brightly colored food

After interviewing a number of first year undergrads about their use of IM and blogs last semester, this article definitely echoed some of the things I heard…

Just stumbled across UsabilityNet. Not a bad little overview of usability, with a nice table of methods (though their typography could use some work). Similar to Usability.gov, but from the EU.

Kim Goodwin from Cooper has a nice short article that gives some insight on analyzing data gathered from ethnographic inquiry in order to produce more valuable personas.

Those who really want to delve into issues of web navigation might want to check out this Masters thesis: Transitional Volatility in Web Navigation: Usability Metrics and User Behavior. It’s by David Danielson, and his thesis was advised by Terry Winograd and Clifford Nass.

You might also want to check out his list of Important Works for Web Navigation.

From Surfmind

In Jakob’s latest column, he describes what he thinks makes a good usability specialist. I agree with his points about experience and ability at detecting patterns, but I don’t buy his claim that the ability to arrive at a “conceptual insight that can drive the design” is one of the most important skills to have - it seems that the usability specialist is acting as a designer at that point, rather than an evaluator.

It’s a subtle point, but clearly differentiating your observations and patterns surmised from any of your design recommendations is one of the most valuable ways to gain credibility with team members. It’s fine to serve in the roles of a usability specialist and an interaction designer/information architect, but it’s worth making a definite distinction between the two roles that are being played (even if many of the skills are the same).

Experience counts for so much. If you have the means, work with older, more experienced (but not dogmatic) usability professionals. The mix of doing a lot of testing alongside someone who’s a seasoned vet is worth…so…much.

He also plugs NNG’s 230 Tips and Tricks for Better Usability Testing. It’s good, not life-changing, but definitely worth buying if it’s on the company, and much more concise than most of worthwhile usability books on the shelves. If you’re allergic to Jakob (I’m not, but some I know are a bit sensitive to his sensibilities), note that it’s written by Rolf Molich, who has done some great work of his own.

Found another good article called Affordances: Clarifying and Evolving a Concept [pdf] that describes differences between J.J. Gibson’s original concept of affordances and how it was later extended by Don Norman. It gets a bit nitpicky about how each has used the term affordance, and goes so far as to do a literature review on usage of the term affordance in various CHI Proceedings, but it’s worth reading if you use the term, and it’s also a great jumping point to other literature on affordances.

If you aren’t going to read the whole article, here’s what the authors define as the main differences:

Gibson’s Affordances

Killing time waiting for class to start, I’m reading a book on visual perception. It’s covering J.J. Gibson’s theories about perception, which revolve around what he called “affordances” - yep, the same ones Don Norman writes about. Don Norman has two good articles that clarify and extend the use of the term for the design realm, and they’re both worth a read. Another article on affordances in software design discusses in more detail why interface elements are “perceived affordances” rather than “real affordances”, an important distinction. Sorta makes you wonder about the perceptual advantages for tangible computing interfaces - does anyone know of research in this area? Also, Gibon’s work on affordances came out in the late 70’s. Does anyone with more of a background in cognitive or neuroscience know if/how his theories have been updated?

Here is a selection of quotes from Gibson and others about affordances. Gibson’s take on affordances as being crucial to visual perception, and the emphasis on the relationship between the viewer and the object that’s perceived as having an affordance, especially when considered with the surrounding context, set him apart from most others who’ve studied visual perception, almost to the philosophical level - read the quote from Abram toward at the bottom. Here’s some related info on information pickup theory, the general theory of perception that affordances are based upon. And if you really want to keep dorking out, here’s a google search on gibson and affordances.

Elan recently linked to the Guide to Flirting, from the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford. He linked to it because, well, he’s a flirt (and he’d be the first to admit as much). But it got me thinking a bit, and it’s worth a link for a couple of other reasons…

BBC article on a redesign of cellphone keypads - it does an elegant job of interspersing two separate sets of keys amongst each other. The article mentions that the designer was the head of human factors at Apple for five years. I wonder if this will actually end up on any mobiles….

Well, after months of work, it’s up.

Boxes and Arrows

Christina put it nicely: “sometimes you can find content; sometimes you have to go make content.”

If I might toot my horn for a sec, check out my interview with Jakob Nielsen. It was great interviewing him - like most people, he’s a lot more engaging one-on-one than onstage at a conference.

We did the interview when he was doing a seminar at Intuit a couple of months back. I felt like we covered a lot of topics that he hasn’t really had a chance to address elsewhere. The interviewing gig was fun, so I may be doing more of it in the future.

Hope you like the site. I’ll be carrying out ongoing usability testing and gathering feedback, so feel free to drop me your comments.