This Is Broken - (please help) New Orleans/Gulf Coast

Emergency assistance needed now. This is really broken. Links to all official non-profit organizations.

"Broken: (please help) New Orleans/Gulf Coast

I lived for ten years in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast, and my heart goes out to the residents of those areas.

If you want to help, please donate money. I know I will.

Also see Wikipedia's entry on Katrina."   continued ...   (Via This Is Broken)

Katrina devistation.

OpitcalBar turns part of a display into a touchscreen - sort of

Going half-way often leads to a half-baked UI ...

"Want a touchscreen display? Then you’d better just buy one, or pick up a Tablet PC. That’s the conclusion of PC Magazine, which checked out the H2i SimplyTouch OpticalBar, a $60 sensor that hooks up to the top of a monitor and tracks finger movements over a portion of the screen, allowing that part of the display to become a virtual touchscreen. The reviewer found that using a keyboard and mouse is still quicker, and that the sensor can still misread taps, despite the fact that the system is designed to work with SimplyTouch’s own software, which has a preset group of icons that you can assign to different tasks. The review didn’t even mention the biggest problem we see with this: pizza grease on the screen. But, then, maybe we need to get away from our desk a little more."   continued ...   (Via Engadget)

A "sort of" touch screen.

Razer Copperhead Mouse Review

Getting the ergonomics and UX right on a mouse ...

"The Razer Copperhead has the same shape as the Diamondback, featuring a symmetrical design that's great for righties and even better for left-handers who haven't yet surrendered to right-handed mouse operation. The mouse has two oversized left and right click buttons that make clicking easy for a variety of hand placements ranging from the usual "hand on top" to a "low-rider" grip where the palm rests on the mousing surface rather than the mouse itself. The scrollwheel is clickable and has groves to provide subtle tactile feedback as you scroll up and down.

Continuing with the ambidextrous theme, the Copperhead has forward and back thumb buttons on both the left and right sides of the mouse. Since two buttons opposite your thumb will be relatively inaccessible, depending on your hand placement, the mouse maps those buttons to cycle the dpi between four presets: 400dpi, 800dpi, 1,600dpi, and 2,000dpi. Common mice top out at 400 or 800dpi, and current gaming mice go up to 1,600dpi. However, the Copperhead's laser engine offers 2,000dpi performance for the smoothest mousing action around."   continued ...   (Via GameSpot)

An ergonomically improved mouse.

Creative Awarded U.S. Patent On User Interface For Portable Media Players

A patent for a User Interface Design. Look out Apple ...

"Creative Technology, the Singapore digital entertainment products maker, today announced that it has been awarded U.S. Patent 6,928,433, which Creative is referring to as the "Zen Patent." The Zen Patent was awarded to Creative for its invention of the user interface for portable media players, including many of the Creative Zen and NOMAD Jukebox MP3 players, and found in some arch rival players, such as the Apple iPod and iPod mini. The Zen Patent covers the user interface that enables users of portable media players to efficiently and intuitively navigate among and select tracks on the players.

Creative's invention for the user interface for portable media players enables selection of at least one track in a portable media player as a user sequentially navigates through a hierarchy using three or more successive screens on the display of the player. One example would be the sequence of screens that could display artists, then albums, and then tracks. When the user selects an artist, the player displays a list of albums for that artist. Selection of one of the listed albums then displays a list of tracks on the album."   continued ...   (Via PhysOrg)

Creative Zen's patented UI.

An Approach To Optimal Design Within Technical Constraints

A procedure for designing for a great UX but within constraints ...

"I’ve observed (and practiced) a number of design processes which were less than optimal. In some cases, the designer has sufficient technological knowledge that they cripple themselves (I think I called it shooting ourselves in the foot) with the their own perceived constraints. Other times, the designer may set out with a fairly idealistic design, but the end product gets nowhere close to that vision.

So after a few hard lessons, I’ve come up with a personal approach which seems to have worked better. I think one of the keys is the initial design. When I first approach a problem, I design as though technological constraints did not exist within reason. What’s within reason? That’s a judgement call. As one commenter pointed out, without technological constraints, the user could just think what they want, and the system would do it. That’s not very realistic though. I say it’s a judgement call for what is within reason because it depends on the device we’re designing for.

Basically the idea is to stretch the boundaries that are perceived to be there. What if those weren’t there? What if we could drag and drop on the web? What if we could retrieve data without refreshing the page? All of these are now possible but were probably perceived as not so just a year ago."   continued ...   (Via OK/Cancel)

Optimal design with technical constraints.

Who wants to own content?

More on the ownership / control equation for Web 2.0 ...

Distribution is not king. Content is not king. Conversation is the kingdom.

The war is over and the army that wasn’t even fighting — the army of all of us, the ones who weren’t in charge, the ones without the arms — won. The big guys who owned the big guns still don’t know it. But they lost.

In our media 2.0, web 2.0, post-media, post-scarcity, small-is-the-new-big, open-source, gift-economy world of the empowered and connected individual, the value is no longer in maintaining an exclusive hold on things. The value is no longer in owning content or distribution.

The value is in relationships. The value is in trust."   continued ...   (Via BuzzMachine)

Ya gotta have trust.

9 Lessons from 9 Years of Interface Design

This should be an interesting series ...

"I recently put together a personal retrospective that outlines some of the high-level principles I’ve come to embrace through nine years of interface design. I described these principles as “lessons” to focus on how I came to adopt these principles and why. Lessons are a useful way to think about interface design methodologies and guidelines because not only is the design process complex, it also never really ends.

When designing digital products -technology, business, and user experience need to converge in all the right ways lest one of these factors overpower the others. If the technology is not up to par, people can’t use the product. If the business case is not valid, people don’t want to use the product. And if the user experience comes up short, people don’t know how to use the product. Experience builds a designer’s ability to understand how these factors limit and enhance each other. It helps to build a designer’s horizontal skill sets.

Over the next few articles on Functioning Form, I’ll dive into each of these lessons with concrete examples and explanations:

1. Insights come in all shapes and sizes.
2. Writing it down forces you to think it through.
3. Less is more…
4. …except when more is more.
5. Patterns occur at all levels.
6. Documentation takes time. Make it worth the effort.
7. Design is communication. Use it as such.
8. It’s about more than users.
9. Design is never done."   continued ...   (Via Functioning Form)

Product Forces.

All Your Control Are Belong To Us

Who gets to control Web 2.0. A rebuttle to the next article below ...

"If you're interested in this Web 2.0 thing, and you haven't yet read Abe's thoughts on it, you should. His distinction of the insiders (those who build the tools) and the outsiders (those who use the tools) is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's use of Eloi and Morlocks (click and scroll down a bit) as a way to distinguish between the hackers who build our technological systems, and the people who use them.

Later on, Abe references my essay on relinquishing control, and claims,

"In the end he's not just arguing that companies should relinquish control, rather he's arguing that they should relinquish control over to him, his company Adaptive Path, and others that share their philosophy. Reliquish control over to the professionals, those that know what they are doing, know how to control things on the internet." (Emphasis his)

As the author of that essay, I feel confident in saying that Abe's take, on this point, is balderdash. One of the challenges facing Adaptive Path, and anyone seriously pursuing designing in this space, is that we as designers, we as professionals, we as those who think we know better, we, too, have to relinquish control. And that is exactly what I meant in my essay. If I were to truly believe what Abe claims I meant, I would be hypocritical. I don't want companies to give control to me. I want them to give control to their customers. Because if there's one thing I've learned, those of us who "know what they are doing" often don't."   continued ...   (Via peterme)

Who will control Web 2.0?

Web 2.0

A detailed discussion of the future of Web 2.0 ...

"Are the internet hypelords getting a bit tired? There's this funny whiff of déjà vu that comes along with the latest and greatest buzzword: Web 2.0. Web 2.0? Wasn't that like 1995? Don't they remember that Business 2.0 magazine? Or remember how all the big companies have stopped using version numbers for software and instead hired professional marketers to make even blander and more confusing names? I hear "Web 2.0" and immediately smell yet another hit off the dotcom crackpipe...

But perhaps that's a little too harsh, while Web 2.0 might have emerged in a large part from tech publisher O'Reilly's PR, underneath it is a real feeling among some that there is something going on that makes the web of today different then the web of a few years ago. Blogs, open standards, long tails and the like. The most concise and clear definition I've found is Richard Manus', " the philosophy of Web 2.0 is to let go of control, share ideas and code, build on what others have built, free your data." Which of course doesn't sound that different then say the goes of the plain old unnumbered "web", back ten years ago. But the Web 2.0 are right, the web is different now, but the big differences aren't necessarily found in those prosaic "information wants to be free" ideals, which actually stand as one of the biggest constants in web evolution."   continued ...   (Via Abstract Dynamics)

Web 2.0 wants to be free.

Planning for User Research Success

A set of questions you should answer before starting Usability Testing ...

"Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective.

When conducting user research activities such as Usability Testing, Interviews and Site Visits, it's important to think about the information you want to gather and why. Sometimes we see organizations undertaking research activities – with the best of intentions – that yield data that is insufficiently detailed, mis-focused, or not timely. For example, they may rush into conducting usability testing of an interface with readily identifiable flaws (such as inconsistent navigation or terminology) that could have been addressed prior to testing.

A useful way to begin planning is to answer a set of questions. Not only do they help you choose the appropriate research activities, but they also help you to actually produce a Research Plan that can then be agreed and signed off with your client or project."   continued ...   (Via Apogee)

Asking the right questions before you start testing.

Engadget 1985

Just for fun, this is what Engadget looked like circa 1985. A lot of hardware and software products including early Apple and Windows 1.0. Usability has sure come a long way. You have to look at this.   continued ...   (Via Engadget)

This is the Macintosh Lisa, renamed Macintosh XL.

Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents

PDF UI has been an irritant for a long time ...

"When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI.
Users are easily confused when websites link them to non-Web documents that offer a significantly different user experience than that of browsing Web pages.

In user testing, we often observe the following behavior: When people are finished using PDF files, Word memos, PowerPoint slides, Excel spreadsheets, and similar documents, they click the window's close box instead of the Back button. This gets them out of the document all right, but not back to the Web page from whence they started.

Blowing away browser windows is particularly bad on intranets, where users often have to log in or jump through other hoops to access document repositories."   continued ...   (Via Alertbox)

PDF Full Screen.

The Future of the Home Entertainment PC

Another example of poor UI resulting in poor UX ...

"The future of the Media Center is a series of devices working seamlessly together to give you the content you want where you want it. Now the players "just" need to make that dream a reality before the cable guys do.

The PC industry has a hard time with usability . Products often require users be tech experts and learn various user interfaces, networking skills and system administration skills. However, standards do exist and controls like keyboards and mice remain constant across the family. While CE hardware is instantly on, PC hardware is anything but and often turns itself off as a result of needing to apply a software patch or a "crash" -- neither of which exists in most CE hardware.

The most obvious example of this usability problem is on home wireless networking equipment which generally requires extensive technical knowledge to set up securely, often needs to be flashed to work properly and is generally not set up optimally as a result.

This may be the reason that people are generally dissatisfied with their PC-related products and why they often migrate to shelves in the garage or basement, are put up for sale on eBay or are returned to the store for some other poor fool to try."   continued ...   (Via TechNewsWorld)

It is not an easy experience.

Spousal Acceptance Factor

Remote control(s): probably the worst User Experience since programming a VCR ...

"Back when we were buying our DLP rear projection TV, we initially bought a 43-inch model. When it was delivered, my wife, Jan, looked at me and said, "Gee, it seems a little small."

Then she tried to use it. There was a long period of time where only I and my two daughters could actually watch the TV. That's because of the plethora of different remotes needed to turn on the TV:

• Grab the Samsung remote, turn on the TV
• While that's warming up, grab the Onkyo remote and turn on receiver.
• Make sure the receiver is set to Video 1.
• When the Samsung is warmed up, use the Samsung remote to bring up the list of inputs and switch to DVI.
• Finally, when all that is live, use the Dish Network remote to manage the DVR.
• Ah, but if you want to adjust the volume, you need the Onkyo remote.

This situation replicates itself across the country. It's not women, either. Several of my male friends aren't savvy about juggling multiple remotes that use multiple modalities. And, of course, they shouldn't."   continued ...   (Via Extreme Tech)

Keeping them all straight.

No-see-um keys, new shape for keyboard

Is this more than assigning events to function keys? Has anyone tried this keyboard? ...

"Two Austin startups have added new twists to typing on a computer keyboard and using a mouse.

Metadot Corp.'s Das Keyboard is selling a keyboard equipped with blank keys mounted on individually weighted key switches.

The idea is that without letters and numbers to guide them, users' brains will adapt and memorize the key positions, resulting in faster and more accurate typing."   continued ...   (Via Statesmen.com)

A new input concept.

Is 'ghetto' a design choice?

Why can sites with poor UI be so popular? ...

"MySpace is a community site that allows you to setup a profile and blog and connect with friends and strangers. It's also a designer's and lover of design's worst nightmare because the UI of the site is atrocious yet it boasts 17 million visitors a month (and rising) and was recently purchased for over $580 million by News Corp.

Great design trumps horrible design because it makes things appear to work easier. Trying to navigate the MySpace UI is frustrating at best. So why does it work? Besides the community I think it's the fact that you can customize your pages and if you explore the community you will see some crazy designs going on. 90% of them you can't even read the content, but people love it.

My best guess is that it follows the eBay design model. My theory is that eBay was a success due to its crappy design because it gave it that flea market feel and when you went there you felt like you getting a deal. Go to Tiffany & Co. and you don't get the feeling that you are getting a bargain because you shouldn't."   continued ...   (Via Whitespace)

A popular site with poor UI.

Dear Microsoft: F Lock sucks!

Whoops ...

"I've complained about this before, but it just bit me again. The implementation of the F Lock key on newer Microsoft keyboards is a user interface design gaff of massive proportions. We have 20 years of people learning how to use function keys, and in one fell swoop, MS decides to change the way everything works. The funny thing is, it's not like the addition of the F Lock key and changing the behavior of every function key has reduced the complexity of keyboards. Take a look at some of the higher end MS keyboards, and you'll see that they're festooned with buttons for just about everything.

In any case, MS should at least make it possible to configure the keyboard to default to the normal behavior that applications and users expect from the keyboard. I have to install their keyboard driver software anyway, so why isn't this an option in there?

Microsoft's vaunted user interface skills and lab testing chops really took a hit on this one.

Nothing like moving a hundred pictures into a folder, then pressing F2 to rename one and have them all disappear. Why? Because F2 means Undo on this damn keyboard. Nice.

Bad Microsoft, bad!"   continued ...   (Via Pretty Stupid For a Smart Guy)

Forcing a new paradigm.

Good Luck New Orleans ...

"New Orleans evacuated as ferocious Hurricane Katrina nears."   continued ...   (Via PhysOrg)

Good luck everyone.

The Psychology of Search: Chapter Three

The third in a series of articles on search ...

"Your Memory Stinks and Search Engines Smell It

Human memory is incredibly bad. In fact, it is so bad that you probably don’t remember what you ate for breakfast just a few days ago. The interesting thing is that human brainpower is pretty impressive; we are outstanding at pattern matching and problem solving. Memory has everything to do with search.

You often search because you have poor memory. But, it isn’t so poor that you are a blank slate, tabula rasa. No, instead, you have a clue and you are buying more clues with every search you do. Let’s cut to the core of this.

Your ability to pattern match and recognize is outstanding, but your ability to dredge up old memories is awful. This is recognition versus recall at work."   continued ...   (Via WebWord)

Bad Memory.

A List Too Far Apart?

We need to design for the greatest versitility - liquid designs accomplish this ...

"On the off-chance that you've spent the last few days living under a rock, let me be the first to tell you that A List Apart has been redesigned.

There has been no shortage of opinions expressed about the new look. Like the old saying goes, opinions are like assholes: some are more well formed than others. No, wait... everybody's got one. Yeah, that's it.

I have a problem with the fixed 1024 pixel wide layout of A List Apart. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that they should have stuck with 800 pixels. Arguments have already started raging about this with some people fighting for 800 and others campaigning for 1024. To me, the whole debate seems pointless."   continued ...   (Via Adactio)

A large fixed width design.

Web Sites and Window Width

It's not the screen size that we should design for, it's the window size. And these days, the window could be quite small. Perhaps liquid designs should be in your future ...

"It seems that designers creating a 1024 pixel wide design are making a certain assumption …something like “screens are continually getting bigger, so our designs can get bigger, too”. But it’s also an assumption that most folks want to browse using a single window, and have that window take up the entirety (or close to it) of the available screen.

In fact, in recent weeks I’ve been seriously considering buying a new Apple display, with 20 or more inches of viewing capacity, large enough for an even bigger design than the new Alistapart one. But the reason is not so that I can stretch one window and make it as big as possible, the reason is so I can have two windows at ~800 pixels wide.

So I wonder if, instead of seeing everyone adopting a wider fixed-width design, we’ll instead see a comfort level forming with slightly smaller, liquid windows. There is, after all, an upper limit to everything, except plasma TVs, of course. Perhaps we’ve seen the beginnings of it with this new design. And, perhaps others will start to have the same opinion that I do: that two windows are better than one."   continued ...   (Via Bokardo)

Liquid design versitility.

Designing usable forms: the three-layer model of the form

A detailed article on form usability ...

"Why do people say "I'm not good with forms" or "I don't like forms" when a form is only a piece of paper, or a screen, with some printing on it?There must be something special about forms that inspires these comments.

The "three-layer model" considers forms from three points of view: perceptual (layout), conversational (questions and answers) and relationship (the structure of the task).

Analysing a form using the three layers helps to unpick its problems, and to suggest ways of making it more usable."   continued ...   (Via uiGarden)

Is this a form or not?

Semi-structured meta-data has a posse: A response to Gene Smith

An excellent article on tagging as a superior classification scheme ...

"I’m starting to work my way back to the tagging debate, and want to start with Gene Smith’s post from last spring at Atomiq: Market Populism in the Folksonomies Debate. Smith regards Ontology is Overrated with some skepticism, concluding that I am overstating the case for effect. He is instead trying to carve out a more reasonable position, arguing for the usefulness of tags in some limited number of cases, and peaceful coexistence with other sorts of classification schemes.

I, on the other hand, am of the unreasonable view that classification schemes are going to be largely displaced by tagging for the same reasons that search has largely displaced directories for finding things, namely that distributed intelligence, for all its faults, tends to beat the work of a professional class when dealing with large, dynamic systems.

Gene’s label for this view is market populism, which seems to me to be a misreading of what is at work here. Tagging is not a populist technology but a libertarian one — it is precisely because the populace does not need to come to a consensus that tagging better expresses both the fluidity and polyvalence of meaning than formal classification systems do. If tagging were populist, it would have all the disadvantages of classification schemes, because it is the very requirement of forced convergence on an agreed-upon set of metadata that causes the problems with classification in the first place."   continued ...   (Via You're It!)

A traditional classification scheme.

Which Sex is Your Web Site?

I wonder what the effect of a male vs. female designed site is on the User? ...

"To identify the sex characteristics of Web sites, Moss, Gunn and Heller evaluated 60 Web sites, half designed by women and half by men across 24 characteristics. They identified 12 characteristics that robustly differentiated those designed by males from those designed by females.

Most saliently, they reported that:

Based on their statistical analysis, female Web sites:
- contain links to fewer sites
- use more informal language
- use more abbreviations
- show a greater tendency toward self-denigration
- tend to use more non-expert language

With respect to visual presentation, female sites:
- tend to use rounded rather than straight shapes
- tend to avoid horizontal layouts
- use more informal typography
- contain more colors (particularly white, yellow, pink and mauve)
- tend to contain more pictures of women

In contrast, male Web sites use more crests and contain more pictures of men."   continued ...   (Via Context Rules Marketing)

Is this a "female" designed site?

Paper prototyping for fun and profit

Paper prototyping for an Open Usability project called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) ...

"More than four weeks have gone by already, but I haven’t found time until now to finish writing about the fun we had at one of the fortnightly meetings of the local open source usability group over here in Berlin. We got introduced to the concept of paper prototyping. A simple concept that works impressingly well. All you need is some paper, a pen, a scissor and users.

The idea is to let the user design the user interface. Users will probably not come up with the best possible UI, more likely they will not even come up with a good UI. But watching a user doing the design gives you a very good idea of what the user expects from the user interface.

We picked one of us to be the user. You should of course use a real user, preferably repeat the whole procedure on a few of them. The user is presented with the tasks, one after another, and is asked to describe the user interface she would expect to perform the given task. Here’s where the paper comes into play."   continued ...   (Via svenfoo)

An Open Usability paper prototype for GIMP.

Why input devices suck

A well written description of the problems with input devices from QWERTY keyboards to speech recognition ...

"What's wrong with QWERTY is more subtle. It was designed for a desk-mounted machine that would be operated two-handed by a typist. Old manual typewriters involved lots of arm-waving and muscle contractions to run the carriage back over, insert paper, remove paper, and so on. It was all good exercise, back in the day. Modern computer keyboards don't. So we sit for long periods in a fixed position while our fingers clatter like crazy and we seize up like rusty pieces of machinery. Worse: because QWERTY takes a while to learn, it has achieved institutional inertia -- it blocks out alternative input methods. And because it's designed for two-handed typing it makes using a mouse, or a PDA, kind of a drag. What are we supposed to do, grow another arm?

Now we get into the horrible alternatives the computer industry has tried to inflict on us ...

First and worst are all the virtual QWERTY layouts. These are what you get when a programmer with no idea about ergonomics and a short deadline tries to come up with a way to let punters get data into a computing device without a physical QWERTY keyboard. You get a picture of a QWERTY keyboard on-screen to peck at with the mouse or a stylus. In extreme cases you get a little laser doohickey the size of a cigarette packet that projects a picture of a QWERTY keyboard onto whatever's in front of it -- a tray table, a sleeping cat, your neighbour's lap -- and monitors where your fingers block the light."   continued ...   (Via Charlie's Diary)

Hook it up to a PDA.

Your Technology is in my Experience

To start, it is the technology. In the end, it is the experience ...

"It's interesting seeing the web 2.0 discussion bifurcate. The technologists seem to feel that "Web 2.0 is about making websites machine readable so that content can squirt seamlessly between unrelated sites. Technologies like RSS, RESTian APIs, and XHTML/CSS are the core of Web 2.0."

The designers are waking up and saying, "No! It's about the improved experience!"

It feels like the phrase "Web 2.0" is definitely here to stay. And with it, the challenge for designers to make technologists understand that Web 2.0 isn't interesting because it makes "the Internet useful for computers," (as Jeff Bezos said), but that it's interesting because it further empowers *users*. This is the underlying theme to Josh Porter and Richard McManus' recent "Web 2.0 for Designers" piece."   continued ...   (Via peterme)

Experience, experience, experience.

Limit Usability -> 0

(Via OK/Cancel)

Listen Up: Any Cell Phone Use While Driving Is Risky

We have posted several articles about the danger of using a cell phone while driving. Since it is a cognitive problem, this study shows that even listening to messages while driving is not safe ...

"Listening on your cell phone while driving can be just as risky as talking, a new study finds.

"It seems an intuitive understanding for most people that production [talking] on a cell phone is harder than comprehension [listening]. But the fact is that both result in poor driving performance," said Tate Kubose, a cognitive scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and lead author of the study.

The findings appear in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. Overall, the researchers found that both speaking and listening on the phone reduced the drivers' competence on the road, resulting in slower driving, more trouble staying in the proper lane and/or not keeping a safe distance from the unwieldy car ahead, Kubose said."   continued ...   (Via Forbes)

Just listening is not safe.

Open Source Usability: The birth of a movement

Overcoming challenges to Open Source Usability ...

"I first became interested in the usability of open source software (or the lack of it) while still at UC Berkeley around 2000. I did some work (actually my students did the work!). In the process, I also, met others interested in the topic such as Nancy Frishberg. But I was soon convinced that it was a wasted effort - open source developers did not really understand what usability had to offer, and it was difficult for a UX (User Experience) professional to have much impact.

Eugene sees the problem of open source usability as a problem of collaboration. The open source and usability communities have a lot to offer each other, but don't know how to work together. Did I tell you that Eugene's company specializes in promoting collaboration? Personally, I think that its not just a problem of collaboration, there are some structural reasons why open source and usability don't go together. But collaboration is definitely the beginning to a solution."   continued ...   (Via Rashmi Sinha)

Open Source need usability too.

A Strawberry Blond Leading Figure in Usability?

A nice way to handle disagreement and a nice set of references emerged ...

"I'd like to thank Jim Hedge of StepForth Placement for how he handled my criticism of his article. I'm not in the habit of challenging folks, and he took my remarks and turned it into an opportunity for me to share my passion for the user centered design industry.

In the Interview with Kim Krause Berg, he let me point out resources to some of my favorite usability places so that interested web people could locate how-to information.

This brings me to something else. Jim, quite kindly, wrote "Kim Krause Berg, for those unfamiliar with her, is one of the leading usability experts in the United States" in his Expanding on Usability piece. This article is an overview taken of the actual interview (thank goodness, because the interview is long!)."   continued ...   (Via Cre8pc)

Good job handling a challenge.

Poor UI Design, Painful UI Design

An all too familiar story of a very poor User Interface Design ...

"Due to the accident, we've got a rental. A new Dodge Grand Caravan.

The real problem was went I went to release the parking brake. It's the kind where there's a pedal in the floor on the left that you step on to set it. Then there's this little latch in the lower left side of the dash that you pull to release it. So I reached my large (but not unusually large) left hand down, put my fingers behind the release lever and pulled.

WHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaaaaacccccKKKKK!!!! The parking brake pedal came flying up (those things are under a lot of tension) and up and up until it smashed into the knuckles of my fingers, still on the release lever.

That hurts. That bruises. That's painful UI design."   continued ...   (Via Sharpes-R-Us)

Everything does not work as expected.

Google aims for Web developers' hearts and minds

Will Web applications become a platform to surpass Microsoft OS? ...

"Google is taking a page from Microsoft's well-worn playbook for tech industry domination: Rather than just rolling out new products and features, the search giant is trying to win the hearts and minds of Web developers.

"It doesn't seem like they have to deliver an operating system or a browser. They're doing a pretty good job of co-opting what Microsoft has done and putting Google stickers on it," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

Gross said companies, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.com, that treat their Web sites as customizable platforms, offer a starkly different technology vision to developers than traditional software companies do.

"The platform of this decade isn't going to be around controlling hardware resources and rich UI (user interfaces). Nor do I think you're going to be able to charge for the platform per se. Instead, it is going to be around access to community, collaboration and content," Bosworth noted in an entry from last year."   continued ...   (Via CNET)

Google Desktop taking over the UX?

Head-Tracking Pointer

Great, but do you need a camera on your head? ...

"The Head-Tracking Pointer provides an inexpensive and easily-used mouse replacement for those unable to use traditional pointing devices. Using only software and any Web-cam, this application allows users to point and click with character-level accuracy by simply aiming their face.

Unlike other head-tracking solutions, the Head-Tracking Pointer does not require special-purpose hardware, head gear, or tracking aids, such as retro-reflective dots. Users train the system by tipping their head left and right. Custom-tracking algorithms provide reliable operation in a wide range of environmental conditions. Head motion is translated into pointer motion by custom filters that provide both high speed for long movements and high accuracy for fine control, without switching modes. All clicking variations are supported, including right clicking, double clicking, and click-and-drag."   continued ...   (Via IBM)

Don't sneeze.

Armed corkscrews and disposable nappies top list of breakthroughs in usable design

Usability comes in many forms ...

"Armed corkscrews and disposable nappies have topped a list of product innovations over the last 20 years which have made everyday tasks easier, according to research by leading user-experience consultancy User Vision. Automated call centres top list of least useful innovations.

The research asked 500 consumers to rate in terms of usefulness a range of everyday products and services developed over the past two decades which have made difficult, inefficient, inconvenient or time-consuming tasks easier. Armed corkscrews and disposable nappies topped the list, followed by TV remote controls, central locking on cars and gas barbecues.

Push button telephones came sixth in the survey, followed by electric screwdrivers, electric toothbrushes, compact broadsheet newspapers and ready-tied bow ties. Other popular usability breakthroughs included self-cleaning ovens, Velcro shoes, hair straighteners and a variety of web-based services including online banking and shopping."   continued ...   (Via User Vision)

Very, very usable.