March 2000

Interesting article on site redesign focusing on QuickLoans. Summary: As usual, user testing is the best source of design improvements Don’t listen to users say they want – it’s often not what really satisfies them. Instead, watch what they do and satisfy their demonstrated need. Add meaning to functionality and context to content by associating…

Funny how non-techies like my family will plunk down 50 bucks now and then to buy a funny looking electronic toy that does funny things when you interact with it, and yet would not think of plunking down $200 for a truly useful PDA. Of course there’s the usual reason of learning curves and not…

On my company’s global intranet home page, we have an area called “Soupcan” which is essentially a multi-user blog. Today someone posted a link to this article with the caption, “China to U.S. & Taiwan: Let’s NUKE it out!” Now I’ve been known to laugh at some sick stuff when meant in jest, and appreciate…

Iridium asks court to let satellites burn. Ridiculous. This is the reason, as Matt Groening says, we don’t yet have amusement parks on the moon. Fucking capitalism.

Neat reason for a publicity web site! The KingDome Implosion. I like the game, wonder if it’s based in real physics or game physics?

Somewhat interesting article about pinball machines in this month’s Wired. Calling it “warm entertainment” because you still have your hands on a partially mechanical object. I bet at some point the trend in computers to become convergent and small will reverse and find a niche for warmer computer interaction. We like that tactile/auditory feeling of…

Reading The Making of the Atom Bomb, and one of the over-riding issues during the development was the importance of considering several techniques in parallel in order to speed production. In so many situations I notice a huge tendency to try and find the one right answer, instead of coming up with a few great…

I was going to vent, aka bitch, about a particular client and our working relationship, but I’ve decided to be positive and instead think of ways of diplomatically improving the situation. But I had to write something here just to feel relieved. Ahhhhhh, that’s better.

Neat, someone combined two of my favorite research topics, Auditory Interfaces and Information design, in Auditory Information Design.

I was actually in church last Sunday worrying about some work I had to get done for a big presentation the following Tuesday when I heard this great quote preceeding the sermon: Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the…

Anyone reading this going to CHI 2000? Lemme know.

Give ya one guess which one’s my comp day off:

Interesting white paper on “Experience Architecture(TM)” from Viant. They’re passing it off as something new, but it’s really what the rest of us are doing, just from a different angle. We don’t do information architecture instead of experience architecture, rather, we do the experience architecture first and then create information architecture for each portion of…

A month or two ago BICYCLING magazine published a story about a one-legged bicycle messenger in New York City. They talked about him like he was a household name, though I’d never heard of him or seen him. Last week, traveling in a cab, I saw him down near Wall St. It boggles my mind…

Pope in Historic Plea to Pardon Church Sins. ‘Bout time. A good first step. Perhaps this step needed to be taken before they could be more specific, such as apologizing for not condemning the Nazi holocaust during WWII.