From: Gleanings
To: Faces
Subject: Gleanings: I got the whole world in my hands

OPENING THANG

Feed mag is starting a multi-part story on globalization. I'm very excited.
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1644

Oh, and I curse reel player on the blog
http://eleganthack.com/blog/2001_03_01_pastblog.shtml#2704024

USABILITY MATTERS

Interview with Jef Raskin-- my latest hero!
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO57255,00.html

NIST WebMetrics tools
http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/webmet/

Jakob says "Traditional phones must die."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010107.html
and points to the
review of the new VisorPhone
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/garf/2001/03/07/visorphone/
(yeah, but he thought micropayments would be here by now, didn't he?)

DESIGN MATTERS

here's one for all you tiny font folks
http://www.futabita.com/
( *very* in "under construction" but still kinda fun)

NEWS

when will people realize we live in an era where nothing is protectable?

Interactive Week: DeCSS 2? DVD code broken again. (tomalak.org)
Last week, a Web site published the pair's seven-line program, which
unscrambles the protection around a DVD so quickly that a movie can play at
the same time, although the film appears choppy. It's the shortest program to
break DVD defenses to date.
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2693768,00.html

ZDNN: From November 16, 1999; DVD encryption break is a good thing. Bruce
Schneier.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2395497,00.html

APROPOS OF NOTHING

I just thought this was cool
http://www.uk.research.att.com/facesataglance.html
but I also love this
http://www.k10k.net/imageUpLoaded/jonathan_keller_lrg.jpg
from the K10K desktop project.
http://www.k10k.net/

5 star hotel on the net
http://www.habbohotel.com/
posted by Christina Wodtke 3/9/2001 07:20:08 AM

From: Gleanings
To: traveling man
Subject: Gleanings: woog-free

OPENING THANG

FIrst of all, I'd like to thank everyone who suggested water as a way to get rid of my wooginess. All this time I thought water was nothing more than a threat to good scotch! and it turns out to be good for you. Who knew?

Secondly, a few Morocco pictures, with very light commentary.
http://nothing-new.com/blog/2001_03_04_nothingnew#2689919

IA MATTERS

Documentation sighting:
http://www.thegrid.net/thorumdesign/portfolio/art/Driven_arch_large.jpg
part of Stacy Thornum's portfolio
http://www.thegrid.net/thorumdesign/

NEWS & COMENTARY

Industry Standard Europe: The English empire.(tomalak.org)
Hastened by the Internet, the language has achieved a dominance that the empire-builders of yesteryear would have recognised with awe.
http://www.thestandardeurope.com/article/display/0,1151,15355,00.html

FEED Magazine: From July 7, 1999; How 19th-Century Politics Determined The
21st-Century. (tomalak.org)
http://www.feedmag.com/daily/dy070799_master.html

Gartner Says Ruling is "Death" For Napster
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_706861,00.html

Medium Risk on NAKEDWIFE Virus
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_706551,00.html

ADVETISING MATTERS

US News: Ads that just don't click-no, literally.
They include longer, thinner ads called "skyscrapers" and larger pop-up boxes.
Giving advertisers a bit more creative leeway, they hope, will drive up
spending. Nice try. The new ads may look funky, but new shapes alone are
unlikely to turn things around.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010312/ads.htm

What of the New Ad Sizes?
They're designed to boost the sagging online advertising industry, and
revive marketers' interests in Web media. But what do Internet architects
really think of the new ad-size guidelines?
http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2536

How to Hire an Interactive Agency
The seminal "Ogilvy on Advertising" suggested some simple steps for the
best way to hire an advertising agency. But decades have passed since
then. Choosing an interactive agency can now be a harrowing -- and
complicated -- decision
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3517.html

APROPOS OF NOTHING

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/

Media Nugget
Jack Kirby is to comic books what Picasso is to fine arts: an insanely prolific visionary who, in the view of many, embodies his medium in the 20th century. He helped to create a number of American comic book genres, including romance, but ultimately found his niche in cosmic power-fables such as The Fantastic Four and The New Gods. The Kirby Collector has grown from a fanzine into the premiere source for all things Kirby.
http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/index.html

Buttoncreation software doesn't kill people, people kill people
http://www.mlanier.f2s.com/apple_request.php

mike at biggerhand.com point to this interesting new take on file swapping
http://filepile.org/

FEEDBACK

Adam of v-2.org writes regarding this article

"W/R/T the larger issue, Dr. Nielsen may or may not know what he's talking
about. (I for one believe the era in which one can make cultural
generalizations and derive meaningful principles from them is over.) But to
assert that an iterative approach to design is foreign to the Japanese
mentality, and especially the Japanese corporate mentality, is prima facie
absurd.

There are examples beyond counting in the history of Japanese commerce of
the use of tightly-coupled iterative loops in the design process, two of the
best-known being Toyota and Sony.

There is even a word in Japanese that means "constant incremental
improvement," which epitomizes the Japanese automobile industry's approach
to design, very much as opposed to Detroit's habit of introducing radically
new metal on a three- or four-year interval.

Every Walkman and fuzzy-logic rice cooker in Akihabara has been through a
process of iterative selection - models with features that were popular last
year will be replaced with a spectrum of models that incorporate those
features, and others. The models among that spectrum that shift units will
become the seed for the next generation, and so on.

True, this is not usability testing except in the grossest and most
scattershot way. But it is certainly iterative; in fact, it bears a strong
resemblance to the way nature does things. I am constantly coming up against
this kind of sloppiness in Nielsen's thinking and pronunciamenti, and I
think it's about time his words are taken less seriously."

EVENTS

***Garage.com's Bootcamp for Startups

March 27-28, 2001
Navy Pier
Chicago, IL

May 7-8, 2001
Chelsea Piers
New York, NY

Do you have what it takes to build a successful company in today's environment?

If you are building a high technology or life sciences business, be sure to attend Garage.com's Bootcamp for Startups conference. In two days of intensive, high-energy sessions, you'll get expert advice from major players on everything from fundraising and business development to recruiting and marketing. Find out how to refine your business model. Discover how to position--and pitch--your startup to investors. Network with peers and potential mentors.

REGISTER TODAY: http://www.garage.com/bootcamp

***M&A's with IP Strategies

Mar 15, 2001
Hyatt Palo Alto 4 - 9 pm.
VC's, Angels, Investment banks, Directors.

Event Details:

+ Panel I
4:00 - 6:00 pm
"IP Strategies" Mel Swan, Sand Hill Angels; others TBA

Panel II,
7:45 - 9:00 pm
"M&A's"
Fred Hoar, Band of Angels; others TBA

Prices:
Both panels and dinner with wine: $68 members; non-members $88
Join and become a member ($48)
http://www.AngelInvestors.org
posted by Christina Wodtke 3/8/2001 08:49:40 AM

From: Gleanings
To: time zoned out
Subject: Gleanings: wired and tired

OPENING THANG

I tired to kill jetlag by forcing myself to keep sleeping when I woke up wide awake at 3 a.m. Now I feel all woogy. Anyone have a cure for wooginess? I'm trying lots and lots of coffee...

IA MATTERS

Building a Web Vocabulary
There's no point in accumulating data if you don't know how to organize it. A Web vocabulary can help you put it all together.
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/750/iq/gen/new/new/gen_new_new_0005/gen_new_new_0005_1.shtml

DESIGN MATTERS

Creative Tension
Some Web designers push the medium. Others scorn the flashy stuff. We asked five leading designers where they stand in this budding religious war.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/030101/creative_content.html?printer=no

It's time to visit typospace again. go on you, git.
http://www.typospace.com/

USABILITY MATTERS

Internet World: Testing Goes Against Japanese Culture. (tomalak.org)
Jakob Nielsen. The designers told us that Japanese clients don't want to hear
what's not working well with their designs, especially in front of all of
their colleagues. Problems in designs are dismissed as failures, and the way
to regain face is to invent an entirely new direction.
http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/03062001d.jsp

APROPOS OF NOTHING

philippe sends this start-up from a 16 yr old who's been coding since he was 10
http://emroth.home.mindspring.com/ribbitfrog/

in these times of trouble, jjg provided a little humor..
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/guests/jjg/tired_wired.html

earth and moon viewer
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/

High court allows KKK to adopt a highway
http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/03/05/scotus.kkk.02/index.html
posted by Christina Wodtke 3/7/2001 08:27:48 AM

From: Gleanings
To: cheerleaders everywhere
Subject: Gleanings: I'm Baaaack

OPENING THANG

I'm baaack! Big kudos to Noel for his excellent stand-in job. His piece on automated testing I found particularly interesting. Then I came across this link

Useit.Com: Retaining Key Staff: What High-Tech Employees Say versus What They Do.
The most important finding in the study was that what employees say will keep
them in the company is quite different from those factors that actually
determine whether they quit. We have seen similar findings in many other
studies of very different issues...
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010304.html

Self-reporting is a key problem, and I suspect one that automated testing with its reliance on surveys will never be able to overcome.

anyhow, I'll put a little something up on Morocco on one of the sites later in the week. it was one hella big adventure...

IA MATTERS

Cooper occasionally designs a concept piece to show the benefits of good
interaction design: The Wayfinder is a PDA application that helps people
find services in airports.
http://www.cooper.com/concept_projects.htm

Shoot . I wanted to do this!
http://www.infotect.com/index.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

CNET: Media feasted on dead dotcoms in 2000
Dotcoms that failed in 2000 were more likely to receive media coverage
when they closed than while they were still in business.
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356511&rel=true

Darwin: Get Over It!
David Weinberger. Now, of course, it's all different. You get your information
electronically, not on glossy paper. You hunt it down yourself, rather than
waiting for it to be delivered to you. But the biggest change is deeper than
that: The Web has broken the corporate monopoly on information.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/030101/contact.html

Dylan Tweney: The real Slim Shady.
The fact is, Napster's just a symptom of a larger issue: online copying.
Whether it's Napster, Gnutella, or what have you, there will always be some
technology giving copyright lawyers fits, because like it or not, the Internet
is all about copying stuff.
http://www.tweney.com/2001/0303copyright.htm

more at tomalak.org

APROPOS OF NOTHING

i'm late on this, but forgive me, i've been in morocco.

all your base belong to us-- don't try to figure it out, head straight for
video 1.
http://www.planetstarseige.com/allyourbase/index.html
vincent defends the meme
http://www.mersault.com/thinking/allyourbrand/

as kirk so aptly put it,
"the best movie in the history of civilization"
a bunch of us goofy folks who are either in long distance relationships or
are single we watched "Bring It On" on valentine's day. If there are great
date movies, then there are also great group movies where a ton of folks can
watch something together. I place this in that family.
interview with the director
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/peytonreed/peytoninterview.html

404 of the day
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/asdfhjkl
from jhp
wait for it!

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/6/2001 07:35:33 AM

OPENING THOUGHTS

Automated usability testing has been popping up on the SIGIA list and among some friends of mine, so I'll throw in my two cents while I have the stage: it scares me. You can't measure qualitative data (much less a a customer relationship) through radio buttons or checkboxes. When Joe Blow is faced with an satisfaction survey or browser-add-on question, and he's trying to answer as quickly as possible, he won't give meaningful answers (whether it's online or face to face). He gives fast, easy answers. Just give him his $25 eheimlich.com certificate and send him on his way.

We should all be skilled at anticipating client needs. If a client tells me they want to measure usability, I've got to know how to address that. While they may be expecting a data-laden spreadsheet of some sort, nothing touches on the real issue at hand quite like showing them a testing-session video clip of their customer waving their arms up in the air, saying "I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do now."

Can automated usability gauge passion like that?

Are we trying to build brands that customers are passionate about?

Ok, let's break for some coffee...

USABILITY MATTERS

Latest Industry Standard has a few articles on Customer Experience...

Quick and Easy: Web surfers just want to get the job done - now. So if you're not helping, you're hurting.

Testing 1-2-3: Easy-to-use Web sites aren't just "designed" - they're the result of extensive usability testing. The good news: It's easier than you think.

Think Small: Designing for the wireless Web's tiny screens is a big hassle, but these tips will help.

NY Times: Revving Up the Search Engines to Keep the E-Aisles Clear. (Tomalak's Realm)
More than two-thirds of online retail sites tested last spring by Forrester Research failed to list the most relevant content in the first page of search results. No wonder sites have suffered from an inability to convert browsers into buyers. Customers are literally being driven away by weak search technology.

Merges: Effective use of forms on websites (Usable Web)
People don't like filling out forms in the real world, and especially not while using the web. Forms are complicated, distracting, and take control away from the user. That is, unless they're designed effectively.

Goal-Directed Design/Cooper Interaction Design (Mersault*Thinking)
We chose to create a design for a PDA application to help people find their way around an airport. We call it the Wayfinder.

AskTog: Top 10 Reasons Why the Apple Dock Sucks

APROPOS OF NOTHING

MSNBC: Video gallery shows quake, damage
Shaking, rattling and rolling in the Pacific Northwest

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/6/2001 07:32:34 AM

OPENING THANG

One more week 'til Christina, your regular editor, is back with her own flair for picking-and-gleaning in IAland. Until then, everything's my fault: send Gleanings-related insights to noel@carboniq.com.

DESIGN MATTERS

Good stuff over at Noise Between Stations today:
"The wonderful aspect of information architecture for a hopeless generalist like myself is how it ties into so many other facets of product design and business. It's impossible to separate it from strategy, project management, engineering, and the other product design crafts.On the strategy front, Fast Company scores with the article Michael Porter's Big Ideas."

Michael Porter's Big Ideas (Fast Company)
"The world's most famous business-school professor is fed up with CEOs who claim that the world changes too fast for their companies to have a long-term strategy. If you want to make a difference as a leader, you've got to make time for strategy. "

Reinventing an art form online (Apple, from Xblog)
"'All in color for a dime.' That was the phrase used to describe comic books during what is now seen as its Golden Age, the 1930s and 40s. If artist and writer Scott McCloud has his way, that phrase will be true again and comics will enter a new Golden Age, but this time it will happen online, not at a corner newsstand."

Scott McCloud's site:

ADVERTISING MATTERS

Wireless Advertisers Fight For Consumers' Favor (TechWeb)
"While most advertising is centered around finding the "hot button" to motivate a consumer to buy, wireless advertisers must still work to persuade mobile users simply to accept their ads, insiders say."

Advertising Age: Advertorial seeps into search sites. (Tomalak's Realm)
"A few years ago, the idea of tainting search results with paid listings set
off an industry fury. But in today's economic climate, what once was
unthinkable by the most successful search engines is now being accepted as
status quo and a means to eking out desperately needed online ad revenue."

New Alternatives to Banner Ads (NY Times)
"Mr. Boyce said one of his chief concerns was keeping the sites' pages light enough to load quickly. Like many other online publishers, Snowball frequently carries four ads on its pages, and that can clutter the presentation and slow the load times, he said. In March, when Snowball's starts using the redesigned sites with the new ads, the pages will display just one ad and will take less time to load than the current four-ad pages. 'So the user's experience will actually improve in a number of respects,' Mr. Boyce said."

NEWS

Red Hat Dares MS to Debate (Wired News)
"A Microsoft executive's recent quip about the purportedly un-American characteristics of non-proprietary software did more than send open-source fans into a tizzy. It also sent companies supporting the Linux operating system a clear signal: You've become important enough for Microsoft to attack directly. "

High-speed rate hikes may be on the horizon (News.com)
"After rates have remained unchanged at about $40 a month for the past few years, industry analysts and executives say a confluence of several events may mean rate increases are on the way."

Napster Said to Hurt CD Sales (NY Times)

APROPOS OF NOTHING

In the need for some quick publicity? There's no better way than creating a virus.

posted by Christina Wodtke 3/6/2001 07:32:26 AM

OPENING THANG

Two websites in a row today gave me the "Rate This Page" DHTML doo-hickey found here:
If you haven't seen it around, it's an OpinionLab rate-this system graphic that literally follows you through a site, such as Business 2.0 or the TED site, and garners user feedback based on a system of pluses and minuses. The basic instructional copy: "use the scale to rate the page." But unfortunately they're not asking you/me/us what to rate. Design? Content? Relevance? Utility? Hmm, I'm not sure -- just click a plus or minus. Seems specious. Can I rate the tool that's doing the rating?

IA & USABILITY MATTERS

The Role of Flow in Web Design (Noise Between Stations)
"I've always liked the concept of Flow, which is when your skills are balanced with your challenges so that you are neither bored nor stressed. Now Scott Berkun has published The Role of Flow in Web Design"

More on flow.
Book:
Reader notes:

How a blind person will "see" your Web page (WebWord Usability Blog)
"How you construct the pages can mean the difference between a tedious and obscure rendering of the information in the page, and one that gets the message across."

Where'd It Go? It Was Just Here! Managing Assets for the Next Age of Real-Time Strategy Games. (Captain Cursor)
Content management is not just a problem faced by us Web developers."

WIRELESS MATTERS

Could Microsoft be on to something with its Stinger phones? They promise that all-in-one solution we've all been waiting for -- cell phone, PC, GPS, WOPR, etc., and I'm sure they're spending heavily on R&D, but I've little faith that a useful solution will come from a company that, when it comes to handhelds, never met a feature it didn't like.

Microsoft invades the airwaves
"Imagine taking a Pocket PC with all the features crammed inside and shrinking it down to a size slightly smaller than a modern-day cellular phone - and then you can begin to have an idea of what Microsoft is previewing at the 3GSM World Congress wireless show in Cannes, France."

Meantime, HP wants in on the action as they show off their new Journada cell-phone/PDA combo in Cannes.

OmniSky Releases Preliminary Results of Wireless Usability Study (Hanna Hodge UX Blog)
"The results of a the first major usability study conducted by Telephia for OmniSky. The results seem to be that handheld PDAs are superior to handheld phones in terms of time-on-task and click count. Hmmmm, not a big surprise!"

WORK MATTERS

>From the SIGIA list: wanna work in Italy?

APROPOS OF NOTHING

I can't stop listening to Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate. Neither should you.
Notes (with samples):
Buy (with samples):
Email Taj Mahal: taj@hawaiian.net

................................................................
Sick of me? Go to and unsubscribe.
Can't get enough of me? Go there and read my 'blog.
Send comments to your temp editor: noel@carboniq.com.
Hire:
posted by Christina Wodtke 3/6/2001 07:32:11 AM

OPENING THANG

Christina may be in Morocco for two weeks, but she's never very far away. Lou Rosenfeld's interview of her is up and running at the ACIA site.

BIZ MATTERS

+ + Customer service. Kmart signs a deal with IBM to increase checkout time by "up to 20 percent" in its offline stores. Take heed, they've got a metric that matters to them. But I'm curious about the other massive piece of the checkout equation: the humans who have to work with those machines and the training they'll get.

Meanwhile, back online...
>From Tomalak's Realm: "NY Times: Online Companies' Customer Service Is Hardly a Priority."
"But they are also motivated by the bottom line: providing phone support is expensive, so Internet companies under mounting pressure to achieve profitability are adopting more economical automated systems. Critics say customers may be the losers."

IA MATTERS

+ + Prototyping. An early rule from communications 101: show, don't just tell. People prefer flash before devouring their fishwrap. In other words, we're often drawn to pictures more than we are to words. IBM's developers found that out the hard way during some recent user testing: "Users were so drawn to the visuals that we had difficulty in getting feedback on critical questions about content and navigation," says a white paper at the site. Fortunately they've served up a few suggestions on testing their essential stuff early on.

>From xblog: A divided approach to Web site design: Separating content and visuals for rapid results
"A well-designed Web site fuses great content and effective visuals, among other elements. Ironically, integrating these elements too early in the design process can mask problems that might otherwise be detected early, and lengthen the design cycle. This paper describes a way to shorten your design cycle by getting focused, early user feedback on the different layers of your design."

+ + Email. Many of us self-taught (or is it "self-discovered?") usability types have a hard time admitting that anyone in (shh) marketing has anything to teach us. Lo the fool who follows such a path. Case in point: email subject lines. A long time ago in a world far away lived something similar in the form of direct mail. Objective: get people to read your missive rather than toss it in the garbage. Means: write something of relevance on the outside of the envelope. We've got a thing or two to learn from a guy named Robert Bly. Nonetheless...

>From xblog: "The Usability of Email Subject Lines"
"Email is very important to a lot of people and companies. However, very little usability research has been done on email, specifically email subject lines. This article is a summary of a research report written by WebWord on the topic and contains several results. The basic finding from the research is that effective email subject lines are very short, very meaningful, and personal."

+ + Ugly works. And this is why so often we cringe at "marketing:" because we hate to admit that fuchsia and lime green may in fact be the best colors for the "money button." Time to get over it. Better yet, time to challenge ourselves to think in terms of usable and beautiful.
>From Good Experience -- follow the "fuchsia" thread dated 2/19:

DESIGN MATTERS

+ + Architecture. Zipped down to L.A. this past weekend, unfortunately just one single day before the Getty opened up a new exhibition. "Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe" sounds promising. Going? I'd love a report.

APROPOS OF NOTHING

+ + Downloads: the Internet Moving Image Archive
"The films on this site focus on twentieth-century North American history and culture, and also include some coverage of the broader world. Centered around everyday life, culture, industry and institutions in the United States from 1905 to 1969, this collection presents a wide range of images that have not generally been available to the public until now.


posted by Christina Wodtke 3/6/2001 07:32:01 AM

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