Why do I need two plugs?
By admin | June 12, 2009
Nearly everything electrical I buy insists on giving me two plug leads one that works in the UK and one that works in other parts of Europe. How wasteful is this? I don’t need the ‘other parts of Europe’ plug nor, I would imagine do 99% of people in the UK (and vice versa).
I don’t get two different nationality plugs with Apple purchases (well done there) but when I buy a new Acer or Samsung monitor or some other electronic thing (DVD, HDD etc.) I’m given an extra plug that I now need to dispose of.
Topics: Misc | No Comments »
Dovetailing usability with the lean, mean, agile development machine…
By admin | September 8, 2008
To date I haven’t found much notable on the subject of how usability fits into the agile development methodologies and I’m not sure if that’s because there’s not much written on the subject or that I haven’t come across it yet…
So I was pleasantly surprised to find Marc McNeill’s piece on ‘User Centered Design in Agile Application Development‘ (PDF) on the ThoughWorks website. It makes some good points about how well UCD fits with Agile as they both share a similar process and philosophy and it makes the case for making sure that UCD is part and parcel of an agile application development for a number of very strong reasons (not least usability!). What I especially like is that it clearly explains the business benefits of doing so.
It’s always been obvious to me how easily agile development fits with internal IT development teams. What I have found less easy to understand is the best way to cost and manage an agile project when it is being delivered by an external IT/web technology supplier. The whole agile methodology runs counter to the traditional way IT services and projects have been delivered… Fixed price and fixed scope up front.
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
I live in… the Bouvet Islands
By admin | August 5, 2008
For a number of years now I’ve enjoyed find the Bouvet Islands in the drop down country list of e-commerce sites and registration forms etc. According to wikipedia:
Bouvet Island (Norwegian: Bouvetøya, also historically known as Liverpool Island or Lindsay Island) is an uninhabited sub-antartic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, south-southwest of the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). It is a dependent area of Norway and is not subject to the Antarctic Treaty.
What the hell is it doing in a drop down list of where people live? Ahhhh, the sheer pleasure of a comprehensive country list that no one thinks to sift for countries where people can’t actually live. I chanced upon as the name intrigued me when I was scanning the list for Britain, England, UK, United Kindom, Great Britain or whatever they’d decided to use.
Topics: IA/Usability/User Experience | 1 Comment »
No I’m afraid I’m not ‘Linked In”…
By admin | August 1, 2008
Over a very genial pint in the Green Dragon a friend of mine explained that he saw no reason to get ‘linked in‘. “Why would I want to expose my valuable clients and contacts to all and sundry?” With a local offline network that works fine and great word of mouth referrals he could see no point in partaking.
I’m not a member either, so I couldn’t hold forth on the benefits that he was missing out on. I feel like I’ve quite enough on my plate without getting ‘linked in‘… Are we both behind the times, missing out or needlessly trying to protect ourselves from unwelcome callers? Who knows… [UPDATE: Since writing this piece I'm now linked in and will post about it in due course]
He’s been the new business point of contact for his business for a good number of years so his email is already prone to a deluge of highly targeted yet unwelcome approaches. We discussed the need for him to have someone manually sift that email account while he decamps to another one that only the privvy will find out about. The dilemmas of the modern worker eh? Should give him back a chunk of time though!
Topics: Social networks | No Comments »
