90% of all usability testing is useless

90% of all usability testing is useless

Usability testing generally involves measuring how well test subjects respond in four areas: time, accuracy, recall, and emotional response. The results of the first test can be treated as a baseline or control measurement; all subsequent tests can then be compared to the baseline to indicate improvement.
Wiki/Usability

"Overly simplistic usability testing can produce too many issues, most of which will not have any desirable effect on the goals of the organization."
-Dirk Knemeyer | With infoDesign interview

90% of all usability testing performed on Web sites is useless. This is not to say that it doesn’t have a significant role to play in user experience design. When done right, usability testing will improve your Web site and your development process, but the current culture surrounding Web site usability testing is such that it rarely benefits the design.
Lane Becker | Adaptive path

" Prototype ? " - try semantic coding

" Prototype ? " - try semantic coding

I've heard a lot about various versions of prototyping technique in my own design work & in online debate space. Over the time I'm exposed to various methods like xhtml , low & high fidelity prototyping. But what wins at the end of the day is: clear & feasible method of presenting prototype which eases the flow in a more efficient way.

To cut the chase,

What is a prototype?
A prototype is a draft version of a Web site. Prototypes allow you to explore your ideas before investing time and money into development.

A prototype can be anything from:

• a series of drawings on paper (called a low-fidelity prototype)
• a few images or pages that a user can click through
• a fully functioning Web site (called a high-fidelity prototype)

It's quite interesting as IA is more of 'organizing-information-scientifically'. In hard-and-fast SDLC scenarios it mostly depends on the best methodology organization adopts in typical Information Architecture & prototyping scenario. I believe, not only publications or online forums do help in IA know-how, but also 'the-final-call' taken by Information architect also plays a vital role in choosing the most feasible methodology.

So its demands the good knowledge of I.A about, scientific & holistic view of application architecture, navigation flow, re-usable components, presentation layer, interaction elements, key-accessing-areas, delivery methods etc.,

Here's the interesting take on various notions of design-gurus on prototyping, in the order of Digital-web's Garrett Dimon v/s the opinions of creative heads of our firm; perse ' re-usable xhtml prototyping' :

“You need to temporarily suspend any notions that prototyping is always throwaway work. If you approach it as throwaway work, it will be. However, if you approach it with the intention of keeping it, you can create modular code that can be reused.”.
- Garrett Dimon via Digital-web.com

v/s

The whole idea behind XHTML is that it separates the content layer (XHTML) from the presentation/design layer (CSS). As a result, it’s quite feasible to create XHTML pages from wireframes without waiting for visual design comps to be completed. The implication is that we can (and perhaps should) create re-usable HTML prototypes from rough/early wireframes. Efficiencies gained.
- Nick | Creative guru

Templatizing common layouts for this purpose shouldn’t be that complicated. The key would be that the content and presentation layers were truly separate. The quality and flexibility of site developers’ output would make or break such an approach.

However, here’s a potential wrench for your works...
I don’t think it is safe to assume that a good Information Architect will automatically have the skills to code standards-compliant, clean, extensible XHTML/CSS layouts. This means that they could find their work bottlenecked by dependency on Site Developers to produce their deliverables. They need to work in the tools that they are comfortable with to be most efficient and effective.
- James | Advocating IA

Some of the Best Moments in Life !

Some of the Best Moments in Life !

• To fall in love.
• To laugh until it hurts your stomach.
• To find mails by the thousands when you return from a vacation.
• To go for a vacation to some pretty place.
• To listen to your favorite song in the radio.
• To go to bed and to listen while it rains outside.
• To leave the shower and find that the towel is warm.
• To clear your last exam.
• To receive a call from someone, you don't see a lot, but you want to.
• A good conversation with a sweet person.
• To find money in a pant that you haven't used since last year .
• To laugh at yourself looking at mirror, making faces :)
• Calls at midnight that last for hours :)
• To laugh without a reason.
• To accidentally hear somebody say something good about you.
• To wake up and realize it is still possible to sleep for a couple of hours.
• To hear a song that makes you remember a special person.
• To be part of a team.
• The first kiss.
• To watch the sunset from the hill top.
• To make new friends.
• To feel butterflies! in the stomach every time that you see that person.
• To pass time with your best friends.
• To see people that you like, feeling happy.
• To use a sweater of the person that you like and find that it still smells of their perfume.
• See an old friend again and to feel that the things have not changed.
• To take an evening walk along the beach.
• To have somebody tell you that he/she loves you.
• To laugh .......laugh........and laugh ...... remembering stupid things done with stupid friends.

Via: Mayank Singhal

Achtung baby !

Achtung baby !

My current telecom project is coming to an end with a steep learning curve of good exposure, expectations & experience of the German based clients. I've a kind of inclination towards learning & understanding the customary practices of nations we deal with for project or biz development reasons. I believe in most of the scenarios it's healthier to know the social behavior pattern & rules of engagement of overseas clients.

"Indian companies are rapidly moving into Europe for business and even acquisitions. Young and highly qualified Indian managers are relocating to live and work in Europe.

"Should you end up living in Europe, knowing the local customs, manners, dress codes, dealing with neighbors, driving laws, and so forth are critically essential. Here are some broad guidelines."

This is interesting :

"As an Indian working in Germany, you could feel limped your enthusiastic bubble bursting when your optimism about a project, plan, scheme is cut down to pieces by German bosses. Germans take pride in always looking at the dark side of life. This may indicate depth, critical thinking and a certain "intelligent" caution — things that have always been very precious to the precautions German heart and the logic-amorous German head."

Read this article in 'The Hindu' to fathom brief rules of engagement, living practices with your neighbours should you end up living in Germany. The author Mohan.murti is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany.

Bhoole to nahin..mein aapka Saurav Ganguli

Bhoole to nahin..mein aapka Saurav Ganguli

The word pathetic is inadequate to describe how pathetic India’s pathetic batting display was in the game last night. It is time we welcome back our former captain and (former) batsman Sourav Ganguly to the team. Here's why...

1. Sourav is the king of offside play. You could pay an entire month’s set-top box subscription just to watch that cover drive.
   
2. The 10 or 15 runs Suresh Raina scores, Ganguly will be able to score them with ease.
   
3. People won’t be able to raise questions like, “If performance is the criterion, why is Sehwag still playing?”
   
4. Since the Indian team’s cricket isn’t worth watching, we could at least have some Chappell-Ganguly showdowns to look forward to.
   
5. If, perchance, India were to win a game (against the likes of Namibia, Surinam, Burkina Faso etc), the dressing room would come alive, what with Ganguly’s shirt-swirling and a selection of the choicest expletives.
   
6. The Indian team desperately needs a bowler who can bat.
   
7. Sourav would attract all the criticism, and hence the others can play without much scrutiny. He is the kind of pressure-reliever our underperforming boys would want.
   
8. A better player would be given a chance to play for Bengal’s Ranji Trophy side.
   
9. Shoaib Akhtar won’t play cricket for a year; so dada won’t be anyone’s bunny any time soon.
   
10. You would be relieved of that sick commercial, “Mein hoon Sourav Ganguly… ooh, aah (ouch!) India!”
    

Thanks & Over to Vijay krishna

Jack rocks as-usual

Jack rocks as-usual

I’ve been following Jack’s Javascript UI work and it’s been quite impressive. Jack Slocum popularly known as a man behind flexing Yahoo UI to the max. You can find how famous he's in comment section of his blog.

Recently he released a DOM helper utility which provides 'more optimized insertion methods such as HTML fragments and template building'. As Jack points out 'DomHelper' clearly have benchmark performance benefits comparable to any utilities in other libraries.

"If you are doing JavaScript development, then at some point or another you have probably had to use DOM to create elements. Like everything else with DOM, creating elements can be extremely verbose, leading to bloated code and spending too much time doing something that should be simple. The DomHelper class in the 0.32.2 release provides a layer of abstraction from DOM and transparently supports creating elements via DOM or using HTML fragments. It also has the ability to create HTML fragment templates from your DOM building code."

I found Jack’s dragablelayout script kind of interesting & design-provocative. I'm currently trying to implement this interface technique in one of the offshore project. This is the way where the intuitive interface is heading towards. This surely beats the conventional way of thinking inside frames set & hacking around div's to resemble frameset interface. The draggable feature is worth checking it.

"This resize script applies drag handles to an element to make it resizable. The drag handles are inserted into the element and positioned absolute."