Users Begin to Demand Software Usability Tests
“The Boeing Co. is changing the way it buys software and is making a product’s usability (…) a fundamental purchasing criterion.” (Patrick Thidodeau – Computerworld)
All posts from
November 2002
Keep It Simple: Simplicity versus Innovation
“The site should be innovative in design and content, but, when it comes to usability, a slightly conservative mindset is the best option.” (Peter-Paul Koch – Digital Web Magazine)
What’s Your Problem?
“Trying to establish a profession on the foundation of a myth is, I think, a tactical error.” (Mark Bernstein)
ASIST 2002 Annual Meeting: Notes
“Just spurious notes from what I saw, in general a very good conference.” (Victor Lombardi)
Three Lessons from Tufte: Special Deliverable#6
“Because his books focus primarily on producing graphics for paper and on the representation of information, not the structuring of information, many information architects wonder about the value of Tufte’s writing for their work.” (Dan Brown – Boxes and Arrows)
Mark Hurt interviews Maryam Mohit
“Maryam Mohit started working at Amazon.com in 1996 and soon after became Amazon.com’s V.P. of Site Development, with responsibility for the online customer experience.” (Good Experience)
History of the Graphical User Interface
“The graphical user interface, or GUI, of Microsoft Windows is based on that of the MacOS (and the earlier unsuccessful Apple Lisa), which in turn used many elements of the work of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, who produced the advanced but commercially unsuccessful Xerox Alto and Xerox Star.” (Wikipedia)
Apple Help Technologies
“When users refer to help, it is usually because they are having difficulty accomplishing a task — they know what they want to do, but not how to do it.” (Apple User Experience)
Flash and Web-Based Applications
“The Internet is changing. Although people have primarily used it to read email and Web pages, more functionality-oriented applications are now emerging, with the goal of providing new features that do more for users.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
The Information Architect: A Missing Link?
“(…) our (information) architect is a high level designer that uses information as building material.” (Ricardo Baea-Yates and Miguel Nussbaum)
Knowledge Isn’t Power (…) Unless It’s Shared
“High performers consistently speak of knowledge when talking about their work, whereas lower performers speak of information.” (Rachel Fielding – VNUnet)
Adam is a House A-Fire!
“I think Nathan’s smoking crack if he thinks IAs have lost stature.” (Peter Merholz)
In 75 Words or Less, What is the Semantic Web?
“Eric Miller is the World Wide Web Consortium’s Activity Lead on the Semantic Web Initiative.” (NewBreed Librarian)
Rosenfeld Explains Enterprise Information Architecture
“Rosenfeld addressed himself to the issue of practising information architecture in an unfriendly enterprise environment.” (Ann Light – Usability News)
What Lies Beneath?
“Engaging your services as a designer or an information architect has an associated cost, and ideally anyway, also produces a tangible benefit.” (Adam Greenfield – V-2)
Nathan Shedroff: The V-2 Interview 1/2
“One can’t work for too terribly long in the broader user-experience community (…) without hearing the words Experience Design.” (Adam Greenfield – V-2)
The Use of Visual Information in Art
“Some of the factors that I hope to illustrate are aspects of depth perception, color perception, and form perception.” (John H. Krantz)
The Importance of Information Architecture
“Very glossy, but pretty much right on the money. The reasoning stresses business concepts like ROI, so it speaks to the business person pretty well.” (James Melzer)
Information Architecture is not Usability
“The distinction between information architecture and usability may seem like semantics, but there are significant differences between the two disciplines.” (Jeff Lash – Digital Web Magazine)
Death of a Meta Tag
“In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead.” (Danny Sullivan – ClickZ)