In Favour of Complexity
I was fortunate enough to attend the sell-out ‘UX London’ conference at The Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch this year (June 15th - 17th). It was the first conference if its type here in London aimed at user experience practitioners and ably presented by the good folk at Clearleft. There were some big names in attendance – both lecturing and running half-day workshops. more »
Thank you - you have been ignored
The LSE’s website has a handy function - at the bottom of every page it invites you to “Comment on this page”.
It’s handy until you actually make use of it… more »
In a perfect world, no one would be able to use anything*
Fantastic Dilbert cartoons at 90% of Everything this morning.
Dilbert on User Experience:
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/05/26/dilbert-on-user-experience/
* The views expressed in this title are Mordac’s alone and do not represent my own…
Google Air-Traffic Graph
Google recently blogged about the routing troubles they experienced a week ago when they incorrectly passed web traffic through Asia, which resulted in “traffic-jams”, slow services and interruptions. more »
How to turn a light off in the dark
Hotel rooms present a variety of novel user-interactions to their often tired and stressed guests. But do travellers really value chic design and high-concept living when all they want to do is turn off the lights and go to sleep? more »
Could the Global Economic Crisis finally mean the end of IE6?
The reports of Internet Explorer 6’s death have been widely exaggerated. However, with clients tightening their financial belts and looking for costs to be cut, could ignoring IE6 save money and the sanity of thousands of web developers? more »
Poka-yoke
Poka yoke, pronounced “POH-kah YOH-keh” — is a Japanese term that translates as “mistake-proofing” (from the Japanese yokeru (avoiding) and poka (inadvertent errors). A poka-yoke device is any mechanism that either prevents a mistake from being made or makes the mistake obvious at a glance. The idea is to prevent errors from being made in the first place, or if they are made, making those errors very obvious. The concept was formalised on the Toyota production lines by the Japanese industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo. more »
How much does a web account cost to maintain?
I haven’t logged into PartyGammon to play backgammon for a few months now. I use a Mac and PartyGammon’s software doesn’t run on it. (I asked them about this and they helpfully pointed out I could buy additional software and a Windows licence so that I could. Thanks for that.) Fair enough you might think, Macs haven’t been around for very long… not many people use them… and those who do probably aren’t stupid enough to gamble… or something. more »
The cost of an email
Sending an actual letter containing tickets costs a company money. You have to chop down a tree, cut it real thin, bleach it, press it and then spend money printing ink all over it. Then you’ve got to stuff them in an envelope, stick a stamp on the envelope and put it in the post. I can understand all of this. I can also understand a company might want to charge me for the pleasure and security of receiving hard-copy tickets in the post. But what I can’t understand is why that time-paper-ink-tree-saving process won’t save me any money? more »