Category Archives: usability
bay area usability and design organizations
Silicon Valley SIGGRAPH BayDUX Interaction Design Association Society for Technical Communication San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, ACM The Information Architecture Institute and quasi-related: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Jason on software
More smart writing frm 37signals: Jason Fried on why good software is simple software: Less as a competitive advantage and why functional specs aren’t helpful.
best software talk ever?
At last month’s BayCHI meeting, Alan Cooper of Cooper gave the best talk I’ve seen on software development, Ending the Death March. Unlike the rest of the BayCHI talks, this one wasn’t recorded or podcast. (Aside: please email BayCHI and … Continue reading
guerilla usability: ice oasis hockey
For the past two years, I’ve been playing hockey at Ice Oasis. It’s a nice enough rink, but their web site is terrible. While they’ve since ditched the neon colours, the schedule page is pretty awful: you have to see … Continue reading
ui designers at large
From Membranophonist: a good fix for the iTunes CDDB dialog he then points out a vestigial modal dialog indicating something was succesfull. Lots of other good stuff there too. Next, ThinkMac rethinks the spotlight window. Their design is lacking a … Continue reading
myspace == ghetto
Paul Scrivens (rightly) notes that MySpace sucks in terms of design: It’s also a designer’s and lover of design’s worst nightmare because the UI of the site is atrocious yet it boasts 17 million visitors a month (and rising) and … Continue reading
iTunes 5 from the perspective of anthropomorphized brushed metal
Daring Fireball: The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme: Brushed Metal: I’m the bad-ass theme. I’m the one who flouts the Human Interface Guidelines. Mike: This guy trashes the HIG the way … Continue reading
Canon Scanner driver sucks
I downloaded the Canon LIDE scanner software. The file was a StuffIt (.sit) file. After I decompressed that, I was faced with “CSToolbox_OSX_v4130X.app.” That installed … another installer. The “CanoScan Toolbox Installer” actually installs the software. Ideally, this would have … Continue reading
some lessons on usability
after i launched my house concerts site, i sent out emails with customized RSVP links to everyone. the next day, i got a bug report that RSVPing “no” wasn’t working. well, it was — sort of. the problem was that … Continue reading
marketing sucks
Jeff Veen, asked to judge an interactive design competition, rails against those still not on the cluetrain: User-centered design vs. marketing and image Most sites had no sense whatsoever of how to engage a potential customer through the Web. Of … Continue reading