Direct Manipulation
In Panoramio you can move your photos dragging its red pin over the map. That is direct manipulation.
Imagine the old system: first, select “move photo”, second, introduce a new location, and third, save the new location. Thus every feature needs explanations, controls and several steps. Adding features make the interaction more complex, slower and difficult.
In the old system, the easy way of keeping interfaces usable is reducing the number of features. However while “less is more” is a nice slogan, doesn’t really mean good interaction design. That is the point of Donald Norman in The truth about Google’s so-called “simplicity”. Norman thinks Google is simple just because they hid everything else, but the search box. He believes “simplicity” doesn’t mean good interface. It looks simple, because it has few links. However there are a lot of different contents together under them, so these links aren’t clear and lack information scent . For example, where is Google Scholar, under “Advanced Search” or “More”?. (more examples in Norman’s article).
It’s true there are websites with too many unnecessary buttons and options. But it’s also true there are too many useful elements that you just can’t hide. The easy way isn’t enough here.
Direct manipulation can solve some of this problems. Direct manipulation is nothing new, but came to the web with Ajax. In Flickr or Basecamp you just need to click over a title to edit it. Since you don’t edit titles very often, you don’t need a permanent “Edit” link beside every title, using space and crowding the interface. Also direct manipulation is better than hiding the “edit” feature under a vague general “settings” link.
Direct manipulation is not easy to design, there are still no standards to follow. You can’t use direct manipulation for everything, but it can be very useful sometimes.
4 Responses to “Direct Manipulation”
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Usable design is also about visually (and indeed texturally, audiably et cetera, as applies) communicating how each interaction device is used; in which manner you interact with it. I’m not sure how a blob on a map would tell you it’s draggable, but it ought to try, or users are going to remain oblivious of a feature they would need to know about, which would be more aparrent in a clunky interface with a “click here to reposition your photo” wizard style dialog.
Hi,
Yes, there is usually a problem of discoverability on direct manipulation interfaces.
A classical example is drag&drop. The blob on our mini map is sadly such another example.
Eduardo thinks that an interface that needs an explanation is a bad interface. I beg to differ. To me, an interface needs explanation when it is novel, not when it is bad. And it is not a black or white problem. The amount of explanation the user needs to understand an interface is the really important factor.
In the “blob in the mini map” case, a simple “drag the marker to change the position of the picture” should be enough.
I managed to completely misunderstand Eduardo in a private conversation.
Eduardo only stated that is better to have interfaces that do not need any explanation to interfaces that need one, and I obviously agree. He did not say that it is always evil to have an explanation, as I put above.
For people interested in direct manipulation I recommend reading the papers of Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, my ex-professor of User Interfaces in the university. Its work on CPN-2000 is outstanding, and it was a real eye opener.
Thanks for your comment Johan. As Cuenca suggested in the case of Panoramio is necessary to add a text like “drag the bubble to change the position of the picture”. Anyway adding this text doesn’t change the direct manipulation interaction and it would be much easier than the three steps (move, new location, save) from a classical web interaction.