Five Sketches™

I recently moved into a home where the light switches are all wrong. I was able to fix one problem, and the rest is a daily reminder that usability doesn’t just happen by itself.
In one pair of light switches, the left switch controlled a lamp to the right, and the right switch controlled a lamp to […]

For professional reasons, I like to mess around with software. It’s a form of training, because some of the messing around leads to frustration, confusion, and inefficiency. And that’s good.
My hope is that my experiences will help me to better understand what I put various groups of software users through when they use the software […]

Many people are bad at estimating how often and how long they’re on the phone. Interestingly, you can predict who will overestimate and who will underestimate their phone usage, according to the 2009 study, “Factors influencing self-report of mobile phone use” by Dr Lada Timotijevic et al. For this study, a self-reported estimate is considered  accurate […]

My television lets me step through the channels. To do this, I use the remote control’s CH button. Similarly, my television lets me page through the list of programs, five channels at a time. To do this, I use the remote control’s PG button. In fact, it’s one button for the stepping and paging functions.

The programs in […]

The more choices people have, the more likely they’ll choose something utilitarian over something hedonistic.

In an experiment by Aner Sela, Jonah Berger, and Wendy Liu, 20% of 121 participants chose low-fat ice cream when given a simple choice of two, but 37% chose low-fat ice cream when given a choice of ten. In this case, low-fat […]

Once again, I’ve learned that I am typical. I tend to format dates the same way as many other people do.  This excerpt from William Hudson’s date study report shows the most common formats:

The report has all sorts of tidbits for interaction designers about date formats, error trapping, leading zeros, and more.
One thing the study doesn’t discuss […]

Whether it’s ethnographic research, usability research, or marketing research, I’ve learned that the best insights aren’t always gleaned from scheduled research.
Here’s a photo of impromptu research, conducted by Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s product evangelist. I was her research subject. Betsy recorded me pushing sugar packets around a table as I explained how I’d like Camtasia to behave.

Betsy […]