Screw the Power Users
I designed HomeSite and TopStyle for power users. Only power users would want to edit HTML & CSS by hand, so I made sure to cater to them. Those products were filled with features and tool buttons, and their settings dialogs contained dozens of geeky options. Customers liked them that way.
CAP theorem
In theoretical computer science, the CAP theorem, also known as Brewer's theorem, states that it is impossible for a distributed computer system to simultaneously provide all three of the following guarantees:[1][2][3] In 2012 Brewer clarified some of his positions, including why the oft-used "two out of three" concept can be misleading or misapplied, and the different definition of consistency used in CAP relative to the one used in ACID.[4] History[edit] The proof of the CAP theorem by Gilbert and Lynch is a bit narrower than that which Brewer had in mind. The theorem sets up a scenario in which a replicated service is presented with two conflicting requests arriving at distinct locations at a time when a link between them is failed. The obligation to provide availability despite partitioning failures leads the services to respond; at least one of these responses shall necessarily be inconsistent with what a service implementing a true one-copy replication semantic would have done.
Wizard of Oz
This tool takes the name from the story The Wizard f Oz, more specifically it takes the name from the figure of the character under the curtain. It is a technique derived from the information technology that is used in order to test a product or a service in a detailed way by observing the interaction of a potential user with the object without revealing the evaluator’s presence. References: (1984) J.F. Kelley, An Iterative Design Methodology for User-Friendly Natural Language Office Information Applications, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems.
Top 100 Design Blogs that You Should Follow
Online resources are always scattered and it takes time for us to build the resources that we are looking for. Coupon Audit has created a list of the top 100 design blogs to follow in 2013. If you are a designer newbie or a amateur designer who wants to dig deeper in designing field. This list has the right resources that you should pay attention to. If you want to start building your webpage there’s a Lifehack Deal for MacFlux 4 that ends Feb 11th (68% discount at the time of writing) and also another deal for Coffee Cup another great web design package (ends Feb 22nd, 74% Discount).
The Smashing Book 2 Is Available: Get Yours Now! - Smashing Magazine
The Smashing Book 2 is here. It’s printed (+ free eBook). It’s available. And it’s being delivered worldwide at this very moment as you are reading this. All pre-ordered books have been sent out from our warehouse via air mail and should reach all countries soon.
Walmart Goes Mobile With New Apps For iPhone & iPad (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
At this moment, the must-read stories in technology are scattered across hundreds of news sites and blogs. That's far too much for any reader to follow. Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page.
10 Effective Video Examples of Paper Prototyping
Paper prototyping is a commonly used low cost usability method for testing and evaluating web designs and applications. This method lets developers conduct tests before a single line of code has been written, and allows you to identify and fix any potential issues early on in development. “Paper prototyping is a variation of usability testing where representative users perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person ‘playing computer,’ who doesn’t explain how the interface is intended to work.” Quote from Carolyn Snyder. In this post we have collected our top 10 videos that not only illustrate how effective paper prototyping can be, they also show you how to cost effectively conduct your own tests and some of the videos have been animated, which are just amazing to view.
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint
I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to limit control all these factors.
Predictably Irrational
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions is a 2008 book by Dan Ariely, in which he challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are--how we repeat them again and again--I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them".[1] The book is unique in that it offers a down-to-earth descriptions of rigorous academic research that is described in a very appealing and accessible manner. Chapter summary[edit]
Our brains make the social graph real
Brilliant web essayist Maciej Cegłowski of Two Steaks and Pinboard fame has focused his considerable insight on the area of web standards I've been involved with for the past few years. You should go and read his The Social Graph is Neither now. Maciej is spot on in his criticisms: This obsession with modeling has led us into a social version of the Uncanny Valley, that weird phenomenon from computer graphics where the more faithfully you try to represent something human, the creepier it becomes. As the model becomes more expressive, we really start to notice the places where it fails.Personally, I think finding an adequate data model for the totality of interpersonal connections is an AI-hard problem. But even if you disagree, it's clear that a plain old graph is not going to cut it.
