Don Norman lays down the law about what each really means. A couple of years old, but this stuff never goes out of style.

In POET [Psychology of Everyday Things], I argued that understanding how to operate a novel device had three major dimensions: conceptual models, constraints, and affordances. These three concepts have had a mixed reception.

To me, the most important part of a successful design is the underlying conceptual model. This is the hard part of design: formulating an appropriate conceptual model and then assuring that everything else be consistent with it. I see lots of token acceptance of this idea, but far to little serious work. The power of constraints has largely been ignored. To my great surprise, the concept of affordance was adopted by the design community, especially graphical and industrial design. Alas, yes, the concept has caught on, but not always with complete understanding. My fault: I was really talking about perceived affordances, which are not at all the same as real ones.

Gripe: yeah, a flash movie of stick figures killing each other is just grrrreat. But let’s stop linking to it like it’s the greatest animation you’ve seen in weeks.This is.
via Textism

Nice presentation of ideas on wayfinding, structures, space, etc. Great book recommendations too.

What Does Usability Mean: Looking Beyond ‘Ease of Use’
Usability Of Artefacts [yes, that's how the article spells it]

One of the problems with being a usability specialist is the narrow understanding most people have of what usability is, does, and can do. Both of these articles are among the better examples of giving a more holistic definition of usability.

by Mark Bernstein
from Noise Between Stations

This is bound to change, but the general idea of this weblog is to cover matters reating to usability and user-centered design as well as larger issues involving experience design and the user experience in general. In addition, I’ll be listing some of the other great but random stuff on the web as well as the occasional rant or personal tidbit.

There are several great user experience weblogs, Elegant Hack and PeterMe among the better ones (and those two are good kids, too), but I’d like to keep things a bit more down-in-the-dirt and pragmatic around here, while also keeping a greater emphasis on matters relating to usability.This will likely fail, as blogging tends to provoke reflection on higher levels, but I wanted to throw that out as a goal anyway.

I’m a generalist by disposition, a biologist by training, and a musician by whatever. Keep that in mind as you read — there’s a pattern here, somewhere.

Let me know what you think about this weblog, good or bad. And you: (yes, you) start publishing as well, whether it’s an entire website or just a music review. You’re not watching TV or reading a book, you’re participating in an online communal experience – start acting like it.