UI::IU

User Interface - Intuitive Usabilty

I have to give credit to Hugh Macleod again - this print at the end says it all.

In design we often struggle with evolution. Legacy has killed many products, and the software industry often is not nimble enough to recognize when a wholesale revolutionary jump is necessary in order to keep pace with trending and market changes, keeping the brand intact but

changing the product. Few, such as Apple, have been able to truly both be evolutionary and revolutionary, but to no small degree by a clear vision and key perseverance.

Have you ever truly had an experience with a product that, is not only evolutionary in a new market, but could also be revolutionary in another?

This could be the advent of the mobile application market feeding back into the desktop lifestream.

How? Go, boot up your computer. A legacy operating system, built a step up but with an eye towards early adopters, technologists with a bent towards customization and programming, that has not kept up with the widening market of users that only want to click on an icon and run an

application. They don't want to know how it works. They don't want to spend hours trying to devirus the system or flush the cache. They don't want to dig for files.

They just want one window in which a clear set of intuitive interactions await their touch, sans thinking.

I handed my iPhone to my grandfather. This man, as I've come to discover, is the genetic source of my geekiness, a lifetime cabinet builder that bought his first computer at the age of 75. And, with his first touches, he got it.

And so, as a meandering wander through the computer section of Best Buy illustrated, Microsoft hasn't got it. A desktop. Sub folders. All exposed naked, as driven by programmers who supply the masses, historically true to their DOS predecessors.

But why do 95% of users need this? Why, when I go to the office, do I not press a button, and click a few icons into my applications? Why, when I need a new application, do I not click on the store and automatically install it on my computer? Why do I struggle through applications with 10 steps, with the illustrious 'install wizard', the very model of user unfriendliness for non-techs.

If the Chrome OS can spark a change, or Apple can scale their mobile OS to a desktop level, should Microsoft not be afraid? We never know how these elements pan out, but this is a landscape ripe for the taking. Will it be a push to the cloud? Will it be a redesign of a easily customizable, excessively user-friendly desktop experience, in which I have a hood covering the engine to my silicon car?

Let's hope so, if not to bring a level of stability and to finally show a significant step forward in our understanding of human interaction, and understanding of the how we behave.

Split the Data:Two are better than one.

Musings on massive (def: >100 mb) BIM datasets and a strategy for attribute seek optimization.

In working with a massive dataset on Revit (4 180+mb files, 1 120+mb, and 1 80+mb structural file, compressed), I have had the opportunity to observe the impacts to productivity and inefficiency of attributal seeking in the context of a large (+40 person) team.

Not good.

5+ minute load times. Multi-minute lag on certain commands. View load times. Save times. Reload latest. All of these add up to both actual and perceived inefficiencies in a BIM workflow. While the central database model offers many benefits, the question is how to improve on this?

While undergoing an experiment on a Linux CAVE system, I had the opportunity to work with a researcher writing his own modelling application. Our dataset was a +1gig ASCII file, and in doing manual edits on the dataset (ironically, on a homemade text editor), I had the opportunity to witness a search algorithm that was able to break the data into small batch sets, resulting in a seek time faster than a standard unix word count algorithm.

So, if it is possible to subdivide and partition the dataset in a way that allows for localized seeking, is it possible to modularize the data in a way that begins to prioritize a more efficient user experience?

This is an engineering question. Similar to current battery research, as batteries maxed out their golden ratio of weight to charge hold times, engineers have now had to begin studying ways to separate battery usage into a more efficient division based on the tasks that are being asked of it in order to extend lifespans while decreasing weight. If this same strategy is employed on a dataset, is it possible to separate graphic information from quick access from deep access data?

IE: Splitting apart the data when generated into clusters so as I access views, that information is both optimized in a location to speed graphic population and redraw on the GPU, as well as intelligent streaming caching to take away the generation lag, but not bogging it down anywhere else in the dataset? This could also allow for a separation of types of data, from representation vs. attributes, in a way that would allow a structural package to optimize data it is loading differently than an MEP package differently than an architectural package.

Combined in a cloud scenario, an optimized database manager can be loaded an run in parallel to the BIM app. The dangerous side of this would allow current modeling only applications such as SketchUp to, in parallel, develop an attribute database system that plugs into their software, giving them an instant competitive entry to the game.

This is what keeps life interesting. Carry on, diisssmissed!