July 2003
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Opera in the Park
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1 min read
Lying on the grass listening to La Boheme reminded me of when I was young, lying on the grass listening to Godspell in Thomas A. Edison Park.
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Oral Fixation
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1 min read
A couple months ago on a plane to Florida I noticed an attractive teenage girl sucking a pacifier. She also had a funky skin condition, so I attributed the sucking to a medical condition. Since then I’ve seen more teenagers with pacifiers, baby clothes, and now sucking thumbs. I can’t find any news reports, but…
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Cooper Moves to SF
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1 min read
Cooper moves from the Valley to SF.
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Elements of Hypermedia Design
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1 min read
Referenced in Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think (still a staggeringly good book) is Gloor’s Elements of Hypermedia Design, the new URL for which I just tracked down. It’s like a set of ancient scrolls in a clay vessel that a recent storm has revealed from the sand of the desert. You know there is truth…
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Personas & Scenarios
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0 min read
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We’re All Out In The World
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3 min read
In Tekka, Cathy Marshall addresses a topic that’s been stirring in my mind lately… ‘…do scenarios and personas actually help, or do they just create a warm illusion of user-centered design?‘ She spends some time illustrating how products can drive personas… ‘Want to make personal security and encryption a necessary feature for [our persona’s] email…
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Sumptuous Nav
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1 min read
Wow, go to eye magazine right now and try the ‘concept index’ nav at the top. It’s sumptuous, all those P-words, the fading roll-off colors, the parallel columns inviting your mouse to figure eights. That is doesn’t lead you anywhere is incidental.
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Tog on Web
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1 min read
Re-reading Tog’s First Principles I just noticed the online version has newer notes specifically adapting them to the web… ‘Present the illusion that users are always in the same place, with the work brought to them. This not only eliminates the need for maps and other navigational aids, it offers users a greater sense of…
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Crazed, Shameless Internet Love
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1 min read
Catherine says, I love the Internet. Love it. I love the little search box where I can type anything I like and it will immediately return something, anything. I love clicking buttons and making things happen. I love following links to see where they lead. I love crazed, shameless teenagers blogging for all to read…
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Lightweight
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1 min read
When asked for examples of designs that would facilitate the desired user experience he replied, ‘Somewhere between Google and Yahoo.’
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O’Reilly’s Headfirst
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1 min read
O’Reilly’s new imprint, Headfirst, integrates information design in the layout. Interesting.
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Bull Run
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1 min read
The man, identified as Victor Lombardi from Seattle, Washington state by the government, was caught by a bull’s horn as it ran down to the bullring on the narrow streets of the northern Spanish town. Wasn’t me. Sounds like fun though. Here’s another happy camper.
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RUP and UCD
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2 min read
Dave Cronin’s new Cooper article, RUP & Goal-Directed Design: Toward a New Development Process is a great look at the intersection of conventional user-centered design practice and systems-focused processes. Although he focuses on the Rational Unified Process, the ideas can be applied to any big software development project, and is helpful in understanding and communicating…
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Refactoring
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1 min read
Refactoring is the act of altering code without changing the functionality of the application. The primary use of refactoring is to make the code simpler and easier to understand.
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Geekcorps
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1 min read
Not too long ago I wished for Designers Without Borders, a SWAT team-like organization that would drop designers into third world countries and give them help with technology no one else could offer. Brainheart magazine reports (albeit not online) on something close to this, Geekcorps: A US-based, non-profit organization, we place international technical volunteers in…