tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32422662008-05-07T13:36:26.835-05:00Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comBlogger385125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-79109331314690690902008-05-07T10:38:00.004-05:002008-05-07T13:36:27.064-05:00

Topping the list of things neither you nor your CIO ever want to know... How To Master Microsoft Windows System Restore Points (CIO Magazine) The fact that a magazine aimed at CIO's and technology leadership feels this kind of article relevant strikes me as a very telling statement on the state of technology today. See also: - Anti-virus tools - Backup software - Version Control tools - PC

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-75897218845819573502008-04-21T12:07:00.001-05:002008-04-21T12:10:58.155-05:00

Stupid Phrases Only a Tech Analyst Could Love "Consolidated Web 2.0 Market" - Where do they come up with this stuff? "The buying market for Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networks will grow to $4.6 billion in 2013, predicts a Forrester Report released today." "the number of vendors offering Web 2.0 software will likely shrink during the next few years as vendors such as

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-61240312804662899052008-04-18T10:10:00.005-05:002008-04-18T10:47:04.259-05:00

Disconnect for a day! Reading this article:Movement grows for digital day of rest, I had to chuckle. Every year I make a point to vacation in a place where I absolutely can't get online. My favorite is the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota (Quetico on the Canadian side)...it's glorious. No electricity, no Internet, no cell phone coverage in most areas, no running water, no TV, no radio...

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-23665231550607815862008-04-10T18:00:00.001-05:002008-04-10T08:41:41.693-05:00

A Flickr Collection of Search Patterns Lou Rosenfeld of Bloug fame alerted me to a great collection of screenshots from different web sites that focuses on different search and search results patterns. It's cool to see a set of examples that allows designers to see how other sites provide search interaction without having to "root around" on the web. Peter Morville deserves credit for putting

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-86817888987825745512008-04-09T15:09:00.000-05:002008-04-09T15:09:34.412-05:00

What does it take to delight customers? My good friend Dan from Apogee in Hong Kong posted a nice, succinct article on how to delight your customers. Of course, it's not a big stretch from delighting customers to delighting employees, volunteers, members, or other "users". But if you're reading this you probably already realize that Dan's maxim can be applied broadly when designing. You'll

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-71462792164714066722008-04-04T12:10:00.000-05:002008-04-04T12:10:24.350-05:00

The Simple Truths of Service This is an inspiring video about a grocery store bagger named Johnny, and how he changed his world. The Simple Truths of Service

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-79898970541134771672008-01-16T15:41:00.000-06:002008-01-16T15:43:42.471-06:00

User Experience Specialist: One of Best Careers for 2008 U.S. News & World Report has announced 31 Careers With Bright Futures for 2008, saying the careers chosen "offer strong outlooks and high job satisfaction." Here's their two-part profile of a Usability/User Experience Specialist career: - Executive Summary - US News and World Report - A Day in the Life Of course, UX and usability jobs

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-85043116515731972672007-07-24T15:25:00.000-05:002007-07-24T15:25:56.579-05:00

A funny read If Architects Had to Work Like Programmers is a good, short read poking fun at how business clients sometimes treat technology folks.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-66977364882911148132007-06-05T15:15:00.000-05:002007-06-05T15:50:51.947-05:00

Last Name First - Stupid Web Forms Northwest Airlines provides a great example of one of my pet peeves: forms that ask for information the way the company (or their computer) wants it rather than the way a real human is used to providing it. Northwest's online Check In form should be really simple. You only have to enter three (3) things to check in for a flight. What surprised me so much

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-41605509534528025712007-06-01T15:23:00.000-05:002007-06-01T15:26:55.336-05:00

Make It a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood I just read 15 Reasons Mister Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever. For those of you who grew up watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, it's well worth the read. If you don't know much about Fred Rogers, you should read it. He was an amazing person, and helped shape many a young child's mind. Mr. Rogers provided a safe, peaceful, comforting learning

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-31228695846220432622007-04-27T14:23:00.000-05:002007-04-27T14:23:08.062-05:00

Google Image Labeler A great example of getting users to provide metadata ("tags") if you make it fun. The Google Image Labeler makes tagging images into a game you play in real-time with another user online. You get "points"...and maybe some entertainment along the way. Hmmm...does it have potential for use on intranets of large companies? Possibly.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-10177677079880845432007-04-17T21:24:00.000-05:002007-04-17T21:24:51.285-05:00

A New Approach to Writing for the Web No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July You could say the author takes a new interpretation of the term "web appliances."

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-19693162335936410342007-04-17T16:05:00.000-05:002007-04-23T09:54:38.278-05:00

Sitemaps are Stupid (Guides are good) I've thought that sitemaps are a Bad Idea for about 10 years now. Ten year later I finally got around to writing a blog post about why I think they are stupid. Here are a few things to consider: 1. A sitemap is usually just a replication of the existing site navigation. A sitemap (aka "site map") takes all the main navigation items, and maybe a second level

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-15113875976501060942007-03-30T09:13:00.001-05:002007-03-30T09:14:04.751-05:00

Thatsalottaroadsigns Signs Originally uploaded by acmelucky777.21 North going once, twice...sorry ma'am, you just missed your exit.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-20356600495197549482007-03-29T16:26:00.001-05:002007-03-29T16:32:46.886-05:00

Friendly Wizard of the Day Unused icons where? Originally uploaded by allan.rojas.The desktop cleanup wizard will zap those pesky unused icons that you worry about every day.Now if they'd just come up with an "Email Inbox Cleanup Wizard" that throws all your unopened, unanswered and/or unwanted email into a folder on you desktop...THAT would be really helpful.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-30987129669466284162007-03-29T09:33:00.000-05:002007-03-29T10:09:57.020-05:00

Command Line vs. Graphical User Interfaces (or "Do you know what you want, or would you like the soup of the day?") A recent poster to a usability email list pointed out that command line interfaces can be more efficient than GUIs once they are learned. He had even found a web site that offers a command line for web browsing. http://www.yubnub.org/. This brought to my mind a few analogies

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-27480713745585517002007-03-22T12:27:00.000-05:002007-03-22T12:27:59.351-05:00

Samples and Stats There's some good stuff in this UXmatters article: User Research Doesn’t Prove Anything. The sections on sampling and statistics are very nice summaries for UX practitioners. I've met many UX practitioners who either: - never learned these subjects in school - forgot the relevant lessons - think that you can gloss over these points in business Being accurate is important.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-49334377536844013422007-03-16T10:16:00.000-05:002007-03-16T10:52:58.941-05:00

Web 2.0 If you haven't seen this video from YouTube entitled "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us"...you should. It's notable not just for the points the author is making, but for the really cool techniques used. The style is simple and great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE Let me just add that... We'll need to rethink usability. Additional Resources: - Wikipedia: Web 2.0 - AJAX

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1171301195997115402007-02-12T11:26:00.000-06:002007-02-12T11:26:36.203-06:00

Your next "car"? BodyRite: HyperBike. I wonder if this contraption comes with drink holders or an mp3 player...

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1169825327726240772007-01-26T09:28:00.000-06:002007-02-11T15:26:40.963-06:00

2007 Bad Usability Calendar Check it out (PDF) Read about it here

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1169565462700769412007-01-23T09:17:00.000-06:002007-01-23T09:17:42.860-06:00

Joel's review of Dreaming in Code Joel Spolsky's post The Big Picture has some great UI design points to make: First, that you need to DESIGN first, and that many projects fail because people jump right into coding without a design: "This is a particularly dangerous trap when it comes to software development. You get some big picture idea in your head for what you want to do, and it all seems

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1168988346509194432007-01-16T16:59:00.000-06:002007-01-17T16:17:19.096-06:00

Stop, Look, Listen In Berlin, a 46-year-old German motorist driving along a busy road suddenly veered to the left and ended up stuck on a railway track, because his satellite navigation system told him to. When the friendly voice from his satnav told him to turn left, he did what he was 'ordered' to do and turned his Audi left up over the curb and onto the track of a local streetcar line.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1165967236993485222006-12-12T17:47:00.000-06:002006-12-12T17:47:17.376-06:00

15 Ways You Should NOT Have Fun with Your Wii Some entertaining graphics to decode: Gizmodo: The Japanese Wii Safety Manual is Crazy Thanks Paul

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1164662104741443902006-11-27T15:15:00.000-06:002006-12-01T10:44:14.326-06:00

Spamarama 2006: Are you attending? According to a Postini press release, spam has skyrocketted 59% from September to November, and 91% of all email is now spam. "Postini processed nearly 70 billion email connections from September to November, and saw a 59 percent spike in spam over that period. Unwanted email is currently 91 percent of all email, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3242266.post-1163606460299538592006-11-15T10:01:00.000-06:002006-11-15T10:01:00.386-06:00

Nice Information Visualization Blog Junk Charts is a neat blog that critiques charts, and then goes futher in some cases into redesigning them. If you enjoy Edward Tufte's work, you'll like this. Thanks to Peter B.

Lyle Kantrovichnoreply@blogger.com