From the monthly archives:

September 2009

Results of long-term educational use of Kindle

by Richard Pak
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The Kindle e-book reader has great promise, especially for students.  Who wouldn’t want to trade in a bunch of heavy books for a slim electronic device?  Amazon partnered with Princeton to see how students would interact with the device.  The results are not good.  The student’s comments sound vaguely familiar to my own experiences.  The Kindle is great as a [...]

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STFU Usability Protocol

by Richard Pak

I‘m glad that open-source software is taking usability seriously.  I think that not having a good user experience may be one of the biggest hurdles to more open-source adoption (e.g., compare GIMP to Photoshop).  Shuttleworth (of Ubuntu) has a great plan: the STFU protocol.
During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for [...]

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“Replicants are like any other machine – they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem.”

by Richard Pak

Electric cars are utterly silent making them hazardous when they sneak up on you at low speeds.  Nissan is thinking about having their Leaf electric car emit the whine reminiscent of the flying cars in Bladerunner.  It’s one of my favorite movies so I approve!
“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then [...]

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Consequences of Mobile Phone Usability…big consequences

by Richard Pak
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Time.com is reporting that part of the economic recession may have been caused by Warren Buffet not being able to check his voice mail:
as Buffett was rushing out to a social engagement in Edmonton, Alberta, he got a call from Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital…[ed. Diamond was creating a plan to save an investment bank and needed money [...]

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Redesigning the Homeland Security Warnings

by Richard Pak

The NYTimes has an interesting OpEd where they asked various designers to re-imagine the homeland advisory system.  It’s a multimedia presentation with narration from the graphic designers.  Not much warnings research but interesting.  Here is what it looks like now:

and here is one proposed redesign that, according to the designer, takes advantage of our ability read emotions from eyes:

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Usability issues in navigating your life

by Richard Pak

Gordon Bell, a Microsoft Researcher, is recording his life in excruciating detail in a project dubbed MyLifeBits:
Web sites he’s visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164).
Why is he [...]

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