Archive for January, 2005

Furniture Fun by Starving Artist (Stanley Sy)

Tuesday, January 25th, 2005

“This is an isometric recreation of two studio rooms I’m intimately familiar with at Sheridan College’s ASC. Observing the interior space in detail revealed spaces and objects I have never seen, nor had previously paid attention to. I want to share this. The idea of cataloging every single object felt like an infinite and impossible […]

Confusion reigns over website Accessibility Compliance

Monday, January 24th, 2005

“There are a number of organisations and companies that claim to achieve web accessibility compliance. The monthly stringent tests, league tables and in-depth reports created by SiteMorse, however, often show that they actually fail even some of the very basic requirements.”
Read the article…

CEO Blogs: Polish Them Up Please

Thursday, January 20th, 2005

Vaspers the Grate — “As a Web Usability Analyst and Internet Rebel, I have to tell you the bad news: many of the current CEO blogs need lots of improvement. It’s a shame.”
Read the posting…

Interview: Barry Schwartz, author, “The Paradox of Choice”

Thursday, January 20th, 2005

Creative Good — “People can’t ignore options - they have to pay attention to them. If they make a choice, is there another choice would have been better? There’s more effort put into making decisions, and less in enjoying them. What’s nagging is the possibility that, if they had chosen differently, they could have gotten […]

Six Steps to Ensure a Successful Usability Test

Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

“Instead of thinking of success as a perfect design, you should think of success in a usability test as learning what you need to know. The goal of formative, diagnostic testing is to find the critical problems that prevent users from completing their tasks.”
The six tips are nothing new. However, take a look if you […]

I need web hosting advice (again)

Monday, January 17th, 2005

Here are my basic requirements:
1. I need to find a new hosting provider for both WebWord and Oristus
2. I plan on running Wordpress for WebWord; Oristus will be static
3. I need the hosting provider to provide reliable webmail access
4. I want a fair price, excellent reliability, and outstanding support
So far people have told me to […]

How to Bake Usability into your Company

Monday, January 17th, 2005

Oristus — “Train your designers and developers to do some of their own usability work. This gets them thinking about users while it frees up usability specialists to focus on your more difficult usability issues. Everyone wins.”
Read the article…

Legal Gadgets: Outlook for 2005

Sunday, January 16th, 2005

“An array of silver devices spilled from the box, all with ridiculously small buttons and impossibly complicated operating manuals. Understanding all of their functions and features within two weeks was clearly a non-starter, so they were immediately plunged into the ultimate usability test. If I could make them work, I reasoned, then anyone could.”
The quote […]

Free/Libre/Open Source Usability Sprint

Sunday, January 16th, 2005

“The event will bring together a diverse group of programmers, usability experts, project managers, and users to discuss methodologies for improving the usability of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) and to apply those processes towards specific software projects.”
Read about the event…

Ergonomics as a Success Factor

Saturday, January 15th, 2005

SAP INFO — “Today’s companies demand a lot from mobile solutions. Navigation in the software must be oriented to the work processes of the field services staff. Because the ergonomics of an application affect employee productivity so much, SAP Mobile Asset Management and the utilities-specific version of SAP Mobile Asset Management can be adjusted to […]

Movable Type Accessibility In Question

Friday, January 14th, 2005

Business Logs — “Joe Clark, one of the loudest voices in the world in regards to accessibility, has a boombastic writeup on his weblog that discusses how Movable Type is an application that generates content, and should therefore adhere to the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines or ATAG.”
Read the posting and comments…

iPod Shuffle = Field of Push

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

I have a Jens of Sweden MP-300 MP3 player with an FM receiver, FM transmission, visual display, voice recording, 256MB memory, simple USB interface, drag and drop capability, bass boost, equalizer, long battery life, playback speed up and slow down, and more. I bought it nearly a year ago for $200. The MP-400 is now […]