Defining human behavior with formulas

Ten years in the field and I just discovered Fitts's Law and Hick-Hyman Law. These issues sound so familiar but I was completely unaware of the fact that there are formulas that describe human behavior.

Damn!

Seven types of leaders

Paul Taffinder explains clearly different kinds of leaders. A must have.

Spam folder / Persona definition

I am really curious what sort of a freak would come out based on e-mails sitting in my spam folder. Nice reverse engineering sort of task.

Difference between UI and UX

The best explanation ever... Taken from here

A periodic table of visualization methods

A very useful overview. A bit too complex for what I do on day to day basis though.

UX tales

In usability circles, there is a funny story about how Jakob Nielsen demonstrated his thoughts on horizontal scrolling by nodding his head up and down saying, “vertical scrolling, yes”, then, shaking his head left and right saying, “horizontal scrolling, no”.

Usability and user paths in real life

Very nice set on Flickr. Useful reminder of users figuring out their own paths and preferences.

Drop down usage

What is the optimal number of values in a drop down? Two few would be perfect for radio buttons, but too many should be handled with an auto-complete feature.

Findability vs. usability

You can't make things usable if you can't find them.

Validation message optimization

Instead of "[field name] is required" and "[field name] must be in correct format" use a single and universal - "please enter a valid [field name]".

Reduces copy writing overhead 50% ;)

Enter the hall of humility

As a designer or an information architect one must remember that any idea presented to the client is a hypothesis, your personal understanding of a solution to specific problem based on your brief familiarization with the subject matter. Each iteration will refine the approach but every time new presentation happens a new hypothesis is being presented.

iPad3 cometh

The sharp, crystal-clear screens are awesome news for new iPad owners, but they create some new dilemmas for web developers who’d like to offer a better experience for high-resolution screens. Sure, increased pixel density means you can serve up sharper, better looking graphics, but there is a cost as well — bigger images mean more bandwidth and longer page loads.

Reminder to myself

IA and UX is not limited to online environment. Please consider user experience before and after online engagement. How do they connect, how do they enhance each other, etc. The discipline of IA can be applied to multiple worlds: physical, virtual, and the world of processes and interactions as well.

Tom Sawyer and social media

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain."

Sounds awfully similar to Web 2.0's user driven content isn't it? Make up tasks, make users compete, and award them with badges, karma score or any other award that is vague enough to define and impossible to achieve.

The chicken and the egg of simplification

To make things clear, you have to make things sim­ple. To make things sim­ple, you have to clear things you don’t need.