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December 12, 2003
Tufte forums
Although I can't stand Helfand's buttheaded rant on Tufte, I have to say that a few weeks of following the Ask ET forums can almost convince me she's right about the uncritical devotion many designers have for him.
For every preening little aside by Tufte ("I have always enjoyed reading aloud the paragraph I wrote about Babar's Dream on page 127."), there are many, many softly-landed punches on Powerpoint by his readers hoping for a response. The place is cluttered up with posters eager to hear, yet again, that powerpoint is bad, a lot like the "isn't Flash awful" trolling in Usability circles.
But being Tufte, he's able to haul out some impressive stuff. Check this thread on Project Management diagramming techniques (which has been active for almost two years!) where Tufte shows examples of some of his PM charting ideas, and later discusses how theater production notation might apply to project management.
Also don't miss Adam Richardson's 11/4/2002 comment in the thread about the details of a PM application frog design was apparently developing.
Posted by Andrew at December 12, 2003 05:29 PM
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Maybe the Ask ET forum seems like a sea of sycophants because ET censors the forum ruthlessly. I have personally posted comments that I thought were fairly innocuous only to find them gone after several hours.
Posted by: JD at February 2, 2004 11:14 PM