WebWord

Why buy NNgroup’s reports when Usability.gov offers guidelines? Perhaps because some of their material is very specific (e.g., Site map usability). Then again, are guidelines relevant or useful? If they are useful, do they stand the test of time? (Yes: “About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are […]

“As with all employee surveys, your participation is voluntary and your responses are confidential.”
If you read that sentence quickly, you might very well think that the survey is anonymous. However, that is not the case. Instead, the sentence indicates that (a) you can take the survey if you desire and (b) what you say as […]

“The rapid pace of mobile phone installation and the development of wireless networks are together driving robust growth in the use of phones for browsing. People are turning to mobile phones for Internet use more quickly than they’re adopting laptops for the same purpose in many parts of the world.”
The Face of the Web
Consider for […]

“Given that IA as a profession is really only about 10yrs old (or at least, that’s the figure I hear bandied about), it makes sense that *most* IAs have a ‘past life’ of one kind or another. This has got me to thinking that there are probably about six different species of Information Architect, based […]

“Even where the application of ubiquitous technology would clearly be useful, I know enough about how informatic systems are built and brought to market to be very skeptical about its chances of bringing wholesale improvement to the quality of my life.” (Everyware: Always Crashing in the Same Car)
“Having said that, I don’t jump straight into […]

Paul Sherman, the Vice-President of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), was the author of the UPA salary survey. He made some of his own observations about the survey. Here’s a point that I missed in my summary that I think is worth considering for a moment:
The average salary for males was $82,882; for females, $74,316. […]

I met Dan Brister more than 20 years ago. We’ve been friends for a long time now and we often like to talk about our business adventures. We also talk about his health at great length. Dan is a very lucky cancer survior. Not surprisingly, he’s been interested in health and fitness since his dark […]

Google Adsense Spy was supposed to work like this. You’d start typing, text would appear on the page, and Adsense advertisements would adjust to the content and magically update below the content, all without any page refreshing.
I created the Google Adsense Spy because I thought it would help me understand my writing in respect […]

“The report on the 2005 survey of over 1300 usability professionals includes salary details, educational background, and details on what we do in our work.”
Some key points…

About 1/2 the people in the survey are between 26 and 35, only 4% are 55-65 years old.
Most people are well educated; Bachelors and Masters are common
The job […]

I’ve been having fun with WebWord metrics recently. It’s enjoyable to look at the numbers to figure out what is going on. What does it all mean?
I recently found out that, based on the Computers and Technology Weblogs directory for Yahoo Australia and New Zealand, WebWord is relatively popular.
It is interesting to me […]

Here’s the abstract…
“Accurate project effort prediction is an important goal for the software engineering community. To date most work has focused upon building algorithmic models of effort, for example COCOMO. These can be calibrated to local environments.”
I definitely agree that estimating effort is important, if not crucial. But, the idea of using algorithms, […]

The vast majority of people in the world have no idea what Web 2.0 means. Indeed, the vast majority of savvy web users have no idea what Web 2.0 means.
Out of 6.5 billion people on Earth about 1 billion have internet access, with penetration deepest in North Asia, America and Europe. Forget about people […]