Thursday, November 27, 2003
You Are Meetup
I've just done Chris Heathcote's What kind of social software are you?, a reinterpretation of Tom Smith's Lazyweb request for an 'Am I social software or not?' tool. And I'm sad to say I'm Meetup...(which my friends will probably confirm)
But having just had a Meetup-in-all-but-name a few hours ago with Tom, Chris, Lee, Jonathan, Jane and Iain at The Garrison in Bermondsey, I have to beg to differ: they might not all be totally 'hot' but they most definitely ain't 'not'.
5:56 PM|
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Complaining
In the event, the iSociety report didn't get discussed on Thinking Allowed yesterday - but there was a report about another workplace ethnographic study that I found fascinating. John Weeks, author of Unpopular Culture: The Ritual of Complaint in a British Bank (to be published in January by University of Chicago Press), gave some great insights into his fieldwork in a major British bank. Weeks launched his fieldwork intending to study something else entirely, but was clearly so struck by what he saw happening around him that he refocused his research. It's his thesis that in a large organisation, the concept of 'complaining' serves many purposes, from ice-breaking with visitors to statements of tribal allegiances. Of particular interest is his description of how people stop complaining about 'the IT people' when they meet them, in other words when both start to see each other as human beings: both groups then complain about management. The ultimate complaint is to moan about the 'culture' of an organisation: this implies that nobody is to blame and nothing can be done. But then not all types of complaints are designed to elicit responses or solutions.
Here's the link to the Listen Again page and more info about Weeks on the Thinking Allowed page. I'm looking forward to reading the book when it comes out.
11:05 AM|
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Everyday life
I hope to post something about last night's UK UPA talk by David Sless, but in the meantime, here's a gem. As we came out of the building where the meeting was held - the London office of a well-known Redmond-based software company - several people gathered around the door to the street. A first-time attendee - who is not a usability person - struggled for more than a minute, trying to figure out how to open the thing, while several others observed but were unable to help. Having tried all the expected methods, she called out: "Does anyone have 'O level doors'?" We did manage to get out in the end....
10:35 AM|
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Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Ethnography in Design Forum
Simon Rubens and Paula Neal organised a stonking launch event for the Ethnography in Design Forum last night. Held at PDD's offices (formerly the premises of Vivienne Westwood, apparently), the event brought together people from a range of organisations - both public and private - as well as a number of micro-business practitioners working in product design, service design and ethnography applied to new technologies.
Paula Neal briefly introduced the event, Lee Crossley described the kinds of ways that ethnographically informed research is used within PDD to inform product design, Joe Langford discussed his work with Deana McDonagh on the various ways that focus group-type setups can be used to feed into the design process, and Simon Rubens described the history of the E-lab/Sapient experience modelling approach and how this addresses the issue of reporting ethnographic findings, with simple visual structures that connect components and findings while also driving analysis and rigour.
There was then a lively debate about whether 'ethnography' in the commercial context was anything other than qualitative research by another name; whether all we were describing was just a set of tools (note: human-computer interaction is another 'tool-gathering' discipline) or a philosophy, and the problems of 'what you call it' and 'how to sell it' (I think I've seen this last debate in other disciplines recently: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose).
Lots of people seemed keen on further events, so I'm sure this will take off. It would certainly fill a gap in the current London events scene: while designers, information architects, usability people and taxonomisers have become quite organised, the ethnography-qualitative research end hasn't been catered for in a while.
12:18 PM|
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Thinking Allowed
Max Nathan of iSociety will be chatting to Laurie Taylor about the latest iSociety report on this afternoon's BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed. (The Beeb's website hasn't been updated with today's programme details yet.)
12:10 PM|
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Monday, November 24, 2003
Accessibility conference in London
The BCS Electronic Publishing group have organised a one-day conference in London (3 December) addressing a whole range of accessibility issues, including catering for learning disabilities, multilingual publishing, and testing. There's a good range of speakers, and a generous conference discount for charities.
More details on the events page and full conference information on the BCS EPSG website.
11:42 AM|
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Sunday, November 23, 2003
On stating the obvious
Over on Techworld, Kieren McCarthy lays into the iSociety report on the grounds that it's stating the obvious.
Agreed: the report provides evidence for things that many people say they already know. My problem with this is: if they know it so well, why don't they act on it? How is it that we haven't moved on?
Why do management's continue naively to install monstrously expensive systems on empty rhetoric from vendors, only to see it fail to perform? And then do it all over again a year later. Why do they distance ICT departments from employees, and then wonder why communications are so poor? Why do they fail to train employees to use *any* software, and then wonder why users don't understand how anything works? Why do they blame employees for using their - nice and simple - email clients as their centre of operations, with thousands of emails stored, while they provide complex, dysfunctional and slow KM systems that fail to fulfill people's needs? And why do they ridicule people for printing out documents, while the rate of machine/system/network failure - often for days on end - stops everyone from getting on with their jobs?
It's all obvious stuff. It's just that it's all forgotten at the time when decisions are taken about ICT and how to use it. Too often, managers don't take ICT issues seriously, or in the context of organisation strategy, even when an entire organisation's emails are bouncing, or when the entire network has been down for three days (and there's still nobody around who knows about networks to fix it). Until the organisation comes to its knees, that is. Meanwhile, it's the staff that are manning the lifeboats.
More comment on the report over at The Register.
3:35 PM|
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Going Underground
There's been a lot of stuff about metro maps over recent weeks...and before.
Over on Xblog, some interesting stuff on a 3D Tube map this week. There are issues with 3D: on the one hand, people like 3D representations; on the other, they in practice generally find them less comprehensible/useful for finding their way around.
Tom Smith has pointed to Edward Tufte's exchanges on the London Underground map. Tufte's site includes the original map conceived by Beck.
Then this morning, Excess Baggage on BBC Radio 4 had a discussion about metro systems around the world, the way they reflected - or not - their respective overground cities (mental models, anyone?), and the merits of their maps (all, in one way or another, modelled on Harry Beck's London Tube map of the 1930s). Is New York's regularity lost in it's subway map? Is London's disorder rendered into order on the - much changed - Beck map of the Underground? Tufte believes the original has not travelled well to other metro-ed cities.
Other London Underground resources:
The true physical geography of the Underground
London Underground map with 500m walk lines dotted in
Bloggers around the London Underground (and British Rail too)
Integrating: Bus Spider Map with Tube lines
One of the most welcome things on returing to the UK was the 'spider' maps (at each bus stop), representing the bus routes and how they converge and diverge. It's now Transport for London policy to extend these everywhere. Chris Heathcote is now attempting an integration of spider maps with 'other mode' transport information: Underground, river etc. (Useless info: there's now a car that can be used on the river too: courtesy of a New Zealander who wanted to use his vehicle both modes).
9:11 AM|
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Saturday, November 22, 2003
Decision on California verified voting
Well here it is, yesterday's letter from California's Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel:
"As you are aware, in February 2003, I formed the Secretary of State's Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force in response to concerns over the security of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines and the issue of whether to require each machine to include a voter verified paper trail. As chair and co-chair of that Task Force, you did a terrific job of bringing a diverse group of individuals together on a difficult issue.
"I have reviewed the Task Force report, and considered the views of many of the over 6,000 people who offered their opinions on this issue during the 30 day public comment period. Enclosed is my position paper outlining how I intend to proceed on this issue. In brief, I am requiring that as of July 1, 2005, all local jurisdictions purchasing new DRE voting systems may only purchase certified DRE voting systems that contain a VVPAT feature which is fully accessible and allows every voter including disabled voters and those speaking English as a second language to vote privately and independently. Accessible means that the information provided on the paper printout from the VVPAT mechanism is provided or conveyed to voters via a non- visual method, such as through an audio component.
"As of July 1, 2006, DRE systems already in use on that date will have to be replaced or modified to incorporate an accessible VVPAT feature, if they do not already contain one. As such, I am directing the VSP to establish standards by December 31, 2003, for voting machine manufacturers to follow in developing VVPAT for their systems. These should be outcome-based standards that provide direction without limiting innovation in the development of systems with accessible VVPAT. These should also be consistent with the rules and regulations staff is currently drafting governing voting technology and systems that provide access to blind and visually impaired individuals, required pursuant to AB 2525 (Jackson, Chapter 950, Statutes of 2002).
"Specific issues that need to be addressed include, but should not be limited to, the following:
· Establishing design criteria for the paper ballot copies such as being easy for the voter to read, being in a format that lends itself to easy counting after the election, specifications on the paper required, specifications on the ink required, and determining the specific information to be included on the paper ballot copy.
· Assuring randomized out-stacking of the paper ballot copies in order to assure the privacy of voters.
· Requiring adequate storage space and paper supply in each voting unit in order to accommodate the large number of ballots cast (and spoiled ballots) by the maximum number of voters allowed for each voting unit.
· Requiring adequate viewing space to assure voters can easily view their ballot choices.
· Determining the format of the paper ballot copies for voters who cast ballots in a foreign language.
· Establishing procedures that allow voters to reject or "spoil" their paper ballot copies.
· Establishing procedures to enable voters who notice discrepancies to alert the precinct's poll workers. Such procedures would also need to stipulate under what conditions a voting machine would have to be taken offline.
· Establishing requirements regarding the storage of paper ballot copies.
· Clarifying how to assure that disabled voters who are not verifying on the paper ballot printout can be assured no others can view the printout of their selections.
· Assuring that voters can inspect, but not physically handle, the paper ballot copy.
"In addition, I am directing manufacturers of voting systems that all new DREs purchased after July 1, 2005 include electronic verification as the means to assure that the information provided for verification to disabled voters accurately reflects what is recorded by the machine and what is printed on the VVPAT paper record. Any electronic verification method must have open source code in order to be certified for use in a voting system in California.
"While I am convinced that the voting systems certified for use in California are secure, I recognize that security can always be improved. Therefore, in order to augment current security procedures, I am adopting stricter state standards for certification and security of DRE voting systems consistent with the recommendations in the Task Force report. Please work with your staff to prepare the appropriate direction to local elections officials and voting system manufacturers so that new standards can be adopted by December 31, 2003 and implemented on a workable timeline.
"Most importantly is to begin preparations to implement Parallel Monitoring for the March 2, 2004 Statewide Primary Elections, and the creation of a Technical Oversight Committee comprised of technical experts who can improve current testing and code- review standards, provide expert guidance throughout the certification process, and serve as a panel to review software and hardware issues that might arise. I hope to have this committee in place within 60 days. I am also directing the VSP to work with the members of this Technical Oversight Committee to establish standards for electronic verification.
"I am certain that additional certification standards and procedures to comply with the numerous security recommendations in the report will also be necessary. I urge you to move quickly on this effort so that local elections officials and voting system manufacturers receive as much clarity on these issues as soon as possible."
11:17 AM|
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Back to basics?
While manufacturers are coming up with increasing numbers of convergence products (camera phones, phone-PDA/wireless email devices), and "camera cellphones appear to be on pace to replace DVDs as the fastest-growing consumer technology device ever", according to USA Today, are we actually using these multifunction devices as multifunction devices?
One Sony Ericsson P800 user told me last week that while his device is really handy for notes, email etc, he didn't actually use it as a mobile phone (he carries a separate mobile), and this was no technophobe. Camera phones on the other hand have very poor picture quality and owners rarely seem to use the camera functionality except to demonstrate it (if you want to take pictures, you carry a small digital camera with you).
We seem to be facing the same situation that the software industry has inflicted on us for some time: rapidly increasing functionality and consequently complexity, with most people rarely using much more than a few basic functions that continue to be poorly addressed.
The rapid take-up of camera phones can be attributed to availability (a large proportion of phones available are now camera phones), to novelty, to status (you buy the phones that your friends have - or better), and to the fact that we all find out new products much more quickly these days. We are not necessarily buying the new products because they are better at performing the functions that we really want to use.
In the rush to launch convergence products, manufacturers are still getting the basics wrong for many device owners: the Sony Ericsson T-610 is a visually appealing product, and yes it has a - poor - camera, but its texting interaction still leaves a lot to be desired. I wonder what the comparable figures for SMS use and the camera function on phones might be...
10:16 AM|
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Friday, November 21, 2003
Report launch
The turnout for last night's iSociety report launch was perhaps a little thinner than usual: many were out on the anti-war march wending its way across London, while others no doubt faced difficulties just getting around town (no buses across central London, ranks of police blocking the way - The Work Foundation is just around the corner from Buck House, Downing Street and Trafalgar Square).
Responding to the report, Geraldine Fitzpatrick of Sussex University characterised the workplace as bounded chaos, where each and every situation is unique, and pointed to the Lorenz system (described originally in the context of meteorology - remember the butterfly effect?) as a good way of picturing the complexity we face on a daily basis. The way of dealing with this bounded chaos, she argued, is to design systems - in the widest sense - that permit adaptation to circumstance. And that doesn't mean 'personalisation'.
Bill Thompson, somewhat uncharacteristically, quoted Bill Gates. In his keynote speech at Comdex, Gates described IT at the brain of the organisation: "If you take your brain and outsource it then any adaptability you want (becomes) a contract negotiation." A common pattern in the research findings was the poor communication between users and ICT professionals, though this wasn't always the result of outsourcing.
I can think of a few people in MS who would have much to contribute to an ethnographically informed debate on ICTs in the workplace (Dennis Wixon and Anne Cohen Kiel, to name a couple), but it seems the UK is willing to supply only tablet-wielding sales and marketing bods. Not to worry: they are actually funding - along with PWC - the ongoing iSociety research programme, and that has to be a good thing.
11:01 PM|
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Guardian/Observer digital editions in beta
Simon Waldman (Director of Digital at The Guardian) reports on his blog that The Guardian and The Observer digital editions are now in beta. One clear benefit of this is that all the photos from the print editions are included (something sorely lacking until now). This is to become a paid-for service...
10:22 PM|
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California expected to adopt verified voting
It looks like California is finally taking the plunge on verified voting, following extensive pressure from the computing community. "Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes are properly recorded", the LA Times reported yesterday.
The issues still remain of when to sample the paper trail to support any electronically-stored data, and of which is to be believed - paper or electronic - when there is a discrepancy between the two.
State Tells Counties to Establish Paper Trail on Electronic Voting (requires free registration)
9:46 PM|
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Thursday, November 20, 2003
Not waving, but....
iSociety's latest report, 'Getting By, Not Getting On: Technology in UK Workplaces', is published today.
It will provide little ammunition to the proponents of expenditure on new systems and new technologies. UK workplaces are full of employees struggling with quite basic problems: systems that go down, networks that go down, inputting backlogs from systems failures while keeping up with current work, unloved and unused (and expensive) KM systems, bulging email folders (so often the 'alternative' KM system adopted by employees), laborious cutting and pasting between applications, and equally tedious inputting information already recorded on paper. And more than a few managements who see ICTs as another way of enforcing control rather than as tools allowing creativity - in problem solving - to flourish to the benefit of the bottom line.
It was good, therefore, to see some glimmers of light during the research for this project. Such as the (public sector) IT director who - while upgrading networks and all the other backend stuff - is determined to use ICT training not only as a means of ensuring people know how to use the tech to best effect, but as a way of enabling all staff - including those not currently using computers - to acquire basic ICT skills to improve their own career prospects. This was the same organisation that set up a small call centre that didn't use any of the now standard call centre software control mechanisms, but nevertheless achieved massive increases in productivity. And the same organisation that provided regular training courses for staff: curiously, while many public sector staff still believe they are the poor relations compared with the private sector when it comes to training, the research showed that firms these days often see formal training as superfluous.
In my view, however, the focus of much training is invariably on applications: people are not taught about the principles of how their machines work, how to benefit from shortcuts, how to deal with problems that do occur, how to deal with the spaces between applications, or how best to integrate different technologies, both low tech and high tech. The application is at the centre: there is no holistic view of the computer user.
Press coverage so far includes the BBC and The Guardian.
12:09 PM|
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003
E-voting
Excellent results on the EU Verified Voting resolution to date: from a standing start only a few weeks ago, there are now more than 400 endorsers including MPs, MEPs and many others, plus we've seen coverage in The Times, The Guardian, Kablenet, the French press, Tom Watsons MP's blog (and I hope more to come). All due to the good work of Jason Kitcat and Ian Brown.
Find out more: http://www.free-project.org/resolution/
and press release: http://www.fipr.org/press/031104vote.html
10:09 PM|
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Pointless
I've received the usual Flashmobs hogwash this month, this time:
PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 18/11/03
"The George W flashmob taking place in London on thursday
with everyone dressing up in policeman uniforms is nothing
to do with the London Flashmob group."
As Tom Smith has pointed out to me, any such assembly of 'policemen' brings just the wrong associations to mind (Benny Hill, anyone?). And I'm well aware - from past correspondence on this blog - that Flashmobs are by their nature pointless, so what would they be doing with anything of political import, however humorous?
9:58 PM|
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Bloggers in the workplace
Blogger has this week posted some advice (perhaps in the light of recent developments at Microsoft?) about how not to get fired over your blog. Hmmm.
Tomorrow sees the launch of iSociety's latest report: 'Getting By, Not Getting On: Technology in UK Workplaces', embargoed for the present, but which to an extent informs the context of the first.
9:53 PM|
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Tuesday, November 18, 2003
The world wide archive
The Web provides a good home for quality material that otherwise might not see the light of day.
Back in September, when about to be screened at the San Sebastian film festival, the film 'La Pelota Vasca' (trans. Basque Ball), about Baque terrorism, raised considerable controversy in Spain, with politicans condemning it out of hand, without having seen it, and pages of newspaper coverage. Never perhaps has a documentary received so much exposure or so much criticism in Spain. Now the film's director, Julio Medem, is uploading fresh material: each week a new theme will feature a selection of the documentary's interviewees. Medem estimates that by the end of the planned 12-week series, the material released online will be about three times that in the film. (in Spanish)
Another case is that of a 1959 radio interview with Simone de Beauvoir that was not broadcast at the time, due to censorship by Radio Canada which submitted to pressure brought to bear by the Archbishop of Montreal. (in French)
11:15 AM|
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Friday, November 14, 2003
Poor experiences of e-voting
The regional US press continues to report on lack of US voter confidence in current of e-voting technology.
According to the Miami Herald, "25 percent of likely voters polled in Broward [county] said they were ''not confident at all'' that the electronic system would accurately tally their vote", while the Herald commissioned telephone survey also found that "more than half [the voters who had used the machines] said it was important to have a paper record of their vote -- something that does not exist at present".
The Herald says, "many people are suspicious and more are confused about how the machines work and how they tally votes", reflecting the view of one Florida lawyer: "''We have gone from a totally transparent process to a totally opaque one'".
Meanwhile over at the Indianapolis Star, there's a report that in one county that "computer readings of stored voting machine data showed far more votes than registered voters. 'It was like 144,000 votes cast,' said County Clerk Lisa Garofolo, whose corrected accounting showed just 5,352 ballots from a pool of fewer than 19,000 registered voters." They are still trying to figure out where the software problem lies.
While system vendors continue to tout their equipment as perfectly designed and infallible, it seems to me that lowering confidence in e-voting systems following these kinds of experiences will force vendors to address issues they have preferred to brush under the carpet until now. It's all about the user - in this case, the voter - experience.
10:32 AM|
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British Computer Society: Ready for the Natural History Museum?
There's been much PR puff in the computing press in recent weeks concerning Wendy Hall, the new president of the British Computer Society. She is said to be concerned about the small and declining proportion of women in IT.
Well, Wendy, there are at least two things that could be done to make the BCS more accessible to women already in IT and not in the BCS (the vast majority). I've had totally unsatisfactory correspondence with the BCS in recent years about both:
1. Full-time IT students (99% male or thereabouts, going by my informal straw polls in university computer science lectures), who are often funded and have all kinds of cheapo concessions (e.g. no council tax, free entry to many organisations and events) have extremely cheap membership of BCS, *even when then graduate and are in full-time and very well-paid employment*. Part-time IT students (more often than not female, often caring for family/relatives, that being the reason they are part-time, are often 'job changers', are rarely funded and have no concessions of any kind) pay full fees to join BCS, no matter what their circumstances. I have over the years received various pieces of poorly argued waffle from BCS head office to justify this position. It is unjustifiable.
2. The BCS women's group, unlike *the vast majority* of BCS special interest groups (or SIGs), requires any applicant to already be a full member of BCS (i.e. to have jumped throught a whole series of professional hoops) before joining the SIG. I did receive a response to my email to the SIG concerning this policy, but it was pretty meaningless. I know that BCS is now changing its membership strategy, to allow people to join BCS at an earlier stage in their careers (from next May), but is this SIG's policy putting up artificial fences or what?
Never mind attracting more women into the profession. What are you doing about women already in the world of IT, who you are now complaining are leaving? Discriminating against them and turning them away. The vast majority of people in the new media industries (where there is a significant proportion of women) couldn't give a fig about BCS: to them, it's an arthritic dinosaur, ready to be relegated to the Natural History Museum. Maybe one day BCS will stop being dominated by elderly gentlemen meeting quarterly in the engineering departments of provincial universities, but in the meantime Wendy has her work cut out.
7:15 AM|
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
Blogging MPs
I'm glad to see that Clive Soley MP is carrying his denunciation of the employment practices of News International - originally made in the House of Commons - onto his blog. Clive is fairly new to the blogging world but he's already making his mark.
Meanwhile over at Richard Allan MP's blog, there's an extensive and well-considered post about ID cards: "a solution looking for a problem". Not an uncommon position when it comes to proposals from techno-evangelists such as Blunkett, unfortunately. Richard was in a former life an IT professional.
6:46 PM|
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Machine translation
As a qualified translator, I often get asked about machine translation as an alternative to the human-processed variety, particularly in the context of multi-lingual websites and localisation. Questioners rarely seem to believe that translation programs - widely for sale for some years - are still incapable of rendering sensible text on most occasions, let alone something stylistically acceptable or (dare I say) polished. The often questionable claims of vendors are accepted much more readily.
The last couple of days have seen a few of articles in the mainstream press covering the subject of online translation programs. The Times carries a review of, and The Guardian an extract from, Umberto Eco's latest book, Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation.
Eco: "Let us suppose that in a novel a character says, 'You're just pulling my leg.' To render such an idiom in Italian by 'stai solo tirandomi la gamba' or 'tu stai menandomi per la gamba' would be literally correct but misleading. In Italian, one should say 'mi stai prendendo per il naso', thus substituting an English leg with an Italian nose.
"If literally translated, the English expression, absolutely unusual in Italian, would make the reader suppose that the character (as well as the author) was inventing a provocative rhetorical figure - which is completely misleading, as in English the expression is simply an idiom. By choosing 'nose' instead of 'leg', a translator puts the Italian reader in the same situation as the original English one."
Eco also discusses using the online translation tool Babelfish: when trying to translate certain English expressions into Italian and German, "'The works of Shakespeare' become 'Gli impianti di Shakespeare' (The plants of Shakespeare). 'Speaker of the chamber of deputies' becomes 'Altoparlante dell’alloggiamento dei delegati' (Loudspeaker of the lodging of the delegates), and 'Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce' becomes 'Studien in der Logik der Charlessandpapierschleifmaschinen Peirce' (Studies in the logic of the Charles of sandpaper grinding machines Peirce).'
Unfortunately, programs cannot handle idiom, proper nouns, and the non-shared nature of sematic space across languages, never mind words with multiple meanings (that's most of them), prepositions (which rarely share semantic space), geographical language variation across a single language, the use of multiple languages in a single text (surprisingly common), or context. As Eco demonstrates, backtranslations (translations back into the original language) are a good way of finding out just how bad such 'translations' are.
There's further coverage of the subject in today's Guardian G2, where the Shortcuts section carries a piece (Lost in Translation) on the failings of yet another online translation program to deliver the goods. The subject is Italian press coverage of the current British royals saga (which cannot be openly discussed in the British press without fear of a libel prosecution).
"Of course, it won't read like a page of Hazlitt," says The Guardian, "but you'll get the gist of the story. That's the theory, at least; but in practice - as many have discovered this week - the translations are so eccentric as to be virtually incomprehensible."
La Repubblica's coverage of the British affair is summarised thus: "The problem seems to have originated in a literary disagreement of some sort, as my translation claims it involves a servant who was seen 'to read with a limb of the real house'. Prince Charles denied any literary wrongdoing in a statement issued last week that seems to have been drafted by a member of Blazing Squad: 'I want to affirm clear and round that the chats check me, but I am entirely fake,' he said. Unfortunately, this rebuttal backfired on the prince, and served only 'to tickle the caution around the event'. But La Repubblica is careful not to overstate the damage caused by this as yet undefined literary transgression. 'It will be not true that it the monarchy is about to fall,' it reassures us, 'but, with the future king compelled it deny to go read, the crown does not seem to enjoy of excellent health.'"
Traduttore, Traditore.
6:19 PM|
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Back to ID cards
A few hours ago, David Blunkett outlined in the House of Commons his plans for biometric ID cards for the UK, to be phased in via passports and then driving licences. The estimated cost per person has now risen from £40-odd to £77, so goodness knows what it will actually end up being (this is another public sector project - think of the escalation in costs of Libra, a project to put IT into the court system, as an example of how public sector projects have a habit of suffering from expenditure creep).
Blunkett says that cards won't be compulsory - but then says that compulsory cards are essential to combat terrorism etc etc. So which is it to be?
He says that "Only basic information will be held on the ID card database - such as your name, address, birthday and sex. It will not have details of religion, political beliefs, marital status or your health records." Well, that's a relief, eh?
But we're already into problem land. Having your address on a card that you in effect are compelled to carry means that when you're bag is snatched, the thief not only has your keys but also your home address: a charter for theft (this has happened to me more than once in countries requiring the carrying of national ID cards).
Blunkett also sells the scheme as a preventative for ID theft, but unfortunately fails to mention that the scheme would probably provide even easier ways to rob IDs. ID theft is mainly conducted by means of a varied range of posted communications. ID cards will inevitability be posted, but will by their very nature be trusted more than any other document, and so will be used with far greater ease as proof of identity. How often would a face-to-face encounter take place? Rarely: these days, transactions with others are increasingly conducted at a distance. The photo or the card itself will seldom seen by those asking for proof of identity. In countries using these cards, the ID card number becomes the key that opens all the required doors. Does he really believe that countries such as Spain don't suffer from identity theft?
3:35 PM|
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Government consultations
Last week, eGov monitor reported that just one member of the public responded to a three-month consultation on e-government services by the Office of the e-Envoy. On this occasion, comments were sought from potential users of e-government services offered by public, private and voluntary sector intermediaries.
This minimal response was not, it has to be said, surprising, considering how the government goes about its consultations: posting a PDF to a government website, and expecting the public to come flocking. As the Office of the e-Envoy has previously announced, there are far too many government websites and many of them have low levels of traffic. The Web is a large 'place', and documents for consultation scattered across it like pepper, so what are the chances that people will find a particular document...by accident? Surely this approach is not an advance from depositing a paper document in libraries, and certainly does not make use of the networking capabilities of the Internet.
And when they take a look at the content, is the public likely to be inspired by the way these documents are presented? Unlikely. The topic area itself is a little dry, but little effort is made to explain the subject matter or why it is important, or to make it approachable. Further, there is no opportunity to conduct a dialogue with others. Consultation is seen by government as a one-to-many and many-to-one process, rather than an opportunity for many-to-many interaction. Letting go of the traditional bureaucratic approach is proving difficult for government. This is an institutional problem that no amount of technology will solve.
1:41 PM|
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Friday, November 07, 2003
Topsy-turvy
While recent discussions on the Spanish list Cadius indicate that the Spanish Royal Langage Academy (RAE) has refused to recognise the term 'usabilidad' (usability), with the consequence that it cannot be used in the titles of theses, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports that the Spanish Standards Association AENOR and other organisations have set up a formal standards committee to clarify the exact meaning of the term 'Ciudad Digital' or digital city. Apparently the committee will spend a couple of years deliberating over the conditions that have to be met by a locality to comply with what AENOR refers to as a "clearly Spanish standard".
It's a topsy-turvy old world...
4:52 PM|
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Thursday, November 06, 2003
British Library to collect electronic publications
A while ago I discovered that the British Library had a policy of not issuing serial numbers to non-print materials such as electronic publications, including online journals and blogs. The Guardian reports today that a change in legal deposit law was required, which has now taken place. The British Library press release states that the capture policy will encompass "non-commercial publications" and CD-ROMs and, "will include the selective harvesting of information from the 2.96 million websites with a .uk suffix". Blogs are not mentioned.
10:18 AM|
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Lunch, Spiderman and bloggerfood
I had a lovely riverside lunch with Lee Bryant, who wagged his finger at me for not having put an RSS feed on my blog yet, so I came home this evening and did so. Seems to be working OK.
I'm glad we had such a long lunch - first it was great conversation, and then I managed to coincide with Spiderman's arrest on the north side of Tower Bridge: he was just being pushed into the back of a police van by the massed ranks of the Metropolitan Police. I wasn't quick enough with the digital camera though (and too many pressmen with baseball bat-telephotos hogging the pavement space).
1:35 AM|
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Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Competitions
Liverpool John Moores University is running a fun little participatory design experiment to design a remote control for the house of the future. You need to register with the site and select experiment 2. "This contains a control panel building tool where you create and publish your remote control design. You can also rate the work of other designers."
And talking of competitions, the reUSEIT competition to redesign Jakob Nielsen's website - 'a design eye for the usability guy' - is now in the judging phase, with a grand total of 53 entrants. Bob Sawyer somehow managed to put me onto the judges panel without me finding out. I get the feeling that by the end of this week I'll be able to quote Nielsen like I can still quote chunks of Shakespeare learned at school.
11:16 AM|
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The usability profession
The UK Usability Professionals' Association yesterday published the largest (and possibly the first) survey of salaries in the UK usability sector. Some points of interest:
- Although the average salary for those in employment was £37,801, there was a considerable range, with a low of £18,500 and a high (for more than one employee) of £90,000.
- There wasn't a great difference between salaries for those with a first degree, a master's and a doctorate.
- UPA members earn on average around £4,000 a year more than non-UPA members, though whether this is because the more focussed and ambitious tend to get involved more in professional organisations, or whether members benefit from networking with others to gain better jobs, is a moot point. [You can find the full report on the UK UPA website.]
And what exactly is it that usability people do anyway? A discussion was launched some months ago by Tog on the issue of 'what do we call ourselves', which led into the other side of the coin, 'what do people who call themselves usability specialists do'. This provoked Janice James into writing an article in the latest edition of UPA Voice about the present and the future of the profession. And Steve Krug, Eugene Chen and Keith Instone put together a while ago this presentation for AIGA Experience Design on the multifarious aspects of the profession. Today's master's courses in human-computer interaction - so often associated with computer science or psychology departments of universities - seem inadequate preparation for a range of skills that spans so many traditional disciplines.
10:46 AM|
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Sunday, November 02, 2003
Developers are not users (Doh!)
Is the wider IT community starting to realise that you can't determine whether something is usable without trying it out with ordinary people (i.e. not developers)? An article in this week's Register concludes with the following:
"The problem is that we all think we know what usability means. But we all view it from our own perspectives. The trouble is that I, and probably most of you, are working with technology all the time, and we make assumptions about how easy it is, and what constitutes improved usability. That may be reasonably when you are considering what would be easier for an application developer, say, but it isn't when you starting having to think about inexperienced end users. It is probably a long time since any of us were in that position and it is simple to underestimate the complexity of the technology for those that are not familiar with it. The question is: how much more are we taking for granted?"
10:35 AM|
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