new technologies Articles & Videos

  • Apple & the Dark Cloud of Censorship (at asktog.com)

    Many have suggested that market forces will ultimately force Apple to abandon its hyper-control, and that may well happen. While it took Microsoft more than a decade to copy the Mac, it took Google a matter of months to copy the iPhone and begin to eat away at Apple's potential market share.

  • Mac & the iPad, History Repeats Itself (at asktog.com)

    In bringing that original Mac to market, Steve Jobs hit on a formula that worked for him. It worked for the iPhone, and it worked for the iPad, too. Here are the necessary elements.

  • Productivity and Screen Size

    A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn't test realistic tasks, and it didn't test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully.

  • User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems

    Internet scams cannot be thwarted by placing the burden on users to defend themselves at all times. Beleaguered users need protection, and the technology must change to provide this.

  • Remote Control Anarchy

    The 6 remote controls required for a simple home theater illustrate the problems caused by complexity and inconsistency in user interfaces.

  • Time to Make Tech Work

    The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users.

  • Let Users Control Font Size

    Tiny text tyrannizes users by dramatically reducing task throughput. IE4 had a great UI that let users easily change font sizes; let's get this design back in the next generation of browsers.

  • Making the Physical Environment Interactive

    Tiny motors and sensors will make physical objects interactive and create a renaissance for gestural user interfaces. As interface design moves from the screen to the material world, the need for simple, easy to use designs will only increase.

  • Avoiding Commodity Status

    PCs do not need to be commodities: a focus on quality can differentiate both products and services. Software has great potential for getting better, as shown by an under-appreciated feature in Windows XP that can save users $2,000 per year.

  • DVD Menu Design: The Failures of Web Design Recreated Yet Again

    Designers of DVDs have failed to profit from the lessons of previous media. DVD menu structures are baroque, less usable, less pleasurable, less effective. It is time to take DVD design as seriously as we do web design. The field needs discipline, attention, to the User Experience, and standardization of control and display formats.

  • Poor Code Quality Contaminates Users' Conceptual Models

    Software bugs and system crashes result in huge productivity losses and undermine users' ability to form good models of how computers work. Website designers can help improve user confidence by prioritizing quality and robustness over features and the latest technology.

  • Stationary Mobility

    Mobile Internet access will free us from having to connect appliances to telephone jacks and will make smart devices much easier to install. In fact, they may not need a user interface at all, as exemplified by the Japanese i-pot.

  • Security & Human Factors

    A big lie of computer security is that security improves as password complexity increases. In reality, users simply write down difficult passwords, leaving the system vulnerable. Security is better increased by designing for how people actually behave.

  • Flash: 99% Bad

    Flash reduces usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks the Web's fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.

  • The Network is the User Experience: Microsoft's .NET Announcement

    Microsoft's .NET strategy is a brilliant counter-move that reduces the Justice Department's proposed penalty to a victory in the previous war. Integrating the user experience at the network level opens the door to new and exciting services while diminishing the importance of traditional isolated websites.

  • Finally Progress in Internet Client Design

    Napster, IE 5 for the Mac, and Yahoo FinanceVision introduce specialized Internet UIs beyond the standard page viewing that had been unchanged since Mosaic.

  • User-Supportive Internet Architecture

    The basic ideology of the Internet is bit transport; we need a utility-focused human-centered ideology for its fundamental architecture and protocols.

  • Stuck With Old Browsers for at Least 3 Years

    4% of users upgraded to a new version each month in 1998. By 2008, upgrade speeds were only 2%/month. It takes 3 years for 3/4 of users to embrace a new version.

  • URL as UI

    Users continue to type and guess URLs and domain names, so Web usability can be improved by better URLs. In the long term this machine-level addressing scheme must be hidden.

  • iCab: New Browser With Structural Navigation

    iCab, a web browser introduced in 1999, uses the LINK tags from the page headers to provide additional navigation links to the users. This structural navigation provides a valuable alternative to users.