Pieter Desmet is doing some great work in designing for and measuring emotions. I particularly like PrEmo, a visual scale of facial expressions for a user to specify an emotion they’re feeling.
James Kalbach, danke f�r den Hypertext-Link.
Keywords: marketing, brand, cartoon, face
Java.com is a sprightly little entry by Sun targeted at consumers. In the least we should all be thankful for a coherent way to download the software, which comes in a dizzying array of incomprehensible variations on Sun’s site.
And since the site emerged from my colleagues I feel OK poking fun at it’s obvious and stereotypical IA-then-design process roots. I can see the boxes sitting there in Visio…Download! Learn! Explore! :)
The new Mirra Chair from Herman Miller is said to be a better fit for more body sizes, easier to adjust, more colorful, more green, and less expensive (<$800) than the Aeron. Due in stores near the end of June.
Mr. Nahzah comes in once a week for a pound, French Roast, Melitta grind. Occassionally he and his wife drop in for an espresso after dinner. He’s an electrician nearing retirement, she runs the stationary store on 3rd. They immigrated from Berlin together in 1950. He is always well-dressed, a charming man. He approaches me while I’m staring at the screen, "What is that?"
I look up, "Huh? Oh, I’m trying to improve my website."
"Our son bought us a computer. All our vacation plans we online planned. We’re going to Spain. Can I order coffee from this site?"
"Once it’s finished. In fact…" recognizing a victim when I see one, I swivel the monitor towards him, "would you like to try it?" You buy the French roast every week, right?"
"Ya."
"So how would you do that here?"
"Let me see." He squints his eyes and looks at everything on the screen, reading and re-reading to himself. One very long minute goes by.
"So, what’s your guess?"
"Ah, ah, I don’t know."
"You want the French Roast, right?"
"Ya."
"And that’s a type of coffee, right?"
"Ya, of course."
"So wouldn’t you click on ‘Beans’?"
"But I don’t want beans. I want it ground."
"Yes, yes, of course. But before they’re grounds they’re beans.”
“But I don’t want beans.”
“Yes, I know. But nothing else makes sense. So you’d click on ‘Beans,’ right?"
"Ahhhh, ahhhhh," still starting at the screen, his face turns red and his head starts to shake, finally blurting out, "Das kann ich doch nicht riechen!"
Ouch. We’re both silent for an uncomfortable moment. I realize I’ve reduced this poor old man to cursing at me in another language, "Ohmigod, I’m sorry. I totally stressed you out. I’m so sorry."
"No, no, I am sorry. I lost my temper. ‘Beans,’ you are right. It is my fault, I should have known it was ‘Beans.’"
I triy to recover by lightening the mood, "Ummmm, so, was that something in German you said before?"
"Oh, ya, that is a German saying. It means, ‘I cannot smell that.’ We say that when we don’t know what something is just by looking at it."
"Ah, got it. ‘Smell that,’ it’s a funny phrase though."
"But I think it works well. We can tell by the smell of something if it is good, like food. I wanted to know which was the good link, but couldn’t ‘smell’ it, you see."
"Kinda. So, I should make that link smell better."
"Yes, it should smell like what I’m looking for."
"So my little blue link here should give off a pungent, slightly burnt aroma, with chocolate overtones?"
"Yes! Yes!" he smiled widely and nodded yes.
Bill Seitz has launched wikilogs, ‘a hosting service which lets you maintain a personal wikilog, or wiki-based weblog‘ and includes his trademark wit, ‘ I’ve done some things to make wikilogs.com a bit more reader-friendly than the average wiki, and I’ll be doing more, but you’ll probably never get that Jason Kotte feeling here. So, if you’re one of those people who asked “why the heck is Julia marrying Lyle?”, you’re probably more of a weblog person.’ While I can barely create a three color palatte, I’d still like to see a user-definable wiki CSS file option. Witness the design variation possibilities at Zen Garden.
Lou and I. You’ll notice he opted for the beer sampler, one of which was titled the Polar Bear. Molly and I. We talked for like, 120 seconds, but one could tell she’s a total sweetheart.
Surprisingly tough to find any, much less thoughtful, information on closed card sorts (e.g. testing an existing classification system). Donna Maurer’s Card-Based Classification Evaluation comes to the rescue, complete with pictures for people like me. Bless those nice Boxes and Arrows people.
I’m tempted to make three modifications to Donna’s method: 1. Write out the notecards in pencil to allow easier taxonomy revision and retesting, 2. Use an alternate spreadsheet format that allows straightforward charting of the results, and 3. Time each response, so I can compare response time in different taxonomies to see which is better understood and used.
Rashmi, the queen of quantitative IA research, has a shiny new firm, ‘The word Uzanto means user in Esperanto. It reflects our commitment to belief in useful, usable and accessible technology for all.‘
Yay! Thanks, Eric, for nursing her back to health.
Despite having found a wonderful community of like minds in New York, I’m always envious of the vibrant new media scene in San Francisco. Last night I crashed a post-seminar drinkfest held by Adaptive Path and finally, randomly, met (in person) Veen, Berry, Steenson, and Blood, among other fine folks. Hopefully Merlin will post his pics. Rebecca commented that I’m younger and more attractive than she imagined, which leads me to think my blog persona is a grumpy crank.
I left the tapas and sangria early to fly home, away from the sun, descending through the clouds into the rain soaked, cursing, cold, Jamaica Bay.