I sat down the other day with Josh Hinds, our lead user interface designer for Network Magic. Josh is the one responsible for the look and feel of Network Magic, including the user interface, the icons, and the tone. He is the guy who really makes Network Magic sing. We've gotten a lot of great press on Network Magic's wonderful user interface, so I thought you would enjoy a bit on his design philosophy, and how he dreams about making home networking easier.

Sherman: Most designers have a couple of “core principles”. What are your “core principles” for the design of Network Magic?

Josh: As a user interface designer, my guiding principles relate directly to creating the best possible experience for the people using Network Magic. Since home networking can be somewhat complicated at times, our goal is to make Network Magic super simple and very approachable for all users. To do this, we rely on several standard design techniques to communicate things as clearly as possible:

1. Consistency – Maintaining a good amount of consistency in our visual design helps prevent confusion and makes it much easier to digest and comprehend information.

2. Efficiency – Any repetitive tasks need be streamlined and easy to find or else the user will become annoyed very quickly.

3. Simplicity – With visual communication it is important to only show elements that have a purpose and are useful. Figuring out which elements you can throw out safely will only enhance the impact of the most important items.

These concepts seem pretty straightforward but it actually ends up being quite a challenge to use them effectively in Network Magic. It can be extremely difficult to find the best place for a new feature without degrading the efficiency of the current process. For example, when we created Net2Go (which allows you to access files remotely), we needed a way to share folders both publicly and privately. We wanted to add the new functionality without making the task of sharing folders even more complicated. We ended up changing the existing process only slightly and then adding an additional task to modify the properties of a shared folder. While this solution is not ideal, it did allow us to preserve the simplicity and efficiency of the original folder sharing task.

Of course the only way to really know if we have accomplished our goal is to get real feedback from real users. Since we are constantly changing Network Magic with new features and performance enhancements, it is important for us to test this stuff on a regular basis.

Sherman: How did you land on the Network Map looking like it does?

Josh: Defining the look of the map was a big challenge and one of the more interesting projects that I’ve been able to work on. Network Magic was really the first network visualization tool for the home network. I was very excited because this was something new and powerful that we were making accessible to anyone with a home network. For the design, we went through several iterations before releasing Network Magic 1.0. Since then we have made some minor changes but for the most part it looks the same. With new platforms and technologies in development right now, we will have more opportunities in the near future to create even better visualizations of the home network. Here are some prototypes of map that we played with:

Early designs of the Network Map

Josh went a little crazy with this one

Ahh, Nirvana--where we ended up

Sherman: What’s your dream for Network Magic?

Josh: I want to see Network Magic become the ultimate tool for managing all my connected devices. As more and more new devices support IP communication, it will become increasingly important to have a central view of everything in the network. Tedious tasks such as backup and file syncing should happen automatically without any intervention. Accessing device information from any location will be easy and seamless. For example, imagine listening to a voicemail message that someone just left on your IP-enabled phone from any computer in your network. That’s pretty cool, and the possibilities are endless.

Sherman: If you had a magic wand and could instantly solve one home networking problem, what would it be?

Josh: Well, if we lived in a magical world with wands and things, I would expect everything to just work without any hassle. Sadly, I don’t have a magic wand and I don’t know anyone else who has one either. So, instead, we all must face the frustrating reality of poor interoperability between various kinds of hardware and software. Today, it is simply too hard to set up a secure wireless home network and easily share content between devices. I think it needs to get much easier before we will see mass adoption in the home. Fortunately, smart people are working on these problems right now and it should get better over time. I know we are doing everything we can to make networking trouble-free and fun with Network Magic.

--Sherman