Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

If you use gmail, apparently you can change myusername@gmail.com into myusername+spamsite@gmail.com or my.username@gmail.com and it will still go to your email. Didn’t know that.

(Anne Galloway) These are awesome: blankets with a map on them, I want one now too. Get to know your neighborhood while getting comfy. You can have them made in Brooklyn, they take about 200 hours to make, pretty expensive I would wager.

Cloudvox looks awesome. (via Simon)

Youtube has a new logo.

Nathan explaining some Androidy stuff: “CyanogenMod exists because Android is an open-source mobile operating system – in fact, it is the only commercially viable open-source mobile operating system. When the words “open-source” and “commercially viable” exist in close proximity to each other, I usually start talking too fast and wave my arms excitedly.”

So this is exactly why Google shouldn’t be in the content business. They’re not even any good at the content business (they are good at algorythms and UI).

I noticed Google is using a new (?) layout for forum results. Google has since long identified certain sites as “forums” and given them a different layout in their search results, but this layout is new I believe.

Practically, this means that forums can get 5 links instead of the usual 1 or 2 in a search results page.

More quoting of Dave Winer: “I read the article about this Sidebar Wiki thing and their product manager said it was just like blogging. I suppose if you have no soul it’s just like blogging.“

Agree on this one. Google’s Sidebar Wiki thing is a terrible, terrible idea, and will be overrun with SEO spammers just like their other content wiki initiatives were. It’s not just that Google sucks at content, it’s that content is the wrong place for them to be in the internet ecosystem. They point people to content. They shouldn’t manage content sites themselves. Youtube is an edgecase, this wikithing is way over the edge.

Back to the good old blogging and linking to other blogs. Dave Winer: “the fact that Apple holds up apps and rejects them often because they compete with their own software is to me like buying a coat made of the skins of endangered species. I won’t use iPhone apps for ecological reasons.”

Loosely coupled systems scale more easily and are easier to maintain, but they can cause some unusual error messages when one of the parts of the system is down. I understood this message, but I imagine most users wouldn’t.

The new Amazon Cloudwatch monitoring ($0.015 per hour for each Amazon EC2 instance, so that’s about 10 US$/month per server) graphs in the (free) AWS console for ec2 instances are AWESOME:

(Yea, that’s a strange disk read spike there…) Now I just have to learn to interpret these and understand what’s going on there.

What happens to user behavior when we tweak the site to be slower in various degrees for them? It turns out that over a large gradient of site slowdowns, users in general spend around the same amount of time on Facebook, as measured by session time (user activity up until a certain period of idleness). Logically, page views suffer as a result.

Typical upload/download speeds at the farm with TATA.

Test

Installed blogging client on new laptop. Ready to go.Tesssssst.

Wij hebben 2 katten ter adoptie: 1 witte en 1 zwarte. Ze zijn 4 jaar oud, we hebben ze meegebracht uit New York 2 jaar geleden. Over 1 maand vertrekken we naar Colombia en we kunnen ze (spijtig genoeg!!) onmogelijk meenemen, dus we zoeken iemand om 1 van de poezen (of beiden) te adopteren.

Het zijn 2 vrouwtjes. Ze woonden de eerste 2 jaar in het appartement in New York, maar zijn nu gewoon buiten te wonen, dus ze kunnen binnen of buiten. Ze zijn beiden gesteriliseerd en gevaccineerd en hebben een chip ingeplant. Ze zijn ook zindelijk (binnenshuis). Het zijn heel lieve katten, vriendelijk in de omgang.

We kunnen ze spijtig genoeg dus onmogelijk meenemen, bel ons op 03 / 325 88 70 or email petervandijck @ gmail dot com als je meer informatie wil.

Stuur deze webpagina ook door naar je vrienden, alvast bedankt!

Foto van toen ze nog klein waren:

Foto’s van nu:

Bel ons op 03 / 325 88 70 or email petervandijck @ gmail dot com

Still not great but I like the idea of collaborative UI design:

Eurostar confirmation page: “Unless you have a photographic memory, you might want to print this page for your records.” :)

Jared Spool interviews Brian Kalma, Director of User Experience and Web Strategy for the darling of Internet retail, Zappos.com.

Podcasting isn’t hip anymore (and most of the companies founded during the hype have done really badly), but it’s still a very useful thing.

In Arambol, India, I came across a small travelers’ library where you could borrow and exchange books, with about 100 books organized in the following 4 categories: English, Dutch, German and Funny Languages. Unfortunately I got a picture of the library but not one of the classification:

The Journal of IA is up. It’s a peer-reviewed journal, which is fantastic, because it not only makes IA more serious and research-driven (which it needs), but mainly because it encourages the creation of this kind of research. I don’t particularly care if IA as a discipline survives or goes the way of “knowledge management”, which drowned in unscientific blabla and became pretty much irrelevant (with apologies to everyone who identifies with this). But I do care a lot about good research in my field, and this will hopefully encourag that.

One thing though: content is only available in PDF format. Guys! This is ironic in more ways than I can count.

• Continuing the ear-infection: sick on the Konkan express (Poorbuthappy in India!)
  (tags: india sick ear-infection travel with kids children)

There’s a great discussion going on on the IXDA mailing list about what we call mobile phones (and what we call sending SMS messages) in different countries. I’m trying to summarize here, please leave a comment with info on your country and also note where this list may be wrong:

• USA: Cellphone or cell, texting.
• China: “Handy phone” (?)
• Iran: mobile. (landlines are called “telephone”).
• Spain: "teléfono móvil" or "móvil".
• Denmark: mobile phone.
• UK: mobile or mobile phone.
• Philipines: cellphone.
• New Zealand: “mobile” (but cellphone is also used).
• India: mobile. Telephone or landline for a landline.
• Korea: “handphone”
• Japan: keita.
• Dutch (Netherlands): mobiele telefoon.
• Dutch (Belgium): GSM.
• France: "téléphone portable" or "portable" but since "portable" is used for laptop too some people call them "mobile".
• Germany: handy http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handy
• Indonesia, they call it hand phone or simply abbreviated as "hp" pronounced "ha-pe". "*Ha*" as if in *ha*m and "*pe*" as if in*Pe*psi. In terms of texting, they use "SMS".
• Turkey: "pocket phone" ("cep telefonu")?

In general, “text message” is more widely understood than “SMS”.

I also created a Google survey, I’ll open up the results. Fill in the form about what phones are called in your country here.

Apple’s Belgium language gateway has “Apple” as a language option :)

(In Dutch)

Wij verkopen de volgende dingen, in Belgie, in de volgende 2 maanden. Contacteer op petervandijck at gmail puntje com of 03 325 88 70.

Alles is zelf af te halen in Deurne, Antwerpen (dicht bij autosnelweg).

Wit babybedje Ikea.

Goede staat, 1 jaar oud met matras. Goede staat. Originele prijs 90 euro, nu 49 euro.

Changing table baby.

Van Ikea. Changing table gedeelte is afneembaar om later in gewoon kastje om te zetten. Wit. Goede staat. Origineel: 100 euro. Nu 49 euro.

Kast babykleren.

Ikea kast babykleren. Wit. Nieuwprijs 100 euro, nu 49 euro.

Burostoel.

Van Ikea, redelijk goede lichtgroene buro stoel.

Prijs: 20 euro.

Televisie

Zonder afstandsbediening. Werkt goed (wij gebruiken hem met Belgacom TV bakje). 49 euro.

Grote Ikea kleerkast.

Ikea kleerkast met 5 kasten. Inclusief vele laden etc. Zeer goede kwaliteit. Nieuwprijs 600 euro. Nu 299 euro.

Handmaaier.

Zonder electriciteit of gas (enkel duwen, en geen lawaai), perfect voor stadstuintjes, en ecologisch. Werkt perfect. Nieuw 100 euro, nu 49 euro.

Droogkas

Werkt perfect, 1 jaar oud. 95 euro.

Wasmachine

Werkt perfect, 1 jaar oud. 95 euro.

Mannenfiets.

Goede staat, 49 euro. 5 versnellingen.

Barbecue

Zeer goede barbeque merk Weber, goede staat, 49 euro.

Fietszitje kindje.

Kan op de meeste fietsen gemonteerd worden. Hoogte verstelbaar. 29 euro.

2 boekenkasten.

Van Ikea.

Prijs: 25 euro voor de 2.

Keukenmeubel.

Van Ikea, met 2 laden en 2 vulbakken. Dik, stevig hout.

Prijs: 50 euro.

Sta-diepvries.

Van de makro, 1 jaar oud. Werkt perfect. 6 laden.

Prijs: 150 euro.

Zwart-wit HP Laserjet printer P2014.

Perfect voor thuis- of office gebruik, veel beter dan deskjet printer (goedkoper in onderhoud en sneller). Print enkel zwart wit. Past op Mac of PC. Van Makro, 1 jaar oud. Met USB kabel. Met 1 laserprinter cartridge (gaat lang mee).

Prijs: 65 euro.

Ijzeren kastjes Ikea.

2 kastjes buro-stijl Ikea, met sleuteltjes. 1 horizontaal (rood), 1 vertikaal (grijs).

Prijs: 55 euro elk of 75 euro voor de 2.

Stalamp Ikea.

Mooie lamp Ikea, met stevige voet.

Prijs: 20 euro.

Sofa

Sofa van Ikea. Overtrek kan gemakkelijk gewassen of vervangen worden. 1 jaar oud. Stevig gebouwd.

Prijs: 85 euro.

Oude werkende piano.

Een werkende staanpiano. Alle toetsen werken. De piano is wel vuil (moet gekuist worden). 1 voetpedaal werkt, het ander is kapot.

prijs: 295 euro.

*want*

We are visiting family these days, and I noticed they weren’t very sure which language to speak to the kid, Spanish or English. I think it should be generally the native language (Spanish in this case), unless you want to encourage that other language explicitly. In any case, I have the feeling those things set in a pattern pretty easily so there’s no need to explicitly discuss it.

Anyone care to share experiences dealing with family and multilingual kids?

Why people don’t get that Digg’s new URL shortening “service” is evil is beyond me. It hijacks the URL conversation by using that frame.

Jorge blogs (in Spanish) about the latest IA Summit.

Design is the problem – the future of design must be sustainable is a new Rosenfeld Media book. Go check it out.

Real professionals use Michael Angeles’ Wireframe Sketch Book.

Amazon Mechanical Turk doesn’t work with Google Chrome:

Oh good, someone was blogging the IA Summit. Lots of links to presentations there.

Joshua Porter on the IxDA mailing list: “There is a saying that I particularly like: ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood…Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.’ So…right now we’re discussing what to call the people who are gathering the f’ing wood. Should they be called wood gatherers, or boat architects or sailing experience designers? Here’s a suggestion: Let’s talk about the sea.”

Apple has great documentation for UI designers for the iPhone.

Lou Rosenfeld: “Long ago I was probably one of the world’s greatest information architects. For, perhaps, a year or two. (It might have had something to do with the fact that there were only about two dozen of us who claimed the title at the time.) Then I got bored and more importantly, the homesteaders were better at it than I was. So I moved on. And that’s fine; the issue wasn’t one of competence and intelligence, but of personality type and attention span.”

This is what I like to see happen after a redesign of a mid-size informational site.

Visits:

Pageviews:

Traffic coming from search engines:

Guess at which point we launched?

The next thing I want to see happen is for those lines to start slowly but consistently going up (which I think they will). User satisfaction (as measured by feedback) is also way up.

(The little bumps are weeks.)

Webword was one of the first blogs out there, and it was all about usability, so I loved it. John Rhodes was the man behind it, and today he emailed me with a new book he wrote, which I’m reviewing here.

The book is about selling user experience, not from the top down (ie. convincing your CEO), but from the bottom up, which is how 99% of us have to sell it. It’s funny, it’s brilliant, if I could write like that I’d be writing my next book today. I love it.

If you’re doing UX work in a large organization, you should buy this book. And if you’re a UX consultant, you should too. It’s that simple. The book is worth it’s weight in gold: it gives you (as a UX person) insight in how to really get things done in large companies.

The first chapter starts off good (and I’m gonna put a lot of quotes in this review to give you an idea of the writing style and wisdom in the book):

"99% of the people in an organization are not thinking about UX and the other 1 % are thinking about women, fire and dangerous things. Most managers understand UX about as well as they understand the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow."

A wakeup call, but true. It’s a practical book, can’t emphasize this enough:

“This book is full of stealth. We’ve got guerilla attacks, end runs, and cloaking devices. These tactics are not conventional. I’m asking you to reject the frontal assault. We’ll be successful under the radar.”

In "2. The First Business of Business is Business", he explains what business is all about.

“How Do You Talk About UX? The advice I am going to give you next is worth the price of the book: Do not talk about user experience for at least a month. Instead, before you say or do anything regarding UX, think about what it means to the bottom line. Modify your language to be more in line with the true intentions of the business.”

Chapter 3: User Experience is an Ugly Baby

I didn’t know Donald Norman used the term “user experience” in 1998 and 1999.

Again, John puts his finger right on the problem:

“Most folks involved in UX do not have business or management experience. This means that few people can bridge the gap between the two worlds. There isn’t a common language available. This leaves UX at a disadvantage.”

In chapter 4: Understanding Your Role in the (Dis)Organization, he explains how companies *really* work. Forget about the org chart.

"Managers hate risk; they love people who can reduce it. In business, there’s nothing so valuable as a sure thing. Put that idea in your pocket and never let it go."

In the following chapters, John explains how to deal with managers, co-workers, designers, sales, CEOs and executives, teams, stakeholders and consultants. One chapter each. This part of the book is pure gold: for every group, John clearly explains how they think (and this is true in almost all organizations), and even more importantly, how to influence them).

More good quotes:

"A consultant has power nearly equal that of a customer. There isn’t quite as much juice flowing, but it can be pretty damn close, especially since your organization is probably paying this person hefty sums of cabbage."

"I like almost all designers and developers. The reason is pretty simple. Unlike so many workers, these men and women get real work done. "

"Sales people talk. They talk to a lot of people and they talk all the time, mostly to product managers, marketing, and of course customers. Although unusually biased, these workers have an exceptional grasp of what your company has to offer and what your customers want and need."

By the time we get to chapter 14, it’s back to you. How to use project momentum to your advantage. Here’s the first sentence of this chapter: "All projects are headed in some direction. You want to understand the vector of activity and inject UX along the way." Damn good stuff.

Now go buy this book.

I’ve only read half of the book this far, but I am wildly enthusiastic, so I’m going to go ahead and post this review right now. Buy this book. Order it for everyone in your consulting company. Really. It’s almost at the level of "Don’t make me think", which I think is the best book about usability ever written. And I only say "almost" coz it lacks the funky illustrations. Go order it! If you’re disappointed you can email me personally.

Cruxy was a smart, future-looking service with a great team and great technology, but it never took off hence it’s now shutting down. “The world has changed for the better, and we are glad for that, but at some point we have to admit, Cruxy is not needed or used by enough people for us to keep going. While we have had an amazing cloud-based business model since day #1 that actual made sense and worked, thanks to my brilliant, co-founder Jon Oakes, we were never able to scale our business up with enough volume to allow us to make an actual living.”

The Nielsman does it again (after years of nothingness): really big menu dropdowns work well (as opposed to regular “menu” dropdowns). I believe it.