Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 11:52PM U.S. News & World Report has designated a "Usability Experience Specialist" as one of its Best Careers 2009. Of all the titles I've run across in this field this is the most like a mash-up that I've heard. It's worth checking out just for the comments.
Monday, February 2, 2009 at 03:36PM It's been a while since I checked on one of the elders of usability, Jakob Nielson. Checking his man's web site (Alert Box) I came across an interesting post on the ROI of usability and how it's still a great deal for $ spent vs $ earned/saved (spend 10%, gain 83% by Jakob's calculations.) The article also shows that the big gains of the last 6 years have been achieved and now it's a matter of incremental upkeep or initial design. Math was not my best subject, but the argument that increasing conversion rates (somewhat the domain of experince design) is more desirable (and less expensive ) than increasing unique visitors (the domain of advertising.)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 06:11PM Kim Krause Berg posts an interesting piece over at Search Engine Land how Google (and thieir competitors) are crafting a solid competitive strategy that entrenches products and features into every crevice of our user's lives by grounded design and developemtn in current philosophical and psychological concepts of computers as extensions of our mind.
Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 03:46PM The Interaction Design blog has posted 20 Cool Interaction Design Concepts, with a focus on 2D, 3D. motion monitored and interactive goldfish, the emphasis is certainly on "concept." Cool, idea though and the shape of things to come.
Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 04:44PM ReadWriteWeb.com posts a review of Userfly, a "a simple way to test your site's usability for free - with one line of code. The deal is you add the Userfly JavaScript code to your site and all visitor interactions with your site are then recorded for later playback.
A pretty powerful tool for answering the question "What are users doing on my site?", though there still needs more traditional testing to answer the "Why are they doing that?" questions.
userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.