I logged on to eBay today and was presented with a message asking me to confirm my account type (personal or business). The instructions telling me how to perform this confirmation read as follows:
How to confirm your account type
1. go to My eBay
2. sign in (if requested)
3. click ‘Personal Information’ in the ‘My Account’ section…
One of the best-known books in the computer industry is The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin, which is an enlightened and timeless look at how interaction with our silicon friends can be improved. Jef died a couple of years ago but his son Aza carries on his approach to interfaces.
And this week Aza unveiled Songza,…
Getting to the point is something that some people have trouble doing. Techies can be particularly poor at it, as they often have the sort of mind that enjoys getting involved in the workings of the solution, sometimes forgetting the pragmatism that required it in the first place.
And so here are a couple of example…
I doubt I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t open their browser full-screen. For one thing, it kind of makes a mockery of the whole windowing principle (flawed as it may be), but mainly it just makes most websites look stupid. If you want to see what I mean, take a look at…
Most of us these days use a number of applications which claim to be “smart.” Microsoft Word is probably the most obvious example: by default it corrects typos, capitalisation and formatting as you type, and does many other “smart” things which purport to make your life easier.
I am surely not the only person who deactivates…
Can I just point out to any passing OS designers (because I know you’re all going to read this) that allowing applications to open windows off-screen is a really dumb thing to do.
I can’t believe I’m the only person who uses an extra screen with their laptop when at their desk, so I doubt I’m…
Over the past nine months I’ve been using Flickr to post some photos, and I find it a fascinating place, mainly for the quality of images available on it and the community aspect, but also because it’s an interesting interface example, being unobtrusive and generally pretty easy to use despite constant evolution.
I’ve also been finding…
One of Jeff Attwood’s posts has got me thinking. It starts by raising the point that whilst “keep it simple, stupid” is a good paradigm for implementing an effective interface, it doesn’t generally reflect what users ask for. Most solutions developers will be familiar with the concept of being landed with a few absurdities in…