Archive for May, 2005

Windows rapidly approaching desktop usability

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

“Every year or so I like to see how Microsoft is doing in its attempt to make a desktop operating system as usable as Linux. Microsoft Windows XP, Home Edition, with Service Pack 2, is a tremendous improvement over previous Windows versions when it comes to stability and appearance, but it still has many glitches […]

Who is just as know or influential as Jakob Nielsen, but disagrees with Jakob Nielsen?

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

“I am going to write a thesis on the subject of usability, and basically I need different views on the matter. It seams to me that there is Jakob Nielsen, but no prominent opposition to his views.”
There is plenty of opposition. Trust me.
Read the thread…

Practical (and Cheap) Usability Testing

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

“By cutting some corners, you can conduct tests on your own, without the hassle and expense and still pinpoint the major issues. To simplify the process, I am going to break it down into four areas…”
Read the article…

Dividends from Past Articles

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

About 2-3 people visit WebWord each day from Boxes and Arrows. The link is from Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training, which I wrote about 4 months ago. Niiice!
I have about 20 articles brewing in my mind, and I have 2-3 rough copies ready to publish. So little time and so many other priorities, however. […]

Book Review: Designing Highly Useable Software

Monday, May 23rd, 2005

Linux News — “This book will give you a realistic grasp of the workaday constraints experienced by these colleagues, the best practices that they should be observing, and the types of suggestions from you that might sound plausible to them.”
Read the entire book review…

Meeting Peter Morville in NYC

Tuesday, May 17th, 2005

I’m currently at the Enterprise Search Summit in NYC. So far, so good. Peter Morville gave a talk yesterday that I really liked. He brought together a lot of material and delivered a good story.
We’re meeting for breakfast this morning. I’m going to try to find out more about findability. He’s been talking about […]

Number of clicks, value of clicks

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

Number of clicks is one important metric, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The value of each click along the way is also important. To make this easier to understand, here’s what I wrote in an email: If you found $100 on every street corner but your feet hurt a little, I bet you’d […]

Bloglines users are a load of knitters

Tuesday, May 10th, 2005

“After producing a list of the top 100 folder names subscribed to on bloglines I found the usual suspects at the top “Blogs, news, tech, people, politics” etc. etc. But then at number 37, I found a folder called “Knitting” that had been used for 2,085 feeds.”
Read the article…

Enron Testimony from a Fool

Monday, May 9th, 2005

These things are worth digesting…
“To this day, the majority of stockbrokers are compensated on the number of trades their customers make, not on the returns they generate for them or on the quality of the advice they provide.”
“In the end, analysts have minimal structural incentive to be accurate in their predictions; rather their built-in incentive […]

Fine-grained treats = user happiness

Monday, May 9th, 2005

“Intermittent, unexpected treats are more powerful than regularly scheduled expected treats.”
Nothing new here if you know anything about the basics of psychology. Nevertheless, a good refresher.
See the article…

Context matters

Monday, May 9th, 2005

“Context plays a more fundamental role for Asians than for westerners. Asians have a more difficult time thinking of an object as completely separate from its background.”
Read the posting…

Experts Predict Where Search Will Go in 2005

Monday, May 9th, 2005

“Leading search engines are now about on par in terms of accuracy and documents indexed, so they now will need to develop new cool, differentiable services on top of these results.”
Read the story…