Usability In The News

Usability Quote of the Day

November 21, 2008

In the information age, as computers invade our lives and more and more products contain a chip of silicon, we find that what lies between us humans and our devices is cognitive friction, which is something new and something that we are ill-prepared to deal with. Our engineering skills are highly refined, but when we apply them to a cognitive friction problem, they fail to solve it. -- Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, p. 92. (via interaction-design.org)

Monday, November 28, 2005

Convergence catch-22

Simplicity vs. convergence - a catch 22 ...

"Donald Norman in his “ask Don” postings:

Today simplicity, tomorrow convenience. Tomorrow convenience, the next day simplicity.
Jack of all trades, master of none. Certainly this is no new topic- combining gadgets and gizmos into one ubiquitous swiss army device that will allow us to always have the right tool at our finger tips. But when it comes to designing an interface, is this a catch-22 that will always swing like (as Donald implies) a pendulum?" continued ... (Via MNteractive)

Swiss Army Knife. - User Interface Design, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Ergonomics