Usable

Ifttt This Is Wrong, Then I Don’t Wanna Be Right

April 27, 2012
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Every once in a while, something comes along that makes me hit my head like the star of an old V8 commercial, then reminds me why I’m so optimistic about technology. Ifttt is one of those things.
Ifttt, while a funny domain name, stands for “If This, Then That,” and that’s the simple beauty of this [...]

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Reply All… Hilarity.

December 13, 2011

A recent email exchange at work left me laughing and wondering if people lacked a basic understanding of how “Reply All” works. Occasionally, those of us who work a little too much get nastygrams from HR informing us that we’ve hit the limit on vacation accrual and will begin losing time if we don’t take [...]

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The Immovable User Meets Irresistible Design

August 26, 2011
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There’s a nice article over at all tech considered about the symbiotic relationship between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive.  Ive has designed Apple products since the fruit colored iMacs, and Steve Jobs is, well…  Steve Jobs.  The article describes the intimate working relationship between Jobs an Ive since The Steve returned to Apple in 1992.
The [...]

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Facebook Adds New Status Privacy Features

August 25, 2011

Facebook released some new status privacy features. It allows you to tag other users in your status, add location (I think this is what happened to Places), and determine who gets to see each status message. This is all handled in a series of controls at the bottom of the status pane:

It allows you to [...]

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Melting Rock with RockMelt

December 3, 2010
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I’ve been using RockMelt for a week or so now.  For those of you unfamiliar with RockMelt, it is a new browser that functions as a social desktop.  If you’re wondering what that looks like, consider a browser with social functions built right into the chrome of the application.  The far left border displays the [...]

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Toward a More Usable City

August 6, 2010
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A B-Cycle kiosk was just installed in front of the John Hancock Center in Chicago.  It’s good to see bike sharing make its way to this side of the Atlantic.  I’ve already seen bikes being rented from the kiosk.  I think the fact that the bike can be grabbed from a kiosk is critical to [...]

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Following Function

March 24, 2010
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Smashing Magazine has a good article written by Steven Bradley examining web design through the Bauhaus lens of “form follows function.” He first gives a pretty good summary of the history of Bauhaus and the evolution of its principles, then turns his attention to interpreting the validity of form following function. Unfortunately, [...]

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A Word on the Tagline

March 1, 2010

You may notice the tripartite slogan that’s part of the logo of this site:  Useful, Usable, Compelling.  Those three concepts are the pillars of the framework I use to design or analyze a system.  In short, what I mean by these terms is:
Useful
Does the thing do what it’s supposed to do and only what it’s [...]

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Why Apple Rulez!

February 1, 2010
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So, “Welcome to Macintosh” was just playing on CNBC.  I was cleaning up from the dual birthday party for both of my kids, so I left it on.  All in all, it’s maybe a bit too simplistic and a bit too reverent of the fruit company from Cupertino, but it made some valid points.
The most [...]

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