The more I’ve worked in the design industry, the more I’ve become interested in creativity. Not as an end or a product, but as a process. I’m talking about how you harness it, and how you create an environment that is most suited to allowing it to flow. One of the best things I’ve come across on creativity is from John Cleese: View post

I just read this article by Jared Spool. OK, so I’m not asking for principia 2, but I cannot be alone in wishing that there was a little bit more meat on this bone. Jared tackles the thorny issue of what colour your links should be. Now, this is an interesting argument and I would not wish to deny anyone the right to argue for any combination of link colours. The problem here is that scientific arguments are introduced to claim that old-style blue/purple links are somehow inherently bad, and that these claims do not really stand up. View post

Talking with a colleague recently, the topic of conversation turned to icon notifications. You will have noticed them proliferating – your app, site, programme or interface wants to let you know that something has happened, so it appends a number to its icon, and the number increases as the volume of tasks amplify. Some Google snuffling reveals them to be called “badges” in Apple’s language. View post

Last Wednesday saw me taking to the stage at the Usability Professionals Association to talk about ROI of design. View post

When I started this blog, I promised a rant about 3D TV and Cinema. Well, now is the time.

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Humans are extremely good at discerning and distinguishing faces. In fact we have specific areas of our cortex devoted to this function. If it is damaged, we can become prosopagnosic – we lose the ability to distinguish faces. The study of how humans are so good at this task has occupied scientists for a while. We already know that we tend to fixate on just one side of the face, and that our perceptions of attractiveness can vary startlingly. View post

Eyes are a great place to start if you want to see how imperfect humans are: Who would design a camera with a circuit board in front of the sensor? That is exactly the case with eyes, as the neurons which feed the optic nerve and blood vessels which nourish the eye are between the retina and the lens, and light has to pass through them to reach the rods and cones. This arrangement is a result of the evolution of eyes from spots on the surface of the skin, to dents in the surface, to round pits and eventually the eyeballs that we know and love today. View post

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

-Mark Twain

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Understanding business software and processes can be tricky. One of the ways that is often used by researchers is observation. An observation captures the context of where the user works, and can be useful in uncovering latent (i.e. unarticulated) requirements. View post

One of the curses of journalism must be that of creative block: You have a deadline and you just can’t think of anything good to write about. So what do you do? Of course, that time-honoured classic: The why-oh-why article. Five hundred words on some putative curse that blights the life of all concerned. Nauseating? Yes. Embarrassing? Obviously, for all concerned. Yet the punters lap it up – and presumably go away muttering about the tribulations of Health and Safety, or budget airlines, or remote controls.  View post