All Blog Posts (28)

The story about how US Airways pilot, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, successfully executed an emergency landing in the Hudson River and personally ensured that all passengers were safely evacuated is remarkable for many reasons and undoubtedly front-page news throughout the country and a top news story throughout the world.



The… Continue

The online games I play have both released major updates. These exciting and long-anticipated events have been tracked regularly by game reviewers and fans alike. I've been reading for weeks before and since the releases about these expansions in forums, release notes, reviews, and developer diaries.



Developer diaries are particularly interesting artifacts. A developer diary discusses the motivation, goals, and/or design thinking that went into a particular aspect of product design.… Continue

OptimalWorkshop has a product in beta called Chalkmark which is used to track where people click on a design prototype.



In Chalkmark, you upload images of interfaces and write a prompt for users to click on the interface to accomplish some task. Chalkmark records the clicks and shows you them in a report that looks similar to what you see with eyetracking heatmaps.



The cool thing about this is that you… Continue

Yesterday, lost in a Barnes & Noble, I luckily picked up "Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations" by Nancy Duarte. Who's she? Beats me, but the book rocks.



Too often presentations get caught up in the gee-whiz of the technology. Doesn't it seem like PowerPoint and its ilk set us up to create BORING presentations? Just because we can use a decaying slide… Continue

In keeping with the Transportation theme for World Usability Day 2008, check out the New York Times article, The Road to Clarity by Joshua Yaffa. This article chronicles the creation of a new font, Clearview, now being adopted for US highway signs. Proving increased legibility and researching the actual improved usability was a key part of the design process. Further details about the research, as well as a… Continue

I am an Amazon.com shopper, and I am stupid.



A couple weeks ago I participated in a focus group for the Intel website (more on that in another post), in return for which I received a $75 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Hurrah! I went onto the site and shopped: books, a couple new French presses, an electric tea kettle. I spent something like $78, which meant only $3 out of pocket.



Except that I went through the whole purchasing process and forgot to enter the coupon… Continue

I'm working a lot with social networking apps lately, so I spend time every day on Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, and Bebo.



Just recently, Facebook rolled out a new interface. I'm still discovering the things they changed about it. One thing I very much like is that they are allowing users to choose when to change to the new layout, and they also allow you to roll back to the old layout if you want. This gives the user the feeling of being in control; as a user, you choose to apply… Continue

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