I have done it! I have finished compiling my usability report ha ha!! Now time for some research on message boxes and also on ‘contingency design’. LinktoComments('')
After looking at 37signals I am planning to start something like that one day. Only, i need to learn a bit more of web design and all. The bloggers in India are rocking! Is blog THE killer app? Giving the power of publishing to every person that knows what Internet is? Look back, pause, think about it, I am not making any predictions but something tells me blogs are here to stay and if at all there is a web service I dont mind paying for, it is this: the blog. LinktoComments('')
What’s with this stupid TEN sports channel? Is it run by the Pakistanis? Everytime I tune in to watch ‘Cricket Classics’ I have this diplomatic asshole Rameez raja dishing out all the matches that Pakistan had won. I am yet to see him air a match in which pak isn’t playing. What’s more in Indore I found that they air Ptv – the paki channel, what the hell’s going on? LinktoComments('')
Tired. Sleepy. Hungry and bored. Wish I had a private jet and I could fly to chennai and bangalore and come back to indore tomorrow morning… dream, dream dream when I need you, in my arms whenever I want you all I have to do is dream… ever heard that song? LinktoComments('')
Extremely tired after a whole day of usability testing. My advice: Do not indulge in whole day testing, after lunch your efficiency as the data logger nose dives. I was yawning away to glory when the final participant was performing his tasks… big mistake, yet he made a brilliant observation – “The hour glass doesn’t appear when I click something and it is being processed… how do I know if i had clicked something or not?” think about it. My conviction about dialog boxes not being usable is complete; people don’t read if the message is too big on a dialog box, they just click ‘OK’ thinking it’d take care of everything. LinktoComments('')
I have a Touchtel phone connection, I thought it was a great thing, I mean with DOT you can expect customer-service, but now looks like I am wrong. In indore Touchtel sucks big time their service is awful. I am planning to switch to DoT. Did usability testing whole day, 5 users and two systems – and wrote an article for the internal mag. Feels good man! .LinktoComments('')
Planning to do some research on how people interact with ‘dialog boxes’: Do they click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ AFTER they read the message or do they read at all? Think about it when you are faced with “Script error want to debug? |Yes| |No|” What do you click most times? How many times have you screamed “Shit!” After clicking |Yes|? very soon… I shall put an article about it here and netusability. Keep checking this space..LinktoComments('')
Involved in a web site project. My friends have taken my suggestion of using an open-source product, we’ll be using PHP-Nuke. Looks like an exciting project, let’s wait and see!
Right after I posted this article on ‘how to present a usability report to the developers’ I am faced with a typical situation; one of explaining and defending my report. They want a ‘positive’ feedback to be sent to the client, and I will not sell my soul. My report wasn’t too critical or something, it started off with some positive comments about the system by the users and all, but they were clearly confused by the organization of screens and 2 out of 3 users aborted their tasks as they couldn’t figure out a way of completing them… it is not rocket science man, but if they WANT to be blind to the fact that it is not just about how well your code works but also about users finding it easy to use, well, I have More...
Listening to Sting – Fields of Gold. This song gets right through you – through the barbed wire of your pretence, hypocrisy, insecurity and fears – and touches the very core of your soul. On its way back it pauses at your heart and gives it s oh-so-gentle squeeze, and at once you feel pain and at once joy. Fields of gold has moved every single time I have listened to it. (I am playing it for the third time in a row now!). This lazy-hazy saturday afternoon I am stuck between Poe and Dean koontz. I had bought ‘Complete work of Edgar Allan Poe’ in Bangalore and Koontz’s ‘From the corner of his eye’ from Landmark chennai… my confusion is, I love poe (Remember Raven?) but I want to read Koontz More...