Technology should be useful.
This simple tenet someimes seems to have escaped the attention of software designers who release products that in the final analysis seem neither useful or usable.
In a recent article on knowledge management at CIO, Bonnie Nardi, an anthropologist working for Agilent, says that people often need to communicate with people in the organization who aren't connected to them by lines on an organizational chart. But too often, collaboration software creates barriers to the process rather than facilitating it.
Currently, collaboration, workflow and knowledge management applications are designed to manage knowledge, not support individual personal networks. But knowledge, like Soylent Green, is people and exchanging knowledge means making easy to get in touch and stay in touch.
Looking for the history of games on the Internet or biographies of some of the pioneers or even the history of Napster?
Try NetHistory 2.0, which has all that and more (early browsers, email, web development, USENET).
Jon Udell: Instant Outlining, Instant Gratification
As useful and ubiquitous as email is, it has flaws when it comes to collaboration. It can be difficult in particular to recreate the context of a discussion--who knew what, where documents have been sent, what versions have been reviewed.
Instant outlining, a combination of instant message, blogging, and outlining, lets you maintain a list of 'buddies' and informs you when any of them update their outline. Outlines themselves are hierarchies of modes containing text.
It's persistent instant messaging.
Want to know what was what and when was when?
Go to the Intel Microprocessor Hall of Fame. It lists all Intel's microprocessors from the 4004 released in 1971, Intel's first microprocessor to the Intel Itanium.
Is Anti-Virus Software Obsolete?
In an April 1, 2002 article at Security Focus Online, Paul Schmehl says 'yes.' Unfortunately, there's no good replacement for it--so don't throw away your virus-scanning software.
To be effective, virus scanning programs require constant updating. In addition, it's an essential part of their nature that they continually run the risk of disrupting your system.
So what's the answer? One possibility is behavioral blocking which detects viruses according to what they try to do.
Restructuring. Downsizing. Reengineering. The result of all this reorganization has been employees who are more exhausted than empowered.
We talk and talk and talk about the importance of skilled, motivated people. Study after study agree that treating employees well pays off. And yet, companies don't always seem able to follow this simple principle. According to a recent article at HBS Working Knowledge, some of the problem may llie in outmoded strategic perspectives.
In knowledge-intensive situations people are the key resource and people can't be managed like office supplies.
The hardest mind-set to alter is the longstanding, deeply embedded belief that capital is the critical strategic resource to be managed and that senior managers' key responsibilities should center around its acquisition, allocation, and effective use.
In today's world, the burst dot-com bubble notwithstanding, capital is available. It's talented employees that must be sought, nurtured and sustained. One of the outcomes has been to recognize that, like shareholders, employees are also holders of scarce resources. This means that senior managers need to work to define a community that workers want to belong to.
Virtual keyboards let you type in air
Several companies are currently working on systems that will let you enter data on a handheld or other device without having to haul along a clunky keyboard everywhere you go. Devices currently either track muscle movements or angular movements of your fingers. The devices still have a ways to go before they're small and unobstrusive enough to be practical.
In a March 4, 2002 commentary at Internet World, Johnathan B. Spira of Basex talks about the importance of knowing where knowledge comes from, who supplied it, and what other things that knowledge relates to. For example, a single paragraph from a 20 page paper is not as informative as the entire paper.
In understanding and transmitting knowledge, context matters. Providing a way to make available profiles of posters can be helpful in placing the information in the context of the person, their inerests, and experiences and also providing some additional information about the meaning of the available information.
According to an article by Gerry McGovern called, Is your content being read?, 80% of the content on one of the largest and best-known websites around is never read.
What can you do to make sure your content is accesible and usable and actually being used? Some ways to increase the odds that your content will be read include:
If eighty percent of your content is never read, think of how much more efficient and manageable your website will be without it. Think of how much easier it will be for people to navigate and search for content. Less is more
David Weinberger has produced a kid's version of his new book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, called, What the Web is For.
Weinberger, who co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto, wrote Small Pieces Loosely Joined, live on the web, posting each chapter as he wrote it, soliciting feedback, revising it and reposting the new version. The final version of Small Pieces Loosely Joined is still available on-line as well as in traditionally published (Perseus Press) hardcopy.
John Seely Brown, chief scientist at Xerox, says, don't forget that humans use computers. In an interview at Forbes.com, he talks about looking for ways that virtual connections can augment the physical connections that already exist.
We refer to changes we have to keep up with, things we don't want to give up, and forget that we are in charge not the technology. We should continue to use things that work well and adopt new technologies that allow us to do things we want to do but couldn't before or to do things in better, more useful ways.
ASAP: What's your favorite technology, and why do you use it?Brown: My favorite technology is a very, very lightweight printer. It weighs about an ounce. It never runs out of batteries, even though it's portable. It prints at astounding resolution. Here, I'll give you one if you like. [He throws a pen down on the desk.] This is a beautiful example of friendly technology. I spend a lot of time finding good pens.
According to Carol Righi, PhD, user-centered design can be understood to include both art and science. Science exists in gathering market intelligence, user characteristics, wants and needs, tasks and feedback. But there is art in the process of creating an elegant design and in the different solutions different developers envision.
So how does the process move from science to art? Often, the team comes up with a 'subsumer,' a high-level entity that incorporates all the constituent requirements.
Things that facilitate design:
People like to print things. What looks good--and may be totally necessary on a web page--doesn't always make the best printed page.
Printable pages should:
Style-sheets can be very useful in producing printable versions of on-line articles.
Content Management for the Masses
There's an interesting article at Lighthouse on the Web about Fog Creek's CityDesk, a content management package that costs less than $350.
It only runs in Windows, has no workflow management, produces static pages and can't create valid XHTML. But it's also quick, easy to use and stores information as Access database files so upgrading later to a different program would be viable.
In a recent article in Technology Review called, The Internet Amenity, Simson Garfinkel says that wireless Internet service is cheap (no wires to run, not a lot of central equipment). What makes it expensive for a business to provide is the overhead--credit-card billing, technical support, security.
Open community wireless networks don't needs these services and some organizations (schools, universities, businesses) have decided it's easier, friendlier, and possibly cheaper in the long run to have an open network.
Computer scientists push to publish code powering genetic research
Open source versus protected code is an on-going debate in the software community. The conversation takes on another layer of complexity when the code is produced at a public university.
On the open source side, is the increased opportunity for collaboration, resource-sharing, and problem-solving. On the protected source side is concern for valuable trade secrets. Other issues include professional respect, federal funding, academic freedom, and public private partnerships.
The Internet was simple. Now, according to Bob Frankston in an article called, The Internet is Missing, it's complicated.
To make it simple again, he says we need to return to the basics: connectivity, 'real' addressing, encryption, and address stability.
According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Hubert Dreyfus, professor of philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, says that distance education is an overhyped misunderstood trend that could backfire and result in worse education, not better.
Nietzsche and Kirkegaard would agree with him, he says--if they weren't dead.
How does web design affect the bottom line?
Boxes and Arrows, an online magazine on information architecture and design, looks at the evolution of Amazon's, Barnes and Noble's and Borders' web pages. Amazon sells far more books online than either Barnes and Noble or Borders (though B&N and Borders are larger booksellers overall). Are there differences in their web pages over time that help explain the differences in sales?
Analysis:
One conclusion is that successful design elements emulate familiar off-line shopping experiences. For example, the long homepage provides an opportunity to browse, the high use of images also encourages browsing. Also like brick and mortar stores the web sites change incrementally rather than drastically maintaining familiarity and trust.
Weblogs as Trusted Sources and Knowledge Filters (Part One) is a paper I recently wrote to discuss what a weblog is, why knowledge filtering is important, and how experts might use web logs as a way to keep people informed.
Information overload is a real issue, as is the interpretation of specialized knowledge. Just because data is readily available doesn't mean it can be interpreted or applied easily. The Internet gives us access to a wealth of knowledge and information, but we need to be able to find what we want and we need to be able to figure out what to do with it once we find it.
I started working with weblogging software to look at ways for extension specialists to maintain dynamic web pages and to find simple ways to catalog information and share it with other people. Personally, I find a lot of interesting information on the web and have found web logging a useful way to keep track of it for myself and provide pointers for others.
Comments are welcome.
UCD for different project types
User-centered design doesn't just apply when writing brand-new applications. It's actually important in each of the following types of projects:
Among the core activities for ensuring a good, usable human-computer interface are: Audience definition, Task Analysis, Iterative Design, and Usability Validation Tests. User design should be considered through all stages of development including Requirements and Analysis, Design and Development, System Testing.
The second part of the article includes specific ways these activities can be applied to the four different types of projects listed above.
It's common practice in the web logging community that when posting new items to your web log you acknowledge the blog that pointed you in the direction of the link in the first place. I tend to accumulate links as I go and write up the entries when I have time so I've often forgotten how I found them by the time they percolate back up through the list.
So, here's a list of web logs I check regularly:
o BoingBoing
As the sub-head says, "A Directory of Wonderful Things"
o elearningpost
A collection of links on online learning, knowledge management, community building and instructional design
o Ordinary-Life.Net (A Web Designer's Journey)
A Web Design Web Log
o Privacy Parts
Privacy and Technology
o meryl.net
Web design and style sheets
o SiliconValley (Dan Gilmor's e-Journal)
A technology journalist's web log
o Boxes and Arrows
Information Architecture, User Design
o JOHO, the Blog
The Blog version of Journal of the HyperLinked Organization
o O'Reilly Network Weblogs
Michigan Virtual University has developed a set of standards for designing and developing online courses. They have made the standards 'open source' including a downloaded Course Evaluator.
Their philosophy of design, as stated on their web site is:
The application of ID, referred to as Instructional Technology, is rigorous and takes time to complete. This requires more planning, preparation and effort for designers. However, when applied, produce more efficient, effective and appealing instruction for the learner.
All of our standards are based on ID principles and not specific practices. Principles such as active engagement of the learner, appropriate practice and feedback, evaluation, establishment of goals and objectives, and mapping to real world performance are all vital to our process (Yelon and Berge, 1988; Yelon, 1996).
We also believe that the technological learning environment should be as 'transparent' as possible. In other words, navigation, layout, access and speed should be designed in such a way that the learner can concentrate on the material instead of worrying about the delivery vehicle, thus reducing anxiety and increasing learning.
Real learning is measurable and must be measured. All online instruction activities should be tested to find out if they are effective. Though helpful, we believe that evaluations should go beyond "did you like the course?" to "what did you score on the evaluation that determines whether you learned something?"
The OID standards themselves are divided into Technology, Usability, and Instructional Design categories.