I was simultaneously curious and terrified as to what that button might do. It was isolated from all of the other buttons in the elevator, so I couldn’t help but stare. Maybe these are more common in earthquake-prone areas (Californians?) but this was the first one I’ve seen in Seattle.

WikiAnswers has the scoop on the Earthquake button: “The button is used to allow the elevator doors to be open in a safe way and allow the building security etc. to know you are there and need rescue. “

Really, I find this fascinating. Google has established such a strong brand around their minimalist design style, that something as small as this is (a) considered newsworthy, and (b) warrants an “official Google response” (according to the TechCrunchIT article).

This leads to an interesting task for the non-Googlers in the audience. Take this news back to your company, and ask: Is our design philosophy so firmly ingrained in the minds of our customers, that straying from it is newsworthy? Maybe being newsworthy isn’t the goal, but it says something about how solid your design is if your customers can recognize what does and doesn’t belong.

Take how Safari handles tabbing. As part of an early draft of my portfolio redesign, I was considering including a brief blurb from my latest blog entry, so I was researching how to make an RSS feed reader in PHP. I referenced a 2-part article from Scratch Projects (Part 1, Part 2).

If you check each of the articles, you’ll notice that their titles are largely the same; only the part number distinguishes them. In fact, they’re both open right now in Firefox, and I can’t tell the tabs apart.

Someone working on Safari must have considered this case. With only one article open, it looks like you would expect:

But with both articles open, it cuts out the redundant information, only showing what you need to tell them apart:

Very nice…

The rounded edges combined with the hole at the top made it look and feel completely different to anything else that I keep in my pockets or desk drawers. To this day, I can grab my Listerine out of the center console of my car in short order without looking – the form is that unique. I imagine the same is true for purses (ladies?).

That’s why I was so mortified when I saw another, very different product cash in on that same form factor…

That’s Neosporin’s new “Neo-to-Go,” which I saw advertised the other night on TV as a must-have for moms with accident-prone kids.

I think this is asking for trouble. While I’m probably not at risk of having both in my car, I could see women keeping both in their purses, and potentially mixing them up, with disastrous consequences.

Both of these products are made by Johnson & Johnson, and I’m sure their product designers found what seemed like another innovative use for a cool form factor. But the uniqueness of that form factor has other ramifications than strictly visual appeal, which I think they must have ignored or not even considered. I just hope the incidence of swallowing Neosporin doesn’t spike over the coming months.

A couple of things caught my eye. First are the Snood and Breakout games that they’ve included. Nothing new, until you see the news headlines flash across the screen. It’s an interesting way to pass the time without wasting it – at least you’re keeping up with the latest headlines.

More interesting is their new Spectra Visual Newsreader, covered yesterday at UX Magazine. Essentially, you pick your favorite news stories and they swirl about you, waiting for you to flick through them.

My only complaint is that, despite the fluid collection of news stories, you’re forced to flip through them one at a time, in order. I kept clicking on random stories trying to grab something different out of the cloud.

But really, I think MSNBC should work on fully immersive environments. How cool would it be to have news stories swarming around you!

It was a tough, but exciting, decision to make. Following along with this year’s MIX Conference clinched it for me; I realized how much fun DevDiv was having without me! Plus, you really can’t beat Ux team at DevDiv, and while being the lone soldier had a lot of benefits, it will be nice to be back with that team, doing what I love to do.

Speaking of which, the past month has also brought a lot of reflection on what it exactly it is that I love to do. I think this is a common reflection quest for people in the ever-expanding usability field: As it continues to fragment into subdisciplines, finding which one (or combination) of them fits you is a tricky affair, let alone finding someone to pay you to work in that niche. Friend and former-MHCIer Whitney Hess has discussed this topic at length. (PS – If you aren’t subscribed to her blog yet, you should be.)

After mulling over what I loved to do (and going through numerous portfolio drafts), I settled on Design Communication as the best nomenclature for what I love to do. Cooper is one of a very small group of companies to list this as an explicit job role; however, I realized that Design Communication is exactly what I had been doing at Microsoft, and to a lesser extent, at CMU. I think returning to a Microsoft will be a great fit for me.

If you have any thoughts on the new portfolio, I’d love to hear them. And if you’ve been wanting to visit me but are waiting for me to settle down, rest assured that I’ll be in Seattle for a good while.

Jakob Nielsen released his Alertbox just a few moments ago, implying in the summary that, of all the bad design decisions a company can make, those around content are the most costly:

Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages… which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.

Intrigued, I followed the link, only to find this:

So not being able to even see the content… does that fall anywhere near the “bad content” end of the spectrum?

A bit of investigation reveals that the entire Alertbox subdomain is somehow restricted in its access. Hopefully this issue isn’t too costly for him.

I stumbled upon Stikipad, and I was impressed. The design was simple, the markup commands easily accessible, and it didn’t require any complicated setup. From that day six months ago, if anyone asked me about setting up a wiki, I recommended Stikipad as the most usable alternative.

Yesterday, I was distraught to find that I couldn’t access my wiki. Every time I tried to sign in, I was redirected back to the sign in page. No errors – my password was correct – it just wouldn’t pull up my account!

Once I learned it was happening to a friend also, I decided to check out their help page to see if there was anything about this issue. The page is, itself, a wiki, and it turns out it was edited 15 days ago; likely, with that bold message at the top (posted here in case Stikipad comes to their senses):

Conclusion? Stikipad must be dead. I can’t imagine a legitimate business functioning for two weeks with such an inflammatory message on the landing page of its help site.

Really, it’s a shame. I thought Stikipad had a lot of potential. I guess it goes to show the extreme importance on having bulletproof customer service when you’re in the web industry (especially if you’re asking people to pay you): It seems like customers will put up with occasional bugs, as long as the company is responsive. But dropping off the radar entirely is simply unforgivable.

I followed his link to Mac OS X hints, and adjusted the Dock accordingly. But even with that fix, I ended up being so frustrated that I turned off Spaces all together last night. Why? Because the “fix” ended up breaking Alt+Tab.

I still maintain that the best way for Spaces to be effective is to maintain truly separate Desktops; including, separate files on each Desktop, separate Docks for each Desktop, etc. However, that isn’t how Spaces operates today. Accepting this fact, I still find myself determined to reap the potential productivity benefits.

After the jump, I discuss why I’m obsessed with Alt+Tab, how Spaces is breaking Alt+Tab, and how I’m using Mozilla Prism to make Spaces meet my needs a little bit better.

Why I’m Obsessed with Alt+Tab
I remember when I was 15, goofing around on AOL (on Mac Classic, no less), when I randomly stumbled upon Alt+Tab. It was so simple, but so compelling: The idea that you could switch between applications with a couple simple key strokes.

I write about it like I’m the only one to ever use it, and I know that’s far from the case. But for something to have taken hold so long ago… anymore, hitting the Alt+Tab keys to switch between applications is as natural to me as breathing. When I’m reading blogs and chatting with friends, I have one hand on my mouse and the other poised over the Alt+Tab keys.

A cursory search on the topic shows that I’m not alone, and the author here brings up my point (albeit for Windows Vista): Changing the behavior of something so fundamental (especially if its used many times a day by your power users) is dangerous business. There’s a high risk that you’ll frustrate your power users unless you’re legitimately improving the feature.

Apple seems to have hacked apart Alt+Tab with Spaces, and not for the better. Below I go into the behavior I’ve been able to determine on a case by case basis. But here’s a quick preview: The fact that the behavior varies from case to case is a good indication that something might be wrong.

Alt+Tab Mixed with Spaces
Between the hack linked to above and the different options in Spaces Preferences I discussed yesterday, you end up with 6 different scenarios, each with a slightly different behavior. The full list is shown below.

Whether you think some behavior above is correct or not, that’s not really the point. The point is that Alt+Tab is so fundamental, and this basic functionality is now no longer predictable by expert users who rely on it.

So what to do? As I said, abandoning Spaces wasn’t an option. Below, I discuss how I used Mozilla Prism to create as close of an ideal working environment in Spaces as I could.

Setting Up Spaces with Prism
If you review my article yesterday, my main goal is to have separate windows from the same application on different spaces. The result? See the bottom row of the table above. Sadly, both options result in atypical Alt+Tab behavior, and I’m unwilling to adjust.

Enter Mozilla Prism: If I can’t have separate windows, I’ll just have to rely on separate applications.

If you aren’t familiar with Mozilla Prism, the simple explanation is that it takes a web application (GMail, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and treats them as their own applications without any of the standard web browser junk. Aside from that added simplicity, I now have common websites behaving as separate applications: Perfect for Spaces.

Here’s how I’ve set up my dock so far:

Now, the GMail, Twitter, and Facebook “applications” can all be open in my “Social” space, leaving other spaces free to utilize my web browser however I choose (for blogging, research, etc). If I Alt+Tab to them, it will take me back to my social space; not what I’d prefer, but I can live with that.

If you want to try this for yourself, be advised that the link above has an older version of Prism than what seems to be the latest… Prism 0.9 for the Mac is hidden here. FYI, this download is also much faster than 0.8.

What I Still Want to See
In closing, a few thoughts about this solution, and what I view as some short-term and long-term improvements.

1. Spaces Preferences doesn’t recognize Prism-made apps. I’m not sure why. I can select them. I can hit OK. But then they just don’t show up in the window. It’s very strange.
2. This solution doesn’t scale well. Every time I find a space-specific web browser need, I’ll have to create a new Prism application for it. Which means dock clutter, and more apps to switch between with Alt+Tab.
3. The core problem with Spaces isn’t confined to web browsing (even though web browsing is probably the worst offender in my book). Code editors, graphics programs, etc… all of them will need to be on multiple spaces.

Ultimately, these issues take me back to my first point: Until the desktops are truly separate, Spaces won’t be a complete tool. But, hey. If you can’t make your desktops separate… why not make your applications separate? For now, that’ll do.

In some cases, applications will be nicely confined to one space. IM clients, for example: I will only chat in one space to prevent from being distracted in others.

Web browsers are another story. I need them everywhere. For email. For blogging. For arranging photos on Flickr. For researching that tricky programming issue that has me pulling my hair out. But I don’t want email on my programming space. That’s the point of separating it out – I don’t want to be distracted by something that isn’t contributing to the task on that space.

So let’s take a simple scenario, and explore how Spaces supports it.

The Scenario: I have my email (Firefox) and chat (Adium) open in a space. I want to write a new blog post in a new space, which means I want to open a new Firefox window in a new space.

Now, there’s a spot in Spaces Preferences where you can tie applications to one or all spaces, so that was my first guess:

But that’s wrong! When you tie Firefox to every space, that means all your browser windows – email, blogging, the works – follow you to every space you visit. Certainly good in some situations, but not what I’m after in this scenario.

It turns out that accomplishing my goal is a bit convoluted:

1. Don’t list Firefox in the Spaces Preferences.
2. Have my email open with Firefox in the first space.
3. While still in the first space, open a new Firefox window.
4. Press F8, or otherwise invoke the “Spaces Exposé” command.
5. Drag your new browser window from one space to your new space.

This seems like entirely too much effort for what was advertised. I think the value of Spaces is having unique desktops. That includes everything that comes with a desktop: Unique docks, unique windows, unique tasks.

If I’m working on a tough programming problem and decide I need to dig around for something in the WordPress API, I want to launch Firefox and have a window appear in that space. I do not want to be torn away from my programming space back to the space where I first opened Firefox, and subsequently lose my context.

I think that spaces should be thought of as the highest level of abstraction in an Operating System, giving users a holistic desktop experience in each space. Arrange your dock to support that space’s task. Run applications and open windows as you need them.

Instead, I feel like Apple spent too much effort on switching between spaces. Dragging a window from one space to another in Exposé, or how Cmd + Tab now switches between spaces as well as applications (which, let me tell you, is incredibly jarring for someone like me who uses it constantly).

Don’t get me wrong, the graphics treatment and the Exposé interactions look terrific. But users are the ones forced to live with it, and how pretty it is gets old quickly if it doesn’t work the way it needs to.

Edit: Apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way. After looking around a bit more, I found an article over at 37signals that explains how to make my scenario happen more directly. I still think Apple has room for improvement, but this makes me happy in the short term.