A particularly good review in Boxes and Arrows this week, Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment In which messieurs Merholz and Hersch take NNG to task
"the report methodology is so fundamentally flawed that any financial analyst worth her salt would immediately question its findings."
Bad statistics analysis/ DOE procedure is probably the worst critique that could be levels against something that purports to be quantifiable. The book might still be useful, perhaps, if one wanted to wave it about while talking to management since the Nielsen norman names are two of the few known outside the practice. But then, you'd be chancing the managers might read it and then you'd look foolish. There was much grumbling around Y! when our copy made the rounds. I still feel Cost Justifying Usability is the place to place your dough, be you designer or evaluator. After all, after usability testing reveals the problems, it's design that fixes them. This marriage is the magic.
Larger questions arise, of course. As the "ROI us" movement gains steam, a few dissenters start to push back. Designers are often once removed from critical design decisions, and have trouble owning fully the results of their work (sometimes to their benefit, sometimes to their detriment). Design also often results in effects that are subtle and hard to measure, or need be measured over longer stretches of time-- something hard to convince people to do in this ever faster paced environment.
Intense and frequent measuring also can result in making design a slave to tiny jumps in quick-numbers, and an attention to the page as a series of tiny components to be optimized. Looking at Amazon lately, I wonder if their increasingly disjointed design is a result of their A-B testing. Sometimes you have to step back from the daily data and look at the design system, and make the leap of faith that a coherent design will make a long term positive user experience and go for it.
Now obviously one can choose ot measure this too. One can run longer tests, and discover if what I've said is true. But will companies do so? If you practice data-driven design, what data drives you? Is it the right data? Is it enough data? Is it good data?
I've spending a bit more time online again, remembering the pleasures of using the computer for messing around-- even surfing-- and I've noticed a need for a couple features, one simple, one not-so.
I'm addicted to reading The Julie/Julia Project. But, like my experience with a couple other excellent serials (Bloggus Ceasari and Dive Into Mark for instance), I encounter two great frustrations.
1. Where to begin? Digging one's way to the first post of a serial is ridiculously hard. If you're doing a good job with a serial, you will get late-coming fans, as the publicity gets out. Why not make it easy for others to get caught up with a nice "start here" or "first post" button (and yes, I'm repeating myself... and ceasari did indeed respond)
2. How to bookmark? I suddenly appreciate I.E.'s nomenclature "favorites" because I now need true bookmarks--- a way to note this is the place in the serial where I left off reading, so I can pick it up again. And this bookmark, unlike Netscape bookmarks, needs to be movable and eventually disposable.
One for the lazyweb? They would both be nice MT additions...
The oddest thing googlealert has brought me is "literature reinvented by three frenetic red white and blue stay-at-home moms ".
to which I mostly say "huh?" and "why me?" but considering previous forays into poetry perhaps I shouldn't ask.
"Hey Christina - You've been quiet of late, is YAHOO! burying you alive?"
Over a year ago, I hurt my back. I don't know if it was something I pulled, or if it was easy to pull something because of the crazy hours I was working on the new Yahoo! search, but I went down like a ton of bricks. Pain killers, unable to move, ice, heat, physical therapy and so on. The thing is, I never really got better. I spent thanksgiving flat on my back with my grandfather, his heating pad and his scotch to help me through it. I spent several other holiday days flat on my back as well.
I never knew what would set it off. One day I went for a bike ride, the next day I was staring at the ceiling all day. Went to the grocery store one day for ice, spent the floor with ice on my back the next. Sleep wrong, get out of the car wrong, work at the computer a few hours too long... and I'm back on the floor. I've been living my life on a funny edge for a long time, never knowing what would have me back on the floor.
Well, I may be slow to get an idea through my head, but I'm not hopeless. I started doing the stretches (finally) my physical therapist taught me every single night. it seemed to help. I noticed they were rather like yoga stretches. So I added a couple more stretches from a yoga book, and that went well. I could sit longer, walk better... so I started adding a few more yoga moves. If anything felt uncomfortable, I didn't do it. Later, as I grew stronger, I tried the harder positions once more and found I could do them.
In the last month I've been doing yoga twice a day, both for one to one and a half hours each time. This is a huge amount of my waking time; time I usually spent writing on the blog, or for B&A or reading... but you know, I can't really regret it.
I can touch my toes. My downward dog is just beautiful. I enjoy saluting the sun. I kayaked last weekend. I rode my bike to work and back (16 miles) for the first time since the injury, and I felt great.
I feel in my body. And my body feels like a good place to be again. And everyday it's a bit better.
So excuse me if I am not blogging much these days. I'm under repair.
The Onion | Bowling-Alley Owner Wants TV Ad To Look 'More Matrix-y'
Is this your client?
""Is there any way we can work in those falling green letters or something?" Dieber said. "And I'd love to throw in some of those levitating effects. There could be a shot of me in the snack bar, and I jump into the air and just stay there while the camera spins all around me. That'd grab people's attention.""
If I am proud of anything AIfIA has done this year, I think this is it (and I'm proud of many things we've done...). For mysterious reasons, EH has always gotten a lot of international visitors, and I know that IA is not USIA. And that folks in outer countries are going through the same issues, worries and problems that the US folks are. So to know someone out there is translating the articles that helped me struggle through the big IA questions brings me great joy.
It's a small collection right now, but if you are bilingual, take the time to translate an article that helped you make sense of it all... give back.