(Comments added for week ending Sun 23 Jun 2002) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 49 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:49 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 23 Jun 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Are People Willing to Pay to Reduce Others’ Incomes? | Thu 20 Jun |
| We design an experiment where subjects can reduce (burn) other subjects money. Those who burn the money of others have to give up some of their own cash to do so. Despite this cost, and contrary to the assumptions of economics textbooks, the majority of our subjects choose to destroy at least part of others money holdings. |
| Fri 21 Jun 07:13 | (the other) JS | In another study, I seem to recall people asked about (then) Japan's economic growth. Given a choice to up the U.S. growth or slow Japan's, most opted to slow Japan's. This offers a small glimse into why companies do stupid things in business. The priciple seems clear. It is not enough to win. Others must lose. |
| Fri 21 Jun 07:35 | Alan Fisher | Absolutely. A few years ago, the company I was working for sent me on a managament training course where we were divided into teams. Some of the people on the course were from the sharp end of the business, rather than back-room, like me. In one particular exercise, we were told that a certain choice of action would mean that your team would win and the others would too. The alternative was to try and 'beat' the opposition, but if you both tried to do it, you both lost. The 'sharp end' lot insisted that we should try and beat the others, even though we were gradually losing money doing so. The lesson I learnt was that there are far too many people in business who want to compete at all costs, even if it's detrimental to their own cause. |
| Fri 21 Jun 08:37 | MadMan | Unfortunately, Alan, that exercise *doesn't* reflect business reality at all. If you make widgets and I make widgets, both of us cannot win. To increase my market share, your market share *must* go down. (I'm assuming that we're the only two companies competing.) Yep, marketing is warfare. It would be nice for both sides to 'win', but that doesn't happen now, does it? |
| Fri 21 Jun 09:14 | John S. Rhodes | The Prisoners' Dilemma -- 'Cooperation is usually analysed in game theory by means of a non-zero-sum game called the 'Prisoner's Dilemma' (Axelrod, 1984). The two players in the game can choose between two moves, either 'cooperate' or 'defect'. The idea is that each player gains when both cooperate, but if only one of them cooperates, the other one, who defects, will gain more. If both defect, both lose (or gain very little) but not as much as the 'cheated' cooperator whose cooperation is not returned.' Strategy and Conflict: An Introductory Sketch of Game Theory -- 'Game theory is a distinct and interdisciplinary approach to the study of human behavior. The disciplines most involved in game theory are mathematics, economics and the other social and behavioral sciences.' The Strategic Elements of Marketing Games (PDF file format) -- 'Although it is popular to think of marketing as a zero or constant sum game of marketing warfare in which sellers compete for a share of a given market, the marketing game is, in fact, a non-zero sum or mixed motive game. That is to say, there are outcomes in the marketing game in which all the players can lose, all the players can win, or the conventional possibility of having some winners and some losers. One purpose of this book is to demonstrate and analyze some of the more important types of mixed motive structures found in marketing games.' |
| Fri 21 Jun 10:17 | MadMan | Thanks for the links, John. Let me be clear about something: when two or more companies are in the same market and targetting the same consumers, it is not cooperation; it is competition. So your first link isn't relevant. There are situations in which both parties (two is a good number for simplicity) can appear to be winning. For example, let's say the market for notebook PCs was in a nascent stage (total sales: $1 million) today, and only Dell and Compaq were making them. Say Dell had 60% and Compaq had 40% market share. By selling the product category and its virtues (convenience, portability, etc.) instead of their individual models, they could otentially grow the total market to, say, $4 million. What happens? It looks like a win-win situation. Dell's revenues went from $600,000 to $2.4 million, and Compaq's revenues went up from $400,000 to $1.6 million. But in fact, it's only a relative win. Is that the ideal scenario for Dell? No! A better scenario would be to increase the market to $4 million and bump their market share to 75%, hence making total sales of $3 million instead of $2.4 million. However, for this to happen, Compaq's market share would have to fall to 25%, and that's definitely a loss for Compaq. It's better to have a larger share of a smaller market than to have a tiny share of a large market. Leadership has many advantages, but I'm sure I don't need to get into them. Marketing is competition, not cooperation. That management training programme Alan attended (gosh, how I hate those programmes) was a good scenario for internal cooperation within a company. I agree: employees must work together for the benefit of the company, not compete with each other. That's the prime reason performance appraisals and incentive pay is harmful. Since the total money available for bonuses and raises is usually fixed, you are forced to compete with your colleagues for the booty, and that's one way to destroy teamwork within a company. But I digres... Cooperation within the company, and competition without. Simple, really. |
| Fri 21 Jun 10:19 | MadMan | Oops, I forgot to close the italics tag after 'appear' (in 'appear to be winning'). John, could you please do that and then delete this comment? Thanks |
| Fri 21 Jun 10:24 | MadMan | If you're interested in how people are manipulated and persuaded (especially by slick con artists and salespeople), I recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Cialdini. All the people I've lent the book to love it. :) |
| Fri 21 Jun 10:38 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, great comments. I removed the italics. I'm not going to delete the post that you want me to delete because I don't want to rebuild my pages -- I'm just too afraid of corruption of files! |
| Fri 21 Jun 11:54 | JB | Actually marketing isn't competition, but simply a tool by which to compete. And not all competition has to be defined as you win the other loses. Many companies have gone to ruin because of this mentality. That is what the fast follower model of doing business kind of dictates. See what the competition is doing and then if it is successful, do it yourself but use marketing to position yourself as unique. |
| Sun 23 Jun 17:26 | (the other) JS | One can choose how and where to compete, it needn't be on the most primitive way. 7up can compete in the small lemon-lime market, or as the Uncola, a much larger market space. Competition is different from monkey see, monkey do. |
| About the Blogosphere | Sun 23 Jun |
| (WebWord) Overall, I find the usability of most blogging software (aka blogware) to be extremely high - especially when compared to traditional content management software. One concern: blogware is becoming more and more powerful, with each generation of software packed with more and more features. Thats a bit worrisome to me. One of the Usability Laws Ive noticed on the web is that with Great Power comes not-so-great Usability. |
| Sun 23 Jun 10:07 | John S. Rhodes | This is an interview with John Hiler, the editor of Microcontent News. He recently wrote an article that a generated a lot of buzz -- Blogosphere: the emerging Media Ecosystem. It might be a good idea to take a look at that before you read the interview. That's up to you, of course. Couple more things related to the blogosphere... Blogosphere = Borg Collective? At Large in the Blogosphere (NY Times) |
| Sun 23 Jun 14:53 | MadMan | Mt Hiler, it ain't good blogging software till it supports reader comments. Please put that on top of your next revision list. :) Strange that Blogger Pro *still* doesn't support it. |
| WebWord Comment | Sat 22 Jun |
| I really need to learn more about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). I just went to a page where CSS was used to manipulate the characteristics of the browser scrollbar. Extra fun: Be sure to right click on scrollbar. |
| Sat 22 Jun 07:53 | John S. Rhodes | In case you cannot see what I am talking about, due to browser type and version issues, take a look at this screenshot. Here are a couple of resources I just found... Liquid Pulse CSS CSS Scrollbars by Snow White HTML Goodies: CSS and the Scrollbar |
| Sat 22 Jun 10:31 | MadMan | Um, John, I hate to break it to ya', but that function already is built into Internet Explorer. Try it on *any* other web site and right-click the scroll bar. Same thing. :P Ha ha ha ha ha! |
| Sat 22 Jun 11:07 | John S. Rhodes | |
| Sat 22 Jun 12:12 | christina | I'm rather surprised that you are advocating this particular ability of css. I thought changing the basic browser tools was one fo the big no-nos of usabilty. People have so little that's consistant to rely on, and now the few tools they know how to use, back and the scroll bar are subject to alteration by javascript, css and so on. I know this is one of the reasons Jakob critisizes flash; it disables browser behavior. Ask yourself: is taking away GUI design from folks who at least have standards to follow and giving it to everyone from php's to high school hackers going to make sites in general more or less usable? The scroll and back button were saftey back ups to let people navigate difficult sites. what happens when they are not there any more? I know I've definately come accross scroll bars that I coudln't find at first because they were so camflauged into the site. That said, I know it's inevitable but I'm just surprised you are advocating it. |
| Sat 22 Jun 12:29 | John S. Rhodes | Christina, I'm not advocating anything. I'm sorry it seems that way. What I meant to state is that is is interesting that CSS is powerful enough to manipulate the browser scrollbar. I didn't realize it was possible. Any tool can be abused. Indeed, as the power of the tool grows, the easier it is to abuse. A perfect example is Flash. You can do great things with it, but you can quickly abuse users with it. I'm neither for nor against manipulating the browser scrollbar. I just think, from a technology point of view, that it is fun and interesting. In some cases customized scrollbars will improve the usability of a web page, in other cases (most cases probably) it will decrease the usability for the reasons you mention above. Thanks for the feedback and thanks for making me think more about what CSS manipualtion means to users. |
| Sat 22 Jun 12:52 | MadMan | Christina, John merely mistook IE's built-in behaviour for a CSS trick. An honest mistake. So the scroll bar was not manipulated at all. :) |
| Sat 22 Jun 14:46 | Frank Lynch | No fair! John gets to post pictures! |
| Sat 22 Jun 20:05 | Manuel Razzari | This makes obvious how unaware usability people is of graphic design issues. That's bad. Don Norman now know about it. |
| Sat 22 Jun 22:15 | John S. Rhodes | Manuel, Just because I do not know everything about CSS it does not mean that I am unaware of most graphic design issues. That is a logical fallacy; you made a hasty generalization. Let me turn the question around. Do most graphic designers know much about usability? |
| Sat 22 Jun 23:38 | Joey | Can anyone suggest a good CSS book? I don't want to buy one online without seeing it and my local bookstores are stuck in the year 2000. Some of the HTML books are from 1998. |
| Sun 23 Jun 00:31 | MadMan | Joey, Glasshaus has just sent me two books for review, one of which is Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation. I'll be writing a proper review in a couple of weeks, but it looks pretty good so far. It's got good coverage of cross-browser issues too. Of course, there's plenty of reference material on the Net too. |
| Sun 23 Jun 07:13 | MadMan | Frank, That's not true. See? |
| Sun 23 Jun 11:19 | Joey | MadMan, maybe I have a better question. What should a web designer be learning? I see HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, etc. For the average well-rounded web designer, what core language(s) should I know? |
| The Weekly Noun: Time | Sat 22 Jun |
| (Gamegrene) Keeping track of time, when it is important, will add great depth to your role playing games, and make things much more interesting for everyone. |
| Sun 23 Jun 10:55 | (the other) JS | A couple of researchers, Hammond and Morrison break the American time style into Go and Do. Go is sequential, formal, scheduled, regulation-driven. Do is flexible, informal, needs-driven. Computers are very good at Fredrick Taylor Go time, not so good at representing time any other way. |
| WebWord Comment | Sat 22 Jun |
| Another auction is available for advertising space in the WebWord Addiction. Good luck bidding. |
| Sat 22 Jun 19:57 | Anonymous | John: Do you have any interest in sharing if your other auctions have been working for you? |
| Sat 22 Jun 23:11 | John S. Rhodes | Anonymous, I'm not sure what you are asking or why you are asking. Could you please clarify? |
| Pet Market Back Button | Thu 20 Jun |
| (Macromedia) The Pet Store application was designed to allow users to navigate both forward and backward through the application states by using the browser’s Forward and Back buttons. This makes the application more useable as users are able to use navigation techniques that they are familiar with. |
| Fri 21 Jun 02:38 | Anonymous | They've invented a back button? Wow, what's next? |
| Fri 21 Jun 10:58 | Joshua Kaufman | Nice little app. More impressive than the back button is that they're shipping tiny helpless kittens via ground shipping. I hope they at least poke air holes in the boxes! |
| Fri 21 Jun 15:24 | John Dowdell | 'More impressive than the back button is that they're shipping tiny helpless kittens via ground shipping. I hope they at least poke air holes in the boxes!' No need, we freeze-dry 'em to dormancy. Just add water, et voila! 8) (A back button makes easy sense when navigating a web of documents, but the metaphor can be a strained fit when applied to a single-display, multi-state application. Still, when people are in browsers some are used to hitting 'go back'. Should that mean go to the previous page? to a previous display? should it undo purchases? should it only undo viewing choices? What interface changes happen when browsers display applications as well as documents?) Regards, John Dowdell Macromedia Support |
| Fri 21 Jun 19:21 | Joshua Kaufman | 'Still, when people are in browsers some are used to hitting 'go back'. Should that mean go to the previous page? to a previous display?' I would guess most people would expect the back button to go back the last modal state or the last state which required to the user to do something before the application could do anything else. For functionality of the back button to be truly usable, I think it's important that usability guidelines are laid down quickly. Hopefully, this is one of the usability guidelines that NNGroup is currently working on? If guidelines aren't implemented soon, who knows what people will have the back button doing? It could get very messy very quickly. 'should it undo purchases? should it only undo viewing choices?' Since using the Web, I haven't been able to undo a purchase by clicking the back button and I certainly hope that it doesn't start working that way anytime soon. As for undoing viewing choices and interface changes, I'm not sure what you mean by those. |
| WebWord Comment | Sun 16 Jun |
| Am I the only person tired of seeing the Flash Player 6 download dialog box? I guess Ill just have to give in and install it. |
| Mon 17 Jun 00:30 | Anonymous | What is most troubling about that dialog box is that the authenticity is verified by VeriSign. |
| Fri 21 Jun 15:29 | John Dowdell | You're using IE/Win, right? The way they've implemented ActiveX Controls and the OBJECT tag, you'll see such an auto-installation request on any page with SWF content. Because lots of pages have SWF content, you'll get frequent auto-installation requests.... You can use a different browser which doesn't have such auto-installation, but most all of them include the Macromedia Flash Player now anyway. (For VeriSign, it makes perfect sense... they're certifying that the ActiveX Control is indeed coming from Macromedia.) Regards, John Dowdell Macromedia Support |
| Wacky Uses | Thu 20 Jun |
| Discover hundreds of little-known uses for well-known products,by just clicking on a product! |
| Fri 21 Jun 02:38 | Anonymous | I've got a pop-up killer. I frequently had to hit 'reload' to get the pages to display. Don't know if it's related to the pop-ups or some other problem. |
| Fri 21 Jun 13:30 | Anonymous | Probably one of the best reasons for using Opera as my default browser is it's Quick Preference (F12) menu selection enabling or disabling pop-ups. Jumping back onto IE every now and then for sites that I absolutely have to go to that don't render well in Opera, I was shocked at how lame the pop-up experience is nowadays. This site rendered perfectly in Opera w/o a single pop-up bothering me. The best part about this is that I LOVE the content and nothing was battling for attention. |
| Chew on this: Tooth phone implants | Thu 20 Jun |
| The tooth phone consists of a tiny vibrator and a radio wave receiver implanted into a tooth during routine dental surgery. |
| Fri 21 Jun 03:56 | Matt Round | This coverage makes it clear it's just an old idea made into a non-working mock up by a couple of art students and then well publicised. It's amazing what you can get funding for and pass off as news/science. |
| Andreessen Interview: Browser wars aren't coming back | Sat 15 Jun |
| The bad news is the browser is kind of done. Essentially, nothing new has happened since it got adopted in the mainstream over the past four years. Microsoft releases a new version of Internet Explorer, and its like, what exactly are the new features? Theres probably three or four new features in there, but who cares? |
| Mon 17 Jun 10:32 | Jack Schonchin | Produce a browser under 5MB that runs fast, has IE's feature set, has better cookie and pop-up management, and that looks like Netscape 4 ... and you'll have droves of people knocking at your door. This is not rocket science folks. The people are waiting for someone to lead the revolt. |
| Thu 20 Jun 19:37 | Jeff Albro | The browser war IS on. The contender is Mozilla. It rocks. It is open source, runs on macs, pc, and unix, has better features than IE, and only a few more bugs. The highlights: Elimination of pop-up windows Waaaaay better bookmark management Configurable look and feel See http://www.mozilla.org -Jeff |
| Failings catch up with Web content management's consultingware | Wed 19 Jun |
| (David Walker) The rise of the commercial content management packages paralled the rise of the dot-coms, intent on growing now and making money later. As more sites adopt clear, well-defined commercial goals, those commercial packages will need to evolve or die. |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:23 | John S. Rhodes | Enterprise Technology: Choosing the Right Content Management System How to evaluate a content management system CMSWatch Content Management - Executive Guide cms.filsa.net Ten Things to Know About Selecting a Content Management System |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:28 | MadMan | Not to forget (and please excuse my linkwhoring) You need a content management system and Your clients need a content management system, both very fine articles on evolt.org. :) |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:32 | John S. Rhodes | I love evolt.org and do not spend enough time there...shame on me. |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:33 | MadMan | I've emailed David about this, but got no response. That white on blue combination is murder to my eyes. I find it hard to read beyond a few sentences. I suggested using silver instead of white, but he hasn't changed anything. Am I the only one who finds it hard to read? |
| Wed 19 Jun 09:38 | Alan Fisher | Madman, The colours are OK, it's the font which gives me problems. I couldn't read a long article in this style. What font is it? |
| Wed 19 Jun 11:55 | MadMan | Alan, it's Georgia. Actually, it's supposed to be a very readable font. It was specially created as a serif font for the Web by Microsoft. |
| Thu 20 Jun 11:31 | Alan Fisher | Well, I am overdue for an eye test... |
| Faucet Facets: A few best practices for designing multifaceted navigation systems | Wed 19 Jun |
| (Adaptive Path) Architectures based on faceted information are an interesting hybrid of search and navigation. Users are given the impression of browsing through vast amounts of information, while the iterative process of specifying attributes is much like the interaction of many advanced search engines. |
| Thu 20 Jun 10:21 | Kirk | Multifaceted is generally a good idea, but sometimes it makes it too easy for a user to winnow a search down to 0 results! I think good solution would have an entire category set (say, all dishwashers) pushed to the client, along with the matrix of how they rank...then every time a facet is selected, have a text box and button that says Search has |013| Results [Show me these results] an ideal solution would probably have to be graphical, with some wacky Venn diagram kind of things, but this wouldn't be too bad. |
| PwC Consulting changes its name to simply Monday | Thu 13 Jun |
| Many may find the name change to Monday odd, but the move is no laughing matter for PwC Consulting. The firm is striking out from under the shadow of accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers after years of toiling within a company more synonymous with ledgers and gray suits than catchy slogans. |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:44 | MadMan | http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/25770.html My thoughts exactly. |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:46 | MadMan | Damn, John should turn on auto URL Linking in MT. :( http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/25770.html. Read it now. |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:36 | John S. Rhodes | I do have URL linking turned on in MT. Really, I do! I'll investigate some more... |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:36 | John S. Rhodes | I do have URL linking turned on in MT. Realy, I do! I'll investigate some more... |
| Thu 20 Jun 08:31 | M | I'm collecting web feeedback on this topic at http://www.mba-experience.com/name.html send me suggestions! |
| Why Software Is So Bad | Wed 19 Jun |
| (MIT Technology Review) Software firms have been able to avoid product liability litigation partly because software licenses force customers into arbitration, often on unfavorable terms, and partly because such lawsuits would be highly technical, which means that plaintiffs would need to hire costly experts to build their cases. |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:55 | John S. Rhodes | Software Licenses - Information for Auditors -- 'One of the hardest tasks to manage in the computing department for any organization is licenses for software. Understanding that the software that you have installed is ONLY covered by a 'license to use' is a hard concept to grasp. This article covers licenses issues for Windows based desktop and server based platforms.' |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:56 | John S. Rhodes | Software Licenses -- 'The common EULA used today essentially states that the program on the CD that you just bought from Fry's can only be installed on one computer at a time and cannot be given to a friend to install. You can copy the software, but once again it can only be installed on a single computer at any time. There is no requirement for the source code to be available; actually, when software uses the standard EULA it usually means that that source code will not be available.' |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:01 | John S. Rhodes | Hey folks, new concept... Deep Posting What do you think of me posting related news inside the other postings that I have made. As you can see above these two 'deep postings' occur inside my original posting. Pros: (1) You get more information on the topic. (2) It saves you from searching on the topic, for example, doing a search on Google. (3) It gives you more of an idea about what I think is interesting about the topic. Cons: (1) It has less visibility. (2) You must click on the link on the home page to get here. (3) Not all regular postings will warrant Deep Postings. (4) Deep Postings will probably not ever show up in the WebWord Addiction newsletter. Any other pros and cons? Thoughts on Deep Posting? |
| Wed 19 Jun 22:40 | Joshua Kaufman | I see 'deep posts' being useful, but usually when I click on the comments link I expect to view useful comments from other visitors about the original post, not to see what additional 'deep posts' you provided. I definitely see a place for them, but it would be nice to have a separate deep post area within the orginal post, but outside of the comments area. Maybe a Moveable Type feature request is in order? |
| Voyeur Web | Wed 19 Jun |
| tools: Real Searches (AltaVista) and Take a Peek (Ask Jeeves). There is also a very good page over at Search Engine Watch called What People Search For. |
| Wed 19 Jun 12:10 | Berna | I've been looking at the What People Search For link. Has anybody else noticed that many of the questions are repeated? I mean after the page has refreshed a few times you are likely to see the same questions... Now I'm asking myself if these are truly the questions that are asked shown in real time, or if they're just a pool of FAQs? |
| Wed 19 Jun 17:05 | figment88 | You missed the big source - wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker aggregates these public snoops and private relationships with some engines. SEOs use these results to figure out what keywords to target and markets use them to find keyword buys at PPCs. |
| Measuring the Value of Usability Engineering | Wed 19 Jun |
| (TaskZ) If proof of the value of usability is so desirable, why dont usability engineers spend more time measuring it? Here are seven reasons I have observed why usability engineers dont measure the value of usability efforts, rebuttals to each argument, and suggestions for how to remedy them. (Comments: Kind of reminds me of A Business Case for Usability and Cost Justifying Usability.) |
| Wed 19 Jun 09:35 | Ron Zeno | A couple more reasons: Usability engineering as practiced is often not valuable at all, even detrimental. Usability engineering is so poorly defined as to be meaningless. No one can demonstrate its value without first defining it in a way where it can be done reliably and measured effectively. Neither reliable methodologies nor effective measures exist. Most usability practitioners are blissfully unaware of the above... |
| Wed 19 Jun 12:05 | JB | Now this is a step in the right direction. Also point #3 is incorrect. There have been plenty of studies that show that there is a lack of consistency amongst usability experts and that their reviews are neither consistent nor accurate. I think this approach may scare many in the industry, because now it means that they cannot go tearing off into a site and suggesting wholesale changes. It strikes me as a kind of - the greater the volume of work you get from me, the greater the value you have received. Sometimes less is more and a more ROI focused industry will equate into greater respect and importance. Then again these are just my thoughts.... |
| Wed 19 Jun 15:49 | Anonymous | People also should consider the number of hours in a day. The Usability Specialists are often called to perform a great number of tasks and many times publishing a report of a study's outcome isn't a very high priority. |
| AmphetaDesk and the Adventures of Morbus Iff | Tue 18 Jun |
| (WebWord) AmphetaDesk is a syndicated news reader - it can display the news and content from thousands of websites in a single, customizable page, saving the end-user the hassle of visiting each site manually and slogging through advertisements and confusing navigation. Its a massive time-saver for the information junkie. |
| Tue 18 Jun 07:28 | John S. Rhodes | One of the best things about this interview is that Morbus Iff describes -- in plain language -- the difference between RSS 0.9x and RSS 1.0. By the way, in case it isn't 100% clear, AmphetaDesk can be used to grab and view my RSS feed. |
| Wed 19 Jun 05:20 | MadMan | I have suggestions for usability and interface improvements based on the 24 hours I've used it. Should I post them here for the community to discuss or send them by private email? |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:34 | John S. Rhodes | MadMan, why not both? |
| Wed 19 Jun 06:44 | Anonymous | Because that would be redundant? If I posted it here, I'm sure Morbus would see it. ;) |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:53 | Morbus Iff | I'd certainly be willing to see them in both places, with a minimum of my email. It's easier for me to keep things in my TODO list if there's a big nasty email staring at me ;) ... |
| Kuro5hin is Broke: But Am I All that Surprised? | Wed 19 Jun |
| My real point is that there are two types of usability testing and one is expensive and uses highly trained professionals and is a big investment. The other type is just you getting decent input from real people and then actually following it. I like the second approach a lot. |
| Wed 19 Jun 07:25 | MadMan | What's that American expression? Oh yeah, 'There's a sucker born every minute'. :)) |
| Extreme design versus extreme programming | Sun 16 Jun |
| (John Udell) Now that we have largely replaced human touchpoints (sales clerks, travel agents, etc.) with software, it is the behavior of software, not human employees, that projects the corporate brand. So every business is now in the software business, and the quality of the softwares behavior is a crucial success factor. |
| Mon 17 Jun 04:02 | Mac | Companies have been forcing their employees to use inadequate ill-designed software systems for decades. If they dare to complain or make suggestions for improvements they are generally told that 'we pay you to work with the tools we provide, so get on with it'. It is only since consumers of the companies services and products have started to use software systems that these companies have started to think about the 'usability' of these customer facing systems. However little effort is made to improve the tools that employees use and their very human skills are used more and more to plug the 'usability gap' that is prevalent in the workplace. You can analyse and improve your web-site all you want, but if the employee in the call-centre does not have the tools to do the job you will never improve the 'user experience'. |
| Mon 17 Jun 09:32 | Jack Schonchin | The article's premise is flawed. I need employees for three reasons: #1 to ask questions, #2 to report complaints, and #3 to process my purchase. Technology has only taken over at the checkout counter by making the processing of my money go faster. I still ask questions and report complaints. The vast majority of customer service is still handled by people. Do I get a quick response? Is the employee knowledgeable? Is the employee polite and sensitive to my situation? Even in web site sales, the measure of a company is how it responds to the customer in a personal way. I didn't think much about Barnes & Noble until they screwed up an order and I got jerked around by its employees. To me, those employees projected the B&N brand more than anything it could say on its web pages. This article sounds like it was written by a dot-commer still living in the 'new economy.' |
| Mon 17 Jun 12:10 | Ron Zeno | Nice to see that someone can see through Cooper's fragile facade (transparent to anyone with some basic critical thinking abilities): 'interaction designers (like him) are born, not made' How comforting for anyone who wants to take on the title of 'interaction designer'! No qualifications required, just assert that you are born to the position! 'his insistence that designs can and must be worked out in essentially complete form on paper, on whiteboards, and in the brains of the designers, over a long period of thoughtful iterative refinement' Wonderful, especially when considered in light of the previous quote. 'Iteraction designers' don't have any qualifications and they don't have to bother with that tedious 'usability testing' stuff! |
| Mon 17 Jun 14:36 | Kung Pao | So Ron, why don't you like Cooper and the gang? Go on, rant away. I'm listening. |
| Mon 17 Jun 16:11 | Ron Zeno | My apologies to anyone who considers my comments a personal attack against Mr. Cooper, his company, etc. My comments are not intended as such, but instead are meant to provoke others into thinking critically. So 'Kung Pao,' why do you accuse me of disliking Mr. Cooper? Why use the word 'rant?' If you disagree with my comments, why not just say so? Perhaps you could even give reasons why. |
| Mon 17 Jun 16:40 | Sweet sausage | I meant that you clearly disagree with his 'fragile facade' i.e., his methods and philosophy. So I wanted to know how and why. I don't disagree with you, btw. |
| Mon 17 Jun 17:40 | Ron Zeno | This isn't the most appropriate venue, so to the point: Alan is a great propagandist and self-promoter. He freely admits he had no revelant design experience nor education prior to starting his company and writing About Face - it shows. He has found an extremely credulous audience. PT Barnum would be proud. |
| Tue 18 Jun 04:39 | Matt Round | 'his insistence that designs can and must be worked out in essentially complete form on paper' Developing the structure, navigation and layout of a complex site/application on paper is a very poor substitute for things like HTML wireframes and experimental versions of the project. |
| Tue 18 Jun 07:21 | MadMan | When I quickly want to sketch a wireframe for a single page, or when I want to brainstorm a concept with a colleague (which needs a hasty diagram), I find paper and a pencil very convenient. But like you said, doing that for a complex site or application would be painful, if not stupid. Probably painfully stupid. ;) |
| Monkey See Monkey Do | Tue 11 Jun |
| (Design Interact) While I’m not opposed to design trends, learning from others is how designers grow. I am concerned about the stagnation of style that I see on the Web. A large e-commerce portal will launch a stylized navigation system and almost immediately after, many other sites will copy the style exactly. |
| Mon 17 Jun 15:33 | kevin airgid | Thank you for the feed back on my article at design interact... yes, I agree with your comments... it's a hard thing... produce a unique design yet make it easy to use??... we do need consistency but not boredom...hmmm the struggle goes on.... |
| Ergonomics fiasco | Sun 16 Jun |
| So far, OSHA has announced that it will develop ergonomics guidelines for nursing homes, retail grocery stores and poultry processing plants. Where are federal employees on this list? Not at the top. |
| Mon 17 Jun 12:23 | Jack Schonchin | Ergonomics in nursing homes? I wonder if erognomics are factored in at the John S. Rhodes Funeral Home. |
| Most People Lie In Everyday Conversation | Thu 13 Jun |
| The study, published in the journals June issue, found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies. |
| Mon 17 Jun 11:58 | Andrew Lyons | What a perfect example of why you should read any scientific study carefully before believing it. So-called scientific study write-ups are full of holes Here's why 'Some' participants were instructed to try to appear likeable, 'others', were instructed to try to appear 'competent', and the rest were given no guidance at all. But we are not told how many people were in each group. Then we're told that 60% of participants lied. Well, if the three groups of participants (likeable, competent, normal) were of equal number, then 66% of participants (likeable + competent) were told to lie as part of the test! Hardly surprising then, that 60% of them actually did lie. If I am right about the groups being of equal number, perhaps a more surprising result is that 6% of people who were told to lie, didn't. Unfortunately that interpretation does not support the hypothesis that the sceintists wanted to 'prove'. If anybody does know the real numbers behind this experiment, I would be very interested to find out. After all, I AM willing to be proved wrong! |