would guess the major real customers  
are banks, educational institutions and the US government, but that's just  
wild guesswork).

About 10% of the "western" male population is colour-blind (the rate is  
much lower in other segments of the world population). While good  
authoring should handle this anyway, it is often the case that graphic  
designers don't. (There are some exceptions, and world-famous designers in  
the Web world whoare themselves colour-blind). High-contrast mode is a  
sub-optimal solution in many cases, but where it is an improvement on "the  
default presentation" people will of course use it anyway.

Not using a mouse, or using an IME to generate characters considered  
"normal" (e.g. typing numbers on a standard french keyboard requires using  
the shift key). Again, this is more in "behaviour", but where the design  
of an app relies on people e.g. hovering something ("If doors were made by  
web developers, you wouldn't see the handle until you were reaching for  
it") it causes problems.

Using captioning, subtitling, etc, for multimedia content.

> I'll also go back to my previous email and call the distinction between
> a web document and 'something-higher-level-that's-not-a-doc'. If you're
> viewing a full screen canvas animation, what can the user do to
> 'adapt it'?

In the general case not a lot. This is a serious problem for real users,  
and for real content producers who have to serve those users -  
governments, banks, schools, the sort of behemoths who, we complain, don't  
move with the times. Sometimes because the new technology doesn't  
*actually* do what they need, among other reasons.

> My claim is that that vast majority of 'adaption' that we see on the web  
> is applied to flowed text. I agree with this and agree this is an  
> awesome part of the web.

Sure. In part because CSS has been extremely successful in making it  
relatively easy for developers to get their preferred layout unless the  
user insists on changing something, while allowing users the flexibility  
they might need.

> However, what does it mean to carry this ability into non-documents?

Well, that depends on the user and their needs. Things like ensuring that  
a user can effectively interact with an app.

In principle SVG allows the same adaptability via CSS that is available  
with flowed text, but for a far richer set of graphical representations.  
This is generally possible in real implementations. But in practice, there  
has been relatively little work on making graphic representations adapt  
well.

Despite having woefully less capable technology to work with, the  
Television industry is generally well ahead of the Web in practical  
experience here. TV in a normal US bar is pretty awful, but it generally  
has captions being displayed. Japanese television manages more powerful  
adaptations - high audio contrast, and in extreme cases messing with the  
timing to allow adapted presentation of content.

> My concern is that we are using yesterdays tasks to define tomorrow's
> features.

Yes, we should be careful about that. But it is also important to remember  
that a lot of yesterday's users are still here today. As I mentioned, for  
some classes of app, ignoring those people is apparently a sign of how  
cool the developers are, but for some classes of app it is simply a  
dealbreaker that means the development is not worth doing.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Tuesday, 7 May 2013 01:06:12 UTC