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Thursday, May 30, 2002
An extremely sensible and well-written article about Flash MX components, UI design process, and usability. Written by the guy who did SmallBlueprinter.com.
This article says that Amazon's still around not because of service or prices, but because they have great software. Most of what's discussed is really great design, the unsexy, invisible kind that we all love: "[survivors like Amazon] perfected ways to put vast inventories at customers' fingertips, they make it easy and safe to pay, and they make regular patrons feel valued. They also built systems that can easily integrate new product categories or tie separate online stores into a single back end." Ok, backend integration is probably mostly a technical achievement, but it's possible to make big inventories browsable, or make check-outs secure and easy, and even to make people feel valued, using some crappy software; those things don't have to do with how wonderful your code is. I assume that what Target and all the rest aren't liscensing is Amazon's designers.
I figured that if I waited a coupla days, Victor would post the shot of us in Hamburg. We all look strangley identical in this picture (except Ulrike)....
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
Thomas Friedman's essay on technology and privacy in the Times is so stunningly wrong I can hardly stand it. In the first paragraph, he "wonders" whether the fact that the 9/11 terrorists used Travelocity to make their plane reservations has "given pause" to the designers of the "wired world" that Silicon Valley has been building. Leaving aside, the wussy technique of using phrases like "I've been wondering" in place of a real opinion position, the essay attempts to scare readers rather than inform them. Yes, many of the technical and behavioral infrastructures of networked technology are based on trust relationships. Of course, so are many of the technical and behavioral systems that govern the highway system or other communal technologies.
The worst is Friedman's conflation of the concept of "trustworthy behavior" (I'll give you my email address, but don't spam me with it) with "trustworthy systems." (this elevator will not suddently plummet ten stories). He implies, mostly through quotations, that technology built upon assumptions of trustworthy behavior is itself eroding trust in systems, and suggests that these two forms of trust cannot co-exist: someone from Travelocity says "our only responsibility was to authenticate your financial ability to pay. Did your name and credit card match your billing address? It was not our responsibility, nor did we have the ability, to authenticate your intent with that ticket, which requires a much deeper sense of identification." My intent with that ticket is something that might be authenticated? That's quite frightening. I don't recall my intent being called into question (or stored in a database) for any other recent purchase.
It's hard to believe that Friedman is frightened of things like Travelocity, but that's what is suggested here. It's clear that he's simply placing blame on things he doesn't really understand.
There's a lot of interesting stuff at the interactionmasters seminar site, a record of a several-day interaction design workshop in in Finland. It looks like it was a good balance of loopy design theories and practical topics (Flash content).
Monday, May 27, 2002
On Friday, I was able to meet up with Victor Lombardi and James Kalbach at the Hamburg office of Razorfish. We had some Kartoffellsuppe (actually Victor had something that looked like regurgitated corned beef with an egg on top...) and talked about teaching IA and living in Germany. Extra thanks to Eric Malheb who was nice enough to meet me at the train station and give me a walking tour of Hamburg!
Thursday, May 23, 2002
How's Berlin these days? From CNN: "... left-wingers had vowed to make Bush's 20-hour stay in the city a noisy one, with about 100 separate protests across Germany. Police had made much of Berlin a virtual fortress, with 10,000 officers on duty and a 14-block area around the Brandenburg Gate completely sealed off in the largest security operation since World War II."
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Ben Fry has released a pdf book about his experiments in visualizing the human genome.
Wednesday, May 15, 2002
Somebody asked about too-long drop-down menus on SIGIA the other day (hey, has anyone got any research that proves that too many options in a drop-down is rilly rilly bad? My boss doesn't believe me when I tell him that.)
Here's an example (in German) with more than 800 options in one menu. Click on "City Highlights" in the left nav menu, then on "Events" underneath it. Then click on "Zur Detailsuche" in the main page (orange button). Take a deep breath and click on the "Events" drop-down. Notice the rigorous database management going on here? All those Events that appear 30 or 40 times? By the way, this pile of crap of a site is a DaimlerChrysler Mobility Services effort. Bet it cost millions, and it's beyond useless.
This one is a must: FacetMap.com has had a great demo of faceted browsing techniques for a while. Now it also allows you to create your own facetmap with your own content, and browse it using several different interfaces.
Where did guuui come from? Nice site about interaction design that's apparently not running on one of the usual blog tools. (via Christina)
My boss is actually handing out drugs at work today. Well, ok, not actual drugs, but we have a Playstation 2 with Tony Hawk 3, which is actually worse than drugs. I'm not sure that introducing a PS2 into the office is such a good idea.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
NY Times article on BMW's iDrive. Seven hundred functions, all controlled by a few buttons, and complete automation down to the headrest position. This is life-threatening technology; I'm sure you could prove the dangers of the cognitive overhead required with a usability study. Can your surviving family members sue when you crash into a wall at 80 mph as you try to navigate the fifth submenu? I wonder if you sign something when you buy it along the lines of most software licenses: "I agree that BMW is not responsible for anything that happens because of the iDrive software."
Sunday, May 12, 2002
For the longest time I've been unable to get a dial-up connection faster than 33 here at our apartment in Berlin. I just had to reinstall the OS last week, and managed to misplace my RemoteAccess and LocationManager prefs. Now that I've recreated all my dial-up settings, I find I'm able to get connections like 49 or 50 again. How odd.
Friday, May 10, 2002
Frog's redesign is notable for how frequently and pervasively the word "design" is used. The "deliverables" section, while it doesn't actually show clients, say, what "layout wireframes" are, really reinforces that frog is selling "design", not "digital media solutions," "integrated solutions," or whatever. Too bad the site is sort of ugly, especially that black-white gradient background.
Thursday, May 09, 2002
The Doors of Perception conference has a nice new site (although I can't quite see what about it caused the months long delayed launch.)
Wednesday, May 08, 2002
So I'm entering the final weeks of a fairly big project at work, and of course things are running behind. There's still aspects of an ever-more-complex CMS to design (since we didn't know the client needed to be able to do blah blah blah), and other things as well. I lost yesterday to a serious system corruption (my second ever on the Mac since, what, 1988?). Of course it's not hard to reinstall everything, and I was able to store all my files on a server before I started, so no big deal.
I'm suddenly swamped with work, some of it pitching for new clients. It's good work, and interesting, and making use of new stuff like mobile devices. But I am not getting paid enough. I've been an intern here for three months and 8 days now, which means piss-poor money. I am damn sure getting paid too little to be upset that I lost a day of work because of a system crash, that's for sure. My boss genuinely wants to pay me more, and of course when we get this next client than there will be money, etc. etc. I don't doubt him, he's a good guy. It's just that in the meantime, I suddenly feel a little exploited.
Of course I have some interest in making sure our project goes well, that the client pitch is good, etc. But looking ahead, I have a (well-paid) teaching gig coming up next month that I really want to be good, so I need time to prepare, which I don't have for the next couple of weeks. Mom and Dad are coming to Berlin to visit for about 10 days. There might be some other freelance work on the horizon. I even have one or two small projects I want to do on my own. And Heather and I are supposed to have a vacation sometime!! Part of me just can't not try to do a good job when I know what needs to be done; I also don't want to let anyone down. But I know I need to not be so stressed for the amount I'm paid. What do you think?
Sunday, May 05, 2002
Friday, May 03, 2002
Don Norman gave up on usability today on CHI-WEB: "I'm starting a new career phase: Ugly is out, beauty is in. I'm looking for examples. Usability? Yeah, that matters, but beauty, pleasure, and fun -- those are truly important." How do we know he's not kidding? By the amazing, playful, unobtrusive and just plain FUN stuff he's added to his site! You can't not have fun with that beauty.
Is this a sign that "Experience Design" has even reached deep into the conservative core of Usability?
