“Are electronic voting, early voting or other new types of balloting really improvements to the United States’ voting system? No, says a University of Buffalo professor, who indicates that until elections account for ergonomics and the human factors associated with voting, the system could remain flawed.”
“This half-day seminar will expose you to some of the latest ideas and approaches being explored in the fields of usability and information architecture. The current thinking in the industry will be summarised, introducing practical ideas to use in the workplace. This seminar is the first of an ongoing series to introduce you to the latest thinking from across the globe, taking academic research, relevant projects and practical implementations and providing ideas on ways to improve the experience of your users.”
“70 percent of consumers will share information, such as their name, address, postal code, phone number, account number or give the answer to a security question to an unsolicited call or email.”
How can we make security easier for people?
Good Experience — “Mystery solved: it was all a difference in perspective. The clerks were explaining to me how the product return affected them (they would have to call the catalog and manage the return) and not how it affected me (I could only get store credit).”
O’Reilly — “The key is “understanding the intention of the user and enabling them to complete a task,” added Jeff Weiner, a senior vice president at Yahoo. He said that personalization can be thought of as fitting into two boxes. There is the explicit gathering of information, where users provide information about what they do and do not like. The implicit personalization comes from tracking what the user tends to do. Weiner said that a search result must transition from a means to an end to simply being an end in itself.”
“A person working with a computer system has to negotiate with it to get it to do what they want it to do,” Lally says. “It’s actually about problem-solving and developing a particular set of techniques.”
Read more… (registration required?)
IntranetJournal — “Intranet developers and content owners are able to grab the attention of their users through momentum. Interest — caused by curiosity, marketing, word-of-mouth, or hype — is raised during initial rollout. And there will always be a surge in your Web server’s usage logs during this period. But once the novelty has worn off, will your intranet have enough true substance to transform that initial momentum into regular usage?”
Marju states: “In my opinion, usability and updated content is one thing, but no intranet will ever replace good old-fashioned project management. After all, it’s good to remember that intranet is just a tool used by real people.”
I’ve produced my third podcast. This one should be better than the first two. I’ve been working hard to improve what I am doing. Thanks for the feedback. I’m listening to you.
Here’s my RSS 2.0 feed for podcasts, if you want to subscribe. Please note, this is experimental and it is only for WebWord podcasts!
I talk about selling and only selling. Up selling, cross selling, down selling, and future selling. I use McDonald’s as a concrete example. We can all wrap our minds around that, I think. Enjoy the show!
Title: webword-2004-10-25.mp3 (Right click, Save Target As…)
Host: John S. Rhodes
File size: 2,803,712 bytes bytes (2.8 MB)
Length: 11:40
Channels: Mono
Frequency: 22050kHz
Bitrate: 32kbps
Guardian Unlimited — “Yes, but unfortunately, the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue’s The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.”
IT Conversations — “Malcolm explores why we can’t trust people’s opinions — because we don’t have the language to express our feelings. His examples include the story of New Coke and how Coke’s market research misled them, and the development of Herman-Miller’s Aeron chair, the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, which succeeded in spite of research that suggested it would fail.”
To get the full impact of this, you need to download the MP3 of the presentation that Malcom gave for Pop!Tech 2004 held in Camden, Maine, October 21-23, 2004. It is great stuff and I highly recommend it. You’ll have to register to download it, probably, but it is worth it in my opinion.
“The paper goes in face upwards, you say?”
“A lawyer’s failure to operate a fax machine correctly has been blamed for the European Commission losing a multi-million-euro court case.
The European Court of First Instance ruled in favour of five German banks which had been fined a total of €100m by the EC. In 2001 they had been found guilty of running a cartel to fix foreign currency exchange rates ahead of the introduction of the euro.”
Okay, let’s rewrite that first sentence…
“A designer’s failure to create a fax machine interface correctly has been blamed for the European Commission losing a multi-million-euro court case.”
Ahhh, much better.
I created another MP3 file for you to download. This is my second podcast, although I don’t have my RSS 2.0 feed ready for you. That means that you can’t use iPodder to grab the feed. Give me another day or two and we’ll be all set.
I talk about Windows Media Player 10, WinAmp, Super MP3 Encoder, Jens of Sweden, Kmart’s false advertising, Turner Syndrome, dircaster.php, Courtyard Marriott, ugly male singers, and usability and podcasting. Enjoy the show!
Title: webword-2004-10-24.mp3 (Right click, Save Target As…)
Host: John S. Rhodes
File size: 4,644,992 bytes bytes (4.6 MB)
Length: 19:17
Channels: Mono
Frequency: 22050kHz
Bitrate: 32kbps
Selected References…
1. WebWord.com
2. Turner Syndrome
3. dircaster.php
4. Courtyard Marriott
5. Ashley Simpson on SNL; lip sync
6. Pocast usability
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