Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
The Broken Window theory of criminology was popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's 2002 book, The Tipping Point. The theory says that urban environments where vandalism and dereliction are present redefine social norms (reducing the pride people take in their communities) and leading to greater crime. In Gladwell's book, he highlights the effect of Giuliani's zero tolerance… Continue reading Broken Windows
It takes a very cold heart indeed to not love a user-experience concept which can be illustrated using a mathematical formula. Look at Fitts’s law: This set of symbols help us understand that the ability to point at something on a screen (or in real life) is dependent on the size of the thing in… Continue reading Decision time
So Windows 7 is now winding its way through to be on the PCs your average users. It's virtually impossible to know how they'll like it. Certainly the development community has been very impressed. A lot of my colleagues have been using it as their primary OS for many months. I've had it running since… Continue reading 7 reasons
I talked a few weeks ago about how toilets and planes are bastions of usability. Of course, I missed out the number one usability battleground. As Don Norman covers in incredible detail in the Design of Everyday Things, doors are the simplest opportunity for poor and inconsiderate design. And, although the world remains full of… Continue reading Doors and language
I've talked here a few times (here and here) about how Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to catch a break. Google or Apple get gushing reviews for living 'in beta', Microsoft gets slammed for getting stuff out too soon. Apple's security is questionable, but we never hear about that. Nor it seems are we… Continue reading Creating the ribbon
Watching people in usability tests is fascinating. Anyone who has done this will know what I mean. Months of planning a system, of hours spent building in impecable logic are dashed irrefutably against the rocks of reality when user after user simply fails to see it the way the designer does. The concept of mental models was first put forward by… Continue reading Model citizen
In the Spring '07 Market Leader (the Marketing Society publication from WARC), Y&R's Simon Silvester talks about how it is the limitations on our ability to learn and adapt to new technologies which will actually restrict their spread; that innovation is useless without usability. He points out that the "geek" audience of super-early-adopters have… Continue reading Humans don’t scale
What's missing from every page of YourSpace except the home page? Give up? It's the logo stupid. Aside from the URL and a couple of subbranding elements (like the player), there is no MySpace branding. The site hands ownership properly to its users but has done a very neat trick through being recognisable just through… Continue reading No logo?
This post's all theft: RMM London have a brilliant quote: "Power corrupts but powerpoint corrupts absolutely". Russell Davies points at this brilliant post. As if we didn't already know this intuitively, the brain finds it harder to understand ideas if they are verbalized and written on the wall at the same time! (Picture also stolen from… Continue reading Corrupt absolutely
I've never really understood Twitter. I regard this as a weakness. All the coolest people seem to love it, and I can see how it's a neat concept. I just wonder what I'd put: "Doing sudoku on tube", "buggering up a lasagne", "In meeting", "reading in bed". I'd bore myself. Well I'm delighted to see that… Continue reading Twitier
Leading product 