All posts from
May 2003

The Persistence of Usability Myths

Added on 9 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Last year we researched the top 10 usability myths. A number of people, including technology pundits, had attacked usability. We thought the attacks were based on misconceptions. (…) We conducted an online survey to see whether web professionals agreed with the pundits.” (John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine – Usability News)

An iYear with Mac OS X

Added on 9 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“It was about a year ago that, after a decade or so of Windows on my client and Unix/Linux on my servers, I bought a TiBook and got into OS X. I am only rarely tempted to go back. It’s worth it, I think, to look back over the past year and see what the take-aways are.” (Tim Bray Ongoing) – courtesy of mark bernstein

Notes for Job Seekers in UI Design and Computer Science

Added on 9 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Job Searching takes time. Many of the things that need to happen to land a job are out of your control. This means that you might be doing everything right, and still not have any offers. Plan for this. Make sure you invest time in learning new skills, staying sharp with your old ones, and getting more experence regardless of whether you’re paid or not. The world needs better designs for just about everything, so the long term future for you is bright – hang in there.” (Scott Berkun – UIWeb.com)

User Experience Themes, Part I: Craft and Engineering

Added on 7 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“And while it’s been important for sites to achieve that baseline of functionality and usability, we’re reaching a point where it’s imperative that we move beyond that. It’s time to utilize insight to provide a unique engagement for our visitors. Not that we ought to abandon engineering methods. Far from it — we need to figure out ways to merge craft and engineering to provide the greatest satisfaction.” (Peter Merholz)

Hypertext Publishing and the Evolution of Knowledge

Added on 7 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Media affect the evolution of knowledge in society. A suitable hypertext publishing medium can speed the evolution of knowledge by aiding the expression, transmission, and evaluation of ideas. If one aims, not to compete with the popular press, but to supplement journals and conferences, then the problems of hypertext publishing seem soluble in the near term. The direct benefits of using a hypertext publishing medium should bring emergent benefits, helping to form intellectual communities, to build consensus, and to extend the range and efficiency of intellectual effort. These benefits seem numerous, deep, and substantial, but are hard to quantify. Nonetheless, rough estimates of benefits suggest that development of an adequate hypertext publishing medium should be regarded as a goal of first-rank importance.” (K. Eric Drexler – Foresight Institute)

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

Added on 5 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“In corporate and government bureaucracies, the standard method for making a presentation is to talk about a list of points organized onto slides projected up on the wall. For many years, overhead projectors lit up transparencies, and slide projectors showed high-resolution 35mm slides. Now ‘slideware’ computer programs for presentations are nearly everywhere. Early in the 21st century, several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint were turning out trillions of slides each year. Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?” (Edward R. Tufte) – courtesy of lee potts

Designers: Time for Change

Added on 5 May 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Although design is one of the most profoundly powerful disciplines in our modern information culture, its identity as a profession is in a state of incoherent disarray verging on crisis. The economic slowdown and tenuous world situation provide us an opportunity to come together as designers to articulate and organize our professional culture, to enhance our recognition and prestige within the context of an increasingly design-reliant information economy and to wield our influence in ways that will benefit humanity and the planet.” (Clement Mok – Communication Arts) – courtesy of beth mazur