The populace demands usable library products

I came across this mini community rant on Facebook the other day:

Wow!  This made me really happy.  I love that regular people are demanding usable products and getting angry that they have to put up with inferior experiences.  They’re railing against Endnote (bibiographies) and Lexus-Nexus (research tool).
You go!

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Firefox Foresight: a Mozilla Design Challenge entry

Over the past month or so, Kiran Jagadeesh and I have been working on a design for this fall’s Mozilla University Design Challenge.  The object of the challenge was to address browsing history:
“Browsing History — How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to [...]

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Design Research Conference 09: Lessons Learnt

Last weekend I was fortunate to attend the Design Research Conference in Chicago (that city of sausage links and thick-necked men, sleek city people clad in black, tall, reflective buildings, and a giant 3D bean-shaped mirror.)
It was by far the most ‘designy’ conference I’ve attended.  It was held at the Spertus Institute, a modern and [...]

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more proof of voicemail’s ongoing death

My sister just returned recently from the Peace Corps, and my parents wanted to bring her back into our present technological age by getting her an iPhone.  Actually, my mom donated her old 3G so she could get the new 3GS.  But that’s beside the point.
The thing is, my sister has now had the phone [...]

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iPhones in the wild

I’ve recently noticed a new trend: wilderness-iPhone usage.  Even a few years ago it would have been unseemly to be caught fiddling with that type of advanced technology while simultaneously enjoying nature’s bounty; but I believe we are now more willing to pair diverse leisure activities like hiking + twittering.  (Tweeting)
Case study 1: iPod in [...]

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5 reasons I loved Mozilla’s design challenge

I was able to participate in Mozilla’s ‘Spring Design Challenge‘ along with my regular schoolwork this past semester, and it was definitely worth the effort.  The challenge consisted of addressing the following question: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”
Participants submitted [...]

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Information visualization projects so awesome they’ll turn your hair gray overnight

I had the distinct pleasure and honor of taking the Information Visualization class this semester at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (where I’m completing a Masters of Info, specializing in HCI).  For the class each project team created a visualization to help aid user comprehension of a large data set.  The very talented students [...]

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Social Comparisons @ Grad School

For my Online Communities class we read an interesting article by Joanne Wood about social comparisons.  Wood discusses and expands upon the original social comparison theory by Festinger (1954), part of which predicts that “individuals prefer to compare themselves with similar others” (231).  Those comparisons can be upward (comparing yourself to those who are better [...]

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Hey, don’t put that picture on Facebook

Last night I attended a ‘prom’ party that my school put on.  They rented out a bar, and everyone was in costumes for the 80’s & Space theme; there was a Richard Simmons, a Robert Palmer dancing lady, lots of giant prom dresses with hideous bows and lace, and even a pair of moon boots. [...]

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Enjoyable User Interface Heuristics

I just finished reading Thomas Malone’s 1982 paper “Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games.” At just 6 pages, it’s a mere rowboat floating on the sea of my semester’s reading; but I found it exceedingly interesting and helpful. I’ll summarize just a few of his main points, and then include an [...]

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