KonzeptioNerd

Sechzig Grad

Probably the next thing after diet-blogs: book-writing-blogs. Sechzig Grad is probably not the only example of book-written-in-blogfor-cum-blogging-about-writing-blog (or, more generally, of self-motivation-by-publication-blogs).

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More fun with ASCII-ads

Sweet. (Hint: check the URL) (No longer there? Check for video here.)
On the downside:

You can no longer copy the URL.
This is the most unconspicious ad-space I can currently think of. OK, there’s unaccounted for movement in the peripheral field of vision, but so there is on the bottom right (animated wold-map teaser). And the form [...]

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Bottle business - how user testing might have saved my shirt

If you’re familiar with German meeting rooms, you probably know the single serving Granini juice bottle that are often part of the catering: stubby little glass bottles with wide necks and nubbed bodies. There’s a typical gesture to drinking Granini from those small bottles. Grab the neck with your right hand. Place your thumb firmly [...]

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Useful Week, London

I am (well, was) in London for Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week and there’s no Wireless in the conference room. There’s not even electricity. I failed to charge my MacBook during the first night, but even if I had, my batteries wouldn’t last through eight hours of structured note taking. Then again, with airport off, they [...]

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Everything is Miscellaneous

David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Disorder makes a great tandem read to Norbert Bolz’s bang design and Bruce Sterling’s Shaping Things. Weinberger, too, is dealing with things gone out of control. But when items break out of their traditional categories, Weinberger gets all excited and fired up.

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Usability and Sociability

Jenny Preece’s Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (2000) is rather reminiscent of Amy Jo Kim’s Community Building on the Web: a large volume (about 400 pages), generous spacing, amiable line drawings. Preece is a useful complement to Kim: where the latter bases her observations on wide-ranging community experience, the former accesses current research, especially [...]

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Jesse James Garrett’s Elements of User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience: User Centered Design for the Web is certainly the piece de resistance of or the user experience design and Garrett’s something of the godfather of the discipline. You simply cannot do UXD and not have read the Elements. Together with ia/recon and the Visual Vocabulary (already drafted [...]

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Bashing the blurb

I usually have a hard time finishing Gerry McGovern’s New Thinking because I can’t scroll very well with two thumbs up (maybe the new MacBook Air with its ingenious multitouch technology could be of help here?). But last week’s instalment? (Great websites do, not say, Jan 14, 2008)
McGovern apparently has a bone to grind (or [...]

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The iPhone … ok, ok

The iPhone seems to be getting a slow start in Germany. At least according to most local media. Over in the US, 10.000 units sold on the first day come across as quite a success. And it appears that a lot of iPhone disillusionment is media made.
We all know that Americans are just indiscriminate fanbois [...]

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Remember deep pages

Netbank has been in the newsletters with its relaunch the “largely avoids scrolling”.
Now, this claim is not quite true to the point: deep, content-heavy pages do scroll - and why shouldn’t they? (See e.g. Boxes and Arrows: Blasting the Myth of the Fold).
There are more severe blunders on the Netbank site, though. Linked and unlinked [...]

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