A few weeks ago I was at an ISACA/ISC2 event where Chris Ulliott spoke about usable security. He argued that we (technology creators in general) ask far too much of the general public to be able to understand and use technology securely. I agree – asking any internet user to be able to spot a … Continue reading Nudge Theory
Category: usability
HCI metaphors – the Windows Recycle Bin
In user interface design it is often thought that creating metaphors and analogies to real life items helps users translate these concepts to computer versions more easily. For example the idea of a computer desktop with files and folders is directly analogous to real life desks with filing cabinets. The idea is that a user … Continue reading HCI metaphors – the Windows Recycle Bin
Mixing up qualitative and quantitative data
It upsets me when papers make the effort to do proper usability studies and then misuse the results because they get confused by qualitative and quantitative data. As nicely explained in my HCI notes, quantitative data has a "structure of integers or real numbers, e.g.number of errors (discrete) or time to complete task (continuous)", whilst qualitative data is essentially everything … Continue reading Mixing up qualitative and quantitative data
Masters Project
I asked one of my lecturers about doing text visualisation as my masters thesis and he said it sounded great, even emailed me a paper to read! I don't have an exact question yet, but it'll be something along the lines of visualising web browser history. I'm quite excited about it weeee! I'll have to … Continue reading Masters Project
Top 10 usability crimes and text visualization
I found a really good article called the 10 usability crimes you really shouldn't commit and I have updated the website according to adhere to some of the principles - mainly making the website logo now a link to the home page and indicating the active form field for comments below. I didn't actually realise you could … Continue reading Top 10 usability crimes and text visualization
FireFox usage
Great little tool on FirefoxForensics to do the same sort of thing as with IE. Firefox stores its cache of URLs etc in sqlite databases, which can be found in this folder: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profilename] For example there is a cookies.sqlite, formhistory.sqlite and downloads.sqlite for starters! I wish IE would be this neat! I have updated my graph … Continue reading FireFox usage
Make your website iPhone friendly
I browse Google news and Reddit every morning on my iPod and many of the websites that link from them look very poor on the iPod/iPhone. It's really not hard to make a website look good on a small screen but unfortunately mobile web usability is often neglected. You can either use Javascript or a server side … Continue reading Make your website iPhone friendly
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