In January, I wrote about my experience creating a new Android HTML5 game app, which I called Happy Shapes.

By the end of that month, mainly due to my own (feeble) personal marketing efforts, the game had roughly around 100 or so downloads/installs. I had been checking the Android Developer Centre almost daily, until the download pattern began to level off.

By February the figures were hardly budging — not much more than 100 active device installs.

By March, I wasn’t checking the downloads at all. I’d read a few articles about app marketing that concurred that an app has to succeed within the first few days of launch.

I hadn’t expected my basic little game to get noticed in a crowded marketplace. The preschool niche is actually one of the busiest game app niches I could have picked — but I have three preschool-aged daughters and wanted to do something fun.

Today, I logged back into the Android Dev Centre. Guess what? People are starting to download Happy Shapes.

Active device installs have  jumped from around 108 on March 12th to 1,288 on April 12th (see graph below).

I’m not sure what has caused Happy Shapes to take off. The number of installs  jumped on March 14th from 108 to 124, and has kept increasing since. Perhaps the touchpaper was lit by a link on an app aggregation site — I’ve found a couple, like this one, but nothing stands out/

The numbers are still small of course, but for me they are both surprising and pleasing.

The graph also shows that the rate at which people are installing the app is increasing. This is probably due to the  feedback that goes with discoverability.

For example, when I first launched the app, it was hard to find it on the Google Play store. For example, even searching for “Happy Shapes”, its own name, the app appeared way down the list. Now it is number three for that search. It is starting to show up in other searches too.

Based on the early download figures, I hadn’t planned update the app further. But the growing number of downloads is encouraging. I think I’ll keep this personal project going — probably at evenings/weekends again — and refine some features and tweak some others.

Happy Shapes is a very simple game with some obvious scope for improvements but my own kids do like it. I’m glad that over a thousand people, some where (actually mostly the United States, according to the green line in the graph above) have installed it on their Android devices

P.S. I mentioned this on a previous post but I created this app using Construct2, which is a fantastic piece of software from a London-based start-up called Scirra.

Summary

Question: Are interactive infographics better than spreadsheets?

Study: In an eye-tracking study involving 32 participants, User Journeys and National College of Ireland compared two interactive infographics to their tabular data (spreadsheet) equivalents.

Conclusion: Contrary to popular belief, participants given the tabular data formats completed goal-oriented tasks faster and more efficiently than participants given the interactive infographics.

Overall, participants found the tabular format more usable, but felt the infographic format was more motivating and more satisfying.

Background

Interactive infographics are an increasingly popular way of displaying information online. For example, the New York Times newspaper has published over 200 interactive infographics. They are frequently used to visualise large data sets and make these more accessible for users. So how good are they really in getting across the facts?

User Journeys and National College of Ireland worked together to conduct an eye-tracking study that compared two interactive infographics with their tabular data format equivalents.

Method

The study involved 32 participants, 75% of whom were male.

We used the following infographics:

1. Snake Oil – An infographic depicting scientific evidence for popular health supplements

See: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

Snake Oil infographic used in study with kind permission of David McCandless.

Snake Oil – Tabular Format Equivalent

See: http://userjourneys.com/dataviz/snakeoil_tab_new.html

2. Baby Name Popularity – An infographic depicting the most popular baby names in Ireland during the years 1998 – 2010

See: http://userjourneys.com/dataviz/babynames_vis_frame.html

Baby names infographic created using tutorial provided by Nathan Yau: http://flowingdata.com/2009/12/09/how-to-make-an-interactive-area-graph/

Baby Names – Tabular Format Equivalent

See: http://userjourneys.com/dataviz/babynames.html

At the start of each test, we presented the participant with one of the infographics or with its corresponding tabular data format.

We then gave the participant a set of goal-oriented tasks, such as:

• “How many babies were named Aoife in 2008?”
• “How strong is the scientific evidence that vitamin D can reduce cancer?”

We also conducted a post-test survey, and asked participants to rate their experience in different categories.

Results

Overall, participants performed significantly better on goal-oriented tasks using the tabular format.

• Better performance with spreadsheet format: Participants who were given the tabular data responded with an average of 73% and 88% correct answers for the baby names and snake oil data. By contrast, participants who were given the infographic format averaged at only 49% and 63% correct answers respectively.
• Quicker with spreadsheet format: The average time for task completion in tabular format was 35.3 seconds and 43.6 seconds for baby names data and snake oil data respectively.
• Completing tasks with the infographic format took longer, averaging at 59.1 and 69.5 seconds.

Responding to the survey, users gave the tabular format a higher rating for the following categories:

• Usefulness e.g.  it allows me to find information I want
• Ease of use e.g.  it is easy to find what I am looking for
• Learnability e.g.  it is easy to learn how to use this

However, participants gave the infographic format a slightly higher score in the following areas:

• Satisfaction e.g. I like this information presentation
• Motivation e.g. it encourages me to explore the data

Conclusion

While interactive infographics are visually attractive, they are not necessarily better at providing factual information. For simple goal-oriented tasks, our study indicates that the tabular format is more accurate, efficient and usable than the interactive infographic format. However, our study has also found that user satisfaction and motivation are higher with the interactive infographic format.

Further studies would be required to see how interactive infographics perform for discovery-oriented tasks.

This research was partly funded by Enterprise Ireland.

Play the game now on desktop at newskoolgames.com
Here is how it all came about.

Ideation

Originally, I had intended to create a software product. After months of wrangling with complex wireframes, I realised the development was going to cost $$$.

I’m not a fan of apps. I prefer web-based solutions. But my preschool kids, who steal my phone at every opportunity, like apps. Especially games. However:

• My kids unwittingly click on ads that took them away from the game
• Many games ‘speak’ using peculiar words (“trapezoid”) or unfamiliar colloquialisms (“Good Job!”)

Goals and Design Constraints

I set about trying to design a game app that was intuitive for preschool children, regardless of what language they speak, or whether they speak at all.

• The goal of Happy Shapes is for preschool children to learn basic shapes
• I avoided ‘advanced’ conventions such as scores, limited player lives, etc.
• I designed for the mobile phone ‘short-burst’ playing pattern, whereby the playing time lasts only a few minutes

Initial Designs

I began wireframing in Balsamiq. Within a few days, a had a good early mockup of the game screens.

The Plan Changed

My plan was to outsource the development, since I am not a programmer. This changed when I discovered the amazing Construct2 by Scirra.

Construct2 allowed me to develop HTML5 games without directly writing any code. I have a grasp of programming concepts like variables, loops, arrays, etc. so Construct2, with its visual interface, was just the right tool for me.

Developing and Testing the Game

• Working mainly in my spare time, I developed the game in 6 months
• The development took about 40% more effort than I anticipated
• Much of my time was spent learning Construct2 and CocoonJS — an application that converts HTML5 games into Android apps
• I was lucky enough to have two eager testers – my 2 year old and 4 year old girls
• Finally, I put the game live on the Android market on January 9th 2013.

Integrating the Artwork

I got some great artwork from Jaya at Rumah Designs.

The launcher icon is slick and, using the master vectors, I was easily able to create promotional graphics on Google Play, etc.

Your Feedback is Welcome

Development and testing is never finished.

If you’ve got a young kid, and have an Android device, please try out Happy Shapes and let me know what you think.

See the website: http://newskoolgames.com

The official launch of UXPA Ireland will take place at 6.15pm on 8 November 2012 — World Usability Day — at the National College of Ireland (NCI), Dublin.

Register now for FREE — limited to 100 places!

What is the UXPA?

The User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA), formerly UPA, is a global organisation with supporting local chapters around the world.

The aims of the UXPA include

• Promoting collaboration and excellence in UX practice
• Supporting individuals who are involved in the research, design and evaluation of user experiences

Who is Tom Tullis?

Tom Tullis is author of Measuring the User Experience and is VP of User Experience Research at Fidelity Investments.

Tom’s talk will explore remote usability testing – have tools such as Loop11 replaced lab-based testing?

Did you say FREE?

Yes, the event is FREE thanks to our sponsors, which include Balsamiq, Loop11, PaddyPower and National College of Ireland.

What’s The Skinny?

• 6.15pm: Light refreshments and networking
• 6.45pm: Guest speaker Tom Tullis
• 7.45pm: More refreshments, light snacks and professional & social networking

I have never had employees, though I’ve engaged dozens of freelancers.

The outsourcing model worked well when my business was web design and development. Recently, my focus has been soley on UX.

At times I still require the services of other UX professionals, visual designers, etc. Nevertheless, my business model is centred on the procurement of my own UX research and design skills.

That’s fine, except I’ve been using the royal “we” on my website. Lots of micro-enterprises do this, and it’s not something I’d given much thought to … until recently.

In the last 12 months, my website has been too successful. I’ve had to turn down many projects that have been simply too big. I  became aware that the “we” on my website is a hindrance rather than a help.

In reality, I am just one-man-band, doing work that I love. Why should my website say anything different?

Starting from today, I’m changing the “we” to “me”. I’ll start with the homepage.

It will take some time. I’ve only got one pair of hands!

search engines reduce usability [when] they’re unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms.

But there’s another reason why users have learned to distrust on-site search: poorly presented search results. Even Nielsen seems to have a blind spot for search results. For example, search Jakob Nielsen’s site for the phrase ‘wireframes’:

Issues with Search Results on UseIt.Com

• The number of results is confusing. Does ’25 of 920′ mean ‘displaying the first 25 of 920 results’ — my initial, intuitive understanding. Or ’25 matches were found out of 920 documents searched’ — what I now think it means?
• Results are grouped into different sections, but that makes me work to interpret them. I understand the logic behind this but if feels like system-matching rather than mental-modelling. It sure doesn’t look like Google’s results.
• The matched terms are not highlighted.
• In many cases, the search query is not present in either the article title or snippet — which makes the user distrust the relevancy of the results.
• The snippet is not contextual, i.e. it is not retrieved from a section of the article containing the search query. A related issue is some snippets look too similar, perhaps derived from the same template.
• The use of italics as default font style for snippets makes the page difficult to read.
• There is no spacing between individual results, making the results page look cluttered.

Other Changes We Implemented In User Journeys Search

On our own search results page, we have tried to avoid these problems. We have also added the following features, not present in the UseIt site:

• We numbered our search results. Google doesn’t do this seems a more intuitive design here, when the number of results is typically low.
• We used pagination, as 10 results seems enough for one page. (Perhaps in a future version we should let the user control how many they see per page.)
• We added ‘this works’ text in the search box. This gives the experience a sense of fun. It also encourages users to try the search function, and challenges their perception that on-site search doesn’t work

Are there any other ways in which we could improve our search results? Please let us know.

[ ] I disagree with this article and I have read the terms and conditions.

I recently noticed a clue to the answer when shopping for a tablet device. Many of the manufacturers offered cases that came bundled with USB keyboards.  Presumably they were responding to demand.

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is one of many touch screen tablets that offers the option of an attachable keyboard. Maybe old habits die hard, or maybe people prefer the robust feeling of tapping on a keyboard, compared to the flat tactile experience of an on-screen keyboard?

Size matters.  Trying to navigate a touch screen on a mobile phone can be frustrating.  It’s not so bad if you have the dainty hands of a small child, but tricky for those, like me, with bigger digits.  At least screen sizes are increasing on smart phones — e.g. the Galaxy S2 has a 4.3” inch screen —  but I find I can still only comfortably use the keyboard only in landscape orientation, and it’s irksome when there is a lag.

The design of smartphones is such that we tend to type with our thumbs. The inherent problem with such a design, of course, is that our thumbs are bigger than our other fingers, and more “clumsy” when there is little space in which to manoeuvre.

Maybe, to provide a small-screen typing solution, it’s not the virtual keypad but the physical device that needs to be redesigned.In the meantime, I’m tempted by that USB keyboard.

Let us assume that the user of any software has three hierarchical types of needs:

1. The software must work; it must be functional. This is the user’s most basic need.

Making sure software works is a prerequisite to good usability and a good user experience.

2. The software should be easy to use. Over the last decade, websites in particular have become more user-friendly, thanks partly to the spread of usability concepts (see Jakob Neilsen), but moreso to the pressures of competition.

When a software tool has no competitors, users will tolerate bad usability, so long as the software is functional. But when there is a choice, users will plump for the tool that is easier to use. Usability is concerned with software’s intuitiveness, its ease of use.

3. The software should be pleasurable to use. When competition is fierce, the software that wins is not only easy to use, but also enjoyable to use.

Steve Jobs recognised this. Donald Norman, usability pioneer, recognised this in his book Emotional Design. Norman argues that software was more effective when users found it aesthetically appealing, or when they formed an other emotional connection to the software, e.g. when they found it aesthetically appealing. As he put it, “attractive things work better”.

User experience concerns designing software to be usable AND pleasurable or otherwise emotionally engaging for users.

When you’ve built a mobile version of  your website (congratulations!), the first UX rule to observe is: detect the device and offer a link to an alternative.

I had a strange experience today when I was viewing the design portfolio of Dublin digital agency Kooba.

One of their portfolio projects was the HSE’s official information site about breastfeeding. I clicked the link and thought the site looked rather strange. After a couple of minutes, however, I noticed the link to the desktop site, and everything made sense.

So, Kooba had indeed implemented Rule number 1 – Detect the device, but also Rule number 2 – Link to the alternative

There is another good reason to link to the alternative. Users sometimes want the ‘full version’ of the site. For example, on the mobile version of Facebook or Twitter, due to space restrictions, fewer features and functions are offered.

But users may nevertheless want to access the desktop versions. For example, I am sometimes willing to endure the full-version pain of a site I use to find flights, SkyScanner, even when using it from a mobile. Why? Because the mobile version doesn’t allow me to search the flight dates for an entire selected month, a feature available in the desktop version.

Maybe the ‘select entire month’ feature should be in the full version. Ultimately, however, some features will have to be omitted.