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The guy who wrote the link you posted is kind of an idiot but he's also kind of right, at least about the problems with overly-rigid frameworks.

In spite of what he says, the 1970 Royce paper is generally accepted as the earliest mention of the waterfall method (see Wikipedia) even though Royce did not call it that. However, he did diagram it quite clearly in the form that is frequently used today.

I work for a large company that produces lots of software and the waterfall method is still mentioned seriously - something I find astounding as it's been seen as a very poor method since this earliest known mention. However, Joel Spolsky apparently sticks up for it and he often seems to have a clue. However, I suspect he may be working with small waterfall-like steps inside a larger, iterative framework.

True - but the nice thing about the Condorcet methods is that you can't really mess them up... if you vote for only one guy, it reverts back to just giving you one vote. About the only way you could nullify your vote is to give all of the candidates the same priority.

Besides, idiots and the senile are already disenfranchised - changing the system won't really change that much, and we'll have better election results.

By the way, regarding your sig - the "double space after period" rule is a holdover from typewriters, which were only capable of monospaced fonts. Unless you are sure that your reader is going to be viewing your message in a monospaced font, it's probably best to just add one space and let the typesetting system do it's job. This link is quite old, but it gives you plenty of reasons why people have moved to one space.

Regarding your sig: Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!

It has nothing to with teh internets.

From Report: One Versus Two Spaces After a Period:

The only reason that two spaces were used after a period during the 'typewriter' age was because original typewriters had monospaced fonts -- the extra space was needed for the eye to pick up on the beginning of a new sentence. That need is negated w/proportional space type, hence [it is] the typographic standard.

Wait... I'm a slob/perfectionist and I like videogames. Actually I have no problem keeping a room clean if I know where everything goes (such as a bathroom, or our TV/family room). It's stuff that I don't have a specific place for (interesting magazine articles, stocking stuffers, videogame tchotskes, mail) that piles up and requires great effort (and great levels of nagging by my SO) to deal with. I also know why there is only one space after a period -- you don't need two spaces after a period if you're using a porportionally spaced font. See here for more details, esp. as relates to the interwebs. I found that article while I was digging through my desk looking for last year's girl scout cookies.

Usability and Games: 17 Excellent References Direct link to source article.../

It is 7 +/- 2. So anywhere between 5 to 9 items for a normal individual. http://webword.com/moving/memory.html/

Big, Fat Shameless Plug: I regularly cover usability issues on my blog. I cover everything and anything related to usability, customer experience, human factors, ergonomics, human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience, interface design, and so on. I don't have any bias (e.g., open source, Microsoft), and I don't have any religion. I just report news on usability, offer comments, and write articles about usability. If you are interestd in the topic, check out my blog.

WebWord Usability Blog

Thanks for letting me throw this plug at you...

Elizabeth Neal has recently written on this subject, and the title says it all:

Why You Don't Need a Usability Lab

Promoting the mindset for usability and user-centered design inside the KDE project is a very good thing, though.

Or, is this just a means of generating nuclear material for creating nuclear weapons?

On the topic of growth, I have spent a total of 10 days in China in the last two years. Last year there were more bikes than cars in Shekou in the Shenzhen area, but now I swear there are an equal number of cars to bikes. The real kicker is that these cars are BIG and expensive. We are talking about full-sized Volkswagens, Buicks, minivans, and wagons. Yes, there are Mercedes too. You'd think that they'd be looking at little Euro-boxes given money and space constraints, but status and face (mianzi) are too important I guess.

For a full report, I suggest you take a look at my trip notes:

China Observations

(How many guanxi points do I get for this posting?)

I'm mainly interested in the SAP and mySQL connection because I simply didn't know about it until I read this. I know it is a bit offtopic, but I recently attended ASUG 2004 (America SAP User Group) and I posted news about it to my site. Perhaps you'll be interested.

JavaScript, DOM, and Page Reloads

Usability Interview with David Clark of TandemSeven

More Observations on ASUG 2004

ASUG 2004 and RFID

I'm mainly interested in the SAP and mySQL connection because I simply didn't know about it until I read this. I know it is a bit offtopic, but I recently attended ASUG 2004 (America SAP User Group) and I posted news about it to my site. Perhaps you'll be interested.

JavaScript, DOM, and Page Reloads

Usability Interview with David Clark of TandemSeven

More Observations on ASUG 2004

ASUG 2004 and RFID

I'm mainly interested in the SAP and mySQL connection because I simply didn't know about it until I read this. I know it is a bit offtopic, but I recently attended ASUG 2004 (America SAP User Group) and I posted news about it to my site. Perhaps you'll be interested.

JavaScript, DOM, and Page Reloads

Usability Interview with David Clark of TandemSeven

More Observations on ASUG 2004

ASUG 2004 and RFID

I'm mainly interested in the SAP and mySQL connection because I simply didn't know about it until I read this. I know it is a bit offtopic, but I recently attended ASUG 2004 (America SAP User Group) and I posted news about it to my site. Perhaps you'll be interested.

JavaScript, DOM, and Page Reloads

Usability Interview with David Clark of TandemSeven

More Observations on ASUG 2004

ASUG 2004 and RFID

I predict that in 2004 Google will announce a major move into instant messaging. As far as I know, Google isn't overtly doing anything with IM right now. Paradoxically, that means that they are probably doing something with IM while people are looking the other way.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq /cmosfaq.OneSpaceorTwo.html
http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/taylor/topics/doublesp ace.htm
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/onetw ospaces.htm
http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/011803.htm

Both the MLA and Chicago Manual of Style suggest one space after punctuation while using a compensatory font (ie, not-monospaced). Two spaces after a period is very out of style. Yeah I know - shocked the hell out of me when I learned it a couple years ago too.

...and make no money. As usual, Jakob Nielsen slants the data in a way that seems so very important. But, almost no small sites make any money. Why isn't that the real story? Bah!!

As usual, Jakob throws shit against the wall. A little sticks, but a lot of it does not stick. Why do people ignore this? For example, he predicted micropayments, which would be great for small web sites. Are micropayments viable now? No! They sucked in 2000 and they suck now. (Good idea, but, micropayments suck!)

Last year I wrote Spanking Jakob Nielsen. I'm just so tired of how he throws around ideas and "important" data and people got nuts. Have you ever noticed that he rarely points to sites outside of useit.com and he often is selling his usability reports? Drives me insane...

The Ghost!

Visiting The Ghost

if certain people didn't abuse the back button, either...

How Warchalking Died -- "The purpose of this article is to explain how Warchalking has become obsolete. It is being replaced by Wi-Fi Zones that are being fueled by home networks, corporate networks, and even payphones. The internet will be all around you in all places but you won't ever need to care about Warchalking. Let's bury the idea and move along."

How Warchalking Died . . .
http://webword.com/moving/warchalking.html

Ttalks about WiFi stuff and WiFi zones. Wonder what'll happen with WiFi this year, and what with warchlking?

Funny how I wrote an article three days ago but Roland Piquepaille is writing almost the exact same thing that I did. Mere coincidence? In any event, here's the abstract of my article:

"The purpose of this article is to explain how Warchalking has become obsolete. It is being replaced by Wi-Fi Zones that are being fueled by home networks, corporate networks, and even payphones. The internet will be all around you in all places but you won't ever need to care about Warchalking. Let's bury the idea and move along."

Read the rest of it here: How Warchalking Died

I'm very skeptical of these kinds of devices. For example, how many people really want stock quotes on their watches? Is there real value in that? How is a stock ticker on a watch significantly better than a stock ticker on a PDA or cell phone? Also, beyond the cool factor, how important is atomic time to Joe Sixpack? Let's face it, if it isn't significantly better, then only technogeeks will care about it. It'll die a quick death. But wait, there's more. The other factor is this. Even if the product is significantly better in terms of functionality, if the usability sucks then uptake of the product in the market could be minimal. IMHO there are many strikes against these products becoming mainstream products any time soon.

1. More on usability: webword.com (Disclaimer: This is one of my web sites.)

2. Bell Labs Reports on Progress Towards "Dick Tracy" Watch

3. Check Out a Watch Dick Tracy Would Envy

4. IBM stuffs Linux into "Dick Tracy's watch"

5. A User Interface Toolkit for a Small Screen Device

6. Is Timing Ripe for Wrist PDAs?

1. Sites that rely on graphics for navigation are disadvantaged from the git go. For sites that people visit daily, it's probably no big deal since the graphics can be cached. For attracting new users it's far from optimal.

2. You should understand how people surf. People bail on sites that take forever and a day to load. Upsdell's site has a concise summary of some older research. It is still relevant. Here's another report on the Zona research. I think if you tested this yourself you would reach the conclusion that most flash animations are not worth waiting for. There are other sites out there, easy to find and easy to use. If your site depends on flash for basic funtionality you *will* lose visitors to your competitors.

Did you happen to catch the Flash Usability Challenge at Webword? Now I can't truthfully say that flash is completely worthless, but it hardly looks like the future of the web, does it?

BTW, I don't have flash installed at the moment. I went to your site (numbera.com) and saw no compelling reason to take your advice and install it.

Bye-ya

China is extremely hot right now. I know for a fact that many companies are getting serious about sending their manufacturing to China for cost reasons. Also, the Chinese market is growing at a rapid clip. It won't be long before they are sucking up as much oil as we are, and expecting a higher standard of living.

This might interest some people: The New Silk Road - Secrets of Business Success in China Today. As I indicate in my review, I think the book is good, especially for people who want a 30,000 foot view of doing business in China. I also liked Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China (ISBN: 0446673870). This Etiquette book is more ground level, "tactical", and person-to-person. Combined, these two books will give you a good taste for doing business in China.

In any event, I know that going offshore is having an impact. Not just in manufacturing, but in other areas too, such as programming. It is strange to see whitecollar jobs fly away from the U.S. to places like Hungary, India, Russia, and China. Why? Well, when I was younger, I thought these "brain" jobs couldn't be easily replaced by lower cost labor. Well, that's just not true. The internet has had a lot to do with that, of course. I'd be interested to hear what other folks have to say about outsourcing "brain" work.

Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."

Growing a Spam Killing Community -- "The purpose of this article is to discuss how to eliminate spam through a community of spammer killers. Why take a passive role in spam elimination and why use up precious time and complex tools to track down one spammer? Instead, let's create a community of spammer hunters to track them down and wipe them out, using their own methods against them. Forget killing spam, let's kill the spammers."

For those folks that don't know about WebWord, it is a web site that has been around for nearly 4 years. It is focused on usability and human factors for the internet (web sites, email, browsers, etc.). News is posted to the site almost daily. There are two newsletters available to readers -- a daily update and a periodic update. Check out the subscriptions page for details.

- John

WebWord Usability Weblog

• Jakob Neilson
• Usable Web
• Web Word
• Bruce Tognazzini
• User Interface Engineering
• Usability First
• Microsoft Usability

There was a pretty good article about the "blogosphere" a week or two ago. Very long, and relatively interesting, especially if you are interested in blogs, journalism, news, and that sort of thing. If you have a blog, you might like it too. If you are interested, I've got interview questions sent off to John Hiler, the author of the blogosphere article. I think he'll be getting back to me in a few days. I'll have the interview posted on WebWord.com soon after that.

There was also another story making the rounds about a week ago about making a living from blogging. I was expecting a lot more from it, i.e., some real details on "how to do it", but it was still a reasonable article. It might give you some ideas. Mileage may vary.

Last link whore comments: If you haven't seen Blogdex or Daypop, you might want to check them out. Very nice tools to see what it hot in the world of weblogs.

The Facts About Repetitive Strain Injuries -- An interview with Scott Wright, Webmaster and Primary Caretaker of the Typing Injury FAQ.

Attack of the Back Button -- "Getting stuck on a web page can be painful. The back button doesn't always work. While there are many ways to escape from web pages, many users don't know the tricks. A company can stop hurting users by doing more testing, using proper development methods, and being aware of the issue."

"Surprisingly enough, there WAS a winner."

...barely. I bent the rules a bit. There was NOT a very clear winner. They did qualify for the prize, but just by a hair.

The intent of the challenge was to get people talking about Flash as a development platform for e-commerce web sites. At the time, Flash was really only being used on web development sites ("Hire us, just LOOK at how cool this is!"), on art/graphic design sites, and for advertisements. Yet, I was constantly getting email via my site (WebWord) that Flash was great and could basically do ANYTHING.

Flash has been abused again and again. I think with the new direction, some abuse might end. And, Macromedia has made an attempt to descrease the abuse with their focus on usability. But let's face it, right now, Flash is about...Flash. I'm waiting to see how much the tool will work as a development platform, particularly for e-commerce web sites.

The debate about the usability and usefulness of Flash is nothing new. Check the Flash Usability Contest at the link http://www.webword.com/flashusability.html I liked the fact that the guy stepped up the plate and used his own money to cover the bet. Surprisingly enough, there WAS a winner. Quake74

A blog, or web log, is a site (usually) run by an individual that lists links to other web sites. The blog is usually updated on a daily basis. The links are often to news articles and are selected because the blog owner finds them interesting. There are thousands of blogs today. The trick is finding a blog owner who has the same interests that you do.

A blog will have a brief description of each link, and often include commentary from the blog owner.

Read this article, How weblogs influence a billion Google searches a week that I found on one of my favorite blogs, WebWord.com.

A franchise is a pretty simple business structure held together by common image and business processes. Normally a franchise owner pays a tithe to the franchiser in exchange to access to IP and in some cases a place to operate. Franchises are all geographically focused. That's why you can have lots of them and they all pay their dues to the slush fund at the top that grants them their right to exist.

The view from the top is pretty good. The franchiser gets to burn the advertising bucks and get to snort the coke off the stripper's tits and carry on like a mega corp exec., or whatever.

i have been trying to imagine an open sourced franchise. say for example a really cool team with some really cool software and really cool ways of developing software and tools etc decided that they'd provide the overall branding and infrastructure, and for no fee, but enforced compliance, people could adopt your franchise and your cool tools, processes, etc and your billing systems etc, and make good money or not as they choose, but rather than contribute money upstream, innovations and enhancements are fed through to all memebers of the franchise network.

a client would know that when they hire one franchise team they are getting a whole network of teams that work in very very similar ways, but with local enhancements that if generally accepted as beneficial, get accepted by the network of teams.

tools such as CVS and then sourceforge allowed open source projects to flourish. similarly tools such as p2p project management tools and billing systems, as well as automated unit testing ala JUnit, and a host of other eXtreme Programming widgets will allow teams to gather around a brand for the accelerating benefit of all. I think the so called open company manifesto, an amateur regurgitation of the main tennents of the ClueTrain Manifesto, missed the point entirely. The Open Cola experiment is a sham and a marketing gimmick. I quote "An important note: this is *not* the recipe for "OpenCola" -- that is, the canned beverage from OpenCola that you may have received at a trade show, or other venue or outlet. Making canned cola requires millions of dollars in abstruse gear and manufacturing gizmos. It's easier to make nerve gas than manufacture cola. This is a kitchen-sink recipe that you can make all on your own. It is *our* kitchen-sink recipe. We figured it out somewhere between coding the COLA SDK and debugging the Linux build of the clerver." [from their recipe].

But there is no reason why the philosophies surrounding the open source movement cannot have direct impact on the way a multinational runs, as well as the legal system, education, health care, prisons, terrorist networks, and even the military. an open sourced army? be the first on your block. :-)

About 2 years ago I wrote The Open Company Manifesto. (Sorry for the self promotion, but it is related to this posting.)

Here are my files, if you care...

WebWord.com RSS 0.92

WebWord.com RSS 1.0

- John

Unless you've sat down and observed your interface getting tested with a usability professional or two who work with regular folks to see how the application works *in the real folks non-geek world* then you don't know what you're talking about.

Really, how can you argue with behavior-based experimental data that "this isn't how people behave"? Oh right - with unfounded 3l337 opinion.

Sure, there are other things we could do to better test usability - like have them spend a week or two with Gnome after this test, then test again to see how much they picked up.

but until you're doing testing with your own projects, until you appreciate that these are real people in the real world (that same world you think should use Linux as a desktop OS) then you're really missing the point.

cz

see www.usability.gov

IBM Ease of Use

The perennial Jakob Nielsen

Usability Professionals Association

Webword Usability Blog

This is only going to be a short term effect. Banners generally suck. No matter how bad they get, people will start to ignore them. Our perceptual systems are built to handle this kind of crap.

Aside: It is unfortunate that you always have to watch out for crappy research like you see in this article. How do you know what is good and bad? Ack!

By the way, I actually like Google's Adwords program. Very fast loading pages are still possible, the results are not disrupted, and the sponsored links sometimes match my search. Bravo for usability!

Resources

What is banner blindness?

Banner Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss "Obvious" Links

Commentary: Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design

Usability Perspective on Banner Ads

Banner Blindness: What Searching Users Notice and Do Not Notice on the World Wide Web

1. Distrust over company's security to ensure my personal info remains private.
2. Purchase price is inflated.
3. Usability issues with web site prevent me from completing the transaction.
4. Exact nature or scope of the information to be purchased is vague. Samples please!
5. Unreasonable subscription restrictions.

• Low readability in monitors. This problem hasn't improved that much in thirty years or so, unfortunately. We make leaps and bounds in every other area of computer hardware but we still have monitors that reduce readability of text on screen by 25% (compared to the same text printed out). The eye doesn't like to read stuff that isn't very readable, eh?
• People are in a god damn hurry these days. This is a bad thing. Everyone all stressed out and whatnot.. People need to relax.
• Web content is formatted to be scannable, most of the time. The usability experts (Jakob Nielsen, Webword.com, etc.) always seem to think formatting things so that they are ultra-short and dumbed down to the point of insulting any reasonably educated (college degree) user's intelligence. But when everything is spoonfed and broken down into bulleted lists, I think we only contribute to this ultra-hurried way of browsing the web.

Services First, Technology Second, People Third

"Microsoft doesn't care much about shared source or Smart Tags and we are wasting our time following their marketing trail. We need to focus on Microsoft's true goal, which is to completely dominate the internet services market. We should pay attention to how they are building a services infrastructure, not a technology infrastructure. We should figure out how they are going to use tools like Passport and Microsoft Messenger to control our personal information and various internet transactions."

The Facts About Repetitive Strain Injuries

Comment: Repetitive stress injuries are real. Even if they are a matter of "hysteria", the pain is real. If a person thinks they are in pain, then they are actually in pain. Pain is subjective. Perception is reality...

Resource: The Facts About Repetitive Strain Injuries

pi using photos through eve through ars digita.
Go there now...

(Do it. Do it now. It is what Einstein's Brain would want you to do!)

WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability

Will people want to steal it? That's a measure of true value of course.

No wait, True Value is a hardware store.

Damn! Real hardware can be found at Tom's or Anand's.

I wonder if Tom and Anand date?

But a date is a fruit! I wonder if they bake cakes together, even if they don't date.

Will people steal the cake if they bake it? Probably not. They'd rather steal Sue's Chocolate Wafer Roll .

WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability

Get it here via Google, but without pictures.

WebWord -- Industrial Strength Usabiltity

The ACM also has some mailling lists about AI, usability and education.

These sites aren't about the entire field of cognitive science but it's a start.