Usability — Page 2

Adaptive Path,

December 4, 2005 by Michael Boyle

Adaptive Path,

the user experience agency, has always been in the “Web 2.0” mix, and last week Brandon Schauer published an interesting article, “experience attributes: crucial dna of web 2.0“. It’s a pretty good piece, but I always wonder – what about the fact that there was a TON of very “Web 2.0” stuff going on well before anyone actually wanted to live South of Market St.? The WELL? Very Web 2.0. The original HotWired? Very 2.0. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Steadman owns Plastic, which is clearly a proto-2.0 space. For almost everyone who was involved – professionally or not – in the WWW back then knows that Web 2.0 is really simply things getting back on the course we set 12-15 years ago.

I wonder why everyone seems to ignore this?

I’ve been trying out

December 1, 2005 by Michael Boyle

I’ve been trying out

the new version of Firefox that was released the other day, and I note with displeasure that the close icon is still not on the tab you want to close itself, but over on the right-hand side. Otherwise it’s fine, though I’m not likely to move from Safari, which I switched to a few months ago.

The other day,

October 28, 2005 by Michael Boyle

The other day,

Tim Bray noted many problems with the Dell online buying experience: Shopping, Dell vs. Apple and today noted that he got a flurry of responses suggesting that his Dell experience was not out of the ordinary at all. I agree – after reading about Boris’ experiences with his monitor I went right over to the Dell site to see if it might be time to pick one up for myself, and I was shocked to see how difficult it was to find the information.

Peter Merholz asked

October 18, 2005 by Michael Boyle

Peter Merholz asked

the rhetorical question, “Is Lab Usability Dead?” in peterme.com yesterday. I think he makes an important point – computer usage is anything but sterile and disconnected these days (and this has been true for a while). Studying usage habits and patterns must not assume a single-task model in a pristine environment if it is to be useful.

They’ve just released

October 8, 2005 by Michael Boyle

They’ve just released

the beta of Google Reader, their entry in the RSS/syndication feed reader sweepstakes. It looks fabulous, but it’s pretty blah overall. It offers no new features or innovations of any kind, that I can tell, and the usability is crap. Pretty much UNusable, overall. They break the browser and force you to use their crap navigation just so you can see their supposedly tasty Ajax goodness. Give me a nice interface, but don’t break my scroll wheel! What is it, 1996?