obso1337.org

The New York Times has an excellent (and long) commentary on the food we eat. The premise? Eat as we have eaten for most of our existence: lots of whole unprocessed food. Nothing new there, however the author makes a few good points about the validity of “medical studies”, meat, and the garbage that fills the grocery stores. A good read, even for those who aren’t interested in food and nutrition.

seele :: Jan.28.2007 :: Asides, Life :: Comments Off

Fresh off the Wired Blogs Feed, Wired users prefer Firefox and high resolution monitors. This is extremely interesting since some of use still consider 800×600 resolution constraints in our designs. Of course Wired has a more tech-savvy audience than general websites, but the numbers are still staggering.

seele :: Jan.24.2007 :: Asides, Design, Technology :: Comments Off

I’ve been working like mad on a client briefing most of today and need a sanity check. What better than a To Do list for the next few weeks?

• Finish client briefing
• Meet with GeexBox team on OpenUsability mentor project
• Review toolbar guidelines in preparation for HIG meeting
• A different client meeting
• Client briefing (TBD, but sometime this week)
• User testing Wednesday and Thursday
• Meet with Ellen and discuss toolbar guidelines
• Finish SCALE presentation
• Another client briefing
• Meet with research advisor
• Semester starts next week! Remember to go to class!
• Continue work on the KDE usability history article I started a few months ago
• Meet with Ellen about next HIG topic (going for weekly meetings)
• Write up KDE usability case studies
• Revise thesis plan for meeting with advisor
• Meet with academic advisor about thesis
• SCALE conference already?!
• Finish IA Summit presentation
• Review Katapult and several other applications which never made it off my last TODO list
• Finally.. remember to breath and eat dinner
• Oh, and play World of Warcraft Burning Crusade (this will probably sneak up a little higher ;-)

Oi vey. Actually, that was a horrible idea, but at least I have a list all the things I need to do!

seele :: Jan.22.2007 :: General, Humor, Life :: 3 Comments »

Can’t help but post this quiz: How Pittsburgh Are You?. I’d love to know what some of yinz get ;-)

seele :: Jan.21.2007 :: General, Humor, Quizzes :: 11 Comments »

I will be presenting preliminary research results of my thesis work on the Delphi card sorting methodology at the IA Summit 2007 in Las Vegas in March.

Abstract:

Card sorting is a common IA activity which aids in information design. It can be a valuable tool in discovering important information patterns and testing the suitability of category organization labels. Although a widely used method, it has disadvantages which potentially effect how difficult results are to obtain as well as how reliable.

The Delphi method is an interactive forecasting technique which incorporates the philosophical argument methods of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in order to reach an unbiased consensus from a group of experts or users. It has been successfully applied to interviewing techniques, and has the potential to be applied to card sort methods. Some benefits of this adaptation could be the need for fewer participants or more reliable results.

This presentation will introduce the Delphi method and how it can be applied to card sorting, as well as discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages. It is suitable for practitioners of all levels, however familiarity with card sorting and testing methods is recommended.

My research was partially funded by the IA Institute 2006 Process Grant.

View the program and be sure vote for can’t-miss sessions.

Viva Las Vegas!

seele :: Jan.16.2007 :: Academics, Design, General :: No Comments »