WebWord

Tog — “These bugs aren’t necessarily fatal. The are all at minimum highly irritating, and they have all survived for a minimum of five years or five product release cycles, whichever came first.”
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ACM Queue — “It is therefore critical that the designers, architects, implementers, and operators of today’s IT infrastructures be aware of the human error problem and build in mechanisms for tolerating and coping with the errors that will inevitably occur. This article discusses some of the options available for embedding “coping skills” into an IT […]

“Interdependence theory is established on the principle that the very essence of any interpersonal relationship is found in interaction between individuals. These interactions are highly dependent on the situations that people find themselves in when faced with interference in the relationship, with interference being a term used to describe conflict, miscommunication or opposing viewpoints. This […]

“What is faceted navigation? It’s a way to browse information, or to refine long lists of search results, along multiple dimensions, aka facets. These are orthogonal lenses through which to view the world. For example, I might search for an expert by facets like name, project, company, or date—and more likely, by some combination of […]

“If you look at it from far away, it seems like writing a weblog entry and writing an email are about the same thing. You write some text—a few sentences, a few paragraphs, occasionally something longer—and send it somewhere, to another person or to a weblog. But if you look closer you notice that there’s […]

peterme — “So, here we have an example of an organization scheme that’s extremely useful to me, and likely impenetrable to others. This is what I mean when I say that “blurring” doesn’t feel right. I think there’s going to be an out-and-out tension to resolve.” (read more…)
This type of classification not as impenetrable as […]

“The terms ground breaking, breakthrough, radical and innovative are thrown around enough that many are convinced this project is different from all others. Somehow in the belief that they’re doing breakthrough work, they allow themselves to believe that many of the basic lessons from other projects don’t apply anymore. As an antidote to the common […]

Don Norman — “Once we start to view design as a form of communication between designer and the user, we see that perceived affordances become an important medium for that communication. Designed affordances play a very special role. Now we see that the designer deliberately places signs and signals on the artifact to communicate with […]

Spool — “In those tasks where the users didn’t find their target, they were far more likely to use the site’s Search function than in those tasks where the description words appeared on the home page. When the words did appear, users usually clicked on the associated links instead of using Search. In fact, when […]

Here is a game for you. Like golf, the fewer clicks you have the better your score. Each click is one point. Post your scores in the comments section.
HOW TO PLAY AND SOME RULES
1. Go to the World Wide Web Consortium.
2. Clicking on a link, any link.
3. Your core objective is to get to […]

Digital Web — “The critical factor is ensuring a balanced view and execution. Thoroughly tested usability and a well-constructed architecture are only part of the story. Business, brand, experience design, programming, hardware and network analysis—among other things—must be incorporated and given appropriate weight. This requires more than knowledge and experience. Leading a successful Web project […]

There is a surprising amount of usability information available in the world. There are many excellent books and web sites, and many people with the knowledge necessary to make a difference. I’m happy to say that usability is maturing. It is still hard to precisely define, but the general concept is getting firm.
However, despite great […]