If you have made resolutions to budget better, start accounting for one’s finances or even read bank statements regularly and failed, fear not. There’s an app for that. You need to try Mint.

• Mint has been hailed by UX pros.
• It was recently purchased by tax software-giant, Intuit.
• It’s a web application that  monitors and provides feedback about how you spend money.
• oh, and its 100% FREE

Have you tried it out yet?  Okay, leave this article, seriously. Go sign up and give it a whirl, then come back (or don’t) if you want to read the rest of what I have to say. More after the break.

Mint’s budgeting & accounting system is fun and easy to adopt.  It is unlike other accounting books, systems, and programs which are as enjoyable as monthly trips to the dentist.  Mint uses your bank statements to categorize and archive your activity automatically. Instead of laboriously managing statements and spreadsheets, you can spend time learning about your spending patterns through Mint’s system of interactive charts and pie graphs. MM…. pie graphs.

The makers of Mint realize that unless the system is simple or the program enjoyable, a person will not adopt it.  Habits dealing budgeting and finances are burdensome, even when there are financial incentives to get into those habits. For the first time ever, I want to be rigorous about my personal finances.  And not because I have excessive spending habits, but because it’s damned fun to do so.

Eating my burrito last night, I pondered about finances and the extent to which Mint was bettering them.  I saw a girl in line take out her wallet, and stare into its empty contents with a disgusted and slightly confused face.  I’ve been there before, you look into your wallet and it appears more empty than you believe it should be.  Looking at that girl’s expression, I realized that though Mint is a marvelous tool, the one thing it cannot do is track cash spending.  Once you pull money out of an ATM, it flies under the radar, leading to unconscious and irresponsible spending.

well, duh, Jon. How is an application going to track cash?

Hey, this is just an observation.  Perhaps Mint can do kick ass cash management, as well.  I believe the solution lies in the physical container: your wallet.  Cash can be accounted for the day we all have “smart wallets” in our pockets and purses.  These devices will come with a GPS tracker and a camera that reads bills.  Every time you open the wallet to pull out cash or credit, it records your GPS location and takes a photo of the cash in the wallet before money is taken out, and after. The uploaded data can tell you when and where your money was spent.  And, as an added bonus, the wallet can track down a thief if it gets stolen.

I guess its a problem if you’re dealing with cash transactions you WANT flying under the radar (hint: what businesses do transactions only in cash?). Too much Big Brother?

5 second usability test. As designers, we need to manage people’s immediate perceptions. A generation of internet surfers (like the channel surfers of the previous decades) will judge a websites value very rapidly. A great article

Jakob Nielsen on the Twitter phenomenon. A founding father of usability speaks about the new social media trend. Not to be confused with Nielsen & Co (media watchdog and marketer).

Another set of interviews from Jared Spool. Very useful to web designers and devs. One of his interviews is with Dan Brown, author of one of the bests texts on web-design documentation (Communicating Design). I have a copy of his excellent book on my shelf, but I don’t own Da Vinci Code.

Derek Powazek speaks on designing virtual communities. Front and center on A List Apart, this article talks about how designers can create web applications that engage users to interact with one another. I haven’t fully digested the article, but Yahoo’s Luke W has a few things to say about it.

Using verbs as Nouns in an interface. Your words matter, especially when you guide a user through your information design.

Oh, and here’s some pretty stuff

A video of a designer at work, at high speeds. Incredible and inspirational.

Whats in your bag? A look into the tools that designers carry with them. Lots of apple and moleskine (bah)

A familiar situation

Will you donate $1000 to our organization? [Response is no].
Oh. Well could you donate $10?”

- or how about this one -

Can you help me do all this work?
Well can you help me with this bit?”

- from Wikipedia -

Many of us will reluctantly answer yes to the second question, due to an effect called “door in the face” by social psychologists. We’ve fallen victim to this powerful technique which is readily employed by salesman, fundraisers, and even our friends.

But, are you familiar with the opposite effect, called the foot in the door? It’s another trap which is less known and trickier to pull off. Used correctly, it can help you design a survey that creates increased conversion rates.

The foot in the door effect

This technique is employed by salesman and studied by experts in persuasion. Here’s how it usually works in practice:

*doorbell*
Salesman: Hi ma’am, I hate to bother you today but could I have a glass of water from your sink?
Resident: uhhh.. sure. (I’m a decent person)
*resident leaves and returns with a glass of water*
Salesman: *gulp* Thank you. And my isn’t that a difficult stain on your rug over there??….

This is something slightly different than the door-in-the-face. Here we have a person who is asked for a small request (glass of water), followed by a large request, instead of vice versa. In this case, it is likely the request-ee will comply with the request-er if the request is structured with the larger favor asked for second.

My venture into making and taking surveys

What makes us more or less likely to complete a survey?

First of all, the initial survey question should be so easy to answer that no person will have trouble or be baffled. “Are you familiar with such and such website?” is a question that a reply of yes or no easy to provide.

More importantly, a survey would do well to leave the rest of the questions on a separate page. By allowing the survey taker to click the “next” button early on, you get them to make a psychological commitment to the survey. This is GENIUS!

It plays off the foot in the door, an effect we are familiar with! Answering the first survey question is the small, easy request. Once completed, its like a foot in the door and cognitive dissonance kicks in (’I already gave the survey writer this much of my time, it wouldn’t be THAT much more to continue’). By agreeing to a small request, it would be a form of contradiction to disagree with a larger request.

Although clicking the next button reveals the hidden questions (which are potentially more complicated and time-consuming), the user has already made an action that is buying what the survey-writers are selling.

A survey may take a lot longer to complete (and even includes a re-direct to another non-survey page — a usability no-no) but if the questions are put onto separate pages, it is more successful than a survey design that is a wall of text. Theirs is brilliant in their deceptiveness – KEEPING IT SIMPLE ON THE FRONT PAGE.

After discussing the two effects, which work in opposite ways, I pose the question: which is more effective?

Last month, researchers at MIT unveiled exciting new research developments in gestural interfaces at the TED conference in LongBeach (you can see the video here). In her presentation to the conference, Patti Maes (of MIT) demonstrates a device which reads visual information from the physical environment and uses a projector to create an interface along any surface. This interface is a touchable, interactive display which brings up information about (potentially) any physical item. Representing a quantum leap in the bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, this device has caused professionals and tech-geeks alike to created quite a media buzz. But is such a device more hype than delivery?

The user interface shown at TED is an impressive breakthrough in user interface technology; I do not question that. However, when the presentation emphasizes the point that the device could enter the market at an affordable price of $300 they liken themselves to Microsoft and Steven Spielberg who have visions of making this technology ubiquitous.

Does this device stand a chance of spreading throughout technology markets?

Consumer audiences have been fascinated with gestural interfaces ever since Tom Cruise manipulated a (not so) hyper-futuristic computer database with his fingers in the movie Minority Report. They have also been quick to adopt touch-screen interfaces, which have been integrated into bank tellers, check-out stands, and the ever-popular touchscreen mobile phone (iPhone).

However, they have also been quick to grow frustrated at such technology. Electronic signature pads continue to elude many people, and I am not the only person who grew frustrated at the iPhone touchpad keyboard. A similar technology to that unveiled at TED is the projection keyboard (pictured), which has been available for several years but remains unused and unadopted by the market.

My point of contention is this: the device like many other gestural interfaces provide no tactile feedback in using the device. Taking a cognitive psychologists point-of-view (ignoring all the privacy and moral issues of making technology ubiquitous for a moment), I believe this to be a crucial limitation to the device. I will state my bias here: I like my Android G1 smartphone much more than my iPhone because I make virtually no errors on the keypad where the iPhone touchpad was a consistent source of frustration. However, I still assert that this aspect of our cognitive apparatus is integral to human tool use. Can a tool be used effectively when it cannot be felt and grasped?

Our sense of causation and agency is rooted in tactile feedback. Humans are accustomed to a mode of acting in the world, where a physical state change (a key being clicked, a ball being pushed) creates some reaction. Many of these futuristic devices suffer from feedback issues inherent in a device the lacks this tactile mechanism. A user may move or make a gesture, interacting with the device, and perhaps nothing is registered and the state does not change. In these situations, people don’t know whether it is a limitation of their gesture (an incorrect input) or if the system is not configured or designed properly. Physical feedback removes ambiguity by acknowledging user input, putting the burden on the device. It can act as a reliable source of feedback for the user in any device.

There are many more questions regarding whether the market can bear another leap in user interface development. Let’s just say I have my skepticisms.