My Twittering (2009-06-07)

There are things I just cannot do on my blog without Camtasia: narration + music bed, and zooming and panning across the image. #
Mass #media adds #usability to government: interactive European Parliament elections map http://bit.ly/eJSVl #fb (Thx @demsoc) #
UPA provides mini-certification for its conference attendees (“Passport To Success”). Details in this pdf: http://bit.ly/WyymG #
In contrast, […]

Fat finger fone oops backspace

How tiny does the keyboard on a handset or smartphone need to be?

If you ask me, I’d say: “Not anywhere near as tiny as they are.”
I’d also say: “If you make an app for iTouch or iPhone, ensure that the keyboard flips into a larger, wider version when users rotate the device on its side.”

Photos help user personas succeed

If your user persona includes an image, which type of image helps the team produce designs that are more usable?

The illustration on the left?  Or the photo on the right?
According to Frank Long’s research paper, Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design, photos are better than illustrations. Teams whose user personas include a photograph […]

Last century’s disk-folder-file legacy

My friend Donna, who is in her 50s, asked me to help her with her photos. (Donna is not her real name.)
Here are the things Donna wanted to do:

Move photos from the camera’s memory card to somewhere else.
Previously, when the camera’s memory card was full, Donna would delete unwanted photos by using the camera’s delete function. At […]