Fisher Funnies

Gary Fisher Bikes’ website features a nifty Flash application for finding the bike that’s right for you. While you’re just answering simple questions, you’re actually sifting through facets to achieve a result. Today on a mailing list, Christopher Fahey pointed out something else on Fisher Bikes. Use their Compare tool, selecting three bikes. Then do [...]

You May Be An Information Architect If…

Jeff and I are in San Antonio, TX, on a consulting gig. Yesterday after work, we went out for beers with the team we?re working with. Jeff and I, being Bay Area liberals, had been careful to not open political conversations here in Dubya-land. But one of the team members asked about how people felt [...]

Not really courting popularity

So, our original reason for invading that country over there was because we knew they had “weapons of mass destruction.” Though, um, it seems now that maybe they didn’t. So, as it became clearer to Those In Charge that we weren’t going to find any such weapons, the story shifted to one of regime change, [...]

Who is Wired Magazine’s Audience?

The advertisers, silly! Now, to some degree, this is true of every piece of advertiser-supported mass media. But WiReD displays a mercenary zeal toward serving advertisers generally unseen in magazines that want their editorial to be taken seriously. The latest issue includes a many-page insert on Wi-fi. It?s unfortunate that the considerable talents of writers [...]

How About Those Who Lollygag?

Stacy is studying to get a Ph.D. in archaeology. In picking a focus for her work, she’s settled on intentional communities in turn-of-the-century North America. Back in Canada, she had studied a group delightfully named the Doukhobors, Russians who had split away for the Orthodox church. Now that she’s here in the states, her interests [...]

Rettig, Steady, Go!

“Interaction Design” is one of those terms that we ‘user experience’ types use that refers to something that *everyone* is familiar with. Marc Rettig makes that clear in his presentation, “interaction design history in a teeny little nutshell” (PDF, 3.2 MB). Even if you think you know everything about interaction design, you should check out [...]

Peterme in Professional Mode

Yon Adaptive Path way, I’ve just published “Finding the Right Users”, a guide to getting the right people to participate in your user research. While I wasn’t blogging, I published “Conducting International Usability”, my baldfaced attempt at getting someone else to fly me around the world to conduct user tests. And hey, super-catchy essay titles, [...]

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz