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Apparently his design talents do not extend to the design of his website. Try looking at that website with a 1600x1200 monitor and marvel at how the right half of your screen is completely blank.

Reading his thoughts on borders (scroll down) reminds one of a flaw of Wikipedia's HTML/CSS design. "Strong frames ... produce content-diminishing effects," says Tufte. I seldom see borders around tables or equations in textbooks, and it does look very clean. On the other hand, Wikipedia's CSS styles place borders and underlines superfluously about everything, from blocks of code, images and underneath headings. It seems the Wikipedia web designers try too much to make "pretty pages" when, to an academic eye they look ugly and cluttered.

Every page element should signify some meaning; a heading should be underlined to distinguish it, but only if it is not otherwise distinguished by font size, vertical whitespace or some other typesetting. One element variation should suffice, as long as it's a bold change. A table should have borders only if the data are unclear otherwise. It's sad that as useful as Wikipedia can be, it still suffers from so many flaws. Wikipedians could learn much from Tufte, or from any study of technical communication.

Edward Tufte's site.

Does that not make sense? Was it powerpoint, or the people that dealt with it that were to blame? Nice question that the Jack Thompsons of the world should ask themselves.

Indeed. For example, the Ask E. T. discussion board contains all topics on a single page. The topics are all related to information design, and the board no longer accepts new topics which certainly skews things a bit. But I routinley see new responses to topics that are years old, and I myself occasionally read a new topic that was first posted years ago. It isn't "news" per se, but it's an interesting take on a discussion board. I wonder what a slashdot-like site would be like that limited the number of topics (for example, today's MRAM article could be a new post in the MRAM topic), did not allow users to publish any comments with reckless abandon (i.e. had editors that pre-filtered comments), and encouraged longer, well thought out discussion to "when's the next story?".

On my way to work today I was reading Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, in which he presents an interesting breakdown of the communication structure at NASA. Basically, it seems that many of the technical reports within NASA are now being given as PowerPoint presentations, with formal write-ups being supplanted by lists of bullet points. Needless to say, this means that very important technical information is being distilled to easily-consumable fragments that don't contain much information. The furthur up the chain you go, the more filtered it gets. Is it any wonder why there are so many problems there?

On my way to work today I was reading Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, in which he presents an interesting breakdown of the communication structure at NASA. Basically, it seems that many of the technical reports within NASA are now being given as PowerPoint presentations, with formal write-ups being supplanted by lists of bullet points. Needless to say, this means that very important technical information is being distilled to easily-consumable fragments that don't contain much information. The furthur up the chain you go, the more filtered it gets. Is it any wonder why there are so many problems there?

I was looking for some choie Tufte quotes on the futility of representing data on a low resolution [projection] screen, and I found this: Does PowerPoint make you stupid?, a pretty harsh slam of Tufte's disdain for PowerPoint. For those unfamiliar, Tufte hates PowerPoint the tool. He blames PowerPoint itself in part for the Columbia disaster.

The first article I linked defends PowerPoint on the grounds that in the wrong hands, PowerPoint can make horrible presentations, much like anything in the wrong hands. It slams Tufte for seeming to claim that PowerPoint itself is bad, pointing out that Tufte's most hated "Auto Content Wizard" are rarely used.

I have attended Tufte's one-day course. In it, he uses projectors to display very little. A few photos, a video clip, and not much else. For every bit of text or data plot, he refers to the high resolution printed handouts or the pages of his books (included with the course). The point I took away from the PowerPoint chapter (the course covers several topics) was that PowerPoint does two things: First, it encourages Excel style (or OpenOffice Chart style) data plots with few data points, distracting 3D "chart junk", and low resolution (a consequence of being projected rather than printed). And second, it presents information in a sliced and disjointed manner. The audience, Tufte postulated, should be able to peruse the information you are presenting in their own style. Perhaps paying attention to what you are saying, perhaps looking ahead or forming questions about the data. A PowerPoint slide limits the available information to what fits on a single slide: not much. The isolation of the slides makes it difficult for the audience to compare the things you are presenting and to think at their own pace. So, not simply PowerPoint, but any low resolution time-isolated presentation is bad. And on top of that Tufte dislikes the bullet style enforce by PowerPoint, which the above article also criticizes as "you don't have to do it that way" (not so true I think; PowerPoint does push hard for the bulleted list style presentation).

But I think the first article I linked misses Tufte's main points. And with PowerPoint and Excel or OpenOffice's equivalents, one must be very careful to not force the audience to follow your presentation word by word. One should encourage exploration, comparison, and thought. Explain the data, then let the audience peruse it. Forcing one linear path will undoubtedly cloud the picture you are trying to present.

Oddly enough, buying a 5 subject notebook per semester did the same thing for me through my BS. And I did computer science, with minors in math and physics... Fortunately, most of my profs put dry erase marker to the board rather than powerpoint mind-death (Edward Tufte had an interesting paper about this).

No worries about crashes, running out of battery, no expensive tablet to draw non-text stuff (handy since much of cs and physics includes graphs and "circle&line" information). All for a couple bucks a semester :)

While I adore my powerbook and ibook, I can't seem them as being useful in attending lectures (I attended one today at work, a prof from dartmouth came to talk about the riemann hypothesis, and left the laptop in my office, favoring a small notebook and pen).

As others have said, a computer is merely a tool. A highly over-used tool that too many people rely on for every tasks better served by other tools. And I write software for a living :)

--
*P.S.: your sig sucks. *harass harass harass*

Oddly enough, buying a 5 subject notebook per semester did the same thing for me through my BS. And I did computer science, with minors in math and physics... Fortunately, most of my profs put dry erase marker to the board rather than powerpoint mind-death (Edward Tufte had an interesting paper about this).

No worries about crashes, running out of battery, no expensive tablet to draw non-text stuff (handy since much of cs and physics includes graphs and "circle&line" information). All for a couple bucks a semester :)

While I adore my powerbook and ibook, I can't seem them as being useful in attending lectures (I attended one today at work, a prof from dartmouth came to talk about the riemann hypothesis, and left the laptop in my office, favoring a small notebook and pen).

As others have said, a computer is merely a tool. A highly over-used tool that too many people rely on for every tasks better served by other tools. And I write software for a living :)

--
*P.S.: your sig sucks. *harass harass harass*

The article is very clear, it's your comprehension that's the problem here.

I don't refuse to not disbelieve that the article wasn't factually inaccurate, nor do I fail to forget that logical precision without a lack of disorientation may not rarely be misleading.

When presenting data, it's not only curteous but absolutely critical to present it in a way that's easily understandable. In some cases, such as the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, lives may be at stake. (quick summary: Boeing had no data on the probable effects of a piece of foam of the observed size hitting the shuttle as it did.)

Pretty graphics, lots of "ooooo" factor. I find that they tell me nothing. This is a trend in the "network security" field:

1. find a subject for which a lot of data can be collected
2. preparing a bunch of colorful charts and graph that don't actualy convey any meaningful information
3. Profit (or at least get mentioned on Slashdot, et al.)

Tufte would be ashamed.

In a recent article about the "Top Myths" of the shuttle disaster, they explained how gov't/political influence had been debunked as any sort of leading cause, which I don't think you were claiming. Edward Tufte has hypothesized, convincingly, that it was due to information loss from a "telephone game" of powerpoint presentations where the warning signs were summarized and summarized until by the time they reached management, the importance of the signs was all but lost.

Edward Tufte http://www.edwardtufte.com/ , a statistican and groundbreaking proponent of information visualization, has a very good illustration of what happened at the challenger disaster in his book "envisioning information", or maybe it was "Visual Explanations". i really can recommend his awesome books.

And the problems at NASA continued in January 2003 with the Columbia explosion. Presentation-of-data guru, Edward Tufte, makes a good claim that clumsy PowerPoint inhibited decent analysis that could've prevented a disaster. (Tufte cites Feynman's work among others.)

Edward Tufte wrote an excellent analysis on how crucial information about possible problems was buried in incompetently presented data.

I would also suggest that anybody that uses UNIX by choice is not primarily concerned with usability.

He also said "If the content consists of sound and motion, show sound and motion." I think what's important is to choose the presentation medium or media to fit the content, not the other way round,. That means not using programs like Powerpoint by default, but not eschewing them completely.

It's in bloody DETAIL view so what do you expect?!

Easy question. I expect every view to have had thought put into it. Just because this isn't the default view doesn't mean it's not worth bothering with.

The precise point of the detail view is to show you all the text in a list form.

Then by your own definition the screen you're talking about fails in that regard by not showing all of the text. It's clipped on the right hand side where there's not enough space. It's lazy design. If you'd like to learn about information design I'd recommend starting with books by Edward Tufte.

I have not in the decade since read a technical book that was as concise, relevant, readable and useful as the K&R C book. Stuff like that which lowers the barriers to entry to learning a technology goes a long way to making a platform popular and useful. It's totally fair to say he didn't code much or any of UNIX, but as a member of that team, I still give him mad props for being essentially the "Edward Tufte" of C/UNIX.

We each have our own gifts. While I'm sure he benefitted from the serendipity of being a part of Bell Labs at that time, I think the Labs also benefitted from the serendipity of having him.

--LP

Actually in one of Tufte's books he discusses a spiraling representation of the periodic table. Discussion may develop at http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-ms g?msg_id=0000v6&topic_id=1&topic=

The image of the galaxy is what Tufte calls a "duck" - a decorative style element that dominates a chart without conveying useful information. The color coding is also chartjunk; it conveys nothing that isn't already implicit in an element's location in the chart. Most of the ink in this graphic (galaxy, color fills) conveys zero information.

It gets worse. To keep from obscuring the cute galaxy picture, the designer shrank the atomic numbers to an illegible point size, and then threw away useful data (like atomic weight, electronic configuration and common oxidation states, all of which fit into a rather smaller chart than this which is hanging on my wall.)

It is so sad to see this kind of diffusion of UI styles that this, and every program like Winamp etc. offers with new "skins". I want to just use my computer, not hunt for the UI elements. "Oh, the clown's nose is a checkbox, and his shoes are radio buttons! AWESOME USER INTERFACE DESIGN MAN! THIS IS SO INTUITIVE! I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEW GARDEN GNOME INTERFACE!"

Doesn't anyone remember back when the Mac and Windows came out, how it was fantastic that we had a CONSISTENT user interface? How we didn't need to learn yet another persons crazy GUI scheme? How developers didn't need to hack up custom UI designs using graphics primitives but instead could call simple SDK calls?

And think of HTML. Why in the WORLD would I want to install all that "stuff" when I can just say...

<input type=checkbox name=foo value=bar>CHECK ME

Don't forget part 2: it then asks Boeing engineers to prepare a dangerously misleading slide which has something to do with the damage and the models used, and which may or may not be relevant to what really happened.

Well, the first thing that strikes me is that the panel head (RIchard Covey) himself (were he younger and still in the flight program) wouldn't hesitate to fly on the revamped shuttle. So NASA fails the appointed checklist of improvements, but doesn't fail a former astronaut's 'gut instinct' test.

(While we're on the subject, let me recommend to anyone who is, has been, or ever will be interested in the subject of NASA's decision-making--under crisis conditions, or in conditions leading to crises--the work of Edward Tufte. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ His analyses of the data graphics used in the launch decision of the Challenger, the investigation of the Challenger disaster (Feynman's experiment), and the Columbia in-flight decisions are a must-read take-no-prisoners statistical firefight. Also, well-written and heartbreaking.)

Now I'm asking, given NASA's bright-dark history in these matters, Covey's professed take, and the lacunae in the checklist...Would you be willing to fill a seat on the next Shuttle mission?

(Or would I, supposing the sudden need arose for a hack novelist/graphic designer/wicked dancer in space, of course...)

On the contrary side, would you be willing to send up a $$$$$ shuttle, $500 million in launch costs, and 7 astronauts (each representing maybe $3 million in sunk training costs, and more importantly, people, skilled, experts in their fields, brave, etc--not to mention the international incident factors if one of the crew is non-US)--with a higher-than-requested, but amorphously lower-than-previous risk of ever returning?

(Here I reveal my ace-in-the-hole for getting onto a mission someday, despite being the hack novelist, graphic designer, etc--no sunk training costs; I'm worthless, so if I don't come back, the taxpayer is getting an awesome deal.)

Well, I'm not getting these requirements from some arbitrary place, but from many books on properly displaying statistical data and graphical information. Read any book by Edward Tufte on displaying information, and just about any book on statistics for giving accurate information.

In addition, I've developed this list after years of reading, writing, and studying studies with these problems. I've even read entire books on so called "performance tuning" which violate all of these basic things. I'm just blown away how someone can write an entire book or article on performance tuning and not mention standard deviation once or show one run chart with a mean and +/- standard deviation lines.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Hmm. I've thought about this before. I don't know how difficult this should be. In my (long) past experience with graphing and charting software, this amounts to at least two separate problems. The first and easiest is the drawing library - the pure graphics capability. The second, hardest, most complicated and usually least well done part is the interface and presentation capability. In other words, it's easy to draw a pie chart. Making it pretty, providing enough feature variety (but not too much), and making it easy to use is hard. A classic "90% rule of software" problem. But there should be some good libraries (based on OpenGL?) that provide the charting tools. So many scientific disciplines have their own unique preferred ways of charting their data!

A link or two, for whomever else might be reading this:
Graphical Data Presentation, Chapter 12 of an online text, Introduction to Data Collection and Analysis by Albert Goodman, provides a short overview of the basics of charting. I only glanced at it but it seems to be well written.

Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information is widely regarded as the most respected book on graphic presentation of data. He conducts workshops around the country. Tufte's Poster page has a pic of the "Napoleon's March" map by Charles J Minard, a triumph of multivariate data representation.

Tufte also provides a forum on data presentation. This multi-year thread discusses dozens of free, open source and commercial graphing tools. He has also published an essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (or lack thereof). It's not available for free, so here's a synopsis and a review.

Quite apart from the merits of the Acid2 test, its use of rendering a smiley face both (a) to be the test itself and (b) to show the quality of the test result ... is clever!

Most tests create an abstract "score" such as "85% compliant" which can be rendered by a graphic, such as a pie chart, but which is fundamentally different from the test itself. This abstraction process is extra work both for the researcher and for the reader. There is also the danger that it can be misleading. Edward Tufte has written on this at length in "Visual Explanations" and other books.

To put the test & the results together in a meaningful, intuitive package, as Acid2 seems to have done, is just great!

The number of the port molested isn't really a good ordinate.

It's not typos; it's a fundemental problem with the spreadsheet model.

First of all, when you're looking at a spreadsheet, you can't tell what's a number, and what's a formula. It's like a tax form with no instructions, or a program whose source code you can change at any time while it's running -- and that you expect anybody to change as part of daily use.

As long as everything is working, you're OK, but you're assuming that people know what everything on the sheet is for, which (pretty much by design) they don't.

"Computer programs assume people have skills that empirical testing shows we do not possess", as one of the usability advocates put it.

No other common program has so much hidden, yet absolutely critical, data. Your word processor shows what words are on the page, and where the page breaks are, and what's on the headers and footers. Your email program shows you what emails you've sent and received, and what folders you've created. A presentation program (bad as they may be for producing presentations) does show you all the slides you have, and what's on the slides. ...I can't think of any (non-geek) programs that hide a bunch of critical information like a spreadsheet.

Second, all cells seem to have equal importance. Spreadsheets were designed to let you try things out quickly -- so far so good -- but that means people will try typing in numbers to see what happens. The problem with this is that these numbers they type in seem to be just as set-in-stone as any other number. Spreadsheets say "these are your numbers", and don't make any effort to distinguish between "numbers I read off the cash register" and "numbers I tried typing in to see what would happen". Again, not typos -- people interpreting similar-looking numbers as having similar importance.

Sure, if you are good at setting up styles and religious about keeping styles straight, you can kind of avoid this. But again, you're assuming people will fit their behavior to match how spreadsheets work, which is exactly backwards. If we wanted to force people to adapt to how computers are, we'd just give everybody a copy of perl. Spreadsheets are supposed to adopt to how *people* work.

By not providing such basic features as "indicating what's a number and what's a formula", or "indicating what's a measured number, and what's an experiment", spreadsheets are setting users up for numerical disaster. If you look at how spreadsheets are used and misused, this study is no surprise at all.

Edward Tufte wrote a small book "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp making the same point as you about PowerPoint.

Linkage: Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Full of good information for anyone that must present some sort of data, not just those using PowerPoint.

Linkage: Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Full of good information for anyone that must present some sort of data, not just those using PowerPoint.

It sounds like he's trying to one-up Edward Tufte, who had published a well-read report on the slide presentation that led to the Columbia Disaster. I guess we could use a few more such public analyses before people will begin to realize the reach of what falls under "Interface Design" and how critical it is our functioning in the complex system we've created.

THE INTERFACE IS THE INFORMATION. If you don't have an interface, you don't have any information. Period.

Incidentally, I can think of a few reasons not to implement some of the changes that Storey suggests:
- Bolded and highlighted text may draw the eye toward material that was incorrectly analyzed; or the burdern of analysis may fall upon the reader of that (original) memo.
- The threat level may not be something that is established, but rather something that is established through decisions that come from this document

Whether these kinds of metrics are appropriate in the case of the President is unknown to me. My main here is to illustrate that Storey's ideas, though thoughtful, are perhaps a bit sensational.
.
-shpoffo
kNOw Research

It sounds like he's trying to one-up Edward Tufte, who had published a well-read report on the slide presentation that led to the Columbia Disaster. I guess we could use a few more such public analyses before people will begin to realize the reach of what falls under "Interface Design" and how critical it is our functioning in the complex system we've created.

THE INTERFACE IS THE INFORMATION. If you don't have an interface, you don't have any information. Period.

Incidentally, I can think of a few reasons not to implement some of the changes that Storey suggests:
- Bolded and highlighted text may draw the eye toward material that was incorrectly analyzed; or the burdern of analysis may fall upon the reader of that (original) memo.
- The threat level may not be something that is established, but rather something that is established through decisions that come from this document

Whether these kinds of metrics are appropriate in the case of the President is unknown to me. My main here is to illustrate that Storey's ideas, though thoughtful, are perhaps a bit sensational.
.
-shpoffo
kNOw Research

Sounds like there's something wrong with your setup, if those times are accurate.
Also, if you use Powerpoint a lot, you've read this, right?

Imagine a system where you can send email, write a book, make calculations, manipulate pictures, navigate the Web -- do whatever you want to do anytime at all, without having to switch in and out of applications. Imagine a system that never loses your work or buries it in a maze of folders, a system that doesn't wrestle with you on your way to getting something done, a system that effortlessly boosts your speed and productivity by 20 percent or more.
That's Archy. It's the answer to a host of problems that have made you mistrust, and at times hate your computer. Up until now, you've blamed yourself when your computer went off the rails. Guess what? You were right and your computer was wrong.
For two decades now, the graphical user interface -- or "GUI" (pronounced "GOO-ey") -- has been the de facto standard for human-computer interaction. But researchers have known for a long time that GUIs are inherently flawed. Nevertheless, this gooey environment has reigned supreme for so long that we've come to accept it as normal and necessary. Up until now we've had no choice.
Now we do.
In his book, The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin -- creator of the Macintosh project at Apple -- said, "Creating an interface is much like building a house: If you don't get the foundations right, no amount of decorating can fix the resulting structure."
When Jef began designing Archy, he didn't try to tweak or tinker with the GUI interface. He didn't try to decorate it. He cleared the blackboard and built a system from the ground up, giving prime consideration to the latest scientific research on human cognition.
The result is a new user interface that looks and feels completely different. Where your current computer still demands that you conform to its way of doing things, Archy adapts to your way of doing things, the humane way.
The principles behind Archy's design are applicable to all kinds of information appliances and the machines that depend on them. Today that includes aircraft, automobiles, scientific instruments, and industrial machinery. In this sense, Archy Alpha Release 1 is the beginning of a movement. Our long-range goal is a world where enlightened user interface design -- taking account of our limitations and taking advantage of our natural abilities -- becomes the standard. Our first product demonstrates that computers can add ease, convenience, power, and efficiency to our lives without adding to the list of our frustrations.

Challenger was definitely preventable, just ask McDonald who was in charge at the Cape, BUT was over-ruled. He has agonized over this for years as he had to carry the Fax down the hall (which he disagreed with) to go ahead with the launch. Also, NASA lacked an administrator then (like now) who could call the shots. Jim Beggs wouldn't have allowed Challenger to be launched, but the DoJ was tying him up with trivial GD legal matters he was later cleared of. But he had to step aside to defend himself from the creww of DoJ attorneys. To some degree you can blame the Challenger disaster on the overly agressive and politically motivated Department of Justice attorneys. William Graham, Beggs temporary fill in, was not an experienced engineer (he was CS), and lacked both the clout and understanding to stop the launch.

Regarding Columbia, it is now clear we should have launched a rescue mission, which (according to O'Keefe) was definitely possible, as Atlantis was at the cape nearing it's launch. The fatal flaw was that taking damage photographs and launching a rescue mission were not pert chart options at Mission Control. In addition, the Crater analysis code (spreadsheet) and supporting Powerpoint slides were seriously flawed, giving the wrong impresssion to those who tried to interpret them. To some degree, Powerpoint was a culprit in Columbia as the Columbia Accident Investigation Report pointed out and why NASA employees were encouraged to take Tufte's course and read his books.

So next time you design an interface or a web page remember the creator of the Mac. What you create will be WORSE than the Mac.. BECAUSE of all the colours and "clever" bits you used.

I thought Raskin was more concerned with usability then presentation. His essay in Programmers At Work was great at pointing out how very awful computers are to use from a human (non-programmer) perspective!

Anyway, in other parts of the article, he makes legitimate points (IMO) about using google link as substitutes for deep understanding. But then again, he may be living in a reality distortion field after all.

My piece had the temerity to question the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine. The Google phenomenon is a wonderfully modern manifestation of the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality. Hailed as the ultimate example of information retrieval, Google is, in fact, the device that gives you thousands of "hits" (which may or may not be relevant) in no very useful order.

While I agree some things aren't as googable as others, quotes like this make me question whether the guy actually uses the Internet or just trying to make a career complaining about it. Regardless, Google, blogs, and the Blog Subhuman species he refers to all have done wonders to raise the profile of one Michael Gorman, President of the ALA.

Maybe it's just me (in fact, it's *probably* just me), but I can imagine Ed Tuft steaming in the background -- "Whining about the display of information is MY turf, pal! If you know what's good for you Michael, you will let this rest...NOW"

I'm more curious about how many people on the rescue team have read The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint?

(If you haven't already, go grab a copy. It explains how PowerPoint killed the Columbia astronauts, and if that doesn't drive the message home, I don't know what will...)

Purchase a copy of Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. At $7, it's well-worth the price if it prevents more bad slideshows. His site is here. I've no connection, other than as a fan of his work and buyer of his books, which are works of art in my opinion.

I think the essay you're thinking of is Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," which is available for purchase (but, unfortunately, not perusal) here.

The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint

... you know, the information visualization/presentation guy, might like their display.