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January 2001
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favorites a candid shot of fellow IA andi lewis, and she looked down to explain an aspect of her architecture. we met at potrero brewing company, near IQHQ. We musta talked about information architecture about ten-twenty minutes before we moved on to more intriguing concepts, such as unrequited desire, east coast snow boarding vs. west coast, the dangers of matchmaking, and how the leather coat she is wearing is like "buttah". 1/28/2001 08:15:50 PM | link
Yahoo 1996Yahoo - A Guide to WWW1/27/2001 12:06:54 PM | link lots of dots
1/27/2001 10:31:10 AM | link
tools and monkeysIn regards to bad design is good, peterme shot me a note asking I look at the first 99% bad post that restarted the flash holy war, and he was right. It's a well thought out bit of reasoning.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. 1/24/2001 08:35:34 AM | link dots are the new swoosh 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!
1/24/2001 08:17:57 AM | link
do they have something against the greeks?The whitehouse site left up FPO text upon launch (FYI FPO means for placement only) Luckily Brian Westbrook captured it for eternity: Insert something meaningful here1/23/2001 11:45:18 AM | link bad design is goodafter reading this excellent article on v-2, 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 category.) So what. The revolution will produce failures and successes, but in the end we'll have a better, livelier medium for it. 1/23/2001 08:42:30 AM | link
ui victimthis sucks. I can't say an more than that. when you are trying to remove a virus from your computer that is destroying your files-- your photos and your music-- you kinda want to know how to fix the damn thing. Little interface bloopers aren't so funny anymore. can i have a scrollbar, please?
addendum-- i won. killed the virus, mostly thanks to google. 1/21/2001 11:02:58 PM | link small world 2So 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 1/21/2001 11:27:20 AM | link
it's a small world after allrecieved this charming mail in my inbox this morning----- Original Message ----- 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. 1/20/2001 09:37:15 AM | link
future looks hazy, try again laterReading 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 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 It's January again and time to adopt a wise countenance, stick the 1/14/2001 08:16:55 AM | link
yet anotherresource I never valued properly until I needed it. the usability toolbox gave me what I needed when I wanted to find citations on techniques I'd long been using... but you don't care about that. What you want to know is this is where you can find out about heurisitic evaluation, contectual inquiry, and cognitive walk throughs.1/7/2001 09:13:30 AM | link
fuck metaphorMetaphor is seductive. It's an easy shorthand to explain things that have never existed before (such as the desktop model). It's almost impossible to avoid for an interface designer when translating something that previously existed in the real world online. But it hinders. It encourages bad icons. It creates limited or inaccurate expectations for the behavior of the interface.(the first time I used a Mac after years of PC use, I couldn't figure out how to get the CD-ROM out of the CD drive. Someone said "Drag the CD icon into the trash can." I said "You've got to be kidding") Of course metaphor can be used positivly, to aid understanding. But there is so much bad metaphor out there. Sure the southwest airline ticket booth is gone, but Denny's lives on. Look at the top 20 websites, and ask yourself, how many of these base their interaction design on metaphor? And then next time you design a site, ask yourself, can I do this without a metaphor? Can I just make the thing the thing? 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. 1/2/2001 08:56:01 AM | link
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