Usability Quote of the Day

February 9, 2012

Most people who encounter computer-based automation at work do not choose the software with which they work, and have comparatively little control over when and how they do what they do. For them, the use of computers can be an oppressive experience, rather than a liberating one. -- Sarah Kuhn, Bringing Design to Software, edited by Terry Winograd, 1996    (via interaction-design.org)

Friday, February 18, 2005

A piece of IA pie: little, micro, lite or guerrilla?

"First we had 'little IA' versus 'Big IA' from Peter Morville's column 'Big Architect, Little Architect' back in 2000. Then last month, implicitly we had to to adopt 'micro IA' as opposed to 'macro IA' because that's Andrew Dillon's new term for Big IA. And now there's 'IA lite' (vs. 'IA classic'?), Dave Rogers' nickname for the IA that a webdesigner could learn easily, according to Joshua Kaufman.

The first two adjectives ('little' and 'micro') refer to the same activities: deep IA work focussing on structures, search, semantics, metadata, ontologies, taxonomies, or controlled vocabularies.

The third one ('lite') is new, and well chosen I think. I shudder when I think of Lite Beer and similarly so when I think of Lite IA or IA Lite. But part of that is snobbery: Lite Beer has its place in the spectrum of beers and so may IA Lite find a place as well. "

IA Lite focusses on these shallow subjects, like navigation, labeling, and layout. Maybe IA Lite can morph into the IA version of what Jakob Nielsen called Guerrilla Usability.

User Interface Design - Ergonomics

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