August 19, 2008 by Greg Schuessler.

I was reading the article “Deafness and the User Experience” on www.alistapart.com and thought I’d share the link to the article below. Here is a section of the article: “When we look at accessible design for the deaf, it’s not surprising to see it addressed in a similar fashion: audio captioning is pretty much the equivalent of alt text on images for most designers.”.

http://alistapart.com/articles/deafnessandtheuserexperience

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June 20, 2008 by Greg Schuessler.

Human Factors International (HFI) will be hosting a free, live webcast on Thursday, June 26 at 3:30 PM (EST) about Optimizing e-commerce UX: Create websites that empower customers, are effortless to use and create a joyful shopping experience. We can expect a lot from HFI, when it comes to design and usability! Read the full article and details.

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May 13, 2008 by Greg Schuessler.

While I was checking out various usability Web sites I happened to come across the Usability Week 2008 conference and thought it would be worthwhile to post.

Here is a snippet from their site: “Usability Week 2008 takes you beyond the typical conference experience, offering a 3-day usability camp, a 3-day intensive session on interaction design, and several specialized, day-long tutorials that get both broad and deep on core usability topics. Come for as few or as many days as you want.”

Location and Upcoming Dates are:
London - May 19-24
San Francisco - June 16-21
Melbourne - July 21-26

Learn more about this conference via http://www.nngroup.com/events/

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April 23, 2008 by Greg Schuessler.

I’ve recently signed up to facebook.com and I thought I’d write a quick review from a Design and Usability perspective. So quickly:

Pros
1. Fast and easy to setup an account.
2. From a usability perspective I was able to find everything in a relative amount of time.
3. Applications are fun!  Unlike MySpace.com, facebook.com organizes applications in a user friendly way.

Cons
1.  Some applications are very limiting - mainly audio I have found. I would like them to integrate with iTunes preferably.
2. You do not have a unique URL, but that could also be a Pro depending on how you look at it.  Now that I think about it, it’s probably a good idea not to have a specific URL because facebook.com IS a social networking site, not just a free hosting provider for personal webpages.
3. Hmmm…can’t think of a third one at the moment.

So, do you have a facebook page?  If you do then share your comments! What do you like and think needs some improvement?

Cheers!
Greg

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February 9, 2008 by Greg Schuessler.

I have been looking for a way to consolidate my music collection onto one device.  Portable hard drive, iPod, mobile phone, laptop computer, etc.  All of these devices have advantages and disadvantages to them.  I use iTunes for a majority of my music however I also have music on CD’s still.  Well, after much research I finally decided to go with the iPod Touch. Yes I know some of you are saying why not the iPhone.  I could have it all on one! But here is the deal: the iPod Touch is really geared toward music purposes and the iPhone is geared toward phone purposes.

 I’ve had my iPod Touch now for just over 4 weeks and I have to say I love it!  I went ahead and upgraded to the latest patch so I could have these cool applications: Google Maps, Notes, Mail, Stocks and Weather. 

One of the down sides to the Touch is space available.  I bought the largest one at the time: 16GB.  What do you know - about a week ago they came out with the 32GB for $100 more!  Ahh well it’s okay because I have 90% of my music on my iPod Touch and I still have about 7GB left of space.

So from a Design and Usability perspective I would have to say the iPod touch is superb!  It interacts in exactly they way  you expect it to.   I was even impressed how the Google Maps can locate where you are (within a 100 yards approximately)!

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