Riccardo Mori

TidBITS Opinion: Let’s Stop with the Siri Baiting

December 1, 2011

Source: TidBITS Opinion: Let’s Stop with the Siri Baiting

Adam Engst:

This is actually a serious issue in one respect, since it shows just how important technology has become in shaping our impressions of the world around us. And that in turn points to how essential it is that we continue to scrutinize how well search-related technologies work and remain aware of those technologies’ inescapable limitations. Just as you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet, you shouldn’t believe everything Siri tells you.

[…]

So can we stop pretending that Siri is anything more than ELIZA’s chatterbot daughter? Siri can be useful, and is a whole lot of fun to demo, but it’s unreasonable to read anything more — certainly not Apple corporate policy — into Siri’s successes, failures, and little asides. Heck, we can’t even get Apple PR to say what Apple policy is most of the time. At least Siri always responds to our questions.

Siamo tutti bravi

November 30, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Mele e appunti

Sto notando sempre più di frequente sul Web una tendenza che non mi piace per niente: quella della critica facile, veloce, a buon mercato e, se possibile, condensata in una frase. Non mi riferisco al breve sfogo occasionale diretto a questa o quella applicazione perché l’arrivo di una nuova funzione (o l’eliminazione di una vecchia) ci frustra, ci guasta il flusso di lavoro, ci scompagina abitudini fossilizzate. E non mi riferisco nemmeno all’attacco alla persona quando si dovrebbe invece rispondere a quel che la persona afferma, al suo pensiero, alla sua analisi (anche questo mi infastidisce grandemente, ma temo sia ormai una battaglia persa).

Mi riferisco al liquidare il lavoro altrui in quattro parole, in un commento magari condito con quel pizzico di acidità per fare il figurone con la propria cerchia di conoscenze (online e offline). È ancor più irritante quando la critica è rivolta a un prodotto che nemmeno si è provato, o che si è provato per un intervallo di tempo assurdamente breve. Intendiamoci: capita di imbattersi in quell’applicazione, servizio, dispositivo che sappiamo da subito non ci sarà utile. Purtroppo, dalla preferenza personale al sentenziare che l’oggetto in questione è inutile, sarà un flop, è progettato da schifo, il passo è sempre più breve. Ultimamente pare che sul Web tutti diventano ingegneri, designer, progettisti, tipografi, sviluppatori e — soprattutto — punti di riferimento del buon gusto dall’oggi al domani, nel giro di un post o di un tweet. Mi stupisco che non si viva già in un mondo migliore, vista la quantità di gente così in gamba nel giudicare in un istante quel che è buono e ciò che va scartato.

Che ha stimolato la scrittura di questo mio intervento è stata la lettura di un articolo nel blog di Shifty Jelly una piccolissima impresa di sviluppatori iOS e Android australiani. Nell’articolo, intitolato Voi siete dei milionari, vero? (You Guys Are Millionaires, Right?), gli sviluppatori raccontano molto apertamente di quanto sia dura la realtà quotidiana di chi decide di fare lo sviluppatore indipendente, spiegando che in un ambiente così competitivo come l’attuale piattaforma mobile in realtà gli sviluppatori che incassano guadagni strepitosi sono pochi. Se ve la cavate con l’inglese, leggetevi tutto l’articolo. I due frammenti che mi interessa estrapolare sono questi:

A ogni prodotto che creiamo dedichiamo tantissimo lavoro (e ci mettiamo tante delle nostre energie). A volte troviamo persone che lo deridono, o che lo considerano indegno di attenzione dopo averlo utilizzato per 13,2 secondi. Poi ci dicono di non prendercela, di non considerarlo un fatto personale. Facile a dirsi. Quando si investono sei mesi della propria vita, giorno e notte, nella creazione di un prodotto, col cavolo che non si prendono sul personale i commenti altrui.

E, poco più sotto:

E lasciamo perdere le estenuanti discussioni che di tanto in tanto saltano fuori con le persone se debbano o meno acquistare un’applicazione da 1,99 dollari. La gente passa ore e ore a ponderare l’acquisto di un’applicazione da 2 dollari, passando in rassegna le varie recensioni, scrivendo un’email allo sviluppatore, controllando i vari forum online. La stessa gente che poi entra in una caffetteria in cui non è mai stata prima e ordina un caffè da 4 dollari. Dallo sviluppatore si aspettano supporto e aggiornamenti gratuiti illimitati. Dalla caffetteria non si aspettano niente se non un caffè mediocre.

Un altro caso recente è l’annuncio di Little Printer da parte di Berg, una società di consulenza di design che ha pensato di creare una microstampante wireless pensata per connettersi alla nuvola ed essere comandata da uno smartphone. L’idea è quella di utilizzarla per stamparsi dei piccoli promemoria, o una scelta di notizie, o passatempi, o qualsiasi altra micropubblicazione e portarsi queste informazioni in tasca. Quando la notizia ha cominciato a diffondersi, si è subito creato un chiacchiericcio sgradevole in Twitter e altrove, con interventi lapidari come “Inutile”, “Che idea stupida”, “Tornare alla carta, bella idiozia”, “Ma questi dove vivono?” e altri commenti sarcastici. Ovviamente senza nemmeno aver provato il prodotto. Tanto basta vedere un minuto del video di due minuti realizzato per presentare Little Printer per capire che è una boiata, no?

Beh, no. L’idea può non piacere. L’oggetto potrebbe essere l’ultima cosa a entrare in casa nostra. Per alcuni certamente non servirà a nulla. Diamogli ugualmente una possibilità. Rispettiamo il lavoro altrui. Dietro quella stampantina c’è il lavoro di persone che hanno investito tempo, denaro e si spera passione per cercare di produrre qualcosa di simpatico e originale.

In troppi blog leggo un atteggiamento di superiorità nell’appioppare critiche (e qui dico in generale, non della Little Printer in particolare), a volte pare perfino per il solo gusto di poter dire Ve l’avevo detto se alla fine un certo prodotto non ha successo.

Criticare va benissimo, per carità, ma che la critica sia informata, ponderata, costruttiva. Lo sprezzo concentrato in quattro parole, a mio avviso, dice molto più del critico di turno che non del prodotto criticato.

Chiudo con un piccolo aneddoto: ho di recente acquistato Portal 2 dopo essere stato positivamente (e inaspettatamente) colpito dal primo Portal. Ho trovato questo sequel per molti versi più godibile e coinvolgente del primo episodio. Tuttavia l’altro giorno ho raggiunto un punto del gioco in cui mi sono un po’ arenato in una situazione che pareva irrisolvibile, e nell’universo di Portal, in cui si procede per stanze dove occorre ingegnarsi per trovare un modo per raggiungere l’uscita, una tale situazione di stallo rendeva tutta l’esperienza decisamente frustrante. Poi ne sono uscito, ma con la sensazione che il gioco si era fatto più lungo del dovuto, tanto più che mi è scappato il tweet di sfogo, dove dicevo più o meno così: “Se il primo Portal mi è apparso più corto di quel che avrebbe dovuto essere, Portal 2 mi sembra molto più lungo di quel che dovrebbe essere”. Fare queste valutazioni di impulso è molto facile, così come è facile mettersi a fare il game designer da poltrona e pontificare Io avrei fatto così, avrei eliminato questo e inserito quest’altro, ecc.

Ultimato il gioco, ho deciso di acquistare anche The Final Hours of Portal 2, una sorta di libro elettronico interattivo che, nello stile dei contenuti extra dei film in DVD e Blu-Ray, spiega i retroscena e racconta del lavoro dei programmatori e designer di Valve, delle difficoltà che hanno incontrato nell’ideazione di una storia e di una dinamica di gioco che potessero reggere il successo del predecessore e diventare a sua volta un successo ancora maggiore. Leggere questi dettagli e ascoltare i commenti audio inseriti come extra nel gioco, in cui gli sviluppatori spiegano come hanno affrontato i vari ostacoli e risolto problematiche all’apparenza insignificanti, è stato illuminante. Ritengo che questa pratica dell’illustrare il processo di realizzazione di un prodotto sia davvero ottima e utile. Troppo spesso infatti si critica qualcosa senza avere la benché minima idea di come si è arrivati a costruire quel qualcosa. E, dall’altra parte, le persone che costruiscono per davvero devono tenere sempre in considerazione questo tipo di critiche facili e taglienti e creare prodotti che passino il test della ‘prima impressione’. Una cosa che, nell’era della gratificazione istantanea, si fa sempre più complessa.

A review of reviews

November 29, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

Yes, I know: the title sounds presumptuous, the intent ambitious. I just want to point out a few things I’ve been noticing more and more often in reviews in general, and in tech reviews in particular. Things that somehow bother me, both as a reader and as a tech writer myself. Some may read this as a holier-than-thou attitude, but the truth is that I have made similar mistakes in the past, so I’m not calling myself out while expressing my criticism.

“I’ve tried this product/service/software for a couple of days, and —”

And this is the worst possible start for a review. It doesn’t matter who you are: you can be a staff editor for a renowned newspaper or magazine, you can be a blogger with a reputation, you can be a nobody, but with such a beginning you’re throwing your credibility out of the window — at least in my eyes. You’re making me look for another review.

I know you probably have deadlines. I know they probably gave you the device on Friday and expect your 5,000-word review on Monday. Yet I think that in most cases you don’t have enough time to make a thorough assessment, especially with sophisticated devices such as smartphones, tablets, computers and related peripherals. Sometimes you need to spend more time with a device to get accustomed to certain choices in its operating system, user interface, and general design. Sometimes you need to spend more time with a software application (or service) to have a better understanding of its abilities or to fully realise its usefulness — and not necessarily because of a fault in the software, but because its usefulness is designed to be experienced the more you use the software (or service). Not everything is designed to stand out by instant gratification.

On the other hand, if you are given just a couple of days to review a product and you have no choice or say in it, at least don’t start your piece that way. You can do better by mentioning in your conclusion that, regrettably, you didn’t have as much time as you wished to properly explore the product. You may argue that this is just semantics, and you would be right, actually, but sometimes semantics is what makes people read or skip your review.

The review is about the product, not about you

A lot of reviews I read are dominated by the reviewers and their long shadow. I enjoy the personal style, the occasional quip and so on, but I think that the more you disappear from a review, the more you try to keep it balanced and remove as much bias as you can, the more your review will be informed, informative and useful for the prospective buyer/customer. How you use a device shouldn’t be used as a metric to make quick judgments on the usefulness of a particular feature or design choice. (You could certainly use yourself as a type of user among others and point out that those who have similar habits/peeves as yours will probably find a particular feature useful, cool, handy or not).

Of course I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion — in the end a review is based on personal impressions — but I believe the most intellectually honest approach is to give ample space to observations and to clearly emphasise what is your personal opinion and judgment. In other words, the reader should be able to always ‘see’ the product while reading your review, without being obfuscated by your thick fog of opinionated (negative or positive) criticism. As I’ve often said, a good measure of your experience is how little of your personal experience you let come out in your allegedly objective essays/reviews. With your review, you’re helping people make a choice about a product, not showing them how smart you are.

Who is your audience?

This is related to the previous section. Often I read reviews where it’s immediately clear (to me) that you’re not addressing the general public: you’re really talking to your peers. Which means other tech writers, bloggers, journalists, nerds, Mac/iOS/Windows/Android fans, and so on. If you’re doing it deliberately, then everything’s fine and also everything I’ve said so far doesn’t apply. Because you’re talking to your circle, and everyone expects you to be opinionated, biased and politically incorrect. However, since your website is public, you should at least put a bit of a disclaimer in your review, stating that it is addressed more to your peers than anyone else. This way the occasional visitor who reaches your blog or website by way of a search engine will be properly informed about what to expect from your assessments and from the tone of your review.

Why do I think this is important? Because we tech-savvy geeks and power users all have our pet peeves, our habits, our preferences, our standards of excellence, our needs and expectations, which are going to be rather different from those of ‘regular people’. Our beloved iPhone may be ‘just a fancy phone’ for the man of the street, and many people don’t really care about which OS runs these fancy phones, as long as they make calls, send texts, do some email and Web browsing and have a bright screen so that they can find their way around using Google Maps. To remain within the smartphone realm, don’t assume that a two-second delay in opening an application is an unacceptable performance in a modern smartphone and that this is going to be a deal-breaker for everyone. You will be surprised at the amount of people who don’t even notice such a lag. (Or, if they do notice, they might not mind that two-second wait).

If you’re trying to write an objective review, just keep in mind that the end user may come from a radically different experience than yours when you’re judging what’s good and what’s bad in a product. For instance, writing things such as “If you’re accustomed to iOS and the responsiveness of an iPhone 4, you’ll need time to get used to this other smartphone’s interface and you’ll probably find its performance disappointing” is more useful (and accurate) than just saying “This other smartphone’s performance is ridiculous and these design flaws in its UI certainly don’t help either”. Users’ perceptions vary a lot, depending on what they’ve been using before. My parents both have old-school Nokia mobile phones, and when they tried my old iPhone 3G, they found it quite snappy and pleasant to use, while I find it annoyingly sluggish and at times unresponsive since I became accustomed to my iPhone 4’s general performance.

That said…

…Products (both hardware and software) have flaws, bugs, terrible design and usability choices, and other problems that clearly go beyond the subjective realm, and an honest review ought to point these things out. Again, your knowledge and expertise should guide you and suggest the best way to express such faults and issues, so that people can understand whether a certain issue is a big deal per se (e.g. a lack that makes a device patently less useful or usable, a feature that is poorly implemented by today’s standards or in comparison with competing products), or an annoyance that largely depends on personal habits and experience (e.g. I like to have applications with menubar icons for easy access and this app lacks one, and it sucks for that).

Maybe I have stated the obvious here, but if you read certain reviews carefully, you will start noticing the same things I did. If I’m not making direct examples isn’t for lack of honesty, but just because it doesn’t seem fair to single out anyone in particular. Reviews, especially of big products, are important, as they may contribute to their success or failure. Writing thoughtful and thorough pieces may take longer than you’d like (and sometimes all that matters is that the review be ‘out there’ just after the product’s introduction), but you’ll eventually provide a better service for your readers and your reputation will benefit in return.

The double-edged revolution

November 27, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Tech Life

In reaction to Bret Victor’s now well-known Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design, iOS developer David Barnard wrote a piece titled “Pictures Under Glass” is Revolutionary, Not Transitional. His conclusion:

There are certain cases in which more tactile feedback may be able to enhance human-computer interaction without adding to the learning curve — such as the pneumatic displays Bret links to in his post — but I can’t get over the hunch that tactile interaction, like Siri and other voice input technologies, will augment and enhance Pictures Under Glass interaction, not revolutionize human-computer interaction.

In a following article, Barnard admits to being annoyed by the tone Bret Victor used in his rant:

I’m pissed off because Bret, in his post about the future of interface design, denigrated the very thing I’m most passionate about and spend every day working on — Multi-Touch user interfaces on touch screen devices. Well, just iOS really. In his follow up post, Bret did clarify that he doesn’t think the iPhone and iPad are bad, for now anyway, but overall the follow-up was similarly dismissive.

I’ve already said enough about some of Bret’s arguments I think are flawed, but I want to talk more about the tone of his post. I think it was arrogant, distasteful, and ultimately counter productive.

While I understand Barnard’s position and sentiments, I have to disagree as regards to Bret Victor’s tone. Perhaps because not only have I read Victor’s posts but I also translated them into another language, I certainly didn’t find his tone arrogant or distasteful. Since I still haven’t had the chance to share my views on the matter, I figured this was a good start.

About Victor’s tone: let’s don’t forget it’s a rant. When people rant, they usually have to get things out of their system because they’re generally not satisfied with the status quo. Educated people tend to write their rants in a provoking manner so that the audience receives the message with a similar, um, ‘dose of annoyance’ as the person writing their rant. To put it another way, in a rant one reflects part of his annoyance to the public, resulting in a bitter — but hopefully thought-provoking — tone. Which is what I think is happening with Bret Victor’s Brief Rant.

About “Pictures Under Glass”: in his Brief Rant, Bret Victor writes:

Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.

To me, claiming that Pictures Under Glass is the future of interaction is like claiming that black-and-white is the future of photography. It’s obviously a transitional technology. And the sooner we transition, the better.

I believe that some people have misunderstood Victor here. He is not criticising the present. He is not saying that Pictures Under Glass (Multi-touch technology) is bad/limited per se. What I think he’s criticising is that all these Visions of the future basically revolve around a technology that doesn’t seem to be much different or evolved from what we have today. And I have to agree with him.

Yet I also feel the same as David Barnard when he says I can’t get over the hunch that tactile interaction, like Siri and other voice input technologies, will augment and enhance Pictures Under Glass interaction, not revolutionize human-computer interaction. And I can’t help feeling it’s a pity.

See, Multi-touch technology has been (still is) a revolutionary step in human-computer interaction, but my fear (and probably Bret Victor’s) is that this technology will overstay its welcome, so to speak. This is what I mean with double-edged revolution: something that starts as being unquestionably revolutionary and then ends up being something we’re unable to really move away from. It’s probably going to be a slow-paced evolution by more and more refined iterations. Multi-touch technology is already propagating on other devices and machines by contagion and replacing their previous interfaces.

And it’s not always good. I have already seen scanners, printers, photocopiers, mini hi-fi systems, dishwashers, washing machines with touch interfaces. Some of their original interfaces, essentially made of physical buttons, levers and knobs, were well-designed and usable. In short, there wasn’t (and isn’t) anything really wrong about them. The only drawback, possibly, is that buttons, levers and knobs are mechanical parts that may break after excessive use. The great advantage of some of this ‘low tech’ interfaces is that for the most part they are really simple and can be operated without even looking once you’ve familiarised with their controls. Touch panels, especially touch panels with changing screens, must be operated while looking at them. Sure, a buttonless home appliance with just a touch screen looks so cool and screams ‘future’ from a mile away, but how do I turn the damn thing on? Does an all-in-one printer really need to have an iPhone-like interface, with apps you can add such as the weather, a daily planner, Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter search and BBC News?

In my opinion, for some applications, the Multi-touch interface brings an unnecessary layer of complexity. With my washing machine, if I want to set the Delicates/Silk program, I just turn two knobs, one for the temperature, another for the program itself, each program being characterised by a letter. If I want to use less water (because I’m only washing a couple of things, for example), I also press a button with the icon of a basin filled with water and “1/2” above it (meaning “half the usual amount of water”). Each knob has a different tactile and auditory feedback, and I could set the program with my eyes closed. With a touch panel or a touch screen is another story.

But I’m afraid that’s what’s going to happen in the next years: an increasing amount of devices, machines, appliances, with unnecessary touch interfaces slapped onto them (because multi-touch is revolutionary and is ‘the future’) and perhaps with even less regard for true usability (because multi-touch interfaces are perceived as invariably ‘simple’ and ‘intuitive’). Bret Victor’s rant is an invitation not to rest on our laurels, not to content ourselves with moving a finger on a glassy surface, not to make the same error we made with traditional computers, their interfaces and interaction paradigms — that is, holding on to them for decades until they become too limited and inadequate. For me, one of the most important passages in Bret Victor’s rant is this:

And this is my plea — be inspired by the untapped potential of human capabilities. Don’t just extrapolate yesterday’s technology and then cram people into it.

I love multi-touch, and I certainly recognise its importance. iOS’s interface has made technologically advanced and sophisticated devices more approachable for the less tech-savvy and for those who have always had a struggling relationship with computers in general. However, like Bret Victor, I surely hope that twenty years from now I won’t be interacting with my ‘tablet’ (or whatever device it will be) in the same way I’m doing today, with a finger touching an unresponsive surface.

Small adjustments

November 23, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

These past days have been hectic, and I couldn’t update this website and associated blogs as often as I wanted. Regrettably, I’m still far from being able to sustain myself through this space only, so every time a surge in my translation work comes up, I struggle. During this last semi-hiatus, I also noticed two things:

That I’ve been neglecting The Quillink annotated, the tumblelog I (should) use to reblog other people’s interesting stuff and post the occasional photo or quote.
That sometimes I read articles or other people’s commentary to which I’d like to reply, without having to write a longish article in response. One small drawback of the layout of this website is that very short articles don’t look really good in the single-post page view. Plus, I don’t want to clutter the Linked section with that kind of quick responses.

So I thought: issue #1 and issue #2 can effectively solve each other. I could use The Quillink annotated also as an apparatus criticus, posting there those brief responses I don’t really have a place for in my main website. Therefore, if you’re interested, start checking The Quillink annotated more often in the following days, as you may notice a little more activity there as well.