From: Gleanings
To: onlookers
Subject: Gleanings: How much would you pay for immortality?
OPENING THANG
xplane.com/xblog points to this article
"We've noticed a disturbing trend in home page design -- information
overload. Web designers and developers seem to have resolved the 'to click
or to scroll?' controversy by loading everything onto the home page. 'More and more and more is better,' they seem to be saying."
Hey! I'm pretty sure the designers are not doing this by choice. If I remember from my product days, there are quite a few pressures put upon the homepage by every single department in the dotcom. Every designer I've ever known has wanted massive amounts of white space.
IA MATTERS
*Somebody set peter morville's pants on fire.
Strange Connections: An Information Architect's Manifesto
Information architects of the world unite!
The environment has changed. Now, so must we!
*and this may set yours on fire
IAsk
Learn about the age, salary, travel, experience, and benefit packages of your fellow information architects.
*Information architecture, brand and content sites
"Gave this presentation to undergraduate information systems management
students at University College London today. I actually wrote it for the
journalism students at Cardiff University, where I'm presenting it next
week -- so it's pretty wide ranging and general, but it goes over the
development process of BBC News in detail, plus some other stuff as an
intro to user-centered design principles. Oh... btw, it's 6.3 meg... sorry!
;-)" from www.xblog.com
USABILITY MATTERS
*Maximizing Windows
by Bruce Tognazzini
*Wireless Phone Usability Study
The study is available for free download from www.usableproducts.com. Note:
registration is required.
*Another great post from Don Norman. This one on statistical validity
*Content: Don't Make Me Think! by Steve Krug
Chris Farnum explains why you should buy this Web Usability book for your boss.
DESIGN MATTERS
NEWS & COMMENTARY
*Internet World: New Economy Is Down but Not Out.
Jakob Nielsen. The previous two years, presentations by Internet companies had
the old-timers quaking in their boots, so this year many speakers clearly
enjoyed the downturn in the new economy. Even so, most executives seemed to
have realized the importance of the Internet.
*Inside: How the Net Could Nuke TV: Video File-Sharing.
Tom Watson and Jason Chervokas. If you believe the runaway success of
Napster's peer-to-peer business has fundamentally altered the media landscape,
then the next big quake logically will be in television. Just as Aimster, so
may a similar combination of software, hardware, and bandwidth change the way
we watch television.
APROPOS OF NOTHING
*I received a charming note from a reader in the Philippines explaining he could not possibly make Anton's show, but he still wanted to hear the song.
link removed for storage reasons
Correspondence went like this:
> Indeed, I enjoyed the song. Is it really your song?
Anton and I both lived in Sacramento some years ago. We used to wander from
coffee house to coffee house, talking philosophy and drawing cubist caricatures
on coffee stained napkins (that's how the mythology goes, anyhow.) One day
we made an immortality pact; I'd do a painting of him and buy him a carrows
pyramid breakfast, in exchange for a song written for me (production of a
song takes longer, that's why I threw in the breakfast. 2.99 for two eggs,
bacon and two pancakes, if I remember correctly).
He mistook my comment that it didn't really have to be about me to mean it
*shouldn't* be about me, which is how he got this odd surrealist concoction.
It's not my favorite song by Anton, but it is most certainly written for me.
From: Gleanings
To: scanners
Subject: Gleanings: now with 30% more words!
***OPENING THANG
*This is another rather wordy gleanings-- I've been pondering how to make it more digestible. Any thoughts, short of going with an html format? I'm trying out asterisks today. and why not? whynot@eleganthack.com
*Meanwhile, those clever lads over at xplane.com have created a wonderful graphic explaining when to use flash and when to use a gif. Bless them for not engaging in the holy war.
http://xplane.com/projects/flashvsgif/
***USABILITY MATTERS
*Tog resurrects the butterfly ballot.
The Butterfly Ballot: Anatomy of a Disaster
http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html
***IA MATTERS
You will have to go to the library to read this article, boyos. John Shiple points at this
"Cohen, Laura B. "Yahoo! and the Abdication of Judgment" [14]American
Libraries 32(1) (January 2001): 60-62. - In this piece Cohen rightly
criticizes the library profession for overlooking the many faults of
the Internet subject directory [15]Yahoo!. She cites several reasons
for this: a) a fear that users will see our opposition to typical user
behavior as irrelevant, b) our desire to give our customers what they
want (even if it isn't particularly good for them), c) abandonment our
mission to improve user searching behavior, and d) negligence of our
professional responsibilities. "In a world where the proliferation of
information is accelerating," Cohen asserts, "and paradigmatic changes
are sweeping our profession, we cannot toy with our standards or the
trust of our users." Her solution? "We should explain to our users the
deficiencies of Yahoo!, establish a repertoire of recommended
alternatives, and teach those alternatives with confidence." Cohen
reminds me that the reaction of the library profession (not everyone,
but in general) to the Internet passed through several stages:
indifferent ignorance, denial, opposition, tentative acceptance, and
slavish acceptance. It appears that Cohen is hopeful that we can move
out of the slavish acceptance stage by remembering and reapplying our
professional principles to the Internet age. - [16]RT"
*On Magic Features in (Spatial) Metaphors
http://www.mindspring.com/~juggle5/Writings/Publications/magic_features.html
"Every computer system creates the illusion of a virtual world containing
objects to manipulate. This is especially true in modern graphical user
interfaces. In some systems this virtual world, defined by the user
interface metaphor, is made explicit in others it is not. Explicit spatial
metaphors allow users to transfer navigational skills developed in the
domain from which the metaphor is drawn, but constraints of the metaphor
may limit the efficiency of the user interface. To overcome these
constraints magic features can be introduced that go beyond the spatial
metaphor." from xplane.com/xblog
***NEWS
*Financial Times: Disney may cut jobs and abandon Go.com.
Robert Iger, group president, questioned whether the portal was a long-term
sustainable model. The concerns about Go.com mark a swift change of heart at
Disney, where until a few weeks ago Mr Eisner had said he intended to stand
behind the internet investments...
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3GTJX9JIC&live=true&tagid=IXLT95DZ1BC
*NY Times: The Spread of News by E-Mail Is Becoming News Itself.
People often pass around news articles via e-mail. Some even do it
compulsively, in part because it's so easy: most news sites include an "e-
mail this article" link on some or all of their stories. But until last
spring, apparently, no site made use of the statistics generated by those
e-mail links.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/technology/29NECO.html
*Industry Standard: Napster to Launch Fee-Based Service in Mid-2001.
Sarfeld said a survey of 20,000 Napster users conducted in December by
Webnoize showed that a large majority are willing to pay up to $15 a month for
the music download service. However, Sarfeld cautioned, this is no indication
for what the fee will be. "We are not talking figures yet," he said.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21756,00.html
from tomalak.org
***APROPOS OF NOTHING
*As long as I run this newsletter, I'm keep plugging pal Anton Barbeau. Scream "christina box" if you want to hear the song he wrote for me in exchange for a carrows breakfast.
"SATURDAY FEB 3 - BRAINWASH. San Francisco's finest cafe/laundromat welcomes
back Sacramento's finest Anton/band. (1122 Folsom Street aka 7th and Folsom)
415.861.food. we're on "8-ish", or so i'm told. i think we're the only band
of the night, and so we'll be doing a couple sets, so drag out your request
blankets and lemme know what songs you'd like to hear chopped and tweaked.
no cover, all ages!" --anton
***FOUND ANECDOTE
*from the chi-web list.
"Don Norman gave an example of a conference session that had AV
problems because they couldn't find a book the right height to raise
the projector. Finally one person took a book larger than the required
size and opened it until one half was just the right height for the projector.
He said something like, "a room full of PhDs and not one knows how to
open a book." (I think this was Don Norman--I remember it as such)."
From: Gleanings
To: Friends and enemies
Subject: Gleanings: a new war begins
OPENING THANG
Jesse James Garrett posted this fun note to the Special Interest Groups- Information Architecture mailing list
"
Begin howls of outrage... now."
and there have been. However, this list is archived in a rather sketchy manner, and I was unable to find the posts. If anyone has more luck....
Anyhow, I included a couple of my favorite responses at the bottom of this mail.
I'd love to hear graphic designers' responses to this article.
(I know you're out there, you write me little notes with no capitalization--
Please write designkicksiabutt@eleganthack.com I'll post any good responses I get to a future glean.
Also, George sent this fun article
"Refugees from the dot-com rat race are fueling a boom in leisure adventures. On their journeys, they're bumping into each other in the most far-flung outposts.
http://www.latimes.com/living/20010128/t000008206.html
FYI, the Times puts stuff behind their archive wall fairly quickly, so it may not be accessible for more than a few days until ya gotta pay to see it."
USABILITY MATTERS
Alan Cooper: The Iteration Trap.
High-tech companies are in a hurry--as well they should be--but many hurt themselves by trying to move products out the door too quickly. I often hear executives repeat homilies like "Ship early, ship often," and "Launch and learn." They assume that there is no penalty for simply slapping something together...
http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/jan01/the_iteration_trap.htm
Useit.Com: From April 2, 2000; The Mud-Throwing Theory of Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000402.html
WRITING MATTERS
Web Techniques: Effective Web Writing.
As people have swarmed into this new medium, they've brought all their bad habits from other media--especially from TV and its obsession with moving images. Simple, boring text just doesn't seem to cut it, except as something to keep the animated GIFs from bumping into each other.
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/kilian/
NEWS
Online Journalism Review: Dot-com Content Sites Get Creative.
"What investor would invest in content after all the criticism it's taken?"
says Michael O'Donnell, president of Salon. As a result, content sites have
had to morph into something more. And the year ahead may mark the end of
thinking about them exclusively as Web sites.
http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=529
News.Com: Operational excellence deters serious Web outages.
People who want to throw stones at Microsoft should realize that they also
live in glass houses. They should go down to their glass house (data or
operations center) and make very sure that their operations group is well
funded and has implemented a strong operational excellence plan...
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4607093-0.html
RESPONSES TO THE ALISTAPART.COM ARTICLE
george olsen:
Since I come from a graphic design background (as well as a writing background), I'll step into the fray.... I think there's been a number of good points made, but here's mine:
Regardless whether you agree with the article, you better be prepared deal with the attitude. Remember the "usabilty is dead" article? There's a bit of a backlash going on and I'm not sure it's all bad. In part I think the backlash is due to usability experts, like Neilsen, etc., laying claim to the whole of "user experience." While usability is obviously important, it's not the only consideration.
A looong time ago, David Siegel argues in his seminal "Balkinization of the Web" http://www.dsiegel.com/balkanization/ there are (at least) three aspects to sites: information, interaction (my paraphrase), and experience (my paraphrase). The most appropriate design for a site depends on the relative importance of each of these. The problem right now is that (to stereotype) the gurus in UI tend focus only on interaction, and the gurus in IA tend to focus only on information -- and don't pay much attention to other two.
There are two striking examples of this. In Jared Sprool's first report on Web usability back in the '90s, he talked about how there was all this stuff called "content" (which didn't occur in software UI design) and no one had any idea about how to present it effectively -- apparently he'd never talked with a graphic designer, writer or film maker. The second example, is Jakob Neilsen's site, which present lots of good information but fails miserably in its attempts to reach one of the intended audience (graphic designers) because the site is ugly. (Compare http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ to http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/index.html which is also almost all text.) The "information" is there, but the "experience" to designers is one of "when librarians attack."
And so graphic designers are pushing back on the experience side of the equation. Graphics designers can also bring an understanding of things like corporate branding, marketplace differentiation and appropriate images -- which just may be important for your site/product -- and which UI and IA often overlook, or outright dismiss. Deborah Mayhew's "Usability Engineering Lifecyle" is the first recent book I've seen that really acknowledges this, although unfortunately she doesn't bother to address these issues.
Part of this goes to what level are we designing at Constantine and Lockwood's "Software for Use" offers a really good look at the various layers:
* Aesthetics-Surface appearances or "non-functional" aspects of appearance.
* Form-"Functional" aspects of appearance, i.e. visual design used to aid usability, such using color coding to differentiate controls.
* Behavior-How interfaces and information components act. Typically harder to achieve.
* Function-System offers new capabilities. Much sought after by marketing, but since functions are easy to create, it's also easy to create functions that aren't useful, leading to creeping featuritis.
* Architecture-Novel and effective reorganization of conventional or familiar user interface elements. Probably the biggest challenge for developers, but may offer the biggest gains in usability.
Graphic designers are definitely involved in only "aesthetics" -- and unfortunately, techies and all too many IA/UI people seem to think that's they're only role. That's what the article's compliant about page specs centers around. But good designers definitely are knowledgable about "form" issues, and potentially "behavior issues" (less so for visual designers, and more so for interactive multimedia designers). Another part of the article irritation stems from IA/UI people hammering designers about thing that designers think are obvious. Don't clutter the layout with too many items -- no kidding.... I've seen a lot of bad CHI research due to the lack of people with a graphic design background. (For example, one study was amazed to discover that type set along the edge of a circle (for a round dialogue window) was less preferred by female users than a traditional "white male" dialogue window. Nowhere was it mentioned that the text was much harder to read....)
Part of this goes back to the potential issue of mutual lack of respect of among different disciplines. Be honest, how many of you have viewed designers simply as the ones who "make it pretty"?
Now I agree there are plenty of designers who do simply want to "make it pretty." This is where the distinction someone made between "graphic designers" and "graphic artists" is critical. Just as the UI/IA field isn't monolithic, neither is the graphic design -- both in the temperment of the people in it, as well as the various subfields. As was mentioned earlier, "graphic artists" do tend to be more artsy and think exclusively in terms of aesthetics. "Graphic designers" tend to broader there view to include form, and in fact may be more focused there. It's important to remember which type you're dealing with. It's also important to know the background of the artist/designer you're working with. People with a background in publication design have had to solve problems that are similiar to those involved in IA (form). (In fact, "information architecture" as a title for the field can be traced back to Richard Saul Wurman's attempts to organize information for publications.) Those from an advertising background tend to be more aesthetics-focused.
There's also a decades-long argument within graphic design between "art" and "functionality," most notably among typographers about how type should reflect its content. Should it do so in a way that's not consciously noticed by the reader, or should it be used overtly and expressively. I'd argue there's no One True Answer, it really tends on the interplay between information, experience and interaction.
On a related note, as mentioned there's been a lack of respect for "applied arts," such as graphic design and journalistic/technical writing. So another issue to content with is that the graphic design field tends to have an unstated -- and often unconscious -- view that "artsy" design is superior (since it's closer to "art.") (Writing shares a similar hidden viewpoint: that "real" writers are working on novels or screenplays instead of articles, manuals or copywriting.) A look at the design magazine winners shows they're generally flashy and artsy designs. And in part that reflects the sensibilties of designers, who by definition are more visually sophisticated than the general population. (This is the equivalent of programmers designing interfaces that make sense to other programmers.)
However, the good designers *do* tend to be user-focused, which is another annoyance when IA/UI people come in assume they're the only ones who care about this. But it's important to understand that graphic design as a discipline is a fairly intuitive one. Few designers will have statistics to support a particular design decision. But they *do* have five centuries of beta-testing experience (at least) that's guiding them. The "interface" elements of graphic design (for example, how a book or magazine) have come through years of trial and error -- and they're so successful we don't even think abou them.
Getting back to the One True Design issue, I do think less sophisticated IA/UI people can come across as the "usability police" quoting Neilsen, Sprool, Creative Good, etc to shoot down designs, rather than doing the difficult task of balancing competing interests. Less sophisticated IA/UI people also seem to focus somewhat exclusively on one side of the information-experience-interaction equation. And in a very real sense I've seen people who are "design-blind" (as in colorblind), who really don't see a difference between good visual design and bad. This is where I think we need to be careful that we're not designing IA/UI for other IA/UIs. This goes to the heart of Alan Cooper's argument that you cant't design by heuristics alone. Doing so risks an IA/UI that's "correct" but fails in the real world because it's out of touch with the particularly users/audience its intended for.
(On a related note, one problem with usability testing -- much like market reseach -- is that it tends to be backwards-looking. Just as market research usually fails to discover truly innovative and desire products -- like the internet -- usability testing will tend to ignore innovative UIs because such UIs are new and people need to learn them before they become a defacto standard. Look at Neilsen's early columns and you'll see some techniques that break the "rules" -- for example, no scrolling -- that are widely accepted today. If we only use "accepted" UI, we become stagnant enforcers of "the rules", as the article rightly complains about. The real question is whether innovation is an "appropriate" design solution. For example, the International Herald Tribue UI that's been discussed here is appropriate because there's probably a higher percentage of regular visitors, who are more likely to learn it and use it.)
Ideally, graphic artists/designers are part of a *team* along with UI/IAs, content strategists, (as well as potentially brand strategists, business analysts and systems analysts) among others. There is, and should be, overlap among these roles where different people are able to provide a wider perspective to the particular areas of focus. Ideally, IA/UIs know enough about the other's job that they understand where these overlaps occur and show a mutual respect about the differences in perspectives.
That's the ideal, unfortunately, as shown by the article, a lot of places don't function as a team. In these cases, the overlapping areas can be divisive since UI/IAs can be seen as stepping on the toes or others, especially when UI/IAs don't appear (at least to others) to understand the role that others play. Part of this is reality -- I don't think a number of IA/UIs necessarily understand the value others bring -- and part of it is how we communicate to others. For example, as mentioned in the article, it's all to easy for a "page spec" to be interpreted as The Layout, and all that's left for the designer to do is to paint-by-numbers to complete the design.
There are a number of steps UI/IAs can take to improve the communication problems. To the the issue about The Layout, one easy ste is to abstract the "page spec" down to its "essence" and represent it as a cluster map rather than a wireframe. It still explains what elements need to be on the page and how they should be organized, but it gives the graphic design more room to be creative. At a larger level, it means educating other people about what we do -- as was pointed out, we do tasks that designers might run away from screaming -- including a frank discussion of where there are overlap. And finally it means actually colaborating together with a mutual respect. Understand there *are* competing needs and the art of good design is making the appropriate tradeoffs.
_____________________________________________________________________
George Olsen george.olsen@pobox.com
User Experience Architect at-large 310-403-0301
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As someone who works with graphic designers-boarding-on-Picasso, I'm
not surprised by this article. Over the entire history of graphic
design the profession has rarely gotten any respect and doesn't at
all in the web-related projects I've been involved in. After all you
too can be a designer! All you need is some drawing software and a
color printer!! Moreover, can you even quantify aesthetic decisions?
Few people recognize the knowledge and expertise that a designer
attains through years of study and practice in typography, letter
forms, visual communication theory, art history, art theory &
criticism, color theory, visual balance and hierarchy ... Most
people I've met through web projects feel fully justified questioning
a visual designer on minute details of their designs. Nothing is off
limits when critiquing a designers work because there is few people
recognize that the designer has a specialized knowledge. The only way
to protect your credibility as a designer is through sheer
personality and elitism.
Ask yourself, do you consider graphic design a profession on the
level with IA? If so you'll have to recognize, design has been around
a whole lot longer than this nacent IA professional aspiration. Or do
you think of design as an economic alternative for
wanna-be-fine-artists who want to afford that $3 latte?
Design has it's own internal perpetual argument about 'is design
art?' 'is art design?' 'are they different'. It's never resolved but
generally there is seen to be a major difference between the two
practices. The main one being that art is about personal expression
and design is about solving problems for other people, about
communicating and about enabling.
In interface design, IAs cross a line with designers when they seek
to deliver a specification that is basically a coloring book and
don't allow for an interplay between the visual design of an
interface and the navigation structure and page layout/content
structuring. IMHO.
--
off to gamble--er--study user experience
OPENING THANG
Gleanings will be on hiatus for the rest of the week, as my partners and I are going on a retreat to Vegas. I promise to tell tales of highly designed user experiences when I return! (it's my first trip. suggestions of must-sees welcome: write vegas@eleganthack.com but do it right now! I leave at noon)
In other news, I'm about ready to just resubscribe y'all to xblog. Lots of good stuff from them lately. And I've had many a fun email exchanged with Jeff Lash about their DNS woes, and my inability to get their URL right. Anyhow, if you start to jones for gleanings-style news while I'm away, definitely visit http://www.xplane.com/xblog
And in regards to yesterday's opening diatribe-- I mean, thang-- peterme shot me a note asking I look at the first 99% bad post
I also want to point to Don Norman great post on "Nielsen Norman Group's Compelling Reasons to Use Flash"
don't blame the tool, baby.
IA MATTERS
hey, a nice little "how to IA"
Implementing Information Across Your Site
http://www.webreview.com/2001/01_19/strategists/index04.shtml
"Having trouble organizing your site information effectively? Well, first you need to know how to match your site's goals with the user. "
USABILITY MATTERS
Web Site Identity: The logo tells where you are
--> http://www.humanfactors.com/library/aug99.asp
"What should Web site designers do to help users know when they are still in the same Web site or have moved to a different site after clicking on a link? This question was studied by Omanson, et.al., 1998. Their research attempted to determine which dimensions were most important when establishing a Web site identity. They had observed that many Web users are often unaware when they have moved to a different site." [To Web
design]
Measuring User Experience
--> http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/ellis/
"We've all seen the stats. Almost half of a site's visitors go elsewhere due to poor navigability, slow download times, or confusing content. If users have problems on your site, they jump to competitors en masse.
Fortunately, there are several useful ways to evaluate user experience."
from xplane.com/xblog
Internet World: The Seven Sins of Copy Protection Tools.
Jakob Nielsen and Susan Farrell. Anything that makes computers harder to use should be rejected on the drawing board, because if it ever goes to market, it will be rejected by the users, who already have more complexity than they can deal with on their desktops now.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/01232001d.jsp
from tomalak.org
STORYTELLING MATTERS
The Problem With Presentations
--> http://www.searls.com/present.html
"Nothing is more interesting than a story. In fact, just about everything interesting is a story of some kind. Stories are what make news. They are also what make war, sports, love and money. You have a story to tell. If you don't tell it, you'll lose your audience. Fortunately, all stories come with exactly three parts: character, problem and movement toward a resolution. Characters are identities the audience can care about..." also found on xplane.com/xblog
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Atom films is merging with shockwave, and they are selling all their logo gear, film compilations and other stuff cheap.
don't blame the tool, baby.
Gabe -- my partner at www.carboniq.com -- and I were walking along and we saw yet another logo comprised of a grid of dots with a couple of the dots smooshing into each other.They look to be the new swoosh, which is what drew me to this article. Anyow, at the risk of getting slammed with a zillion logos, I'd love it if folks sent examples... sapient is the only example I could find off the top of my head, even though their dots are a bit squarish. So mail me!
From: Gleanings
To: Unskilled labor
Subject: Gleanings: the bad revolution
OPENING THANG
Put your mouse where your mouth is. Competition to redesign useit.com.
http://anomy.net/useit.competition/
Also after reading this excellent article on v-2 http://www.v-2.org/bad.html I've been thinking about "bad" design again. I have been watching and listening to the debate rage on within the usability community about how Flash is "99% bad" and it reminds me of nothing as much as the arguments I heard when desktop publishing came out. people were up in arms over how much bad design was showing up-- these people don't kern! They use matisse for body text! or something like that.... and of course desktop publishing was blamed for putting the power to design into unskilled hands. Eventually the revolution evolved, and bad designs continued to show up on lost dog posters, and good designs (or at least a typical level of mediocrity) on most professionally produced materials.
Flash is an accessible tool, and a lot of people are messing with it that have no clue what they are doing, and they are producing junk. So what. HTML is an accessible tool, and lots of people are producing junk (take a stroll through any geocities "neighborhood".) So what. The revolution will produce failures and successes, but in the end we'll have a better, livelier medium for it.
IA & DESIGN MATTERS
Long Live Analog
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1514
"The increasingly digital world is obsessed with retro-tech sound and
design. Steven Johnson goes behind the music."
A Few Tips on Designing URLs
http://mar.anomy.net/entry/20010112190505/
"URLs should be viewed as an abstract interface to an information resource engine residing on a web-server ... URLs have to be designed just like anything else in a website. They are an integral part of the user interface of a website. They play an indirect role in the overall user-experience. They can also affect the long-term value of a website."
from http://xplane.com/xblog/
NEWS & COMMENTARY
I never tire of napster stories.
News.Com: Big Blue touts new Napster-proof music locks.
The advent of Napster and its peers has changed the rules and risks in the online music business. Now IBM and other companies are trying to keep just enough of the Napster model alive to satisfy consumers, while giving copyright holders near-absolute control over the way songs and other media are distributed.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4551774.html
Business Week: There's No Fizz in Pepsi's E-Promotion.
Maybe I missed a key point in the evolution of mass consumer society. Perhaps our consumerism is so over-the-top that people would find it amusing to take an active role in choosing the marketing messages designed to get them to buy sugar water. So, Pepsi is either very cleverly aware or stunningly naive.
http://www.businessweek.com/ebiz/0101/ep0122.htm
from tomalak.org
Humbled Dot-Coms Still Major Presence at Sundance Festival
http://www.latimes.com/business/20010122/t000006203.html
French Sue Yahoo, Again (Reuters)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/yahoo010122.html
Doctors Forced to Use Hotmail for Confidential Medical Records
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16235.html
from media grok, on http://www.thestandard.com
INTERNATIONAL MATTERS
our European correspondent writes:
"Now in Spain a friend has opened a distribution list to comment things about IA, usability and more, he is www.terremoto.net, maybe you know him."
(thanks, Juan-- I didn't)
APROPOS OF NOTHING
http://www.usscatastrophe.com/
Flash is an accessible tool, and a lot of people are messing with it that have no clue what they are doing, and they are producing junk. So what. HTML is an accessible tool, and lots of people are producing junk (take a stroll through any geocities category.) So what. The revolution will produce failures and successes, but in the end we'll have a better, livelier medium for it.
From: Gleanings
To: survivors
Subject: Gleanings: hide and seek without the hide part
OPENING THANG
Let's play "spot the christina" at some point I'll be on Jeff @ The House, http://www.jath.com
I can let you know when I'm on it when I know, or you can develop a daily habit like I have. Also, I'll be joining Jesse James Garrett in an unscheduled moderation of a session at the conference http://www.asis.org/Conferences/Summit2001/index.html Come see me and say "Hi". I'm pretty dang approachable.
And a bunch of folks asked where my mysterious and catty design correspondent found his Hugh Dubberly quote. here ya go
"you don't mention it directly, but it's linked to in that ALAP article you
mentioned in your last 'issue'. you can also get it directly at
http://gain.aiga.org/"
IA MATTERS
Architecture, Butterflies and Common sense - the ABCs of a profession on the rise.
Andrew Dillon
http://memex.lib.indiana.edu/adillon/IA2.html
"Creating an Online Press Room" by B.L. Ochman -
http://www.webreview.com/2000/08_25/webauthors/08_25_00_2.shtml.
thanks vincent!
USABILITY MATTERS
Very smart rebuttal to Jakob's more unfortunate tendencies
http://www.v-2.org/jakob.html
(thanks Vincent! http://www.mersault.com/thinking/ )
good post on how to reduce bandwidth for testing
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0101d&L=chi-web&F=&S=&P=65
Useit.Com: Usability Metrics.
Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting
qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are
sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a
product.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010121.html
Internet World: Deconstructing Fodors.com.
John Shiple and Louis Rosenfeld. My only gripe is that some of these
syndicated areas could be better customized. BedandBreakfast.com will
automatically give you listings for B&Bs in Quebec City. But Expedia doesn't know that you're heading there, and you'll have to fumble around their
site for the airport code.
http://www.internetworld.com/011501/01.15.01decon.jsp
thanks tomalak.org
NEWS & COMMENT
NY Times: The New York Times: Five Years on the Web.
With that in mind, Bernard Gwertzman, editor of The New York Times on the Web,
and Martin Nisenholtz, chief executive officer of New York Times Digital, sat down to discuss their five years on the Web, the state of Internet journalism today, and what we can expect in years to come.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/20/technology/20ANNIVERSARY.html
Survivor! How your peers are coping with the web design crisis
--> http://www.alistapart.com/stories/decline/
"Decline and Fall? -- a special issue on the industry-wide crisis. It's ugly out there, but how bad is it, really? We asked 40 of our peers to share how they were coping (or not) with the layoffs and business failures currently plaguing our industry. After reading their stories, you can add your own in the new ALA discussion forum." from http://xplane.com/xblog
addendum-- i won. killed the virus, mostly thanks to google.
So Christina Maria Wodtke wrote me back, and we had a good chuckle over the shock of meeting a sort of doppleganger. She pronounces it "vodka," leading to all sort of nicknames-- I'm suddenly glad my family pronounces it "wood-key."
Christina Maria also told me her family had come from the Von Wodtke line, prompting a google search on Von Wodtke (of course) leading me to this like minded Wodtke
Mind Over Media: Creative Thinking Skills for Electronic Media, by Mark von Wodtke. Is it in the genes?
recieved this charming mail in my inbox this morning
----- Original Message -----
From: Mads Damgaard fra Krogerup højskole
To: comments@eleganthack.com
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2001 2:39 AM
Who the hell are you!!!!!?????
And why are you using my name??
Christina M. Wodtke
Yes, Christina Wodtke is a rare name-- or rather Wodtke is a rare name (but not unknown ), and Christina is a fairly common first name. But I'm sure there are dozens in Germany, where the name originated, and more sprinkled through the USA and Europe. It's fun to meet someone with the same name as yours when you have such an odd name, but not when the writer is accusing you of identity theft.
Anyhow I'd love to hear from other wodtkes, especially of the christina variety... mail me!
btw, I'm Christina R. Wodtke, named for my grandmother Rachel Wodtke.
From: Gleanings
To: Fireballs
Subject: Gleanings: things that blow up in the night
OPENING THANG
How the heck did it get to be Friday already?
Yesterday two different people sent me two different images of a transportation device penetrating a building with flames erupting. I hesitate to guess what this might portend.
http://www.lebienpublic.com/une/20010118.JSL2605.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/sfgate/object.cgi?object=/chronicle/pictures/2001/01/17/mn_sacfire2.jpg&paper=chronicle&file=MN74633.DTL&directory=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/17&type=news
IA MATTERS
NY Times: Web Sites Begin to Self Organize.
The Vines is an example of an emerging class of what are called
self-organizing Web sites. Such sites are demonstrating that with a dab or two of well-written code and a bit of careful planning, a site can take a random collection of links or posts and turn them into a sophisticated,
adaptive system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/technology/18SELF.html
DESIGN MATTERS
The experience of color
http://www.hermanmiller.com/us/index.bbk/5519
Multimedia/PowerPoint Survey
http://www.presentations.com/resources/trends/2000/02/29_f1_mm.html
"Are computer-based multimedia presentations really more effective at
getting messages across than other tried-and-true media? Does the kind of presentation visuals you use matter? Do well-designed PowerPoint slides give you an edge over the competition? Does multimedia animation really communicate messages better than overhead slides or plain words on paper?"
Design Language
http://www.onemedia.com/resources/design_language_index.html
"Combining wisdom and wit, Tim McCreight's Design Language dissects 100 design terms, including their etymologies, definitions and connotations.
Accompanied by specially commissioned illustrations (denoted with
asterisks), Design Language creates fascinating snapshots of the words
associated with the concepts and practices of design."
from xplane.com/xblog
NEWS
Dot-Com Alternatives Pull the Plug
The deregulation of the energy industry was supposed to open the market, but ironically has had the opposite effect.
http://tm0.com/thestandard/sbct.cgi?s=64374789&i=293604&d=900222
IBM Reports Solid Quarter
http://tm0.com/thestandard/sbct.cgi?s=64374789&i=293604&d=900230
Apple Posts Loss
http://tm0.com/thestandard/sbct.cgi?s=64374789&i=293604&d=900231
The Whole Business World Is Watching Microsoft
http://www.thestreet.com/tech/software/1261656.html
from thestandard.com
News.Com: AOL Time Warner plans to close Entertaindom.
Entertaindom was Time Warner's first foray into creating a series of Web destinations, or hubs, focusing on specific topics. The hub strategy and the creation of Time Warner Digital Media were the company's attempts to develop Internet businesses in the wake of its defunct Pathfinder site...
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4515788.html
Internet World: From April 1, 2000; Deconstructing Entertaindom.com. Peter Merholz and John Shiple.
http://www.internetworld.com/040100/4.01decon.jsp
from tomalak.org
FEEDBACK
How did they used to put it in the New Yorker? Oh yes...
Our design correspondent writes:
"hugh dubberly
i met him years ago when presenting the hr site for netscape to the vp of hr there, and he was in the room. he was such a p-rick and a whiny baby that i always used that experience as a boilerplate for the term 'bitchy creative'.
however, he added a little quote in the GAIN issue i read (prompted by your email, as i'd forgotten about the launch of that magazine), and it's pretty dead-on with how i feel about all this naming of titles and roles and IA/UE design stuff....
"Calling what we do 'experience design' is a questionable idea. First of all, it does not provide a good way of classifying design work. Second, it's perhaps hyperventilating to claim experience as the special province of any branch of design. Good designers serve an audience. They make or plan things for people to use. That use is an experience. The design of a thing cannot easily be separated from the design of its use--the design of an experience. Architects are experience designers. Product designers are experience designers. Even graphic designers are experience designers. Experience is not unique to the design of Web pages--or even to the design of software.
I'm amazed and amused by the string of names associated with whatever it is we do and how they've evolved. IN high school I took Commercial Art classes.
By the time I reached college, Architecture had become Environmental Design and Commercial Art had become Communications Design. there were also such titles as Art Director and Creative Director in advertising, Type Designer, Graphic Artist, Graphic Designer. Henry Dreyfuss brought us Human Factors.
Ricky Wurman brought us Information Architecture. Multimedia became New Media. Human Factors became Usability. But that's not quite the same as Interface Design, which became Interaction Design because the interface was but a membrane. Now Interaction Design has become part of Experience Design and UI has moved on to become UE. And now there's ExMod--'experience modeling.' Recently I've heard people talking about digital design and information-product design. We change our names so much that it's not surprising that many people don't know what we do."
amen, sister bitch!"
also, eric points to this interesting article-ette
Hello,
After reading your bit about Navigation... His and Hers
Below is a comment I made on the same issue, diff article
http://www.evolt.org/article/Breadcrumbs_for_the_sake_of_Users/4090/4483/index.html
Just thought i'd share.
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Napkin Folding
--> http://www.cukezone.com/napkin/
--> http://www.ywh.com/Tips/Napkin/napkins.html
--> http://www.quipindustries.com/napfold.htm
"One of the graduation requirements at my high school was a 75-hour senior project on a topic of one's choice. And so here is mine. I hardly recall spending an evening folding napkins in the middle of my senior year, but that's beside the point. All the examples require well-starched napkins that can hold their shapes without wire support. That means no paper napkins, folks."
from xplane.com/xblog
From: Gleanings
To: t-shirt clad readers
Subject: Gleanings: those who can't do, complain
OPENING THANG
In a a particularly apropos move, the dude who started up "Greenhouse for Startups" sold it and started a newsletters of complaints-- the first one includes stories of both investor betrayal and worthless stocks. He sent the first one to all the subscribers of "Greenhouse for Startups" -- perhaps thinking he'd find an empathic audience?
newsletter
http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/011801.htm
subscribe
http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/
IA MATTERS
Information Architecture - A New Opportunity
http://www.webreference.com/new/ia/2.html
Give that content expert a lap dance, for God's sake.
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/topless/index.html
Experience Design is an emerging paradigm, a call for inclusion: it calls for an integrative practice of design that can benefit all designers, including those who work in the new, interactive media.
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/experience/
DESIGN MATTERS
Q&A: Jeffrey Veen, Part II
It seems you hear about new Web design theories on an almost-daily basis.
But when ideas like this come from the same person who determined the look and feel of such groundbreaking sites as HotWired.com and the HotBot search engine, you tend to listen. We have Part 2 of an interview with Jeffrey Veen.
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2426
Design, Colors, and Branding
Black text on a white background is easy to read, and yellow text on a black background is hard to read. But how could your site's color scheme actually communicate something about its content?
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2434
from newmedia.com
USABILITY MATTERS
Internet World: Testing Tips and Notes on Task Time.
Jakob Nielsen. One of the most important usability metrics is time on task.
After all, the entire reason to have interactive systems is to support users in the performance of some task -- to help users get something done.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/01172001e.jsp
from tomalak.org
Using Real People for Web Site Testing, Part I
If you're serious, and we mean really serious, about the user experience of your Web site, you should probably conduct usability testing. The people taking the test, though, shouldn't be your designers and other people within
the company. We have Part 1 of a 2-part series on putting your site to the
test using "real people."
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2438
from newmedia.com
NEWS
Internet World: Talking to the Web.
The voice-enabled Web appears to be the latest craze to grab hold of the industry's imagination. If you believe what you hear, all you will need to surf the Web in the coming years is a telephone, a thirst for information, and the sound of your own voice.
http://www.internetworld.com/011501/01.15.01feature1.jsp
TechWeb: Anthropologists Look For Missing Link In Wireless.
A team of anthropologists conducted 180 interviews in six countries for a new report on wireless usage from Context-Based Research Group. The study concluded that wireless adoption could benefit from more user education and an emphasis on social utility.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010117S0003
from tomalak.org
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Last night, idle and tired of IA (but not of the web-- of never tired of the web, my baby) I decided to build a cafe press store. At some point I'll tell the story of that, but for now take a look at my stuff!
http://www.cafepress.com/eleganthack
From: Gleanings
To: faithful readers
Subject: Gleanings: readers respond
OPENING THANG
Of course I've had no predictions sent to me, but I have had two rebuttals to my rabid hatred and fear of drivers talking on cellphones, and my hope that handless phones might help:
1. dave rossi writes:
"i don't have any predictions (that's always a slippery slope), but i do well in predicting what's already happened.
instead, let me give you a little did you know: did you know the NHTSA rates what distractions cause auto accidents? and did you know that cellphone use is not the first or the second or even the third? yes, it's fooling with the radio that wins. eating second, talking with passenger third. and cellphone comes distantly after that. i love the wall street journal....
hmmm, let's see, as soon as they ban those, i'll jump right in with ya on your dream! ;)"
2. dave o'brien writes
">everyone will have cellphone planted in the hollow of there jaws, reducing traffic incidents by 10%
Actually, counter to intuition, studies indicate that making the phone
hands-free does not keep the driver from being impaired. It seems to be the talking (i.e. the attention) that causes the accident. So the jaw thing wouldn't help (but dentists might like the extra income). Also, this is bad news for those companies trying to add the Internet to cars - if you think talking to a person on the phone takes attention away from the road, how about trying to use your voice to control an Internet device. Yikes."
I stand corrected, but still suspicious. The three times I've nearly been killed by cars the driver was on a cellphone.
In other news... George send me an email with the auspicious title "Why blogger empowers mindless twits" Have to like that.
"Goes back to that idea about the good thing about the net is that is allows anyone to be a publisher; the bad thing about the net is that is allows anyone to be a publisher;
http://www.disobey.com/devilshat/ds011101.htm
On a related note, have you seen http:/www.plastic.com which looks like a moderated blog. More interesting (from what I've heard) is
http://www.kuro5hin.org/ Apparently they've got a system where stories are posted and talked about, then those that are moderated up go to the home page."
anyhow, it's a slow news day, so here are a couple of tidbits from http://xplane.com/xblog
http://www.elearningpost.com/elthemes/nielsen.asp
“Just how important is usability in e-learning? We ask usability guru Jakob Nielsen on this and other wide-ranging issues. '...given that people are just not willing to read so much — I think it leads to a completely different approach to learning on a computer than learning in a traditional environment.'”
these posters blew my mind:
http://burn.ucsd.edu/paris.htm
“Paris 1968. Pent-up anger and frustration over poverty, unemployment and the conservative government of General Charles de Gaulle, gave rise to a mass movement for sweeping social change. In the month of May, workers and students took to the streets in an unprecedented wave of strikes, walkouts and demonstrations. By May 18th, 10 million workers were on strike and all factories and universities were occupied. During those days of turmoil the ATELIER POPULAIRE (Popular Workshop) was formed. The faculty and student body of the Ecole des Beaux Arts were on strike, and a number of the students met spontaneously in the lithographic department to produce the first poster of the revolt, 'Usines, Universites, Union.'”
From: Gleanings
To: yuz guyz
Subject: Gleanings: I predict
OPENING THANG
First, if you sent predictions by hitting reply, that doesn't work for various mysterious reasons. Please resend any predictions for 2001 to predictions@eleganthack.com. I'm pretty interested in seeing what folks can come up with. I found it rather fun to predict like a psychic or a pundit.
Try it, you'll like it! And don't forget to add your name as you'd like to be referred to. Most of the time I just write people's first name, we're a casual Friday kind of community here. But of course if your prediction is brilliant and wonderful and want folks to click to your website after to see what other sorts of clever things you've come up with, I'll enable that.
And if there are no predictions, I'll make more up. In the year 2001
everyone will have cellphone planted in the hollow of there jaws, reducing traffic incidents by 10% and reducing the stigma of being insane and walking around talking to yourself.
DESIGN MATTERS
The identity card project
wow.
http://www.ideo.com/identity/introduction.htm
from xplane.com/xblog
IA MATTERS
fewer choices more better
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/health/09CHOI.html
Information Anxiety 2 is out.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0789724103/eleganthack
Web Techniques: Building Web Sites With Depth.
Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir. Good stores know that it's not enough for the store to look nice--it must act nice as well, and support the total customer experience, including location, staffing, returns, payments, sales, and so on.
E-commerce sites focus far too often on superficial niceties, without
investing in their customers' underlying needs.
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/nielsen/
from tomalak.org
Publish: Invisible architecture.
Christopher Locke. Companies don't have values or voices, only people do.
Fortunately, your company has lots of people. How many stories does your
building have? Before you can answer, you must understand what a story truly
is. To do that, you first have to find your own.
http://www.publish.com/features/0012/feature3.html
from tomalak.org
BUSINESS MATTERS
just found this-- what a great source for articles on business.
http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/products/hbr/
USABIITY MATTERS
Yet more usability backlash
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/redi/
Peter Merhlz write a pretty good rebuttal (scroll down to January 12th)
http://peterme.com/
APROPOS OF NOTHING
While looking for a place to go for my 1st wedding anniversary, I found this
article on Lagos. amazing what tourism can do. Well worth a read.
http://www.outpostmagazine.com/archives/08/trouble.html
This is horrible and wrong and more amusing than dancing Jesus. isn't
technology wonderful?
http://www.geocities.com/dubyahump/
Five Crappiest tech Jobs
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/1127/129.html
Here are my predictions
The layoff merry-go-round: A lot of people are going to get fired, or leave, and most of them are going to get hired again. However with so many people on the market they are actually going to have to work to find a job. People who should think twice about quitting: those with very little experience. Better to stick it out for another six months or so before throw your hat in the job hunt ring.
The market downturn: Is a downturn. It's going to be good again, but not as great as before. Don't be greedy folks. One thing is sure; recruiters are not going to be able to use stock-options to get people to work for less then market value (which is going to be less than it was). They will move to offering better benefits, like more vacation, as people are going to be less willing to spend their life at the office.
Micropayments: hah, like I'm going to predict anything about micropayments.
Europe: is going to continue to get more and more wired, and web workers with savvy and courage will move there to ride the wave of excitement that is similar to san Francisco in 93. And to get four weeks of vacation and great food.
Wireless: is going to continue to be a confusing mess for another year, and this will be fun for folks who like messing around in the unknown. Users however, will continue to use their cellphones for *gasp* telephone calls. My dream is they will be outlawed from doing so while driving.
The Web: will continue to show itself to be one of the most flexible delivery mechanisms ever. However, companies pressed for cash will change their attitudes and stop shoving proof-of-concept unusable sites out the door and start crafting carefully structured user experiences to improve brand loyalty and customer retention. and they'll hire Carbon IQ to help them do it.
Well, I hope so.
>>>Send me your predictions, and I'll post them..
EDITORIAL: 2001: THE YEAR AHEAD
By Kathy Foley
It's January again and time to adopt a wise countenance, stick the
neck out, and make a few predictions for the year ahead. It's not
the easiest of tasks and certainly has the potential to expose
would-be seers to plenty of ridicule but, bolstered by the relative
success of last year's predictions, I'm going to give it a go once
more.... Full story
From: Gleanings
To: Nostradamus
Subject: Gleanings: is it the age of aquarius yet?
OPENING THANG
Reading my Nua newsletter this morning, I realized that I've seen remarkably few prediction stories for January. This was also the year I saw very few "year in review" stories as well. Perhaps everyone's so happy the world didn't come to an end, they're just laying low.
Here are my predictions
The layoff merry-go-round: A lot of people are going to get fired, or leave, and most of them are going to get hired again. However with so many people on the market they are actually going to have to work to find a job. People who should think twice about quitting: those with very little experience. Better to stick it out for another six months or so before throw your hat in the job hunt ring.
The market downturn: Is a downturn. It's going to be good again, but not as great as before. Don't be greedy folks. One thing is sure; recruiters are not going to be able to use stock-options to get people to work for less then market value (which is going to be less than it was). They will move to offering better benefits, like more vacation, as people are going to be less willing to spend their life at the office.
Micropayments: hah, like I'm going to predict anything about micropayments.
Europe: is going to continue to get more and more wired, and web workers with savvy and courage will move there to ride the wave of excitement that is similar to san Francisco in 93. And to get four weeks of vacation and great food.
Wireless: is going to continue to be a confusing mess for another year, and this will be fun for folks who like messing around in the unknown. Users however, will continue to use their cellphones for *gasp* telephone calls. My dream is they will be outlawed from doing so while driving.
The Web: will continue to show itself to be one of the most flexible delivery mechanisms ever. However, companies pressed for cash will change their attitudes and stop shoving proof-of-concept unusable sites out the door and start crafting carefully structured user experiences to improve brand loyalty and customer retention. and they'll hire
Well, I hope so.
>>>Send me your predictions, and I'll put them in the feedback section of the next newsletter.
EDITORIAL: 2001: THE YEAR AHEAD
By Kathy Foley
It's January again and time to adopt a wise countenance, stick the
neck out, and make a few predictions for the year ahead. It's not
the easiest of tasks and certainly has the potential to expose
would-be seers to plenty of ridicule but, bolstered by the relative
success of last year's predictions, I'm going to give it a go once
more.
For the full story, go to:
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/weekly_editorial.html
IA MATTERS
How to evaluate IA (thanks vincent!)
http://argus-acia.com/white_papers/evaluating_ia.pdf
DESIGN MATTERS
Tog on Fitts
http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
USABILITY MATTERS
Usability test that Sun did on the StartOffice package
http://whiteboard.openoffice.org/Usability/index.html
ART MATTERS
well, I think art matters, anyhow
Web Site Includes Commissioned Artworks, in-depth Background and Special
Events http://www.sfmoma.org/010101
NEWS
http://www.tomalak.org> passes on a fairly shocking misuse of customers trust. is it really a surprise that Americans are growing more and more suspicious when filling out forms?
http://63.210.24.35/reports/pdfs/PIP_Trust_Privacy_Report.pdf
Wired News: EBay E-mail Makes Users 'Bidder'.
Auction site eBay has apparently decided that users of its service who said no
really meant yes. So, in an attempt to "help" its users, the company has
informed many of them, by e-mail, that their marketing preferences were
automatically being changed.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41086,00.html
Interactive Week: From November 29, 1999; AOL To Users: Opt Out Again
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2400502,00.html
ZDNN: Privacy snafu enrages eBay customers.
Online privacy group TRUSTe said the eBay changes raise privacy concerns and
it plans to grill execs about it in the next few days. This is a change of
mind for TRUSTe, one of several groups that eBay briefed on the details before
changing people's preferences. TRUSTe at first gave its okay.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2673052,00.html
from http://www.nua.ie
ZDNet: Search engines cause ire among Net users
According to a new survey, poor search engines and information
overload are causing web-rage among Internet users.
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356304&rel=true
NielsenNetRatings: Amazon, Toys 'R' Us top holiday etailer list
Amazon.com's alliance with Toys 'R' Us paid off handsomely during the
holiday season--the online retailer clocked up a record-breaking 123
million shopping visits between the start of November and December
24.
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356308&rel=true
From: Gleanings
To: jazzhounds
Subject: Gleanings: Jazzed
OPENING THANG
I put my husband on a plane last night, went home, poured a large whiskey and watched Jazz. There are trumpets that can sing your heart out of your chest. Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis. Oof.
This morning drinking my coffee and nursing my delicate head, I tried to type in a url half-remembered from the show, which I thought was jazzmusic.org. Nope. Luckily there is http://www.pbs.org/ providing this fine collection of links for the jazz hungry. http://www.pbs.org/jazz/links/ (nope, don't have the wherewithal this a.m. to point out the futility of expecting consumers to remember URLs)
DESIGN MATTERS
A new book is out from the nicest guy in web design, Jeff Veen...
The Art & Science of Web Design
http://www.veen.com/artsci/
Web Reference: Interview with Jeffrey Veen.
http://www.webreference.com/interviews/veen/
Conceptual Foundations
--> http://www.Stars.com/Authoring/Design/Conceptual.html
"One of the commonest mistakes of web designers is to not take the
conceptual foundations very seriously, e.g. What purpose is the web site
supposed to serve? Who is the target audience and what do they want? How
are the HTML pages clustered and inter-related?"
from http://xplane.com/xblog
USABILITY MATTERS
A couple of pointers on www.tomalak.org suggest that high tech product design could take some pointers from the usability mania that's recently hit the web.
US News: Overwhelmed by Tech.
So with the technology industry enduring its first bear market since gadgets
became the hot new thing, many companies are scrambling to find out why
consumers aren't falling in love with the latest stuff. The answer? Most folks
are still trying to figure out how to work the devices they already have.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010115/gadgets.htm
US News: Words to live by from an apostle of simplicity.
Jeff Hawkins, chairman of Handspring. The first time I used a WAP phone was a
couple of years ago. I decided right then and there that it was never going to
succeed. There's no way they can make it good. Someone once told me it took
them 27 steps to get on the Internet.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010115/gadgets.b.htm
NEWS
Southern Comfort's Internet Hangover
A parody gets mistaken as the real thing...
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2001/nf2001019_870.htm
dave points out this article,saying "it's about real
networks plug in and how they hide the free plugin when you land on their
site." they do charge for a subscriptions, so this is only good if you have a subscription to wall street journal already.
DODGE'S E-CONOMY
On Christmas Eve, guest columnist Lewis Perdue wasn't cursing RealNetworks'
low share price, but rather its hard-sell marketing efforts.
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/DodgesEconomy.htm
Dot-coms unionizing? maybe.
Union Vote at Dot-Com Company Postponed
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-4406520.html
Dot-Com Is Set for a Union Vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/technology/09ETOW.html
(free Registration required.)
Okay, I'm reaching here:
Killer shrimp
http://www.infobeat.com/fullArticle?article=405684722
APROPOS OF NOTHING
What time is it??
http://www.time.gov/
a very pretty site-- but this guy has got to bite the bullet and get off tripod. the pop-up ads are annoying. it gets ugly once you have a half dozen open the designer launched, plus a new one from tripod every time you follow a link.
http://www.devx.com/devxpress/gurl.asp?i=1X2955862X5716
I love star wars fan films and I'm not ashamed to say so
http://www.atomfilms.com/default.asp?spot_id=143&sl=0109h
(I'm not even a star wars fan)
Tremendously amusing site of home brewed internet broadcasting.
Jeff @ The House, www.jath.com
Alfred W. Bush:
http://www.thenation.com/special/alfredw.mhtml
from: http://www.thenation.com/
From: Gleanings
To: Jazzheads
Subject: Gleanings: All that jazz
OPENING THANG
I missed the first night of Jazz on PBS, and I'm sad. However today is another day, you and I should be hunkered down in front of our respective TV sets tonight to watch part two... unless you can't stand jazz.
Amazon, ever resourceful, has created a page devoted to the show
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/496934/ref%3Dkbj%5F6/107-3336896-2240510
IA & DESIGN MATTERS
Yum! Tufte!
http://www.ercb.com/feature/feature.0008.2.html
Design Usability: Information Strategy
http://www.internetworld.com/121500/12.15.00Feature3long.asp
"Until recently, few people had heard of information architecture, which I
define as the process of structuring and organizing information so that
it's easier for users to find and for owners to maintain."
USABILITY MATTERS
from xplane.com/xblog
• Are you ready for usability?
http://www.othermedia.com/knowledge/know_0000000011.html
“I am a big fan of usability testing as a way to help make web sites easier to use because it gets straight to the point of looking at what real people actually do with your carefully crafted web site. Unfortunately, I think that there is a reluctance with many people to give usability testing a whirl...”
• Creating Usable Websites
http://www.tekdok.com/usablewebsites/
“The purpose of this site is to share some of the information I've acquired on website design. The emphasis is on overall design and usability, as opposed to the mechanics of creating a website.”
NEWS
Newsweek: Sony's Digital Dilemma.
But now Sony has become the first top-tier consumer electronics company to
make mainstream devices that play MP3s. It's an about-face as abrupt as record
label BMG's recent embrace of Napster. When asked to describe Sony Music's
reaction, one person at Sony Electronics said sheepishly, "They were
pissed."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/512640.asp
from www.tomalak.org
Hollywood Is Ready for Action
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21262,00.html
By Laura Rich Fearing 'Napsterization,' the studios focus on taking control of digital distribution.
APROPOS OF NOTHING
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/
I've long loved looking at different tarot decks (I tend to like reinterpretations of the same thing; and do things like place three different covers of "Straighten up and fly right" in a row on a mixtape) This site indulges that urge.
From: Gleanings
To: Blogaholics
Subject: Gleanings: One Man Shows
OPENING THANG
Lessons, lessons. Everyday I learn I don't live in Jakob Nielsen's black and white world of ultimate pronouncements. Jeff Lash, from my new favorite site xblog, wrote to tell me that even though they own xblog.com, it's not the right URL for their content. Their content is at xplane.com/xblog. I replied flippantly why don't you slap a redirect on that puppy so xblog.com points at xplane.com/xblog. To which he sighed, and said... "Yes, you're right. I'll add it to the list of things to do. It's list item
#257, right after "Finish reading 'Unleashing the IdeaVirus'" and "Save
world.""
Xblog, like my own gleanings and eleganthack, are free personal crusades published by an individual on his/her own time. The blogger community has created a world of self-publishing that is producing (at least in my mind) some of the best content the web has seen since the heyday of the zines. Only too often self-publishers sigh like Jeff did, and say, yeah, I really been meaning to get around to redesigning, or yeah, I should register that domain (or in my case, gosh I only wish I had an editor). But what is important is that they keep publishing-- Their packaging may not be slick, but it really is what's inside that counts. Go to yahoo.com and look up any soft drink site
(http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Food_and_Drink/Drinks/Soft_Drinks/Brand_Names/ ),
and you'll see quickly what no-content-pretty-packaging looks like. Then go visit these guys:
http://www.mersault.com/thinking/
http://www.jjg.net
http://www.peterme.com
http://www.tildeworks.com/design/
http://www.37signals.com/svn/
http://www.xplane.com/xblog/
http://a.jaundicedeye.com/weblog/
http://www.scottmccloud.com/
http://www.giantant.com/antenna/
http://www.hannahodge.com/blog/br_blog.html
http://www.tpodd.com
http://www.captaincursor.com/
http://www.sippey.com/
http://www.glassdog.com
http://www.powazek.com
http://www.fury.com/
http://www.metafilter.com/
From: Gleanings
To: Negatory good buddies
Subject: Gleanings: NOT
OPENING THANG
On hold, after what seemed like about 50 menu choices, in the pac bell voice mail maze, when I knew I had to talk to a human, I started writing this gleanings. Excuse me if this has caused me to write an unusually negating gleanings--
(just my imagination as muzak may cause cancer in laboratory humans)
***Not so wappy--
WAP Forum Refutes Study Findings
http://www.allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2001/01/02/wap_forum.html
The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum has strongly disputed the
findings of a recent study that found poor usability in wireless devices
that use WAP.
***Not so rational--
UI RUPture
Can Rational Unified Process really facilitate a better experience?
http://www.uidesign.net/2000/opinion/UIRupture.html
more
http://www.rational.com/products/whitepapers/101057.jsp
***Not so useful--
Is it really necessary to have a lab for usability testing?
Usability Labs: Our Take
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/labs.htm
and a summery of postings on CHI-WEB on the matter
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0101a&L=chi-web&F=&S=&P=2910
***Not so hateful
Yahoo to Ban Race-Hate Items
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,21183,00.html?nl=mg
***and-- DUH!
Inside: Attention, Masters of the Media Universe.
Seth Godin. You have a relationship. You understand that every interaction has to benefit both of you, or it will end. To build a monopoly based on consumer attention, you have to stop trying to find customers for your products and start trying to find products for your customers.
http://www.inside.com/jcs/Story?article_id=18883&pod_id=13
+++
To show I'm not completely bitter, here's a couple of interesting articles on personas and alan cooper
http://www.umlchina.com/GUI/an.htm
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/almstrum/classes/cs373/general/personas.html
and a nice recipe
Creamless Creamy Squash Soup, Gourmet
http://www.epicurious.com/ego/squashsoup
+++
and if you are in the bay area, check out my pal Anton http://www.antonbarbeau.com
FRIDAY JAN 5TH - STARRY PLOUGH IN BERKELEY. ANTON UK PLUS! guitar guru kevin joins us (assuming he ain't rushed off to deliver his second any-day-now baby!) we're on first, at 9:30, so please arrive upon or about early. $6, 21+. also avec les bille, Tiny and the Bean Weevils. (now, see, that's two separate bands with not-great names that might do well to join forces, non?) please please us like we please you, no questions asked.
................................................................
Do Metaphors Make Web Browsers Easier to Use? has a potential answer, recommending "composite metaphors" to marry the ease-of-comprehension of the metaphor with the extensibility of none.
