People have a tendency to listen to what they want to hear. Asking the participants of a meeting to write down the main idea, the big surpise and unanswered question at the end of the meeting can make a meeting succesfull : The One-Minute Test (UIE – Jared Spool)
Syntagm created a tool to measure the time needed to perform an action based on mouse moves, keystrokes and mouse button clicks:
Keystroke Level Model Calculator.
Functionality, usability and clearly structured information before graphic design:
Ugliness has never looked better. I have spent the last few days examining a surprising trend in web design that has made ugly websites look absolutely irresistible. ….
The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites
As a person who puts business before technology, a profitable website is an unbelievably attractive website to me.
When your site works in internet explorer without you trying
PingMag: 8 Web Design Warm Fuzzy Feelings
Hah! Like this ever happens.
Whoops! There goes $6.7 million
Investigators concluded that, while Air Force guides correctly instructed Raptor mechanics to install the landing gear pins before performing maintenance on the airplanes, there were no similar step-by-step instructions to ensure mechanics remember to take the pins out prior to clearing the aircraft for use.
Salt Lake Tribune – Utah
As the Web becomes both interface and infrastructure for an Internet of objects we can barely imagine, what metaphors will shape our fate? Clearly, the sea level will rise, but our children need not drown nor suffer information anxiety.
Bulletin Feb/Mar 2006, IA Column, A Garden of Forking Paths
This might look like it is way of topic, but it is not. Scott Berkun wrote a great article on the human side of the “attention economy” with the same title: Attention and sex.
“Attention” really is a buzzword that I don’t like, as it is after all a human thing, your attention and how you spend it. Most of the articles on the topic use the money metaphor: time is money and that is what it is all about. I have to disagree but they make a point for what we are doing: making websites.
How can we grab someone’s attention to make them click that link, find that gadget, report, whatever object you are trying to sell.
But anyway you turn it; people want to find things immediately. Not within 30 minutes, now. Now!
And certainly not on the internet because otherwise they could have gone to the store next door and meet people, get a human opinion and a good look at the product they are trying to sell. The time spend on the internet should compensate for things like driving to the store, waiting in the queue, things like that.
Bokardo writes about this web2.0 service that records your browsing behaviour and consolidates reports on that information called “attention metadata”.
Well that is nice, but looks a lot like these “getting things done” apps that tell you to stop wasting your time and get on with your life. It’s a geek thing.
It doesn’t record the data of the actual people using the real services on the internet, cause they haven’t got a clue about why anyone want to spend 10 minutes to set-up a service that actually does the same as all these add trackers and spyware that you can find at 90% of the personal computers (PC :-) .
No, the attention idea is a nice theory or concept, but nothing more then that. If you know what the universal Turing Machine is, you know what I mean (if you get this, leave a comment :-).
Despite the modern drive to consume things made by others, time will always be our most finite resource and it crumbles when split into tiny little pieces. And it’s up to us to choose how much of life is spent passively (consuming, waiting, watching) vs. actively (thinking, debating, feeling, doing, making). Whatever we choose, when we die, we have no one to blame but ourselves for where our time, and attention, went.
Attention and sex – scottberkun.com
I have a huge list of rss feeds. And the higher the unread posts, the better. Read, read, read and read. Don’t stop until you get enough. Well I had enough, enough to filter out the rubbish. The attention economy is something we have to live with, but I prefer not to deal with it. It is a waste of my time and attention.
Interesting article on anaylitcal languages and, historical and biased classifications: The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
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