Beth’s Left Field Idea
I’ve been trying not to pay too much attention to the whole Interaction Architects brouha that Mr. Tog has incited amongst the easily excitable. But it pulls me back in, and now I find myself linking to Beth’s reasonable recommendations regarding what to do about promoting this nascent profession of ours. Ah, such navel-gazing. I [...]
Interaction Architect Job Title Generator
Thank you Molly, you’re wonderful. Interaction Architect Job Title Generator My favorites so far: Observation Designer, User-friendly Manipulator, Coalescence Deviser, and Interaction Philosopher.
Switch, Ye Coders
Here’s a nice overview of some of the main user interface differences between apps for Windows and OS X. It’s well-written, and it’s a nice overview if you don’t want to read all of the Apple HI Guidelines. What’s especially interesting is the emphasis on how a good interface promotes the brand of the product [...]
Bait and Switch
If you haven’t already seen it, Kevin Fox of fury.com has an excellent bit of parody in response to Apple’s decision to cut off everyone’s .mac email addresses/accounts who won’t pony up for the full service. It’s called “Bait and Switch”. Also check out his response to all of the comments he’s received. How much [...]
Nude Architects?
As Andrew noted, Web Techniques has now changed their name to New Architect. Their subtitle is “Internet Strategies for Technology Leaders”. Maybe we’ll be calling codewarriors and other technologists “New Architects”; perhaps this is their big landgrab in the architecture namespace…. Did you know that in Texas it’s illegal to have “Engineer” in your job [...]
SuperHumanism Online
On May 29th, 2001, the D&AD SuperHumanism conference took place in London, convened by Richard Seymour of Seymour Powell. The event brought designers and other professional creative people together with historians, social theorists, technologists and policy makers. Their shared goal? To reassert human values over the technological and commercial ones that sometimes seem to have [...]
Do as they do, not as they say
George Olsen has some thoughtful commentary on the latest Alertbox, which is about watching what users do rather than listening to what users say. He points out that what Jakob is really taking to task are the surveys, questionaires, and other marketing-type approaches which simply test preference rather than user behavior. I couldn’t agree more. [...]
Focus Pocus
Focus groups have lost their focus. Once a cutting-edge technique for probing the psyche of the public, they’ve outlived their usefulness. They are like a tired magician performing the same tricks week after week in the Catskills. Call ’em focus-pocus groups, for after a company has conducted hundreds of focus-group interviews, its likelihood of uncovering [...]