I totally agree with you (and am a closet academic at heart). It's just that if you're a developer looking to make your project more usable and relevant, then academic papers are overkill. If I was going to pick between an interaction designer with HCI academic background and commercial development experience and one with just commercial development experience, I'd prefer the academic background sight unseen (but then I'd ask for a portfolio - having an HCI degree doesn't make you a great designer, and the lack of one doesn't mean you can't design)
HCI suffers in real-world situations because tomes like Carroll's collection are of interest to academics, but are often hard to apply to day-to-day problem solving that most development teams need.
Here's a list of books I'd recommend before buying HCI for the New Millenium
The Humane Interface - Raskin
Contextual Design - Beyer and Holtzblatt
Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
Usability Engineering Lifecycle - Deb Mayhew
User and Task Analysis for Interface Design - Hackos and Redish
About Face - Alan Cooper
Information Architecture for the WWW - Rosenfeld and Morville (2nd edition coming from O'Reilly in July)
O'Reilly should also have a book coming out in Fall from Mike Kuniavsky (OpenOffice contributor) on User Research that should be good.
tell me - how are little soldiers actually used? and how little are they? Are we looking at a shrinking ray? or just recruiting wee folk from the Irish American community?
Uhh.. No. Jobs finished keynote - not even new PDA
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Yahoo News reported today that the upcoming Office.NET suite will come in significantly larger packaging. The new larger boxes are not, as some initially assumed, for actual paper manuals. Sources have revealed that the extra room will be used for a roll of duct tape. Duct tape use will be mandatory on all mouths for Office.NET users unless they agree to only speak for purposes of praising Microsoft*.
* some sources indicate that critics of Linux, Linus Torvalds, or Open Source will also qualify for a duct tape exemption.
So will Hailstorm play nice with whatever the AOL collective is working on? Or will there be several authentication networks where you need an id on each to reach the full range of the Net.
Didn't this happen with early financial systems too? I have logos for a number of money-transfer networks on the back of my ATM card (though Interac is the only one that I recognize from actual use). I'm guessing they used to be incompatible...not on the same card.
When I'm worried about limited net access and content, I'm not talking about MSN and AOL being the only online properties...but what if the NYTimes or WSJ implement Hailstorm? And what if Sports Illustrated implements AOL's version (no question there, since it's part of the Time Warner family).
And how will the inevitable open-source clone work? Will people try to co-opt Hailstorm, or turn away since it's MS? (my crystal ball predicts both, in two different projects)
In wartime, and particularly in this kind of war with an invisible enemy, civil liberties will be restricted. And I fully support that, if it helps them get the people and organizations that planned and carried out this tragedy.
The question I have is: after the war is over, can we regain those liberties which we voluntarily (at least for me) have given up? I'm not sure...and I'm not sure where the line is between short-term support of this surveillance to aid the current search for terrorists, and long-term support that will see us living in a police state.
Zimran used to be at Creative Good (Mark's consultancy) until quite recently...I'm all for usability and user experience (it's how I make my living, and a big part of what I spend my spare time on). But I'm also a big supporter of disclosure...
While the BeOS acquisition gives Palm a jump on their previous media capabilities, I for one am happy with my PalmOS just as is...I'd like faster hardware, but I don't want a PocketPC-wannabe OS from Palm.
The simplicity of PalmOS is what makes it attractive...maybe for some superficial Joe Q. Public's the flashy wizbang stuff is a differentiator, but I'm hoping that BeOS doesn't replace PalmOS (maybe have a dual OS strategy? the media-rich BeSpawnOS and the no-nonsense evolution of today's PalmOS?)
I'm no fan of MS, but given my current job search headaches I'd prefer not to see a recession get triggered by something that could be avoided. Selfish? Short-sighted? probably. But I'd like the economy to recover sooner than later, and a MS breakup would result in later.
While I think that Raskin is over the top with some things he's right that the fundamental metaphors for human-computer interaction haven't changed much from the advent of the GUI at PARC.
There's a lot of folks saying "but this isn't how people really use Gnome" or "the comments are insipid"
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.
Well, having recently rewatched Superman II: the blast wave breaks the Phantom Zone prison that has drifted into Earth's solar system and releases General Zod and cronies to come and plague a powerless man of steel and the rest of Earth with horribly bad acting and worse dialog...
Because things are so spread out here, telecommunications is much bigger than in the states (Australia's the same way). Geography provides the necessity that is the mother of invention.
here is the website for the Supernet project
http://www.innovation.gov.ab.ca/supern et/
Here's a list of companies involved
Bell Intrigna (a member of the Bell Family), Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks and 360 Networks - with four leading Alberta technology companies - AXIA Netmedia, TotalTelcom, WiLan, and Netricom.
And then there's Netera, the non-profit in Alberta that runs a 4x Gigabit ethernet backbone in the province
www.netera.ca
Alberta already has the highest per capita of internet access of any state or province. The point of this project is in part to diversify rural communities so they aren't as dependent on agriculture, oil fields, or forestry. If there's broadband in town, entire new industries can set up in somewhere like Stirling (pop. 700).
As soon as I saw that the GeForce2 Ultra was just a fall refresh part of what was already a spring refresh part, my MS conspiracy wheels started turning.
Two scenarios:
Nvidia comes out with next-gen NV 20 now
NV20 in Fall 2000
NV 20 refresh spring 2001
NV 25 available for PC Fall 2001
NV 25 also available in Xbox Fall 2001
Why should I buy an Xbox when I get the same or better performance on my PC?
Nvidia comes out with next-gen NV 20 later (this is what is happening)
GeForce2 refresh in Fall 2000
NV 20 debuts spring 2001
NV 20 refresh best available nvidia card for PC Fall 2001
NV 25 only available in Xbox Fall 2001
Am I the only one, or does anyone else wonder if MS has anything to do with this roadmap varying from the nvidia pattern of 6 month cycles?
the other alternative is that Nvidia just wants to wring more $$$ from the GeForce2 design cycle, and the Ultra is the result - they know people won't be buying the Ultra in droves, but it'll keep the GeForce2 GTS from hitting the bargain bin as soon.
David Brin (Uplift War, Startide Rising) wrote a short story based on exactly this principle called "Tank Farm Dynamo"...
Using the tether to *generate* electricity would de-orbit a space station (tether as dynamo), requiring thrust from {rockets,small mice in spacesuits} to keep it in orbit. Pumping electricity *through* the tether would cause the station to acclerate and could be used as thrust instead of rockets or mice (tether as motor).
The upcoming Voodoo 5000 is a dual chip solution - effectively doing SLI. The 6000 will be a quad chip part (which is why it has that nasty $599 estimated retail price). The VSA 100 is the actual chip that 3dfx developed. It supposedly will scale to 32 processors...a third party manufacturer is already on board for an 8 chip card for professional 3D / CAD etc...
Seems nVidia will strengthen their lead with another 3dfx delay (cool, cuz I like nVidia, bad because competition drives prices down and performance up...though in many ways nVidia acts as competition to itself by releasing new products on a 6 month cycle.)
Then instead of one "browser + content" company (AOL) we'd have two...you can log on and have a choice of "how would you like your world filtered today?"
I'd much rather see IE be part of Office, and split off the content side of MS all alone, so you can surf free...
It depends on the users, it depends on their goals, it depends on their tasks. It depends on the environment...social and physical. It depends on the platform: cell phone, VR, or plain-vanilla desktop.
Usability guidelines help, but aren't sufficient. Really deeply understanding your users (and you may have several very distinct user groups), your users goals, and the best way to reach those goals - and then doing iterative prototyping and usability evaluation is the way to answer specific design questions.
for more, look up user centered design on Google, etc.
yes xbox was unveiled, officially or not, at GDC 2 weeks ago. Since then there has been more info come out about it. Gamespot's article is one of the best I've seen. Gamespot also has an xbox faq. Thresh's Firing Squad also has some analysis. And the demo unit looks like a big, black X. (pics in some of those articles)
You're right brennan - sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a monitor. see Bruce Tognazzini's explanation (Tog being an original Macintosh UI guy among other things - he's up there with Jakob in the UI / Usability field). If you're really interested and want academic literature, start at the Human Computer Interaction Bibliography at www.hcibib.org, search for serif for a couple references.
Do you see any way of incorporating usability engineering into the Open Source development cycle, or is it too idealistic to get volunteer usability engineers working along with volunteer software engineers? See www.luigui.org for one attempt to bring ui and usability to the OSS world.
I also have taken an Athabasca course. Standard tuition is $375 Cdn ~ $260 US including textbook, etc. The 'study guide' was basically a hand-holding walk through the text book: read pages 5-8, write down all the bold terms, do excercises 4 and 7 on page 10.... Courses felt more like community college courses than classic computer science. This is both a pro and con - community colleges are more flexible than big universities, often are able to tailor their programs to the job market of the day. So Athabasca has a comp sci course in object-oriented systems analysis and design, while the local big school does not. However, the emphasis on flavor-of-the-day skills means that higher level skills (think algorithm design) are not emphasized as much as in the school where I have taken face to face comp sci courses.
Given all that, I will take more Athabasca courses, but I'm not sure I'd want to take a degree there.
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I totally agree with you (and am a closet academic at heart). It's just that if you're a developer looking to make your project more usable and relevant, then academic papers are overkill. If I was going to pick between an interaction designer with HCI academic background and commercial development experience and one with just commercial development experience, I'd prefer the academic background sight unseen (but then I'd ask for a portfolio - having an HCI degree doesn't make you a great designer, and the lack of one doesn't mean you can't design)
tell me - how are little soldiers actually used? and how little are they? Are we looking at a shrinking ray? or just recruiting wee folk from the Irish American community?
let alone a Palm acquisition announcement.
Yahoo News reported today that the upcoming Office.NET suite will come in significantly larger packaging. The new larger boxes are not, as some initially assumed, for actual paper manuals. Sources have revealed that the extra room will be used for a roll of duct tape. Duct tape use will be mandatory on all mouths for Office.NET users unless they agree to only speak for purposes of praising Microsoft*.
* some sources indicate that critics of Linux, Linus Torvalds, or Open Source will also qualify for a duct tape exemption.
So will Hailstorm play nice with whatever the AOL collective is working on? Or will there be several authentication networks where you need an id on each to reach the full range of the Net.
Didn't this happen with early financial systems too? I have logos for a number of money-transfer networks on the back of my ATM card (though Interac is the only one that I recognize from actual use). I'm guessing they used to be incompatible...not on the same card.
When I'm worried about limited net access and content, I'm not talking about MSN and AOL being the only online properties...but what if the NYTimes or WSJ implement Hailstorm? And what if Sports Illustrated implements AOL's version (no question there, since it's part of the Time Warner family).
And how will the inevitable open-source clone work? Will people try to co-opt Hailstorm, or turn away since it's MS? (my crystal ball predicts both, in two different projects)
cheers,
cz
In wartime, and particularly in this kind of war with an invisible enemy, civil liberties will be restricted. And I fully support that, if it helps them get the people and organizations that planned and carried out this tragedy.
The question I have is: after the war is over, can we regain those liberties which we voluntarily (at least for me) have given up? I'm not sure...and I'm not sure where the line is between short-term support of this surveillance to aid the current search for terrorists, and long-term support that will see us living in a police state.
Zimran used to be at Creative Good (Mark's consultancy) until quite recently...I'm all for usability and user experience (it's how I make my living, and a big part of what I spend my spare time on). But I'm also a big supporter of disclosure...
The simplicity of PalmOS is what makes it attractive...maybe for some superficial Joe Q. Public's the flashy wizbang stuff is a differentiator, but I'm hoping that BeOS doesn't replace PalmOS (maybe have a dual OS strategy? the media-rich BeSpawnOS and the no-nonsense evolution of today's PalmOS?)
cz
I'm no fan of MS, but given my current job search headaches I'd prefer not to see a recession get triggered by something that could be avoided. Selfish? Short-sighted? probably. But I'd like the economy to recover sooner than later, and a MS breakup would result in later.
cz
see here for a bunch more on ZUIs
While I think that Raskin is over the top with some things he's right that the fundamental metaphors for human-computer interaction haven't changed much from the advent of the GUI at PARC.
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
Well, having recently rewatched Superman II: the blast wave breaks the Phantom Zone prison that has drifted into Earth's solar system and releases General Zod and cronies to come and plague a powerless man of steel and the rest of Earth with horribly bad acting and worse dialog...
CANARIE is the national group leading advanced networking in Canada canarie
things like CA*net 3
Because things are so spread out here, telecommunications is much bigger than in the states (Australia's the same way). Geography provides the necessity that is the mother of invention.
cz
Here's a list of companies involved
Bell Intrigna (a member of the Bell Family), Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks and 360 Networks - with four leading Alberta technology companies - AXIA Netmedia, TotalTelcom, WiLan, and Netricom.
And then there's Netera, the non-profit in Alberta that runs a 4x Gigabit ethernet backbone in the province
www.netera.ca
Alberta already has the highest per capita of internet access of any state or province. The point of this project is in part to diversify rural communities so they aren't as dependent on agriculture, oil fields, or forestry. If there's broadband in town, entire new industries can set up in somewhere like Stirling (pop. 700).
Well worth the price in my book.
cz
After all, the perks of telecommuting should be more than working in your jammies.
cz
Two scenarios:
Nvidia comes out with next-gen NV 20 now
- NV20 in Fall 2000
- NV 20 refresh spring 2001
- NV 25 available for PC Fall 2001
- NV 25 also available in Xbox Fall 2001
Why should I buy an Xbox when I get the same or better performance on my PC?Nvidia comes out with next-gen NV 20 later (this is what is happening)
- GeForce2 refresh in Fall 2000
- NV 20 debuts spring 2001
- NV 20 refresh best available nvidia card for PC Fall 2001
- NV 25 only available in Xbox Fall 2001
Am I the only one, or does anyone else wonder if MS has anything to do with this roadmap varying from the nvidia pattern of 6 month cycles?the other alternative is that Nvidia just wants to wring more $$$ from the GeForce2 design cycle, and the Ultra is the result - they know people won't be buying the Ultra in droves, but it'll keep the GeForce2 GTS from hitting the bargain bin as soon.
later,
cz
David Brin (Uplift War, Startide Rising) wrote a short story based on exactly this principle called "Tank Farm Dynamo"...
Using the tether to *generate* electricity would de-orbit a space station (tether as dynamo), requiring thrust from {rockets,small mice in spacesuits} to keep it in orbit. Pumping electricity *through* the tether would cause the station to acclerate and could be used as thrust instead of rockets or mice (tether as motor).
The upcoming Voodoo 5000 is a dual chip solution - effectively doing SLI. The 6000 will be a quad chip part (which is why it has that nasty $599 estimated retail price). The VSA 100 is the actual chip that 3dfx developed. It supposedly will scale to 32 processors...a third party manufacturer is already on board for an 8 chip card for professional 3D / CAD etc...
Seems nVidia will strengthen their lead with another 3dfx delay (cool, cuz I like nVidia, bad because competition drives prices down and performance up...though in many ways nVidia acts as competition to itself by releasing new products on a 6 month cycle.)
I'd much rather see IE be part of Office, and split off the content side of MS all alone, so you can surf free...
It depends on the users, it depends on their goals, it depends on their tasks. It depends on the environment...social and physical. It depends on the platform: cell phone, VR, or plain-vanilla desktop.
Usability guidelines help, but aren't sufficient. Really deeply understanding your users (and you may have several very distinct user groups), your users goals, and the best way to reach those goals - and then doing iterative prototyping and usability evaluation is the way to answer specific design questions.
for more, look up user centered design on Google, etc.
yes xbox was unveiled, officially or not, at GDC 2 weeks ago. Since then there has been more info come out about it. Gamespot's article is one of the best I've seen. Gamespot also has an xbox faq. Thresh's Firing Squad also has some analysis. And the demo unit looks like a big, black X. (pics in some of those articles)
You're right brennan - sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a monitor.
see
Bruce Tognazzini's explanation (Tog being an original Macintosh UI guy among other things - he's up there with Jakob in the UI / Usability field).
If you're really interested and want academic literature, start at the Human Computer Interaction Bibliography at www.hcibib.org, search for serif for a couple references.
Do you see any way of incorporating usability engineering into the Open Source development cycle, or is it too idealistic to get volunteer usability engineers working along with volunteer software engineers? See www.luigui.org for one attempt to bring ui and usability to the OSS world.
thanks.
I also have taken an Athabasca course. Standard tuition is $375 Cdn ~ $260 US including textbook, etc. The 'study guide' was basically a hand-holding walk through the text book: read pages 5-8, write down all the bold terms, do excercises 4 and 7 on page 10.... Courses felt more like community college courses than classic computer science. This is both a pro and con - community colleges are more flexible than big universities, often are able to tailor their programs to the job market of the day. So Athabasca has a comp sci course in object-oriented systems analysis and design, while the local big school does not. However, the emphasis on flavor-of-the-day skills means that higher level skills (think algorithm design) are not emphasized as much as in the school where I have taken face to face comp sci courses.
Given all that, I will take more Athabasca courses, but I'm not sure I'd want to take a degree there.
best of luck.