Sapere Aude
Tag: usability
The ‘outrage’ that fostered this particular rant is the completely broken way in which it supports ‘management’ of ‘my places.’ Basically, it just doesn’t work for any definition of work which includes what I consider the bare minimum functionality. The only interface to your data is to organize it hierarchically. And frankly the drag and drop interface is persnickety as hell, and painful to use.
complaints about the left-side panel. justified, i think
the del.icio.us team is in the midst of building a new platform which will speed up the site and help us grow even faster. We’re also taking a close look at our UI and exploring ways to make it both easier to use and more functional. Over the years we’ve heard a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. Many folks like the simple and terse nature of the site, while others take issue with certain elements of the design. Our challenge is to make del.icio.us better without messing up the stuff that already works.
uh oh. if del.icio.us is yahooized, good night
the first time an online map is easier to use than the desktop applications from 13 years ago.
says one of the original mapquest guys.
it takes a new Google user 1 month to go from typing novice queries to being a search expert. This means that there is little payoff in optimizing the site to help novices
Understanding photowork “most users rejected the use of any form of actual digital photo album software. Despite often having such software bundled with the camera when purchased, we saw no evidence of it being used.” software is an aftertought to manufacturers, and it shows.
Adobe’s first step was to set up a del.icio.us account and start collecting the best bookmarks on Illustrator they could find. They then integrated del.icio.us into Illustrator CS3 as part of their “knowhow” palette, thereby allowing users to tap directly into Adobe’s bookmarks.
superior UI wins
Mr. Jabbour pinned 2 maps to the wall, then pointed to the different renderings of the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn, which he says is the most difficult station to represent because so many subway lines converge there. In Mr. Jabbour’s map, the subway lines run parallel to one another, making the map easier to read, if slightly inaccurate. Each line is marked with a circle bearing the route’s letter or number, instead of the oblong station markers used on the current map.
Sometimes truth is less important than knowledge.
The main problem we’re trying to solve is to get people out of the dark ages in terms of how they develop pages.
lets hope this means generally more accessible and usable commerce pages
Early indications are that Freebase is going to be a whole lot of fun. In his walkthrough Tim O’Reilly calls it addictive, and explains why. Because the system thinks in terms of relationships among types of items, a single act of data entry can produce multiple outcomes. Tim’s writeup gives a couple of examples of what that’s like. Here’s mine. I found a record for myself in the system, sourced from Wikipedia. I updated it to say that I’m the author of the book Practical Internet Groupware. Then I added that Tim O’Reilly was the editor of my book. That single edit altered the records on both ends of the author/editor relationship. My book’s record now showed Tim O’Reilly as its editor, and Tim’s record sprouted a Books Edited list that contained my book as its first item. Nice. This is just a Hello World example, of course, but it has the feel of something that people will be able to understand, will want to use, and will enjoy in a social way.
wow, if we can trick people into enjoying metadata creation, the sky is the limit. but beware metacrap
Gregor J. Rothfuss 