Recently we gave our results page a facelift. One of the ways we’ve made the page cleaner is to simplify – we’ve removed the source URL string from the results page.

In the past we thought it was a good idea to display it. At the time it made complete sense: it helps the user decide the relevance of the result; A video from ‘youtube.com’ may seem to be more attractive than one from ‘zooblr.com’. Many of the big players (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) display the source URL on their result pages. But the interaction within Taptu is very different - click a result in Taptu and you’ll be whizzed to a mobile-friendly Taptu Summary page. Do the same in Google Mobile and you’ll go to a transcoded source site.

People have established perceptions of how a search engine should work. When a URL is displayed beside a link, first-time users perceive it to directly link to the external site – in the old version of Taptu at least, the user’s expectation would differ to the actual behaviour.

So for now at least we’re experimenting by removing the URL. What do you think – should we continue to display it? Did you find it useful?

As mobile UE designers, we face a constant challenge - how to offer our users lots of great features without creating a complex experience for them?

Within our team, we talk often about the experience we want to create - as people use our service for the first, second and future times. We work to create an experience where features are ‘revealed’ to users as they choose. We want this to happen progressively over time, so the user deepens their experience with the service under their own control.

Rather than purely taking in consideration what features to include in the service - which is what Kathy Sierra refers to in her Featuritis Curve below - we look at how the features could be unveiled so that the first visit isn’t overwhelming! On a mobile phone in particular, where we face constraints of limited screen space, network latency and navigation, it’s crucial that we fight the urge to tell a user everything at once.

Some users just want a simple search experience. Others will want to share what they find with friends by SMS. Others will want to broadcast a link to all their friends - direct to their favourite social network or microblog feed, (i.e. Twitter). We need to consider every one of those scenarios when designing.

For the first time user, our service is clearly a mobile search engine. We keep it simple and don’t offer stacks of features that will overload them either onscreen or cognitively. As users explore the service, they can discover other features - or ignore them - as they wish.

There is a concept in User Interface (UI) design called progressive disclosure, which Jakob Nielsen referred to in 2006.

A classic example of progressive disclosure in computer software is the ‘Print’ dialog box displayed when printing a document. First, you’ll see the dialog which shows only a few important options. If you want to, you can also ‘disclose’ a whole range of other settings/controls - the ‘advanced mode’ - peeling away at the layers of the onion until you get to what you need.

As a concept, progressive disclosure is similar to what we’re trying to achieve with the user experience of Taptu. We want this approach not only to work at individual widgets level, but to underpin the whole service experience as it unfolds to our users.

Have you used a service that gave you this feeling of revealing features? Or one that utterly failed at it by either overloading or hiding them too far away? We’d love to hear more about any you think do it well, or not so well!

I came across this quote this morning and find it rings very true. We’ve all experienced some great and some very poor User Interfaces on the web, at the cash machine, on our mobile. Things just get far more complicated than they need to be. Nelson Minar highlights how the iPhone takes a step towards simplicity.

While the sleek touchscreen defines the iPhone’s design, one of the things I like about it are the simple mechanical buttons on the side. There’s a dedicated volume rocker which instantly makes the iPhone a better music player than any iPod. But even better is the silent mode switch, an old fashioned mechanical two position switch. Slide it away, feel a satisfying click, and your phone is now in silent mode. There’s even an orange dot visible for visual confirmation.

You can measure the disaster of cell phone UI by how many button presses it takes to silence the damn ringer. My first Nokia phone took 2, the Ericsson took 3, and on the RAZR it’s like 17 button presses. You don’t need silent mode often, but when you do you need it quickly and without a bunch of screen reading distraction. The physical switch for that is lovely.

What can you do today to simplify the process your users go through?

[From Nelson’s Weblog via Merlin Mann at 43Folders]