Introductory Rant

I've been meaning to review this software for almost a year.

I normally don't review products--I am not a journalist--but this time I feel obligated to do so, not because the D-Link DSB-R100 USB FM Radio is particularly worthy of a review, but because a majority of the other reviews I've seen are garbage.

In particular, a number of other reviews actually have positive comments about D-Link's radio software. Are these "journalists" on crack? Are they corporate shills? Are people really so totally ignorant about basic usability principles?

A reviewer wouldn't even need to be trained in user interface design to know that there are clear, immediate usability problems with D-Link's software. While the problems are not severe, almost anyone should be able to determine that the software is harder to use than it ought to be.

(I'm going to concentrate entirely on the software that D-Link bundled with their USB FM radio. For opinions of the hardware, check one of the other reviews mentioned below.)

Installation

From the very beginning I knew the radio software would be poor, since even the installer had usability issues.

Analysis of a screenshot from the installer:

• Non-standard buttons
  Whether or not icons on buttons is a good idea or not, it's not standard. A simple Windows program such as an installer should follow Windows interface guidelines. Period.
• Colored text
  Unnecessary. Blue text is hard to read, and users now tend to associate blue text with hyperlinks. The magenta text at the bottom has poor contrast against the gray background and is even harder to read. Simple bold text would have been sufficient.
• Non-standard installation directory
  Again, by default, Windows programs should install to a subdirectory of Program Files. Worse yet, there is no browse button to select a different directory; selecting a different directory requires typing its path manually.

To be fair, the installation was otherwise fairly simple and straightforward.

The Radio Application, main view

The foremost problem is that D-Link's radio software is based on the interfaces to physical radios. In many instances, real-world metaphors are a Good Thing, but they cannot be taken to the extreme of duplicating physical limitations that don't exist in a software medium!

• Dials
  Dials are not appropriate interface widgets for mouse-based interaction. You don't need to be a usability expert to know that software dials are a bad idea.

• Three volume controls
  Being familiar with Windows, I understand the differences among the different volume controls. However, most users should not need to be exposed to these differences.

• Power buttons
  I haven't the slightest idea why radio software needs a power button. In this case, the software has two: a "Power Off" button and a "Power On" button. Also note the non-standard tooltip.

• Poor button placement
  The rewind and fast-forward buttons for the sound recorder/player are arranged in reverse-order from convention. The "Edit" and "Store" buttons should be coupled more tightly to the presets.

• No keyboard controls
  Being able to type in a station frequency seems pretty natural and obvious to me.

• Useless tuner slider
  The slider is too small and the sensitivity is too great to be able to tune to a specific frequency quickly and accurately. Does it really need precision to five hundredths? Again, being able to type in a frequency would be more useful.

  Using it to station surf might have a few uses, but unfortunately the radio tunes to a station only after you release the mouse button, not while you're dragging.

• Excessive number of presets
  D-Link's software stores a whopping 200 presets. Wow! This is not an upper limit; it is a fixed number. Whether you use them or not, all presets come preprogrammed (to seemingly random frequencies).

  Even with the unrealistic assumption that every tenth of a MHz tunes to a unique radio station, there can be only 211 stations at most in the radio's FM range (87.0 Mhz to 108.0 MHz). A more realistic upper bound would be a quarter of this number. Apparently D-Link preferred overkill to allowing the software to store an arbitrary number of presets based on each user's own particular needs.
  [Edit: The FCC allots each FM radio station 200 KHz of bandwidth. This reduces the upper bound down to 106 stations.]

  To manage this mind-numbingly large number of presets, D-Link chose to divide them into 20 groups, with 10 presets per group. Only one group is visible at a time. The user can select the previous or the next group but cannot jump to a specific group. Regardless of the selected group, the visible presets always are numbered 1-10. This is a little confusing, since it's not obvious how to determine which group is selected. Can you find it? In the main display, next to the station frequency, above the MHz label, is the group: ST1. ST1 is a poor abbreviation; I typically associate "ST" with "Stereo", and only in retrospect can I assume that it really stands for "Set 1". The label is positioned poorly, which only exacerbates the confusion. If placed elsewhere, there also would be more room for the text, eliminating the need for the abbreviation.

  I would prefer group 1 to have presets 1-10, group 2 to have presets 11-20 , etc.. With this numbering, it would be obvious which group currently is selected.

  This may be moot, since 10 presets may be sufficient for most people.

• Inflexible presets
  One advantage of a software-based radio interface is that it should be trivial for a user to change the order of the presets. Unfortunately, D-Link's software does not allow this.

• Useless cassette deck graphic
  Clicking on the cassette deck graphic displays a small graph of disk space available for recording in its place. The correlation between a cassette and free disk space is weak at best, and I see no reason why they couldn't replace it with the disk space graph permanently. Again, this is an attempt to copy a physical interface that has no purpose in a non-physical interface.

• Nearly incomprehensible icons
  Why does the store preset icon show a document going to a floppy disk? What document? A solitary floppy disk icon would have been more suitable; the lone floppy icon already is commonly used to signify saving, and eliminating the document and arrow would have allowed the floppy icon to be larger and more recognizable. The sleep and wake icons are too similar to distinguish quickly.

• Lots of blue text that aren't hyperlinks

• Look-and-feel
  The whole look-and-feel of the application is reminiscent of bad, unprofessional Windows 3.1 applications.

• Poor use of screen real-estate
  Screen real estate is wasted to a gratuitous D-Link logo. The customer already bought the radio and is using your software, do they really need to remind him who the manufacturer is? (And perhaps more importantly, do they really want to take credit for this software?)

The Radio Application, minimized view

When minimized, D-Link's software shrinks to a smaller window. Not surprisingly, even after removing most of the problematic widgets and extraneous graphical elements, D-Link's software is still poorly designed.

• Minimized view cannot be dismissed
  The minimized view is obtrusive; it always appears on top of other windows. This behavior cannot be disabled. Futhermore, the minimized view cannot be minimized to the taskbar. This means that there is no way to remove D-Link's radio application window from the desktop; the user either is forced either to use the main view (which fortunately can be covered by other windows) or to have the minimized view floating on the screen.

  (D-Link's software actually does allow the user to dismiss its windows completely; the user must quit the radio application. The radio continues to play after the application terminates. This behavior is hardly intuitive.)

• Completely incomprehensible icons
  The buttons are just too small to identify without tooltips.

• Poor use of screen real-estate
  Even in this minimized view, where the graphical elements should be kept to a bare minimum, D-Link squanders highly valuable screen real-estate with a gratuitous logo.

  Furthermore, in this minimized view, is the user really concerned about details such as whether the station is broadcasting in stereo?

• Even poorer use of screen real-estate
  Aside from being able to mute the radio, the minimized view provides no functionality at all. Its sole purpose is to display the current station and a VU-meter. The user cannot tune to a different station in this mode, making this view virtually useless. This situation would be different if it accepted keyboard input, but alas...

  The idea is nice but is poorly implemented. In contrast, Winamp's title-bar mode is much more functional and less obtrusive. D-Link would have been better off eliminating the minimized mode entirely and displaying the current station in the Windows taskbar instead.

Meta-reviews

The software used to control [the D-Link USB Radio] is laid out very well and is very intuitive. The full window looks pretty busy, but it is actually well thought out. --Overclockin.com

Exactly how much thinking does it require to copy a physical interface?

After installing the radio, we fired up the software and found it extremely easy to use. --3daccelerated.com

Would that opinion remain the same if the reviewer above weren't already familiar with physical radio controls?

You’ll notice that all of the common features you find on standard radios are provided here as well... there's even a "Volume" indicator in the form of a dial! --rolotech.com

He says that like it's a good thing. Anyone who thinks a software dial is an appropriate widget deserves to be beaten with a clue-stick.

There's are [sic] 20 pre-set tables, so you get almost 200 channels of audio that you can conveniently switch between at the simple flick of a mouse... --rolotech.com

To get from one preset group to a random preset group will require 10 mouse-clicks on average. Isn't the purpose of using presets to reduce the amount of necessary interaction?

Conclusions

The software is barely adequate. It performs the functions it is intended to do. The D-Link USB Radio certainly is not unusable, but it provides little-to-no advantage over a physical radio connected to the PC via its line-input port. Most reviewers find the software "intuitive" and "easy to use" only because of their prior experience with physical radios. If word processing programs mimicked typewriters by forcing interaction through virtual, on-screen keyboards, users still would understand how to use them, but they surely wouldn't praise them.

Thankfully, there are alternatives to D-Link's software. Other programs, such as Radiator, provide superior functionality and better ease-of-use.