Surprisingly, my anger wasn’t directed at the network for being slow or at Parallels for taking entirely too long to boot up or shut down. It wasn’t because I lost work, because my computer inexplicably froze up on me or forced me to restart because it had some updates to install.It was at a piece of software I explicitly elected to use, though there were other options available. And, perhaps most surprising of all, this piece of software is from Apple, who’s products I generally find enjoyable to use.

I am fucking pissed at iMovie ‘09.

I needed to do some editing of a video I shot for a tutorial. A colleague of mine suggested using a product called Ultra Video Splitter from company called Aone; my e-mail esponse to him was this:

Thanks, Xxxx – I’m probably going to take a shot at it using iMovie – as it’s software I’ve been meaning to learn how to use for quite a while and this would be the perfect opportunity! I’ll let you know what I come up with ……

Dan

It’s true; I’d never used iMovie before, mostly because I never had a reason to have to use it. And here was the perfect opportunity. I’ve had good experience with Apple products in the past, and I didn’t mind investing time in learning a tool that could potentially come in handy in the future. Besides, Apple sh*t is cool, right? Way cooler than some Windows shareware app.

The good part, is that within about half an hour of clicking around, after hovering over buttons to bring up tooltips and countless Apple-Zs, I knew my way around the interface and had a good mental model of how all the parts fit together. Apple tends to be very good at designing simple, learnable interfaces with plenty of scaffolding to enable first-time users like myself to find their way around.

My goal was very simple. To comb through about 45 minutes of video, splice out ~20 interesting clips, and make a separate video file out of each. I went through the video, Favorite-ing about twenty sections and made ‘clips’ out of them to add to my movie. All without looking at a single sentence of an instruction manual. Bravo to me for being so smart, and kudos to Apple for building an application which requires zero instruction for a newbie to get up and running.

But from here, things went downhill. Fast.

First off, I realized that I couldn’t only export one clip at a time.  You’re only able to export the whole movie (i.e. the sum of all the clips plus whatever transitions are in between them). This was kind of confounding, and I spent a bit of time Googling around before resigning myself to a wonky workaround: duplicating my twenty-clip project twenty times, and then deleting all but one clip in each of the projects, so that when I export, I got just one clip in the movie. *Sigh*.

My test case then was to just create one duplicate project with one clip, and to see how the resultant video came out. To my dismay, I found that the video I was exporting was of significantly lower quality than the source. Back to the Google. Without knowing too much about video editing and codecs, from what I read, In concluded that this is is just apparently the way iMovie works, nothing I can do about it.  But I would be taking these video clips and using them in a Camtasia presentation, which would compress them even more, so starting with degraded-quality clips was not an option. Time to check out the other application recommended by my colleague. *Sigh*.

One issue though – I’d spent about three hours going through the video and hand-selecting the bits that I needed, and I didn’t want to have to go through the video again in another program and repeat this laborious process. Surely there must be some way to export the chapters I’ve created or information about the Favorites I’d earmarked? File -> Export? Hello? Share? Where are you, menu item?!? I tried ‘Export to Final Cut XML’ or something and the xml  file which was produced didn’t seem to have units or tags that I could make any sense of. Fair enough – that one was kind of a stretch. But still …. *sigh*.

Looks like I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Here was my plan: I was going to take out a piece of paper (there must be some around here somewhere) and some kind of writing instrument, and record onto the paper with the writing instrument, the time, in seconds, that each one of these clips starts and ends. Then, with this presumably inferior recommended software open, I would then take aforementioned piece of paper, read back the numbers, and create a parallel set of clips within the new software, then export these to seperate videos. Simple, right? A pain in the ass, sure, and a waste of time, sure, but what could go wrong?

As it turns out, it’s not that easy to figure out where in the movie each of my twenty clips started and stopped. iMovie does not tell you the location in minutes and seconds of the playhead. Let me repeat that, this time in bold , red letters:

Nowhere in iMovie ‘09 is there any indicator of time. Everything is relative to everything else, but it’s not possible to determine where anything is in absolute terms.

What is the implication of this? The implication of this is that any work done in iMovie ‘09 is essentially locked in iMovie and, other than exporting a video, there is no way to get this information (even in an ‘analog’ fashion), to any other application.  How so … very … Apple!

(if anyone who reads this knows a way to either export marker information or to see an absolute timeline in iMovie ‘09, please tell me and I’ll gladly whimper away with my tail between my legs).

why? Why? WHY? Who thought this was a good idea? Who would object or be inconvenienced by having this information appear in the “Playhead Information” that follows the scrubber? I just don’t get it. It really frustrates me.

But the deeper question is, why do I still really really want to use iMovie as opposed to the other software (which, after a really contrived process, I was able to utilize)? Why do I want so badly to want to like this software, and to want to use it?

So my revelation out of this long, tedious retelling of this event is that Apple is kind of like a selfish, flaky friend. You know the kind I’m talking about – the kind of friend that’s great to be with when you’re actually hanging out with them, but the second you ask for a favor, or suggest an activity that they’re not too keen on, you get shot down, because … c’mon … who’s really in charge here? We all know that Apple is wearing the pants in this relationship.

And I’ll put up with it (I suspect other people will too), with all the abuse, with the selfishness, just for the chance to use the software — even on its own terms. Doesn’t matter if Apple shows up late, or forgets about my birthday, I’ll take what I can get, because, when things are good, they’re really good! And when things don’t go so well, I’m willing to cut him some slack, because man, he is cool … I’m surprised he even wants to hang out with me at all. And when other people try to tell me how he’s kind of a douche, and that I’ve got lots of other good, reliable (albeit less cool) people I could be spending my time with, I’ll defend him, but I won’t be able to explain why. You could call it “Cupertino Syndrome.”

On the one hand, this experience was incredibly infuriating, and on the other, it’s completely unsurprising. This is what Apple does, over and over again. Mac. iPod. iPhone. iMovie. You name it. When you buy into something Apple, you’re not only buying into that thing – you’re buying into a whole ecosystem of (sometimes really expensive) stuff to support it and to work well with it. And for most of the people, most of the time, it does work well, very well, in fact. And for many people — myself included — on the average, it’s worth it. By excluding so many features from their software, those features that are included are all the more easier to use. As an interaction designer (and a human), I appreciate this simplicity.

Now that I know the limitations of iMovie ‘09, I probably won’t use it again for doing any kind of substantial video editing. But I will always look back fondly on the good times we shared together, and appreciate him for all of the good qualities, such as learnability, a snazzy user interface and some cool visual effects.

And I thought I read somewhere  that they had a ‘Timeline’ feature back in iMovie ‘06 ….

I recently moved from Chicago, IL, USA to Calgary, AB, Canada. Jury’s still out on whether or not trading the El for the C-Train, pizza and hot dogs for Vietnamese subs, or the lake for the mountains (which have their own lakes!) is worth it …. but one thing’s for sure: I’m really happy with my new job as  Usability Specialist with a company called SMART Technologies,  responsible for  many excellent educational technology hardware and software products, most popularly the SMART Board.

But this post is not about SMART (maybe I’ll write one in the future), it’s about parking in Calgary (something I try to not have to do too much of, but there’s just no way around using a car here). Nothing too insightful here, just a funny parking experience I had and also a  kudos to the city-wide parking system, ParkPlus.

The Bad

It took about a million weeks for my car to ship from Chicago -> Calgary (which is funny as my stuff got here in about one). Once it arrived here, I had to visit around eight different places (government offices, registries, dealerships) in order for my car to be blessed as kosher in Alberta. In any event, there was a period where I had a rental car and my imported Volkswagen and had to strategically shuttle them around so I could take the latter to get inspected and then use the former to get home. A funny thing happened when I tried to park them both in the same lot, using my credit card in the automated parking machine. I swiped my card, paid for a couple hours worth of parking for one car, then went to dip my card again, and got the following error message.

It took my quite a while to figure out what the heck was going on here. I eventually just assumed that my credit card info was stored in some central parking database which doesn’t allow one to have multiple simultaneous sessions on the same card. Understandable … it’s an edge use case …. but I still couldn’t figure out what was the rationale for disallowing this. But … what about that error message, huh? Gotta be one of the best I’ve seen. How about ‘Session in Progress’ or ‘Try Different Card’ ? To me, “Impossible Payment” implies that I tried to pay for -i or 1/0 hours of parking time, or attempted to pay with my blockbuster card. I scrounged up enough loonies to pay with cold hard, cash. It didn’t seem to have any problem with that.

The Good

Not that I enjoy paying for parking — especially at work — but if I have to pay, I want it to be as painless as possible. The ParkPlus system makes parking so easy, you don’t even car that you’re getting ripped off!

Here’s how it works. These payment boxes have sprung up all over the city, and many of the streets have signs with zone numbers posted along them. You park your car somewhere, find the nearest box enter the zone number where you’ve parked your car, dip your credit card and you’re done.  Pretty easy, and ingenious for ParkPlus because adding a new zone is as easy as putting up a pole with a number — no need to install a quarter-based parking meter for every parking spot.

Well, the streets around my work building are Park-Plus-ified, and I’d seen signs advertising a way to pay with your mobile. So one day, instead of walking the extra 250 feet past the front door to the machine, I decided I’d pay with my mobile. I navigated to parkplus.ca with my mobile phone and found it to be not a mobile-optimized site, and I was a bit confused by this. When I got to my desk, I spent some more time navigating around the site from my browser on my PC, and as it turns out, you actually need to call a phone number from your phone to pay for parking — how adorably quaint!! The website is only used to create an account and for you to add money to that account.

Paying exorbitant fees every month to Fido for use of their mobile internet, I was a bit upset that there wasn’t a web site — or better yet a mobile app — I could use to do this, but I thought I’d put some money in my ParkPlus account and give it a go using the ‘ol Dialer app on my Android Phone.  It’s a pretty fluid interaction:

• Place the call
• Press 1 to create a new parking session or cancel current one
• Enter zone number
• System reads it back, press 1 to confirm
• It thanks me, tells me when my session expires and hangs up.

Total time expended ….. 33 seconds. That’s pretty great (as great as paying for parking gets), and quite the relief after having used Fido’s ridiculously inefficient voicemail system. I hope to post more on this later.

Sad fun fact of the day: ParkPlus is at the top of my mobile’s automatically generated ‘Favorites’ list (based on frequency of calls).

I was intrigued by the the “Too Warm” and “Too Cool” buttons. I kept on pressing the “Too Cool” button but alas, I didn’t get any less cool. Cuz I’m so freakin cool. See how that works?

On first read, I was a little confused. But it didn’t take too long to figure out (given the direction of the arrows corresponding to each button) that the idea was for the user to press the “Too Cool” button when they were feeling chilly, and the “Too Hot” button when they were feeling too warm. Too Cool makes it warmer, and Too Warm will make it cooler. Simple, right?

I thought this was a pretty unique take on the traditional heat vs. cold / up vs. down way of managing the temperature (e.g. put the heat on and make the fan low, or put the a/c on and crank it). I like the idea of the user’s feeling or current state being reflected in the interface, as opposed to the traditional inversion that has to happen: “I’m cold, and thus I want to make it warmer.”

It reminded me of the oft-argued interaction design question of: Should a button reflect the current state of the interface, or should it indicate the action that will occur when the button is pressed. This of course depends on the specific situation, and if there is some other way to indicate the current state.

Un-originally enough, when I flipped down the panel to reveal more buttons on this remote control’s user interface, it appears that this mode is called the “I Feel” mode. It’s difficult to see from this crappy cameraphone photo, but as you press the ‘Mode’ button, you toggle between several modes, of which one of them is “I Feel”:

So – is this more usable than a traditional control set? I think the answer to this question depends on how intelligent the system is. If I press “Too Warm,” will it keep on getting colder until I’m freezing or does it have a reasonable shut-off point (I suspect the latter). Is that ‘optimal’ temperatue configurable somewhere? If I am indeed very cold (”Freakin Ear-sicles”), can I press “Too Cold” multiple times to make it warm up sooner? This last use case is something that is probably easier addressed with an absolute temperature setting, or even a level-ed fan system.

If it’s any indication of the intelligence of the system, I only recall being “Too Warm” or “Too Cold” once every couple of hours, after which time the system seemed to right itself.

So where else would this relative approach that considers the user’s current condition be useful, or at the very least interesting?

“Too Soft.” Make my ringer louder.

My phone bill has been “Too Expensive,” throttle back on the amount data usage (live updates, etc.)

“Too Busy” to answer email.

***

After using the word “too” a lot of times in this post, I’ve noticed that it’s actually kind of a funny-looking word. Is “too” it even a word actually, or did I totally make it up?!? Too weird.

During a transaction with my a Bank of America ATM (I have a checking account with them) I noticed that a button appeared on-screen for me to enter a customized Fast Cash amount. If you’re not familiar with Fast Cash, it’s basically a shortcut feature that lets me easily withdraw predetermined amounts of money (in increments of $20) without having to go through an extended flow of screens which includes choosing a source account, choosing withdraw, etc. I just enter in my PIN, choose Fast Cash, and I’m at this screen:

That blue buttom on the bottom – the one that says “Set Fast Cash Preference” – is new! When I press it, it takes me here:

And then, once I enter in a value, say $120, and press “Enter,” I’m taken back to the Fast Cash screen which now looks like this:

 And there is my customized Fast Cash amount, accessible with one button press.

I think customization is a good thing; I’m all for using technology to make users’ lives easier. And this is a nice example of using a tiny bit of stored intelligence to streamline what would probably be a pretty common task – taking out money from the ATM. I mean, the banking system maintains all the information about the state of your finances, each and every deposit and withdrawal you’ve made. They have all this information anyway, so adding in a feature like this would seem like a no-brainer. Taken to the next level, this kind of reminds of me of some of the adaptive menus in Microsoft Office. It knows how often you use certain items, and thus bubbles those items to the top, demoting or hiding less-often-used items. Could an ATM not do the same with withdrawal amounts? 

I wonder what research drove the addition of this feature. Do most people take the same money out of the ATM every time they go. Does entering in a custom amount other than the $10, $20, $30, $50, $80, and $100 that is already offered pose a pain point for customers? What does the distribution of average dollar amount taken out per ATM visit look like.

I suppose if they found that many people consistently take out the same dollar amount each visit, and this amount is something that is not covered by the six presets that are offered, then this custom Fast Cash feature could make people’s lives a bit easier. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with it; it’s just a rectangle that comes out from underneath my task bar to tell me something important, like how Firefox has found an update, or some document has finished downloading.

But the speed at which this thing comes out … it’s incredibly slow … it’s almost like it’s sneaking around my desktop, looking for trouble, doing something menacing. It doesn’t actually make any sound,  but  if it did, it would be the creaking of a rusty door in an abandoned haunted mansion. I don’t know why I have such an averse reaction to it. Something ’bout that dialog just ain’t right. I would really prefer it to be a little quicker, and then just be done with the whole thing. I’ve even looked in the Firefox settings to seeif you can change the speed with which the notification appears, but alas, it is not configurable. I believe that it could do everything it currently does – notify the user that something important has happened, and enable them to act on it – in about half the time.

Not only is it slow, but it’s also pretty easy to immediately tell, when it’s only a quarter or so of the way out, what it is communicating. So on top of being weird and awkwardly slow, it also evokes the kind of feeling like when your friend is telling a really long story that you’ve already heard before, and you already know the punchline but must suffer through it anyway. It’s pretty hard to ignore something that is moving on your screen, no matter how slow it is or how small a portion of the screen is affected; your attention is drawn to motion.

I much prefer the Outlook notification dialog which flashes on the screen, and then fades out by lowering the opacity over a course of a couple of seconds. Leave it to Microsoft to make this whole thing configurable, although it is buried incredibly deep: Tools -> Options Menu -> Preferences Tab -> Email Options -> Advanced Email Options -> Desktop Alert Settings!!

At first thought, it wouldn’t seem that the behavior of a new event notification dialog should warrant it’s own settings user interface. But being that a notification can pop up at any time on your Desktop, which is actually a fairly ‘public’ place, given that people can see your screen over your shoulder or you might be projecting, etc., it makes sense to devote this much attention to it.

As another data point, the GMail notifier that sits in the icon tray combines two kinds of animations – transparency as well as motion – to alert the user when new mail is found on the server. This pops in and pops out much faster than the Firefox dialog does, and it’s just as readable. I can’t quite tell, but I think the movement may include a little ease-in and ease-out; I’d argue that this kind of organic motion, as opposed to something which moves at a constant pace, is more natural to the human eye, which ultimately helps make the notification seem more ‘familiar’ and less of a distraction.