Sam Strasser

Sam Strasser

 
Nov 23 / 1:27pm

The Evolution of Western Dance Music!

Check out this website I found at thomson.co.uk

Cool visualization

 
Nov 22 / 10:58am

Interesting little Kiva video

via techcrunch.com

Kiva Systems is still the coolest thing since the roomba

What up Los

 
Aug 9 / 11:17am

Steve Krug on the least you can do about usability

Check out Steve Krug's talk on The Least You Can Do About Usability.  

The concept I like best is "bargain usability".  He describes that as a morning a month (or maybe every week if you're doing agile) with 3 or 4 users.  Throw away the notion that this data will be statistically representative in any way - that's not the goal.  And, by throwing away that notion, you can actually make this affordable, both in dollars and in human time.  Don't use a lab, don't use two-way mirrors, don't spend time doing elaborate representative recruiting for testers, don't do exit questions or stats, and don't make a report. 

This last one, don't make a report, interested me, because by not making a report, you prevent people from making an excuse for not showing up, which means everyone will be involved and no one can ignore usability.

Instead, of all those things to avoid, you should set up a remote monitor so that anyone can watch, and you should all sit down, probably with food, to discuss.  The sooner you can do this after the session, the better, before your biases and flaws in memory have time to take hold.

I particularly like that he does not try to discount the large and incumbent field of "real" usability, but rather explains a way to do it "well enough".  Anyway, you should watch it if you do usability or user testing.

p.s. meant to write this up a long time ago but forgot.  I don't want to lose these notes, so