[guardian-dev] Fwd: [liberationtech] Heml.is - "The Beautiful & Secure Messenger"

[Hans of Guardian]

Beauty in software is indeed quite important, I agree.  Another part that is often overlooked is the quality of the interaction.  You point that out with the info about people's perception of search results being affected by how quickly they are returned.  Software is essentially about human-computer interaction.  Good software provides interaction that feels natural and effortless, things are were you expect them, actions you want to do are easy when you want to do them, irrelevant things are out of the way, etc.

While beauty is important, I believe that the quality of the interaction is more important than beauty for the vast majority of users.  A bad experience leaves users frustrated, while ugly software leaves users dismissive or maybe annoyed.

And of course, the software has to do useful things, otherwise it doesn't really matter how beautiful or natural it is.  So its always a balance between all the factors.  Then we also have to consider the ratio of how much work it takes to do something versus how much benefit it will bring.  Unfortunately making beautiful and natural interfaces takes a lot of work.  We have limited funding and people to do the world, so we have to prioritize.

.hc

On Jul 11, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Guy Tavor wrote:

> Sorry for jumping in:
> 
> If Gibberbot is targeting everyone and want to become a "WhatsApp" alternative, then - yes - product design (including "beauty") is very important, and still is a long way from market leaders. When I was still at Google, we ran some usability tests from which I've learnt some surprising product-design truths, manily around how a person's mind solidifies their opinion based on sensory inputs it is not aware of.
> The most mind-blowing (for me anyway) example was around how people perceive search-results as of higher-quality if they come in 50ms earlier. So - "beauty" is just a general name for a "pleasing product" - it should not disturb the eye, UX should be intuitive, product should be very fast and responsive, product should give value within 30 seconds after installation.
> 
> If the target audience are people who depend their lives / careers / well-being on secure channel chat, then "Beauty", speed, usability and even performance is only secondary.
> 
> My 2 cents.
> 
> G
> 
> 
> Guy
> scoompa
> 
> 
> On 11 July 2013 00:05, Nathan of Guardian <nathan at guardianproject.info> wrote:
> On 07/10/2013 04:58 PM, Lee Azzarello wrote:
> > Many of the critical use cases for
> > secure messaging have a pretty bad taste. Other's don't. I like to
> > explore the role of beauty in software tools, since beauty is
> > subjective.
> 
> I like to think that Gibberbot is beautiful on the inside. We hope soon
> its acne will clear up, and those braces we have been investing in will
> straighten out its teeth.
> 
> +n
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