When you use a piece of software for the first time you form an impression of it and your use with it. Either consciously or sub-consciously, your brain marks this experience with a marker, for later recall and recognition. I call this marker, software’s first impression. After having created a software first impression, any future reference or experience with this software is likely to be triggered and impacted by this first impression. This would seem to suggest, that creating a good first impression is important to the overall success of any piece of software. After all, if it’s not well received it is likely not well used.

Now this impression is usually formed from one or more of the following factors (definitely not a conclusive list):

  • How fast the software is
  • How responsive the software is
  • How well the software does its job
  • How angry the software makes you
  • How happy the software makes you

Why first impressions matter

So what use is it, knowing that a piece of software is going to create a first impression? Like most impressions, the first impression lasts. There is nearly always another piece of software to use that can do what your software does, possibly even better. So the importance of creating a good first impression should be high. Given the amount of choice people often have, their attention is not usually held on one particular piece of software to do the job they want. If it doesn’t do what they want immediately, they begin to look elsewhere for alternatives (this is obviously not the case in niche markets). How quickly they begin to look elsewhere is determined by how strongly this first impression is created and what it represents. A first impression that poses many pain points is going to make the user frustrated very quickly and subsequently look for alternative products. A first impression that presents itself as the solution too many pleasure points however is going to keep the user engaged longer.

Why? Because from the users perspective you have already turned around the question from ‘What can this piece of software do for me” to a ˜What can’t this piece of software do for me”. The latter, is much more powerful and affirms a much more positive connotation in the users mind. A strong, yet positive first impression is exactly what your software should aim to create.

Apple vs Microsoft - A case in point

Just look at any of apple’s products from their ipod series to their computer software (OS X with Leopard around the corner). Their software and user interfaces are obviously driven by user experience.

Whilst I don’t want to get into a flame war over which operating system is best or better, from a usability perspective I think Apple have a lot more going for them than Microsoft.

File Versioning

Just look at the file versioning/shadow copy system in Windows Vista and the new timeline feature in Leopard. Whilst timeline adds a lot of eye candy in the visual department, it makes it quick and easy to drag files bag into the present that previously only existed in the past. Windows however, has traditional properties, tabs and dialogs to access this sort of information with no visual cues. Even if you can restore a file to a previous version, there is no way to know if that version contains the information you want before you restore it. This is in stark contrast to Leopard’s timeline feature that allows you to visualize and look into files contents before you restore it.

The point I am making is that eye candy is not the primary motivator for apple’s features; it is nearly if not always driven by a user experience behind it.

Open Program Selection

This seems to be the opposite of my experience with Windows Vista. I would argue that the Flip3D feature for flipping through open programs and files is all but useless. It takes longer to find what you want than by traditional alt+tab means. Again, expose’ on OS X presents itself much better, allowing you to quickly see at a glance all of your open programs allowing you to select the window or program of choice with one button click. It is really only easy to see the front window in Flip3D, so several flips are in order to find the window/program of choice. Flip3D gets painfully annoying as the amount of open programs continues to rise as you have more and more flipping to do. At least the user experience created by expose’ is constant, no matter how many open windows or programs you have.

Program Launcher

Just looks at Apple’s dock bar and spotlight feature and compare this to Microsoft’s revamped start/run bar in Windows Vista. Typically, we users often only use a small subset of programs on a day to day basis. These are kept on the dockbar for quick launching. Other programs can be opened via spotlight with the type of a couple of words.

Microsoft obviously realised that trolling through a start bar was by no means an efficient way for launching programs, so they added built in searching right into the start bar. Why didn’t they just remove the start bar altogether? Because for Microsoft it is probably one of the strongest brand recognizers they have on their operating system. So much so, that they finally did away with the ˜start” label in Windows Vista, banking on everyones familiarities that yes….this globe thingy is actually a start bar.

So whose user experience is it?

iTunes has existed on Windows for some time now, but the interesting thing however is that they have kept their native apple look and feel and forgone that of Windows (when running on Windows of course). This begs the question, does a Windows user really want one application that has an entirely different look and feel to the rest of his/her applications?

Neglecting to support the native look and feel of a platform is bad for the user in my books. Simply because you create an experience which is different from what they would normally expect. When you use Windows you expect applications to look, feel and behave a certain way. Similarly, when you use a (insert Mac/Linux) you expect it to also look and behave a certain way.

Just recently Apple released Safari 3 for Windows and surprise, surprise; it is using the traditional Apple look and feel. I now have two applications on Windows Vista that look like they belong on a Mac. So whose experience is this breaking? Apples, or mine?

java Swing vs SWT

Another hot topic when it comes to look and feel. Swing has always had its own look and feel across platforms, (which is consistent). But it is not consistent with the native look and feel of the respective platform. So this creates a consistent Java experience across platforms, but not a consistent experience for user on said platform.

SWT however is a much thinner API and does use the native look and feel of the underlying operating systems widgets and components. So SWT applications on Windows Vista look like Windows Vista applications. Similarly, SWT applications on OS X look like typical OS X applications.

Finally

Going back to the Apple Safari and iTunes examples, Apple has a strong reason to not respect the native look and feel of Windows and it comes in the form of branding. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it translates well for Windows users though. Sure, a Mac user on Windows would feel right at home using iTunes or Safari. But for the rest of us Windows users it is another story. I quite like iTunes and Safari, but would like to see them support Windows native widget/component set. You can find an entirely comical look at Vista vs Mac OS 10 here.