first full day in new york

1. It’s windy and chilly. Thankfully, it’s supposed to get a little warmer. I underdressed. 2. 10 years later, and Starbucks still seems to be the most consistently reliable source of coffee. New York: that’s just sad. 3. I had a burger and black-and-white shake from the Shake Shack (thanks, Joshua!). Both were very yummy. [...]

Flickr should know bettr!

So, I’ve just switched from Safari to Firefox, so I have to sign in to all my web services. Including Flickr. Arriving at the sign in page, I see: And then I keep staring. Because I can’t figure out where to sign in. The page before had a link that said “Sign in”. So, naturally [...]

peterme in New York, JJG in Amsterdam

In a week and a half, I’m heading to New York to teach our Beyond Usability workshop with Lane Becker. October 31 and November 1. I’ve never liked Halloween, but I love Dia de Los Muertos. If you haven’t signed up, use my promotion code of FOPM to get 15% off. And if we should [...]

Is Lab Usability Dead?

I would love it if we could simply put a stake into the practice of lab usability. It’s run its course, and it’s simply not well suited to truly measuring the effectiveness of designs in the modern era. Usability engineering was born of a simpler time. Before everyone was networked. When people used computers for [...]

Martin Wattenberg lecture at SIMS

Martin Wattenberg is one of my heroes. He’s a information visualization guy, and I’ve been following his stuff for about as long as I’ve been maintaining this site (that’s since 1998…). Even if you’re not an infoviz nerd, you’ve still probably seen his NameVoyager, which shows trends in baby names since 1880. This afternoon, he [...]

Office 12 UI Is Information Architecture

A follow-on thought from my previous post. If you watch the video interview with the Office UI lead, you’ll hear her talk about making accessible 1,500 commands. The new ribbon, and its task orientation, is not an interaction design solution, but an information architecture solution. It’s actually classic information architecture. What is the most suitable [...]

Beware of false prophets…

Causing a buzz among folks who design websites and software is Jakob’s latest Alertbox “RIP WYSIWYG.” The coming Microsoft Office User Interface portends the move from the What You See Is What You Get interface popularized by the Macintosh, toward a What You Get is What You See model, also called “results-oriented UI.” Now, I [...]

Just come out and say it…

From an email I just got… Peter Bestica, Inc is helping World’s Number 1 internet brand find some directors in User Experience Design. If you want to contribute and be a part of their success and have experience in the User Experience Design in any of the following products please send me your resume. The [...]

Podcast I Like: The Word Nerds

Finding good podcasts has been remarkably difficult. The various services (Odeo, Podcast Alley, Loomia) have terrible terrible search and browse mechanisms. But, with my new Nano, I wanted something to accompany the walking part of my commute. One podcast I’ve gotten to like is The Word Nerds. It’s a weekly program by three high school [...]

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