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| Stop the next war before it starts End the Occupation |
| last updated:10 May 2003 11: 54 Webword time, or 10 May 2003 16:54 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 04 May 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| 10 Most Dangerous Food to Eat While Driving | Sun 04 May |
| So what is the most hazardous food drivers can consume? The offender is one of the worlds most popular beverages and the one with which most Americans start their mornings... |
| Sun 04 May 21:55 | Anonymous | Krusty O's |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 04 May |
| The Ghost is coming, the Ghost is coming... |
| Sun 04 May 21:48 | Anonymous | Summary please. First I have to click two links to see where they go, then I end up at a WebWord article page that has an introduction incorrectly labeled as a 'summary.' I'm not going to read further, I've already wasted too much time. CLICK. Click. click. |
| Don't Believe the Hype About Strategy | Sun 04 May |
| (Business 2.0) Under almost all conditions, fast learners are going to outperform even the most brilliant planners. |
| Sun 04 May 14:52 | Ron Zeno | Isn't planning to learn quickly a strategy? 'The best way to build a company for the future is to cut back on meetings and get to work.' Isn't that just a strategy, too? 'Talking replaces action, planning replaces learning by doing. In this sense, strategy -- the creative part of running a business that excites managers, consultants, and more than a few academics -- is overrated.' Now we're getting somewhere. It's not that strategy is bad, it's that like anything else, strategy can be taken too far and made meaningless. Being an academic, Pfeffer is all too familiar with analysis, research, and planning taken to extreme. Of course, the dot bomb is an example of the other extreme. See Pfeffer's book, The Knowing-Doing Gap (ISBN: 1578511240). |
| Sun 04 May 16:01 | MadMan | The Knowing-Doing Gap is a good book. But in this article, Pfeffer seems to be providing his own definition of 'strategy', and then knocking it down. That's why Wells Fargo (WFC) CEO Richard Kovacevich once said he could leave the company's strategic plan on a plane and it wouldn't make any difference. 'Our success has nothing to do with planning. It has to do with execution.' A fallacious argument. While it is indeed true that without proper execution, the best plans are useless, that doesn't automatically make planning a waste of time. You may need the right temperature in the oven to make the cake come out properly, but the flour is required too. 'Listen to your customers. Listen to your employees. Do what they tell you.' Noble, and I don't disagree with it in principle. But as a marketing recipe, this can be disastrous. How do you introduce revolutionary products when your customers haven't even thought of them yet? Customer requirements ('gimme 10000 features for $49') can also clash with business goals ('need to make money on this damn thing') instead of sitting in meetings and producing fancy PowerPoint demonstrations, develop your strategy by using your company's best thinking at the time, learning, refining, and trying again. Makes the assumption that time, effort, and development resources (money, for instance) are all not a factor in product development. Not so in the real world. |
| CHI 2003 Feature: Testing... 1 2 3 4 5 ... Testing... | Fri 02 May |
| (Usability News) The most impassioned advocacy came from Dennis Wixon, who kicked off a lively exchange by arguing that size is not what matters and that identifying the total set of problems is irrelevant. The true goal of testing is not finding defects but fixing them. |
| Fri 02 May 13:02 | Ralph | I hope that usability by design is the goal. It seems pretty logical that design standards would make use of usability findings over the year so that knowledge would accumulate and be refined over the years, like Fitt's law, etc. Almost all usability problems I find when using software result from not following even the most basic standards, such as Windows standards. |
| Fri 02 May 19:24 | Bernard | Design has to be the focus. You can find a dozen usability defects in a section of a product, but often times the fix isn't to repair the dozen defects but a design flaw at a higher level. |
| Sat 03 May 21:49 | daniel szuc | Some usability is better than none. |
| Sun 04 May 14:54 | Ron Zeno | Inept or ineffective usability is worse than none. |
| A Proposal for Evaluating Usability Testing Methods: The Practical Review System (PRS) | Wed 30 Apr |
| (WebWord) The purpose of this article is to explain the Practical Review System (PRS). The PRS is an outline of 28 characteristics that can be used to understand any usability method, thereby allowing any individual to decide between methods. This solves many of the problems associated with understanding and explaining usability methods. |
| Thu 01 May 10:35 | daniel szuc | Like it John. I am interested! Also agree about translating what usability is to people who think its just about common sense. In a recent project put many examples about devices that have been real flops due to no regard to customer needs and putting it into language people can understand. UCD for UCD and something Whitney Quesenbery speaks about at http://www.wqusability.com/articles/ucd-on-ucd.html |
| Thu 01 May 14:58 | Ralph | I'm not a usability specialist but I am very interested in the subject of usability both as a user and as an engineer/designer, and I would be willing to help in whatever way I could. I've always wanted to be involved in testing as a user for something like a website, but I have never found out how to do that. By the way, I know of personal web page that does something very similar to what you're talking about, but using only the methods described in Nielsen's 'Usability Engineering'. If you want to know about it, let me know. If you don't, I'll stay mum. |
| Sat 03 May 13:57 | Ron Zeno | Good stuff, but what you're proposing is not a means to evaluate methods, but to catalogue them. With that in mind, I suggest prioritizing the attributes that do not require evaluation of the method. Probably the most important is #22, Goals of Testing. Making this alone explicit, specific, and meaningful will be extremely helpful. |
| Sat 03 May 22:20 | daniel szuc | Hi Ron, this may interest you and John has also posted this on webword - http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1058.asp Be interested in your perspective. |
| Sun 04 May 13:56 | John S. Rhodes | Ron wrote: 'Good stuff, but what you're proposing is not a means to evaluate methods, but to catalogue them.' I don't fully agree. I would argue that the PRS will generate a catalog, as you suggest. However, I would then argue that since the methods are catalogued using the same characteristics, we can easily evaluate them or decide between them. |
| Discount Usability: Time to push back the pendulum? | Sat 03 May |
| Discount usability techniques are a great way to eradicate usability problems. But they can never answer the question, How usable is this system? We blow the dust off some techniques commonly used in the early days of usability testing to see if they can provide an answer. (Comments: Thanks David Travis.) |
| Sat 03 May 13:34 | Ron Zeno | So very wrong on so many levels... Thinking-aloud usability tests are a type of discount usability method?!? Discount usability techniques are a great way to eradicate usability problems?!? And of course, the entire article is written as if it is actually desirable to find how usable a system is, let alone that it is possible. |
| Sun 04 May 11:07 | Anonymous | Uh, the article is most wrong with its title. A pendulum swings back anyway. It doesn't need to be 'pushed,' unless it has stopped completely. And if that were the case, you would be 'pulling back' the pendulum. The dolt! |
| A badge that knows more than your name | Fri 02 May |
| ...in certain situations — annual business conferences, trade shows, conventions, cocktail parties, or social mixers for singles — remaining disconnected and uninvolved can be counterproductive. So, to help people break the ice and network at large gatherings, a startup company called nTag has developed a unique and high-tech solution. (MadMan comments: Thanks Udhay) |
| Fri 02 May 06:53 | JK | The whole point of mixing at public functions is to interact in a unique way with other human beings: using conversation. As far as I know, we're the only species in the universe that converses. One of the beauties of conversation at gatherings is serendipity - the hitherto unknown shared interest or experience. The small bond that forms is part of the grease that keeps the wheels of society rolling. Conversation just might be the ultimate creative act. A smart tag that collects information about others, which is then read by the wearer, will limit many people to conversing about what's in their tag. I can't think of anything more boring or stifling of a creative act. |
| Fri 02 May 12:16 | Anonymous | A stupid idea, period. First, event organizers do not want to pay through the nose for name tags. $10 for a box of 50 cards slotted in a plastic holder with elastic neck string, thankyouverymuch. Second, people don't want to disclose personal information. Third, women don't want men staring at their chest any longer than they have to. |
| Fri 02 May 14:18 | Lydia | It sounds like fun to me, actually. People wouldn't be staring at each other's chests, they'd be responding to their own unit. I bet it would connect you to people you might otherwise have not talked to. Obviously it's an expensive system, but it seems to have possibility. |
| Fri 02 May 16:50 | Anonymous | Just so long as I can indcate through my unit that I'm looking for a good time after the convention. Yeah, that sounds like fun. Virtual matchmaker. |
| WebWord Comment | Tue 29 Apr |
| Awesome. |
| Wed 30 Apr 07:19 | Ralph | Yes it is. But someone has too much time on their hands! |
| Wed 30 Apr 07:45 | Anonymous | Excellent advertisement. I shall right this minute buy a bunch of automotive scrap. |
| Wed 30 Apr 09:34 | Frank Lynch | My thoughts, regarding usability, would be that it would be nice if John's link mentioned the specific version of Flash which would be required, as well as the total K which one has to wait for. That would have improved my experience and stopped me from clicking. |
| Wed 30 Apr 10:07 | Carl | Interesting to me is the fact that the model of Accord used in the advert is nowhere to be found on the Web site. |
| Wed 30 Apr 11:03 | John S. Rhodes | Frank, those are good comments. In general I try to include that kind of important information, but I'll try harder in the future. |
| Wed 30 Apr 11:51 | Anonymous | Even better, the link would be more usable if we didn't have to click on it to figure out what we'll see. I saw that Flash commercial several weeks ago. My PC locked up when viewing it this time. Thanks WebWord! |
| Fri 02 May 15:28 | Lydia | Wow, what a great ad! |
| What Does the Future Hold for Text Ad's? | Tue 29 Apr |
| The reality is that this question can not be answered, even with vague accuracy, without a detailed understanding of what motivates all parties, including advertisers, ad networks and media owners. Only then can a worthwhile prediction be made, which is something that this article completely fails to do. (Incidently, my answer, is YES, text advertising will continue to rule.) (Comments: Spanking Jakob Nielsen.) |
| Wed 30 Apr 14:32 | Mark | Irony: after several stories about improving one's writing, we're presented with a story with a misspelling in its title. Perhaps the best way to improve one's writing is to hire a good editor & a good proofreader. |
| Fri 02 May 04:22 | Mac | Alertbox continues its terminal decline... Jakob can't even be bothered to proof read his own articles anymore. This article was published on the 28 April 2003, but the date on the article hasn't been changed from the previous article that was published on 21 Apr 2003. Perhaps this shows that the Nielsen re-cycling scheme has gone too far. |
| Fri 02 May 13:36 | George Olsen | I agree with MarketingFix, Jakob misses the point. Text ads don't work well because they're text, they work well because Google etc. have worked hard to make sure they're _relevant._ Advertising 101: well targeted (i.e. relevant) ads have higher response rates. |
| Spring Brings a Shower of New Devices | Fri 02 May |
| (PC World) Its a Bluetooth-enabled micro robot. The company built them solely to demonstrate its micro technology, which it says comes from years of watchmaking, and has no plans to sell them. |
| Fri 02 May 11:28 | Anonymous | Those mini robots would be toast in two seconds with a dog or cat around. First thing they'd do is rip the attennas from the robots, while you pray your animal doesn't swallow the wires and need a trip to the emergency room. |
| Six Technologies That Will Change the World (Business 2.0) | Thu 01 May |
| Imagine robots that can read your mood and ink-jet printers that can crank out transplantable hearts. The visionaries you are about to meet have not only imagined these things theyre hard at work building them. (MadMan comments: Didnt the Concorde already do supersonic speeds? Look what happened.) |
| Fri 02 May 04:18 | Alan Fisher | Madman, the problem with Concorde was that it was always horrendously expensive. Given the choice, most people would rather spend 3 or 4 hours crossing the Atlantic than 7 or 8, but the price of a seat meant that most people didn't have the choice. That's why the article says they are looking at a 'relatively affordable supersonic business jet'. |
| Fri 02 May 10:17 | Anonymous | technology is a false messiah the eurocentrist concept of progress is mostly mythology authentic visionaries have always known this business + technology, like patriotism + journalism, leads us to dead ends web technicians are contributing to their own obsolescence automation is not liberation self-congratulation comes at the expense of someone/something else web developers are still consumers articles like this linked are designed for allegiance and indoctrination, yet consumed as something else beware false prophets the future only exists in the present moment |
| WebWord Comment | Wed 23 Apr |
| Encourage MadMan to write an article. |
| Wed 30 Apr 01:19 | Anonymous | Dude! Write an article already! |
| Wed 30 Apr 14:48 | Jimbo | It's willfull disrespect that MadMan is now showing us. Screw it. Flying monkeys ain't worth the wait. |
| Thu 01 May 01:10 | Anonymous | It's all a cruel hoax. |
| Thu 01 May 18:02 | Anonymous | MadMan doesn't love us anymore. |
| Take the Fat Out of Your Writing | Tue 29 Apr |
| (Harvard Business School) Is your writing wobbly? Next time you take finger to word processor, think clarity, relevance, sincerity, concision and transparency. (Comments: Thanks Sharad Singh.) |
| Tue 29 Apr 07:33 | Ralph | Write tight? I had to look it up, and sure enough, it's correct. Tight can be used as an adverb in place of tightly. I didn't know that. |
| Tue 29 Apr 19:38 | Lydia | I like her point about writing with sincerity. I'm so tired of marketing speak. It just screams 'we don't care if you have to slog through this, it sounds good to us.' |
| SPAMfighter | Sun 27 Apr |
| SPAMfighter is a small tool you easy install on your computer. When a new mail arrives, it will automatically be tested by the SPAMfighter server and if its spam, it will be moved to your spam folder. |
| Mon 28 Apr 14:24 | George | Or, if you don't want to pay and you like Spam Assassin (I do), you could get SAproxy. It will add information to the headers so you can let your mail client choose what to do with Spam. Too bad it doesn't work with IMAP... |
| Tue 29 Apr 11:34 | MadMan | I got SAProxy, and it worked pretty well. But then it's been acting weird. It's been maxing out my CPU, hanging my system while both sending and receiving are happening at the same time. |
| Humanizing the ATM | Mon 28 Apr |
| (Baltimore Sun) Research performed by both Citibank and NCR showed that most customers are more concerned about the location of an ATM - how close it is to their home or workplace or stores. |
| Mon 28 Apr 12:48 | Ralph | Hey, this is the first mention of John Carroll I've seen on the site. I just finished Nielsen's Usability Engineering, and I want to next read Carrolls Nurnberg Funnel, which was mentioned favorably in Nielsen's book. I agree that ATMs need a few tweaks. On the ATMs I use, after you scan your card, it prompts 'Enter your PIN and press this key'. I sometimes press the indicated key before entering the PIN, and then I have to wait for it to print a rejection notice, and then scan my card all over. I think I make this mistake over and over mainly because I just gloss over the relatively difficult part of entering the number, and lunge at the easy 'Press this button'. The rest of the transaction is this rapid succession of button pushing, so I am preconditioned to do that. Why can't it separate the two actions, first prompting to enter your PIN, and only after it is then entered, give the 'Press this key' prompt? Or even better, realize that PINS are always four digits and just go right to the next step of selecting a transaction type with no intermediate step required as soon as the 4th button is pressed? Until this is done, the stuff mentioned in that article is like a dancing paper clip to me. I agree with Carroll, I just want logic and efficiency, and then to get the heck out. That is what leaves me with a satisfying feeling. |
| Mon 28 Apr 12:50 | Ralph | Sorry, it was Schneiderman who said people just want efficiency, not Carroll. |
| Mon 28 Apr 13:07 | Mac | Ralph, John Carroll and Ben Scneiderman are closely linked on the userati list. ATMs cause me problems when they are inconsistent. Some will ask for PIN plus ENTER whilst others will just say ENTER PIN and will not expect a tap on the ENTER key. |
| Mon 28 Apr 14:30 | Beth Mazur | I don't need it to be friendly; I just wish my bank would realize I've never chosen the 'espanol' option and would be happy not to have to go thru choosing 'english' every time I get cash. |
| Mon 28 Apr 16:34 | Boyink | I've always assumed that the interaction flow on ATM was designed such that the entire transaction can be batched up and sent at once (system efficiency rather than user efficiency). If you mis-key your PIN, you still go merrily on making all the numbers only to be told later that your pin was wrong. What I hate most about the ones we use (besides always having to indicate English) are the 2 sets of buttons - next to the screen and the keypad below, and that the confirmation button is in different places for different steps. Bank ATM's aren't nearly as annoying as the POP card readers types, which seem to be different *everywhere*. |
| Mon 28 Apr 19:43 | George Olsen | I guess Evans never saw http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/mt/archives/000551.html#000551 |
| Tue 29 Apr 08:28 | Wolf | Beth - I'm with you on choices it should remember. Also, my bank even gives me choices I shouldn't have to make - such as, Which Savings account to transfer/withdraw from: 1 - Primary Savings 2 - Savings Account 2 3 - Savings Account 3 You've probably guessed I only maintain 1 savings account. Other ATM's never need this data; and I _have_ delayed myself by not paying attention to the question, until I look down annoyed my money's taking so long. I should see if it could mess with me (or I with it) to choose 2 or 3? |
| Keep it simple--by design | Mon 28 Apr |
| (ZDNet) Meanwhile, my neighborwhos no slouch technicallyhad so much trouble with his new DVD player that he hired a consultant to hook the thing up. |
| Mon 28 Apr 19:15 | ABliss | Getting a laptop to display on tv is not easy either. You've got to get the display drivers, for your OS, install them and then plug and play. As well, setting up a modern stereo recieved for the home entertainment system can be very complex if you have dvd, tv, video, games console, cable tv, etc. I always read the manual but that doesn't make things easy. Maybe there are websites with tip, tutorials, examples and general guidelines for setting up and installing modern a/v and computer equipment, but I haven't found any. My grandmother was given a cd player in her late 70's. One day I went over and she said 'Apparently you can press a button and it goes to the next track straight away.' Usability of appliances like digital cameras does have a long way to go. My major grip with usability and modern gadgets is that advanced features of equipment doesn't get utilised because of its complexity. |
| Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter "C" Unusable | Mon 28 Apr |
| (Uncle Sharky) To prove his point Nielsen conducted a study which measured which words subjects looked up in the dictionary most often. |
| Mon 28 Apr 09:14 | Francis Wu | He he... this reads like an Onion article :). |
| Mon 28 Apr 10:41 | Anonymous | C is for Cookie, and that's good enough for me. |
| Mon 28 Apr 14:20 | JB | lkjhdfhflkdshf jkdhflfhdslk jklj ewriwef dkf :) Translation: I find this a very funny article. (written in the new JN alphabet) |
| Mon 28 Apr 14:57 | Lydia | This is pretty good. Except for the snack digression at the end, this is basically the way he talks! |
| Mon 28 Apr 16:49 | Anonymous | Word fanciers may enjoy reading Ella Minnow Pea. It's a collection of letters written by a girl living on an island where the town elders have begun banning the use of certain letters of the alphabet. It becomes a progressively interesting read. Keep a dictionary nearby. BTW, I found that link by checking my trusty list of alternative bookstores... alternatives to B&N and Amazon anyhow. |
| Mon 28 Apr 16:58 | Frank Lynch | Works for me. |
| Poor choice of name leads to confusion | Mon 28 Apr |
| (NJ.com) My wife, while scanning, accidentally brought up a folder marked ocrapp and then another marked with a similar name. These folders say they are appli cation programs when getting the info, but they were created before the unit was purchased last year. |
| Mon 28 Apr 15:04 | Lydia | The funny thing is, when I saw that I was thinking of OCR and didn't understand the problem, but ASScontrol is a little harder to ignore. |
| A brave new world for books | Wed 23 Apr |
| You will step up to one of these machines and you will browse the index. You might be looking for a classic that has been out of print of years, perhaps, or the latest bestseller, or you might be looking for a book on quiltmaking. You will browse the index, and you will make your choice. You will choose the typeface, the size of the type, the binding, the cover. You will choose whether you want to listen to it or to read it. Then you will pay your money and you will punch your buttons. In a short time, out from the machine will come your book. (Comments: In my experience, kiosks arent economically viable, and the usability is often terrible. An exceptions would be photo booths.Thanks MadMan.) |
| Mon 28 Apr 09:20 | Alan Fisher | Grease Monkey - you said 'I give books twenty years from that date', which I took to mean that you thought they would disappear. Sorry if I misunderstood. What I was trying to say was that forms of communication don't eliminate their predecessors, they simply give us more ways of communicating, which humans love to do. |
| Bloggers tool up | Thu 24 Apr |
| (Guardian) In short, with Typepad, SixApart has embraced almost every advance in weblogging over the past year, and wrapped it into a product my dad could use. It raises the bar for the personal publishing world in a way that the Blogger/ Google buyout promised but has yet to deliver. |
| Mon 28 Apr 08:44 | Joshua Kaufman | Jason Fried has mentioned a new 37Signals service on Signal vs. Noise, but from his description, it sounds more like a personal information and document manager. |
| Greg's Morning Adventure | Sun 27 Apr |
| I dont even remember how I got home. I just know that I woke up this morning with two traffic cones in my bed. (Comment: This is an entertaining true story written by my good friend Greg. Enjoy!) |
| Mon 28 Apr 00:48 | Hanan Cohen | Today I saw an a research called 'The Kindness of Strangers, People's willingness to help someone during a chance encounter' http://www.americanscientist.org/articles/03articles/Levine.html Good reading |