Disqus - Latest Comments for Jim

Re: EA: Dead Space

Jim — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:22:11 -0000

Looks and sounds a bit like Zachary Quinto (Sylar on "Heroes", and the upcoming young Spock). When was this created?

Re: The Playground Barometer

Jim — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:51:17 -0000

Doesn't have Palm Springs, CA in its database, but does have Temecula, CA and Cashmere, WA? Bizarre!

Re: IBM: Transform an Idea

Jim — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:03:53 -0000

Shazam on the iPhone profiles the song as "Get Myself Into It (Prince Language Mix) by The Rapture.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/...

Re: CNET’s Popular Story Box: Usable?

Jim — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:30:56 -0000

I find that the box is too big for my default browser window, about 3/4 of a 17" screen. It sits halfway off, limit the usefulness and thus the odds of being used.

I found it easy to find the "hot" and "older" stories.

The color scheme could be problematic for some color-blind individuals, but it's probably more useful to keep the differentiation just by the intensity of the color that varying over an entire spectrum. It's probably easier to map story "heat" on a red to yellow line than on red to green to lavender. (And sometimes the only thing worse than variations on a single color is using the entire crayon box.)

The box and font size is no worse that tag cloud representations which behave similarly.

Ultimately, though, is it worth it? For me, no. I don't care about what's "hot" in terms of what others are reading. I prefer to have What's New be in a predictable place (which it typically is, here, I think). And I prefer headlines in a list where I can scan from the same place on each line, and where I get more than three words of the headline per line.

Re: Top Three Martian Usability Problems

Jim — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:52:20 -0000

It looks like that web page has been taken down. There's are still links to it on the site, but I get no content from those links or these. Mayb they came to the same conclusions that you did?

Re: My Latest UXmatters Column: How Do Users Really Feel About Your Design?

Jim — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:20:28 -0000

I have the same problem. I try to put in non-published stubs for the other great topics I wan t to post on so I can be sure to remember to do them later. I don't always succeed at that, and some of the stubs linger for months!

Re: A Short Rant on the Lameness of iTunes

Jim — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:42:01 -0000

Yup, iTunes' library management leaves something to be desired some of the time.

But I'm reminded of that old saw that "Capitalism is the worst basis for a society in the entire world... except for all the others." Or is that "Communism is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others."

You take my point, I'm sure: we all have our favorite annoyance and pain points, but half of the stuff that you can do in iTunes you can't do *at*all* in other music apps. Show Duplicates. Folder structures for containing groups of playlists. A record of all your purchases. Sort Artist fields. I could go on for hours. Odds are good that few of the things being complained about are even doable in parallel apps.

We're not really bitching that iTunes does a bad job. We're bitching that they only got 98% of the way to perfect. We need to keep in mind what we're really complaining about: tiny pockmarks, where other apps have potholes and even sinkholes.

Re: Should Users Be “Shielded” From The Linux Command Line?

Jim — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:03:36 -0000

Netbooks are purchased primarily by people who want to use them as low-end laptops. (Like me: the bulk of my laptop usage is web and e-mail and short docs, so my Aspire netbook is superb for that. Can't do the bits of Photoshop and web coding work I'd like to, but oh well.)

These users generally have no need for the command line. (But sometimes they do.) Just like on Windows and Mac, it should be there and accessible for when users need it, but not either in your face or required for 99% of the regular user activities.

Now if I can just get actual installers for software on my netbook. There's stuff I'd like to add, but the need to use command line methods has actively prevented me from pursuing such. (Compare to the dozens of apps I have installed on my iPhone.)

Re: A Clear Case Of Design Failure

Jim — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:26:09 -0000

Our credit union ATM here allows the user to enter the PIN via the touch screen, but then the user has to move to the physical buttons to do Enter. Oy!

Re: Microsoft: Mac Office use is 77%

Jim — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:17:00 -0000

I wonder how much of that 77% number is simply "have launched the free trial that comes on their iMac", regardless of whether they actually used the app then or ever again, much less whether they actually paid for it after the trial was over.

Re: Testing Your Own Designs: Discussion

Jim — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:23:16 -0000

As someone in QA rather than Design, I think that yes, you *can* do (some of) the testing yourself. But you have to be able to take two steps back, one sideways, and then put yourself into a usability testing mindset.

In this mindset, you have to divorce yourself from what you know about the design and implementation and approach it fresh, questioning the decisions up and down the pike. You have to recognize your own biases and be able to put them aside.

This is not an easy thing to do. (Myself, I honed some of these skills playing card and board games against myself as a kid. When you can play chess against yourself, Grasshopper, and win...) And you will still be only one piece of testing data, albeit a knowledgeable one.

Testing your designs yourself is better than *not* testing them, but not as good as having others test them as well.

Re: Computerworld Article On Linux Drawbacks Misses Usability

Jim — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:19:19 -0000

Hearty agreement. I have an Acer netbook with Linux on it. When I decided to install Firefox and Thunderbird, it took two complete reinstalls of the OS before I got it "right". There are other things I would like to install but I'm way leery of having to start from scratch again.

It's a classic case of "It's working, now don't touch it!"

I've considered shifting it over to XP instead -- don't strike me for typing that, Mac gods! -- but I dread the idea of trying that as well!

Re: Magnum Royal Treatment: Front Row

Jim — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:05:31 -0000

And such an ugly dress.