Tag: ui

Talk: We have always been at war with computers

Posted on by jessamyn

two posters showcasing a talk called We have always been at war with computers by Ale Ruiz and Jessamyn West

It’s been a time. I have been talking a bit on social media but mostly just out and about trying to be useful. Everyone’s going through it. I’ve been getting to the point where I’ve got a bit of capacity and have been cleaning off my real and virtual desktops and came across this bit of a shared talk I gave with a friend for Public Philosophy Week back in April. He did the hardware stuff, talking about the tool that is a computer, and how it can really only do what it was designed to do (abbreviated POSIWID – the purpose of a system is what it does). I did the other part. Very few slides but you can view the ones we used here they’re mostly not necessary to the talk but some of them are fun. Here is the part of the talk that I gave.

A user interface is basically any way of interacting with a computer. A command line is a user interface it’s just not a GRAPHICAL one….
Continue reading “Talk: We have always been at war with computers”

research-based usability

Posted on by jessamyn

People sometimes think that saying something is more “usable” is a way of saying that you like using it better. And then they’ll reply that maybe they like using it some other way and you’re at a stalemate. In point of fact, usability is testable and quantifiable. There are a lot of places you can go to read about research-based usability, things that work for most people. I just got this link from Twitter today: 10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies. For people who want a bunch more stuff like this, I highly recommend Usability.gov’s Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines (pdf, 21MB ) which are not only great reading but they’re government documents, so free to repurpose and republish.

just to make sure we’re all on the same page here

Posted on by jessamyn

“A team from Google interviewed dozens of people in Times Square the other day, asking a simple question: What’s a browser? This was in an effort to understand and improve the customer experience of Google’s own browser, called Chrome.

Turns out that over 90% of the people interviewed could not describe what a Web browser is.”

Don’t believe me? Watch the video. Granted, this comes from Google, but while we’re all being “blah blah Firefox, etc” there are many people who just see what happens when you “click the e” and go forward from there.

world usability day is tomorrow

Posted on by jessamyn

If you’re into the whole usability idea — and more and more our interfaces to technology are all we have when interacting wiht the goods, services and government in our lives — then you might like to know that World Usability Day is tomorrow. I’ll noodle around a bit looking at my own websites and I suggest that you and your libraries do the same.

Technology should enhance our lives, not add to our stress or cause danger through poor design or poor quality. It is our duty to ensure that this technology is effective, efficient, satisfying and reliable, and that it is usable by all people. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, because technology can enhance their lives, letting them fully participate in work, social and civic experiences. Human error is a misnomer. Technology should be developed knowing that human beings have certain limitations. Human error will occur if technology is not both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand. We need to reduce human error that results from bad design.

ALA finally hiring Usability Officer

Posted on by jessamyn

You can get 75K plus decent benefits to be a usability officer at ALA. They say “senior” but to the best of my knowledge there aren’t any other usability officers there currently. I’m not sure where officer actually comes from, maybe some ALA-er can explain? In any case, if I were the Usability Officer after I changed the job listings to not spell Website with a capital W, I would ask very specifically what this requirement in the ad means.

The ability to work in a team environment and between two universes of Information Technology and Librarianship is essential in order to maintain an outcome-oriented, global vision.

I’m curious why those are deemed to be two universes instead of, say, two moons orbiting around one big planet of helping people do the things they want to do and go where they want to go. I’m sure Jenny is asking the same questions. I hope they find someone, but I wonder what affect that person will be able to have on the in-process-for-many-years-already website redesign?