(long) UI and iPhoto (was: Transparent IDE elements and other problems)

[j]

> 1) If you were designing iPhoto or an equivalent, what is the min size 
> that you would have specified for thumbnails and why?

If I am building software for "digital consumers"—iPhoto—I include 
options that meet the needs of my specific target audience.  By and 
large, when "digital consumers" are organizing their photos, they look 
for very specific photos.  They don't say, "I want to make a photo 
album of all the pictures I have which include a human head or heads."  
They say, "I want to make an album of pictures of Jane," or "I want to 
email the pictures of the Halloween party to Jane," or "Where is that 
picture of Jane at the Lincoln Memorial—the one where she is smiling, 
not the one where she is frowning?"

Consumers have scans and digital photos that fall into essentially very 
few categories: individual and group photos of the same friends and 
family members in various specific settings (for example, the Halloween 
party, the church picnic, the amusement park, hanging out in the living 
room); pets; and perhaps the rare photo of a landscape, some landmark 
they visited, or an event they attended.

The nature of these photos means that most look similar (that is, a 
human head or heads all clumped together) but are all very different 
(they are heads of different people in different specific settings).  
Imagine a coed in a sorority.  She has 100 pictures of herself with 
four other girls.  Problem is, they are never the same four girls.  
When viewed at the smallest size, the user will not be able to 
distinguish who the person/people are, let alone the context of the 
photo.  The fact that the names of the photos are reduced to "M..." 
means that even these labels are of no use to her.

Even if a user is able to take his time and distinguish the photos from 
one another, user productivity is slowed to a crawl because (a) he must 
take more time to examine each photo and (b) the number of photos 
visible at one time makes scanning for one or a few photos much more 
difficult—there is too much information presented, and it is presented 
in a format requiring very close attention to detail.

That said, on my 15 inch display, seven rows by twelve columns of 
photos seems much better.  Each photo is discernible and few of the 
names are shortened.  Even at that setting, however, scanning 84 
pictures for one or a few specific photos is probably almost too much 
for most "digital consumer" users.  Of course, this is based only on my 
knowledge of interface research and my own specific computer setup—not 
exactly scientific.  Give me a group of two hundred target users and 
two weeks, and I will tell you the exact size to the pixel.


> 2) In the case of selecting and moving a big batch of thumbnails as I 
> mentioned above, would you have decided it wasn't important (and 
> therefore not support it), or would you come up with another way to do 
> it?

If I have 50 pictures of landscapes including blue sky in my library, 
then I am probably not the target audience for iPhoto as described 
above—more likely, I am better described as an amateur landscape 
photographer or a hobbyist photographer.  If the reason Apple included 
small thumbnails was to meet the needs of these users, then they forgot 
their target audience.  Small thumbnails may be appropriate for such 
users—it's iPhoto that is not supposed to be appropriate.  iApps were 
never conceived of as "powerful enough for the pros, simple enough for 
the rest of us."  They are supposed to be "plug and play for the 
average adult, who reads at a seventh grade level."  Users who need to 
organize a massive library of black and white photos by category, for 
example, are supposed to step up to (and pay for) third party software.


> 3) And maybe the most telling question of all, do you have large 
> number of photographs on your computer, and if so what program do you 
> use to organize them?

As an amateur photographer, I have many photos on my computer.  I use 
iPhoto to organize only my personal "consumer" photos—candid photos of 
friends, etc.  I never use thumbnails at the smallest setting, even 
when dragging groups around to organize them.  Instead, my iPhoto 
thumbnails are nearly always set to three columns by two rows—that's 
right: six viewable photos at a time.  To organize my black and white 
photos, my clip art, my stock photography, I use the Finder or third 
party software like iView Multimedia or similar.  iPhoto just isn't up 
to the task, and that's kind of the point: it isn't supposed to be.

J.