So, it depends on what you're looking for, and who needs it.
I like Garrett's Elements of User Experience for a nice on ramp and introduction I like Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery titles for understanding basics of usability and usability testing. I like Unger's Project Guide to UX Design for an overall step by step. I like Wodtke and Govella's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web for a less prescriptive overall design process I like Brown's Communicating Design for a great take on UX documentation I like Kuniavsky's Observing the User Experience for a great take on ux research I like Young's Mental Models for task focused research & great visualization & alignment of project functionality with user behavior I like Norman's Design of Everyday Things for shifting the way you see usability and user experience in everyday life (and apply that to work) Looking forward to Wroblewski's Mobile First, but it's not out for a couple weeks Josh Clark's Tapworthy is a decent mobile design guide if you're only up for nuts and bolts instead of understanding internal combustion;-)
Rosenfeld Media is a publisher that focuses exclusively on user experience and has some fantastic titles, including the mental model book already mentioned. http://rosenfeldmedia.com/
And of course there's tons of great online resources and events - look for local UX Camps, local UX Bookclubs (http://uxbookclub.org)
If I had to choose just one? Design of Everyday Things changed how I see the world.
Exactly how to you talk to the government? Are you talking with policy experts? Politicians? Government healthcare researchers? Government funded healthcare workers? In what capacity? What jurisdiction? What department?
I know that for most people, government is government is government. That's cool - government is at its best when it just takes care of things so well you don't notice it (rare but possible).
But if you're going to make a claim that the government intentionally plans for a 2-3 year period where hospital care is nearly impossible to get (and as a result thousands of people die) then you need to have a little more specificity than "I've heard from the government".
Something you may have heard from the health policy side: With the demographic curve of aging boomers, Western healthcare systems will have to become incredibly efficient in the next couple decades to keep the same level of care (older people need more care, we have more older people...). If we don't get those efficiencies, then we will likely see a period where hospital care is more difficult to get because of those increased pressures on the system.
You're right - a faceted system would be much more powerful (think the guided navigation at your favorite ecommerce store with choices to narrow search by brand, price range, star rating, and type of gear - each of those is a facet).
It's just math - a system with five facets with 10 choices in each facet gives 100,000 unique descriptions vs. having to write out hundreds of thousands of possibilities.
For these healthcare codes, looking at facets like type of injury, location of injury, the activity involved, the object involved (turtle or otherwise) etc. would give far better coverage with less complexity.
All those conversations about "prior art" that we love to throw around here? Whooosh....all gone. Prior art only matters in "first to invent" instead of first to file.
Yes, the fact that you are on a flight from O'Hare to SFO and paid $234 while the person ahead of you paid $428 and the person beside you paid $173...yeah, people will loooove that model brought to Steam.
MORE VIEWERS That's one of the points of TFA - Nielsen screws shows that allow streaming. By the measures that matter to them, they will actually win *more* viewers, because streaming isn't counted by Nielsen. Since tablet streaming cannibalizes views on a traditional TV, their Nielsen ratings will get worse if their show is a runaway success with ipad streaming households. Which sounds like they should be suing / working with Nielsen rather than the cableco.
MORE MONEY It's not just about ratings, it's about revenue. Shareholders& the execs that answer to them demand growth, and here's a potential new source. They're hungry and implacable and not very thoughtful--something like zombies, or brain-sucked minions of Cthulu. The fact that a cable subscriber can already sit down, turn on the TV and watch the exact same paid-for content that TimesWarner now lets them stream in their house doesn't matter one bit to the crowd of shambling shareholders marching towards media innovation, drooling and murmuring "Grroowwwwth. Growwwwtthttthhhhh".
>Gryffindor's sword in the Sorting Hat. >I thought that Griphook took it? If he cared so much about it, why wouldn't he protect it in some way?
The Sorting Hat provides things to people in great need. In the final fight with the Baselisk in 'Chamber of Secrets', Harry drew the sword from the hat (the sword being in Dumbledore's office at the time, IIRC). Neville is just following the same pattern...I don't think Griphook could have done anything to stop it.
The chances of someone making millions of dollars off of an obscure Clarke short are slim-to-none....this is about establishing credibility in the industry, not making money.
>Wait, has anyone ever TRIED the whole 'theatre at home' thing?
In 1995, for a friend's going away party we borrowed an industrial-strength projector, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy projected onto the (windowless) side of a white, 2 story house. It was a pretty good re-creation of the theater experience at home...lawnchairs, 20 or 30 people. Sort of like 'home drive-in movie' rather than 'home IMAX'.
Wikipedia is wrong (at least as of today, maybe someone will correct it). Thomas coined it in August 2004, on the Information Architecture Institute mailing list, and then it got blogged about a week later on www.atomiq.org
This is the first appearance of the word on the public web. And as painful as folksonomy is as a word, it was and is useful shorthand to talk about tagging. I know it sounds like it should be illegal in 13 states, and I think it's ridiculous to use a specialized disciplinary term like that on a survey of lay people (why not include specialized medical jargon if you're going to include jargon from IA geeks).
Folksonomy is at home with tagging, facets, controlled vocabulary, taxonomy, and classification...regular folks shouldn't need to think about such things, any more than they think about LISP or Ruby on Rails or Apache or Tomcat or J2EE.
Of course Platt isn't saying anything new, and is incredibly self promotional. But the thinking in the parent post here sure shows that he's right about a lot of things with some developers' attitudes.
>>The problem, says consultant David Platt, lies not with the user but with the programmers, who just don't think like the people who use their products.
>That is funny, since most programmers are users too. If they don't use their own software, they use other peoples software.
This comment in particular is at the core of many problems in development. Anyone who thinks that they are the target audience doesn't have the humility to gather requirements that reflect actual use. Instead they build for the user in the mirror, and end up with crap.
Bottom line - Platt is full of it, but developers can do better at understanding user experience, and giving someone ownership of user experience on the product team. Joel Spolsky, the Rails folks, and many others are doing a great job of this, and more constructive than Platt.
well, there's a number of forums online, but the most common place to see pics of watch movements is on ebay - many sellers will remove the back of the watch to show the movement...also search for 'skeleton' in watches for transparent cases - watch ppl were into case mods long before the LAN party crowd;-)
At the local department store, there is a desk where they will put on a new strap, replace batteries, remove links in a watch bracelet, etc. There is a list on display behind the counter for the staff of watch brands they must not open, or "it will come out of your pay cheque". These are mostly kinetic powered watches, from what I could tell...though I wouldn't be happy with them opening up my automatic mechanical watches, either.
So, is Bruce Sterling's Zenith Angle mentioned? Since among the many things it covers is exactly the idea of anti-satellite weaponization of adaptive optical tech.
There's a company called HemCon that makes a chitosan bandage - it's a protein gel bandage made from chitosan extracted from shrimp shells. The US Army currently uses it in Iraq & Afghanistan.
So, we've started a pool here in the office about how long it will take for someone to post a reply that tells you they had a 2400 baud modem. And then someone else will post about their 300 baud modem. And then someone else will need to pipe up who admin'ed a BBS using semaphore and carrier pigeons.
But of course, we know you're not *really* old until you used the original nam shub sneakernet with Sumerian clay tablets...man, Slashdot is the best;-)
Creating good UI and an overall understanding of user experience is a common shortcoming in OSS. The notable exceptions have had significant help from commercial companies with ui design expertise (say, Firefox, Ruby on Rails). Can you please describe how you think about user experience and OSS, and how that impacts investment decisions?
- initial thoughts on the UI when assessing products (obviously not so important for server tools) - thoughts on UX expertise of the team - more importantly, how you take a promising OSS company and add UX expertise?
"why he believes India and China will grow the fastest in this regard."
Ummm... It's not that hard to see why people at the start of an adoption curve (china) will have faster growth than people who've plateaued (Australia). Given that if you spend $1 more per capita, in China that's 100% growth, and in Australia 0.5% growth...
If you read the caption, screenshot 4 isn't from Spore, it's from a US military sim - the quote is from the president of a sim company called BreakAway, and he's making predictions of Spore as a sim platform.
I *do* think there's a difference between regular cat owners, and people who obsess over their felines...it's the latter that I wonder about when stories of mind control parasites come up...
I've always wondered if the personality differences exhibited in the population are an actual effect of the parasite, or simply a correlation of 'people who like cats also are likely to behave in these ways'. For that, there'd need to be a study comparing infected cat owners with non-infected cat owners (and even then, maybe infection rates rise with other behaviors / cultural things, like not being careful with the litter box)...
Anyways, given that I'm not a fan of cats, I've always been disturbed by people who fawn over them;-)
Slashdot Mirror
So, it depends on what you're looking for, and who needs it.
I like Garrett's Elements of User Experience for a nice on ramp and introduction ;-)
I like Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery titles for understanding basics of usability and usability testing.
I like Unger's Project Guide to UX Design for an overall step by step.
I like Wodtke and Govella's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web for a less prescriptive overall design process
I like Brown's Communicating Design for a great take on UX documentation
I like Kuniavsky's Observing the User Experience for a great take on ux research
I like Young's Mental Models for task focused research & great visualization & alignment of project functionality with user behavior
I like Norman's Design of Everyday Things for shifting the way you see usability and user experience in everyday life (and apply that to work)
Looking forward to Wroblewski's Mobile First, but it's not out for a couple weeks
Josh Clark's Tapworthy is a decent mobile design guide if you're only up for nuts and bolts instead of understanding internal combustion
Rosenfeld Media is a publisher that focuses exclusively on user experience and has some fantastic titles, including the mental model book already mentioned.
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/
And of course there's tons of great online resources and events - look for local UX Camps, local UX Bookclubs (http://uxbookclub.org)
If I had to choose just one? Design of Everyday Things changed how I see the world.
Exactly how to you talk to the government? Are you talking with policy experts? Politicians? Government healthcare researchers? Government funded healthcare workers? In what capacity? What jurisdiction? What department?
I know that for most people, government is government is government. That's cool - government is at its best when it just takes care of things so well you don't notice it (rare but possible).
But if you're going to make a claim that the government intentionally plans for a 2-3 year period where hospital care is nearly impossible to get (and as a result thousands of people die) then you need to have a little more specificity than "I've heard from the government".
Something you may have heard from the health policy side: With the demographic curve of aging boomers, Western healthcare systems will have to become incredibly efficient in the next couple decades to keep the same level of care (older people need more care, we have more older people...). If we don't get those efficiencies, then we will likely see a period where hospital care is more difficult to get because of those increased pressures on the system.
You're right - a faceted system would be much more powerful (think the guided navigation at your favorite ecommerce store with choices to narrow search by brand, price range, star rating, and type of gear - each of those is a facet).
It's just math - a system with five facets with 10 choices in each facet gives 100,000 unique descriptions vs. having to write out hundreds of thousands of possibilities.
For these healthcare codes, looking at facets like type of injury, location of injury, the activity involved, the object involved (turtle or otherwise) etc. would give far better coverage with less complexity.
cz
All those conversations about "prior art" that we love to throw around here? Whooosh....all gone. Prior art only matters in "first to invent" instead of first to file.
Just like the Rapture dude, having a specific date makes it more credible. Kurzweil is nothing if not a master manipulator of credibility...
We'll have to see if this is any less vaporware than the Skycar
http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=58
Yes, the fact that you are on a flight from O'Hare to SFO and paid $234 while the person ahead of you paid $428 and the person beside you paid $173...yeah, people will loooove that model brought to Steam.
SteamAir, coming in 2013....
Alki's startup FilmOn streamed over-the-air broadcasts online without any licenses...and was sued successfully by CBS and the other networks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575632643263718292.html
cz
>What, exactly, are they winning? Less viewers???
If they win they get more viewers and more money.
MORE VIEWERS
That's one of the points of TFA - Nielsen screws shows that allow streaming. By the measures that matter to them, they will actually win *more* viewers, because streaming isn't counted by Nielsen. Since tablet streaming cannibalizes views on a traditional TV, their Nielsen ratings will get worse if their show is a runaway success with ipad streaming households. Which sounds like they should be suing / working with Nielsen rather than the cableco.
MORE MONEY
It's not just about ratings, it's about revenue. Shareholders& the execs that answer to them demand growth, and here's a potential new source. They're hungry and implacable and not very thoughtful--something like zombies, or brain-sucked minions of Cthulu. The fact that a cable subscriber can already sit down, turn on the TV and watch the exact same paid-for content that TimesWarner now lets them stream in their house doesn't matter one bit to the crowd of shambling shareholders marching towards media innovation, drooling and murmuring "Grroowwwwth. Growwwwtthttthhhhh".
Like the title says, thought I'd check out the parent's book recommendation: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8993
>Gryffindor's sword in the Sorting Hat.
>I thought that Griphook took it? If he cared so much about it, why wouldn't he protect it in some way?
The Sorting Hat provides things to people in great need. In the final fight with the Baselisk in 'Chamber of Secrets', Harry drew the sword from the hat (the sword being in Dumbledore's office at the time, IIRC). Neville is just following the same pattern...I don't think Griphook could have done anything to stop it.
cz
The chances of someone making millions of dollars off of an obscure Clarke short are slim-to-none....this is about establishing credibility in the industry, not making money.
>Wait, has anyone ever TRIED the whole 'theatre at home' thing?
In 1995, for a friend's going away party we borrowed an industrial-strength projector, and watched the original Star Wars trilogy projected onto the (windowless) side of a white, 2 story house. It was a pretty good re-creation of the theater experience at home...lawnchairs, 20 or 30 people. Sort of like 'home drive-in movie' rather than 'home IMAX'.
This is the first appearance of the word on the public web. And as painful as folksonomy is as a word, it was and is useful shorthand to talk about tagging. I know it sounds like it should be illegal in 13 states, and I think it's ridiculous to use a specialized disciplinary term like that on a survey of lay people (why not include specialized medical jargon if you're going to include jargon from IA geeks).
Folksonomy is at home with tagging, facets, controlled vocabulary, taxonomy, and classification...regular folks shouldn't need to think about such things, any more than they think about LISP or Ruby on Rails or Apache or Tomcat or J2EE.
Of course Platt isn't saying anything new, and is incredibly self promotional. But the thinking in the parent post here sure shows that he's right about a lot of things with some developers' attitudes.
>>The problem, says consultant David Platt, lies not with the user but with the programmers, who just don't think like the people who use their products.
>That is funny, since most programmers are users too. If they don't use their own software, they use other peoples software.
This comment in particular is at the core of many problems in development. Anyone who thinks that they are the target audience doesn't have the humility to gather requirements that reflect actual use. Instead they build for the user in the mirror, and end up with crap.
Bottom line - Platt is full of it, but developers can do better at understanding user experience, and giving someone ownership of user experience on the product team. Joel Spolsky, the Rails folks, and many others are doing a great job of this, and more constructive than Platt.
cz
well, there's a number of forums online, but the most common place to see pics of watch movements is on ebay - many sellers will remove the back of the watch to show the movement...also search for 'skeleton' in watches for transparent cases - watch ppl were into case mods long before the LAN party crowd ;-)
At the local department store, there is a desk where they will put on a new strap, replace batteries, remove links in a watch bracelet, etc. There is a list on display behind the counter for the staff of watch brands they must not open, or "it will come out of your pay cheque". These are mostly kinetic powered watches, from what I could tell...though I wouldn't be happy with them opening up my automatic mechanical watches, either.
cz
cz
There's a company called HemCon that makes a chitosan bandage - it's a protein gel bandage made from chitosan extracted from shrimp shells. The US Army currently uses it in Iraq & Afghanistan.
So, we've started a pool here in the office about how long it will take for someone to post a reply that tells you they had a 2400 baud modem. And then someone else will post about their 300 baud modem. And then someone else will need to pipe up who admin'ed a BBS using semaphore and carrier pigeons.
;-)
But of course, we know you're not *really* old until you used the original nam shub sneakernet with Sumerian clay tablets...man, Slashdot is the best
Creating good UI and an overall understanding of user experience is a common shortcoming in OSS. The notable exceptions have had significant help from commercial companies with ui design expertise (say, Firefox, Ruby on Rails). Can you please describe how you think about user experience and OSS, and how that impacts investment decisions?
- initial thoughts on the UI when assessing products (obviously not so important for server tools)
- thoughts on UX expertise of the team
- more importantly, how you take a promising OSS company and add UX expertise?
thanks,
cz
"why he believes India and China will grow the fastest in this regard."
Ummm... It's not that hard to see why people at the start of an adoption curve (china) will have faster growth than people who've plateaued (Australia). Given that if you spend $1 more per capita, in China that's 100% growth, and in Australia 0.5% growth...
If you read the caption, screenshot 4 isn't from Spore, it's from a US military sim - the quote is from the president of a sim company called BreakAway, and he's making predictions of Spore as a sim platform.
Gee, thanks. Was that the parasite talking ;-)
I *do* think there's a difference between regular cat owners, and people who obsess over their felines...it's the latter that I wonder about when stories of mind control parasites come up...
I've always wondered if the personality differences exhibited in the population are an actual effect of the parasite, or simply a correlation of 'people who like cats also are likely to behave in these ways'. For that, there'd need to be a study comparing infected cat owners with non-infected cat owners (and even then, maybe infection rates rise with other behaviors / cultural things, like not being careful with the litter box)...
;-)
Anyways, given that I'm not a fan of cats, I've always been disturbed by people who fawn over them