theo|digital

Slate Magazine notes today that those scrambled letter things are officially lame.

Computers and humans are becoming harder to distinguish in cyberspace. Latest problem: Security tests designed to block computers that impersonate humans (e.g., “type the fuzzy number you see on the screen”) have become too hard for many humans. The tests, known as captchas (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), have been toughened because spammers learned how to make their machines better at “analyzing the images and separating the letters and numbers from the background noise.” Now the images are so hard to decipher that even a company’s chief technology officer flunks 25 percent of them.* Earnest complaint: Security screens have become an “intelligence test.” Cynics’ rebuttal: Fine with us.

Lots of stuff really happening in my life, but while we wait for me to figure out what’s important enough to post about, I’ll be glad to share this remarkable demo from a university audio-visual research group in Barcelona, Spain. Just the interface alone is fascinating.

Of course, the last 24 hours everyone has been talking about Apple’s new smartphone due out this summer.

You know I love good human factors design/interface design/usability. My favorite feature, as presented by Steve Jobs, is definitely “the pinch” – a two finger touchscreen move used to zoom in on photos. Wow. So good.
(start 1:30 to see just the photos part)

Will I get one of these guys? Well, if it’s only offered on Cingular, this presents an issue: their unlimited data plans are pricey. Plus, version 2 is usually better than version 1, even with Apple.

ps – would have loved to watch Steve’s address via Quicktime and the Apple website, but it was so gummed up, the audio was scrambled and video blurred because of bandwidth. Had to resort to YouTube.

Too bad it’s also successful. This interview excerpt comments on this phenom (read it all at: Where Visual Design Meets Usability – An Interview with Luke Wroblewski, Part I)

With the recent successes of not-so-attractive sites, such as Craigslist, MySpace, and Del.icio.us, there is a lot of conversation around the notion of ““ugly design.”” Why do these ugly designs work? What can we learn from their success?

On more than one occasion, we’’ve had a senior business manager tell me that we needed a less-refined visual design for our product because sites that are ““less designed” are more successful. To a certain degree, there’s some truth in that. Sites with confusing navigation systems and unclear page hierarchies may generate more page views because users are confused and clicking wherever they can. Sites that use visual design to make ads look like content may increase their click-through rates and thereby revenue because users think they are clicking on content when really they just clicked on an ad. In almost all other instances, however, design is a good idea.

Dismissing visual design as just a matter of making things pretty or ugly cuts off your ability to communicate with your customers at the knees. As I outlined earlier, design is a means to communicate, not mere styling.

Sites like Craiglist and Del.icio.us remain popular on the merits of their content. But, does their audience enjoy bumping through the site?

by the way, this is precisely the reason I love FaceBook. It combines good content with just-in-time user-oriented design. It’s clean, smart, has decent hierarchy… just nice.