The Most Important Usability Article I’ve Read This Year

The latest issue of interactions magazine, contains Dennis Wixon’s “Evaluating Usability Methods: Why the Current Literature Fails the Practitioner,”. (You have to pay to read it online, unfortunately.) Dennis is annoyed with the current debate within the usability field about “how many users?” This debate recurs every professional generation, and, as he points out, generates [...]

The Slings of Boxes and Arrows — Persecuting Jakob

One of the best things I’ve ever (co-)written is now up at Boxes and Arrows, a review of the Nielsen/Norman Group report Usability Return on Investment We aimed for a New Yorker-style review — to use the subject as a jumping off point for discussing the underlying issues. So, while about half the review is [...]

Film Fans Rejoice – Night of the Hunter Mania

(also posted to the Beast Blog, but too good to just leave there…) This weekend and next week, the Pacific Film Archive has a special treat for film lovers. On Saturday, July 26th, there’s CHARLES LAUGHTON DIRECTS THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER: A PRESENTATION OF OUTTAKES FROM THE FILM. And on July 30th, they’re showing [...]

“Screen Capture” a Whole Web Page on Mac OS X

[Ignore this if you're not a web geek.] So, back in my Windows days, I was a fan of HyperSnap, a screen-capture tool that could “auto-scroll” Web pages, which saves one from having to capture one portion, scroll down, capture another portion, then bring those into an image editor, and stitch them. On Mac OS [...]

Love Me Or Leave Me – Set Your Tivo!

On Thursday the 17th, Turner Classic Movies will show Love Me or Leave Me, a “biopic” of Ruth Etting, who made her way from small Chicago clubs to the Ziegfeld Follies and beyond, in a career managed by a Chicago gangster. My dad clued me into the prior airing of the film with this email: [...]

Avast Ye! Scurvy Dogs! Arrr! And All That

Yesterday caught Pirates of the Caribbean, and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. A rollicking adventure, it has what you’d expect: lots of swords, ships with damned men, parrots on shoulders, cannons, a damsel in distress (who can hold her own in a fight). It also has good stuff you wouldn’t expect — [...]

Business Issues and User Experience

At the DUX2003 conference, among the most commonly asked questions dealt with how user experience can better communicate its value to the world of business. The questions often were of two types: 1. How can I measure my effectiveness? 2. What methods are there to influence others in my organization? Those two questions are addressed [...]

Thoughtwander – Product Research, Hypertext Cycles, and Decision Making

Back in the day, I used to take many a thoughtwander. As I’m getting old and boring, they come fewer and farther between. Recently I’ve found a couple threads that might tie together. The first deals with how people research product information online. The second concerns a hypertext pattern known as “The Cycle”. I have [...]

State of the State

As if things weren’t bad enough in California, along comes an eye-opening and informative story on how the state’s “tough on crime” policies are rending the black communities in Oakland. Considering the delayed effects we’re just now witnessing, it’s likely we’ll see ramifications for years to come. Great. Also of note is the haunting photograph [...]

Usability != User Experience

Historically, usability engineering is done toward the end of a product development cycle, before something goes to code (and, sadly, often not until after), and usually by that point, the only revisions that can be made are rather superficial. If usability testing demonstrates that there are fundamental flaws with the product, well, too late, we’re [...]

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz