It’s a helper app so you often don’t think about it, it’s just a quick Ctrl+Space away. After todays update, I’ve clicked around the preferences and discovered this gem:

They keep track of usage for me. Data geek in me is thrilled about this and I now also have a new argument for newbie OS X features – it’s that great that I run it on average 36.8 times a day!

Does your app give me such a great chart to share?

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While the book claims that it’s intended audience is everyone from novice to a pro. I’ve found it more suitable for novices that prefer to learn through user manual instead of exploring the real application and Googling for more complex solutions. The book covers all the parts of OmniGraffle, from creating basic diagrams, stencils, shapes and advanced editing tools. While I was familiar with most of the content in the book, the in-depth instructions with great screenshots still presented a few new tricks inside the application that I didn’t know that I miss – until now. Since OmniGraffle is available both in basic and Pro editions, they make sure to clearly mark if a feature is specific to Pro version.

If you have experience you’ll get through first two-thirds of  349 pages pretty quickly. The last third has best content, where author explains how to create great looking diagrams and organize your work as your files grow bigger. This is the point where I found a few aha moments as I didn’t even think to lookup advanced ruler and shape settings. There’s even a chapter on all the keyboard shortcuts that you can use, which while might sound geeky is something I’m definitely planning to learn in-depth to save time.

I’m not a big fan of books that basically cover all functions of user interface. That is why I appreciate example projects through which author shows how exactly are they useful for rapid prototyping of iPhone user interface or for creating boring workflow diagrams. I use OmniGraffle mostly for wire-framing, so creating a complex workflow diagram was something I always had problems with. The book explained all the possibilities and shortcuts nicely and even learned that it can create ideal distribution of objects on canvas for you.

If you care about your OmniGraffle skills check out their example chapter – Making your Diagram look good, which is one the best chapters in the book and very much suitable for pro users as well.

Overall, the book delivers on the promise – a bit for everyone and you can pick it up as a complete novice or if you’re a pro. I would recommend it to people who feel that they need to have a manual next to their application. If you’re a pro you’ll probably Google advanced topics as you need them as you already know most of the book.

Official page for OmniGraffle 5 Diagramming Essentials book.

I would also like to encourage Packt Publishing to figure out how to deliver their content to Kindle. I’ve read a few technical books on a Kindle while commuting and it was a real pain to get iPad just so I could read their digital PDF. Why not go with paper version? I’ve discovered that I can read Kindle version of a book in a week, that it took me a month for a paper version.

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2. Hi-fidelity prototyping with OmniGraffle Pro
3. How do you design? – Free E-Book

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• input field
• OK button, in this case labeled “Save”
• Cancel button

Since I’m always confused about the order of OK  - Cancel buttons (you, should it be OK / Cancel or Cancel / OK), I checked a few dialogs around my OS X and they all read Cancel / OK.

I personally prefer the second option, as I usually like to confirm my dialog boxes and it’s much easier to hit OK in down right corner vs. finding the item next to it.

Second choice it’s probably that I’m brainwashed from seeing this choice all the time on my Mac.

After showing my choices to the person in charge, I got the obvious feedback: “Reverse the Cancel / OK button”.

Fine! (I change the button order and go looking in various HIG documents).

Here are results:

Apple’s HIG states:

Always put the action button in the bottom-right corner of the alert. This is the button that completes the action that the user initiated before the alert was displayed. [ed. note: this would make it Cancel / OK]

GNOME’s HIG states:

Show a Cancel button that will prevent authentication and close the alert. Place this button to the immediate left of the OK or equivalent button. [ed. note: this would make it Cancel / OK]

Place command buttons that apply to all property pages at the bottom of the property window. Right-align the buttons and use this order (from left to right): OK, Cancel, and Apply. [ed. note: this makes it OK / Cancel]

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What’s a stencil? It’s a small sprite that can be reused in your OmniGraffle documents so you don’t have to reinvent UI elements every time  you need them.

Graffletopia - UI elements overload

While there are almost too much stencils on the page, one set stands out on its own. Yahoo! Design team Wireframe stencil kit.

Yahoo! Design Stencil Kit

It’s available for OmniGraffle, Visio and in more traditional vector formats like PDF, PNG and SVG. If you take a look at only one stencil library this month, let this be the one.

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• Jure ?uhalev: Hi-fidelity prototyping with OmniGraffle Pro (jurecuhalev.com)
• Review: OmniGraffle Pro 5.0.2 (macworld.com)
• Konigi and Yahoo! Web UI Wireframe Stencil Kits for Omnigraffle (incsub.org)
• Sharing and creating HTML and CSS templates (ajaxian.com)
• OmniGraffle 5.1 improves Visio compatibility (macworld.com)

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But what do you think when you get something like this:

I imagine it would be too much to build a QA tool that would scan all the dialogs and detect if they end with question mark (or if you’re really smart – use natural language processing to detect the question form) and notify someone to take a look at what’s happening. One can dream ..

Have you seen any interesting dialogs recently?

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It’s a visual representation of some of interface patterns used in interface design field. Idea behind these patterns is that if we manage to standardize on certain ways of doing things, then the overall usability and user experience of your interface will benefit from it.

So the big problem is – how do I learn patterns? The usual way in * design profession is that you observe the world around you, take note of remarkable work of others and observe the problems of your users to iterate to a solution.

The other approach is to dive into one of these pattern sites, see how others solved similar presentation/navigation/input/ .. problem and get inspiration from it. Quince is one of such solutions.

Quince browser

It has a wide collection of different patterns together with examples, rational and screen shots. All neatly organizable and browsable. It also allows community to add and vote for their own so it has potential to grow with time.

The bad? It’s done in Silverlight and has a bit confusing User Interface. But it seems to work nicely on my Mac for now and I plan to evaluate it in my future interface design.

Quince patterns

And for the ones wondering – Quince is a very nice flower of Asian origin:

Image by Martin LaBar via Flickr

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So how do you express this with the user interface? Simple, you make an empty box that anyone can assign meaning to it, but its mostly there to have the most private option and to dissolve any implications of labeling yourself.

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With drop-downs, it’s often the case that we want to undo our option but the form won’t allow us. It takes extra attention to detail to allow such option.

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The basic idea of the product is that if you take enough practice tests and the application takes score of the things you know and don’t know you can slowly learn everything you need to know for the actual test.

Everything happens from this dashboard:

uCertify

Instead of describing whole application, I’ll try to make a more of a usability review of it.

• Learning notes are well prepared but lack better navigation from within text. Having related articles or wiki like links would increase browsability of content in initial learning stages. Right now it feels more of a book experience that you have to read from beginning to the end in linear fashion.
• Studying topics are nicely grouped but also give the sense of learning by heart feeling. It’s probably really easy to pass an exam with this tool without having real experience with Adobe Flash.
• I’m not sure what their intention with tagging was. It’s useful to tag articles, but having to keep taxonomy in the head is a bad decision. Show me the tags I used on other articles so I can group them via tag!
• Please use standard Windows dialogs. Having your own pop-up dialog is annoying as it doesn’t confirm to usual Windows shortcuts.
• More keyboard shortcuts would be useful. Like using direction keys on the keyboard for moving left and right, instead of having to click buttons.

Overall it’s a nice and cheap way to study for exam and in the process also learn something. While it probably allows one to learn all the cue cards, ii also contains enough articles and explanation of questions and answer to be useful with real knowledge.

I would wish they would follow Microsoft Human Interface Guidelines as they have some interesting self made dialog boxes and interfaces.

I’m also a bit disappointing that it doesn’t work on OS X as Flash is not Windows only. I tried installing it using Crossover Office but it sadly failed at that.

Disclaimer: this review was not paid, but I did recieve full uCeritfy Adobe Flash CS3 Ace Exam to be able to take a look.

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In no specific order:

1. UX London, 15th – 17th June 2009, London – Early bird: £895 (~900 EUR)
2. UX Week, 15-18 September 2009, San Francisco, CA – $1795 (~1 356 EUR)
   or alternative UX Intensive Berlin, 12-15 May – Early bird: $1795(~1 356 EUR)
3. UX Camp Berlin, 23 – 24 May 2009, BarCamp style event.  Most useful if you speak German or are pushy enough about people speaking English around you.

There’s also a Upcoming group Interaction Design that lists most of these events.

I would advise against going to general Web conferences to learn more about UX as their are too general in their nature and you’ll unlikely learn anything new.

Is there an UX conference that I missed and is a must go in your opinion?

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