This is a piece of work I was involved with a while ago as part of an academic research group at Sussex and Nottingham University. It’s a large multi-user wall display designed to be used by small groups of people … Continue reading
This post is a collection of my concerns about the usability of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child, aka the “Hundred Dollar Laptop”) and how well suited it is to its target user groups. If you haven’t seen it, take … Continue reading
Google Book Search behaves strangely when you use search terms that contain characters with diacritics (OK. I’m showing off. I mean accents) It would be nice to report this but Google shares something in common with that other megacorp in … Continue reading
The makezine blog has a great guide on how to try out the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) system yourself on Windows, but if you cant be bothered, I have put together a video clip of the OLPC UI in … Continue reading
Now Internet Explorer used tabs that means there isn’t a major browser on the market that doesn’t use them.Tabbed browsers work nicely when used with a mouse that has a wheel or (a third button) for the following reason. You’re … Continue reading
Look at IE 7’s tabs. They use more pixel space than Firefox, they are bright blue and they have Aqua-style 3D beveling. They are basically shouting off the rooftops “Hey, look at me, here I am, great new tabbed browsing!” … Continue reading
In his recent blog post, Paul Adams got me thinking about metaphors, and how useful they are in explaining usability in a hurry. A friend recently asked me for some advice to help him “improve” his website. The site involves … Continue reading
DV247.COM – fairly standard e-commerce site. I ordered something on Friday and on Monday started to wonder what day I needed to stay in for collection. Here’s their order status page: Now I couldn’t see any indication here of whether … Continue reading
Pac man pie chart joke (via Boing Boing)
Some call centers tend to treat you, the caller, like a document. You call up with a simple piece of information (e.g. “You’ve over billed me this month”) and then you get bumped between different staff members like an unwanted … Continue reading