Monday, July 25, 2005
Usability professionals survey
The Usability Professionals' Association is currently running a survey of usability professionals - whether members or not - that includes coverage of employment and salary. UPA is particularly interested in responses from outside the USA.
To get started, go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=24248929450. It should only take a few minutes to complete.
8:54 AM|
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Tonight's UPA London event cancelled
Just in case you hadn't heard, there have been more 'incidents' (unclear as yet exactly what) this afternoon in central London.
Microsoft London has advised that we don't go ahead with tonight's UPA event, so we've cancelled/postponed and are trying to let everyone know.
We'll let people know through the usual channels when we have another date fixed for this talk.
3:44 PM|
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Bad forms
I've just received a renewal notice for Harper's magazine. And I'm going to renew. (With the dollar the way it is, they're virtually giving away US publications if you're paying in sterling, so I subscribe to quite a slew of them.)
There's an option to bill my credit card, which is the one I intend to take, as I don't have a dollar bank account. And this is where things start to go wrong.
The line for entering the credit card number is a mere 28mm or 2.8cm long, and the lines for credit card number, expiry date and signture are spaced exactly 2.8mm or 0.28cm apart. I've measured them. I defy anyone to enter readable information on such a form, even when using a superfine graphic artist's pen and a magnifying glass.
1:02 PM|
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Launch fatigue
So many reports and initiatives are being launched before the summer break. In the last week we've seen, for example, IPPR launch its Manifesto for a Digital Britain, the disability charity Scope produced its latest survey of election accessibility - 'Polls Apart 2005' - yesterday, and we've also had the launch of InSync, a network and showcase programme for London's audio-visual and digital meda sectors, based at 01zero-one in Soho.
I hope to find the time to blog some of these in the next few days.
11:12 AM|
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Being receptive to good ideas
I recently placed a reservation for Gavin Bryars' 'Sinking of the Titanic' at my local library. This morning a form letter arrived, inviting me to collect this "item". The library assistant disappeared, letter in hand, to try to find the physical object: on the reservation shelves, in the back rooms... No luck. Until, that was, I tracked her down and told her Gavin Bryars was a composer and the "item" was a CD, not a book.
The library assistant thought the form letter was badly designed, as it didn't tell her what type of media she was looking for, and "these days libraries hold many different formats", all of course of different dimensions, and so shelved at different locations. But her subsequent enquiry to a senior member of staff about "who designs these forms" - she was interested in getting the form letter improved - produced a rebuff, and it looks like nothing will change.
Often coal-face staff have good ideas about how to improve design, but too frequently find themselves unsupported by management. What a pity that Southwark library staff will continue to waste time for the lack of such a small change - the media format information is held on the library catalogue and could be easily printed out along with title and other item information - to a standard letter. And then people wonder why ICT seems to have so little impact on productivity.
10:41 AM|
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Monday, July 18, 2005
Irritations
The more I'm using my iPod for programmes - rather than 'tunes' - the more I'm getting irritated that each time I need to stop listening to something, I need to go right back to the beginning of the relevant MP3...which may be an hour long or more.
As a visitor remarked yesterday, whenever he's asked why he's still wedded to tape, he replies that he can just pick up a recording exactly where he left off.
Sometimes we seem to be going backwards rather than forwards.
11:40 AM|
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Perceptions
It's only Tuesday, but it almost feels like it should be Thursday or Friday. Perhaps because last week London and Londoners had more to deal with than could reasonably be expected of anyone in one week. We don't seem to have had a weekend in a couple of weeks. Perceptions are everything.
5:02 PM|
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Report launches
The coming week sees two interesting report launches, which probably won't be read on the beaches of southern Europe this summer.
On Thursday, IPPR launches its long-awaited Manifesto for a Digital Britain. Read more from Will Davies on the IPPR blog, which also links to the various themed project papers (links on lower left).
Then the following Wednesday, Scope launches its Polls Apart 2005 report on accessibility and the recent elections. I suspect that the song will - sadly - remain more or less the same as in the previous Scope reports, which perhaps says something about how long the public sector takes to turn around ships of a certain size.
1:20 PM|
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Who designs if not designers?
David Wilcox has blogged last night's AIGA meeting on 'Design and Social Policy', and has passed me the baton on some remarks I made at the event.
Nico Macdonald had asked for a show of hands on the question of whether the design community should engage more, or less, with social policy. He estimated that around 40% thought designers should engage more, 20% that they should engage less, and 20% that things should go on pretty much has they have. Further, there was a fair amount of cynicism expressed as to politicans' motives in wishing to engage with 'design'.
My main point was that 'design' will take place, whether designers take part or not. Forms, websites, interiors, processes, services will all be 'designed' one way or another, as they have always been. The question is whether a 'design sensibility' will form part of the process of creation or development. To date, we've seen many examples of bad design in the public sphere. But we cannot necessarily expect, for example, government lawyers, political scientists, or the so-called 'dead generalists', to produce good design, like a rabbit out of a hat.
While Ben Rogers may be right in arguing - as he did - that design disciplines are neither necessary nor sufficient for reinvigorating or reforming public life, a design perspective can be useful in informing what is developed (by informing how things are developed), and I would argue it provides a more solid grounding than the sadly ubiquitous focus group, or that most ancient tradition, BOGSAT (bunch of guys sitting around a table). However, it does throw up fresh challenges, for designers themselves: for example, where does a designer draw the line between informing and empowering the citizen? Even seemingly straightforward design issues can have significant political implications.
And as was pointed out during the AIGA discussion, what's in fashion today may in turn be dropped in favour of tomorrow's shiny new tool, so designers should tread with caution.
10:45 AM|
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
The mobile usability lab
If you're interested in current options on a mobile - laptop - usability lab, Harry Brignull (at alma mater Sussex) has some comparative information on his website. This post from John Udell is also useful.
11:32 AM|
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Bubble in the desert
Carl Myhill, one of the people who got UPA Cambridge off the ground, is currently on a posting to rural Nevada. Read the blog.
11:04 AM|
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