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"The most fiscally prudent administration in living memory was Clinton’s. Bush was gratuitously bad..."

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:43:12 -0400

“The most fiscally prudent administration in living memory was Clinton’s. Bush was gratuitously bad on the fiscal front: he didn’t need to enact those monster tax cuts. Obama was necessarily bad on the fiscal front: he inherited a recession and had no choice. But the flip-side of stimulus spending in a recession is tax rises when the economy starts to recover so that you can pay for all that stimulus. If Congress refuses to enact any such tax hikes, that’s a problem. And so it makes sense that the downgrade came now, when Congress’s intransigence came into full focus.”

- Felix Salmon’s Downgrade FAQ explains the situation quite well.

This is from a Pew survey on political attitudes. If...

Thu, 05 May 2011 13:07:00 -0400

This is from a Pew survey on political attitudes. If you’ve ever wondered why the American right is so much more effective in government than the left, it’s likely something to do with this: the two largest left-leaning groups here (“Solid Liberals” and “Post-Moderns”) broadly favor compromise, while conservative groups broadly oppose it.

Playbook Review

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:57:00 -0400

Wayne Rash is complaining that the new Blackberry Playbook is being unfairly compared to Apple’s iPad, a device which is in a radically different class than the Playbook. He has a point: spend even a few minutes with a Playbook and you can tell at once that he’s right: this is like comparing unrelated fruit. (Apples and lemons, perhaps.)

I here attempt to present a fair and proper review of the device.

Blackberry should be proud of what they’ve done in engineering the Playbook. The device is a slick, smooth, and sleek combination of matte and gloss surfaces. Weighing in at 0.9 pounds and only ten millimeters thin, it’s surprisingly portable, and at 7.6 by 5.1 inches, it is a broad and flat device nearly half the size of a piece of standard letter-size paper. This unusual, ultra-flat design means the Playbook can sit flush on a table, and its plastic and glass exterior won’t scratch delicate wood surfaces. The flat design, without rubbery feet or other such adornments, means the Playbook can even prevent corners curling.

There are, however, a few problems. The Playbook is so thin it can easily become lost in a pile of papers, never to be seen again. Also, the Playbook we tested occasionally would make odd noises or appear to light up, which can prove distracting. (By the second day of testing, happily, these incidents seemed to stop, and did not resume.)

Then there’s the price. Blackberry’s Playbook starts at $499—very expensive for a non-collectible—and also has $599 and $699 versions, though in our testing we could not distinguish any meaningful difference between the low-end model and the more expensive ones.

Finally, we feel we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that, unlike other Blackberry paperweights, the Playbook can not receive email.

note: I would actually be remiss if I didn’t say I have never seen a Playbook in person. This review is entirely fictional. If the Playbook doesn’t hold its own as a paperweight, please don’t complain to me.

"But do we really need to measure? The idea that “if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t count” is one..."

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:00:06 -0400

“

But do we really need to measure? The idea that “if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t count” is one of the most damaging delusions of our time. It gives us a world that rewards quantity, not quality.

Make metrics the core goal of your design and you’ll just end up with design that optimises those numbers, at the expense of other important qualities… The numbers of capitalism are almost all short-term – profit, year-on-year growth, yield – rather than long-term and sustainable. No wonder the tantric joy of user-centred quality often loses out to the instant hits of promotion, discounting and resource depletion. The metrics make it so.

”

- The fall and rise of user experience

maniacalrage: Tumblr’s New Error Page (View full-size) Look, I...

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:32:41 -0400

maniacalrage:

Tumblr’s New Error Page (View full-size)

Look, I really like all the folks at Tumblr, but how is it possible that you cannot go a single day without getting an error at least twice? Lots of users, lots of load, I get it. But seriously, come on.

Designers and Women in Open Source

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:00:08 -0400

Designers and Women in Open Source:

It’s depressingly cultural for open source to be dick-measuringly sexist, but MS makes money when they’re friendly to women.

It’s really not surprising. Open source developers are great at making tools for open source developers, but I don’t think they even see what they’re lacking from the people they turn off or push away. Women (probably to their credit) mostly don’t think like open source developers.

The Problem with

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:00:07 -0400

I use the

tag a lot on this blog. It’s a handy new tag in HTML5 for sidebars and other accompanying content, which is fantastic, semantically. I display my

s next to the text and use them as marginalia.

The problem comes in when I try to display them. I want the aside to appear to the right of the paragraph it’s talking about, so people who are reading can glance over and see I have more to say on the topic. I use the following code to do this:

aside {
    float: right;
    margin-right: -189px;
    width: 169px;
}

Fits nicely into my golden ratio grid. Everything is happy.

Ideally, screen readers do understand the purpose of the

tag and handle this somewhat correctly. I have not tested this, but I doubt they are yet up to date.

Except, for this to line up properly, I have to put my aside before the paragraph it’s referencing. Otherwise, the floated aside will render starting on the bottom edge the paragraph, instead of the top—as you’d expect if you know CSS. But, to someone reading in the Tumblr feed, or in an RSS reader, it’s out of place and jarring.

Is the problem RSS readers and Tumblr, or is there a better solution in HTML5?

Apple's Worst Interaction

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:00:08 -0400

I want to play a game! Hey, that one looks fun:

I think I bought this on my other computer! So I should just be able to download it again, right? Hmmm…

That says it’s $9.99! But I thought I already bought it. Maybe not? Or maybe it just always lists the price? I’ll just click.

*click*

I’m sure I bought it.

That says “your credit card will be charged for this purchase” and the big button says “Buy.” I guess… I didn’t buy it? Oh well. I do want to play…

*click*

I knew I bought it!

The iPhone’s App Store does the same thing.

I wonder how many people give up, rather than re-downloading an app they’ve already purchased, because they’ve been lead to believe they will be charged for it again.

Crimson Text

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:27:18 -0500

Crimson Text:

And no sooner do I make fun of open-source typefaces than someone points me to Crimson Text, a Garamond-inspired open-source face (with an eminently elegant ampersand).

Lest you think I’ve changed my mind on open-source fonts: it still suffers from sloppiness, though: for example, none of the different weights and styles sit on the same baseline, and the kerning needs work. Still, it is far better than most.

Open Source Ampersands

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:50:51 -0500

Open Source Ampersands:

Inspired by Dan Cederholm’s “Use the Best Ampersand Available,” Mark Pilgrim has a new site featuring ampersands from open-source fonts.

Only problem is, only one or two are ever going to be the best ampersand available. Which is kind of the problem with open source.

Cut to the Quick

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:47:00 -0500

I’m just about finished with Merlin Mann & Dan Benjamin’s inaugural podcast, Back to Work, which is too long.

They get in a bit at the end about interface clutter in Photoshop and in UNIX manuals, which is a bit ironic as it’s really a question of editing: focusing attention to the most important commands in the interface (or the most interesting parts of the podcast).

There are lots of ways to accomplish this with design, but it’s one of the best places to approach a design problem.

What are the most important pieces of content? What will the user spend most of her time trying to do? Find that, and cut out or bury as much of the rest as possible. People who need more will find it. Most people just want the basics, quickly.

I didn’t do this, but wish I had, because: it summarizes...

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:15:00 -0500

I didn’t do this, but wish I had, because:

it summarizes nearly every important sentiment I have towards Drupal, and
it’s a fantastic information graphic.

So there’s a logo for HTML5. Some prominent people don’t like it—especially Jeremy...

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:25:26 -0500

So there’s a logo for HTML5. Some prominent people don’t like it—especially Jeremy Keith.

In particular, they object to this HTML5 logo representing things that aren’t in the HTML5 specification: CSS3, SVG, WOFF, and so on. This represents an unacceptable muddying of the terminology from the W3C, the body that actually defines what is, and isn’t, HTML5.

No.

As I see it, there are three meanings of HTML5 floating about:

The whole suite of web technologies currently being embraced by modern browsers,
the subset of the above explicitly covered by the HTML5 specification (markup, web forms, and an array of new JavaScript APIs), or
the further subset of the above, that constitutes actual HTML markup.

To the web-designers and developers, the most useful definition is probably #3 — and it’s in this sense that Keith uses it, for example, in his excellent HTML5 for Web Designers. To the general public, #1 is the only definition that will even make sense. To everyone not concerned with actually writing the specification, #2 is entirely irrelevant. The W3C is just picking a definition to run with that is relevant to someone other than themselves.

So, going forward, what should we call the HTML5 markup? How about “HTML5 markup”?

If you follow anyone on Twitter who does anything with the web, you’ve no doubt seen this...

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:32:47 -0500

If you follow anyone on Twitter who does anything with the web, you’ve no doubt seen this float across your feed a few dozen times this week:

An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…

Oh, how we laughed.

It does highlight one of the key problems of search on the web, though: that it’s fairly dumb. Even with Google’s now-famous pagerank system, a lot of searching must be done by a computer sorting through text: a computer that’s unaware that a bar is the same thing as a pub (made more complicated by a bar only being the same as a pub some of the time).

The SEO solution to this—trying to embed a thesaurus into the copy—is poor for two reasons. First, obviously, it’s ugly and reads poorly to humans, who are perfectly capable of understanding the groups of meaning that drive our languages (and who the sites are nominally for).

Second, however, it’s hitting the problem from the wrong end. The problem here isn’t broken websites, it’s broken search engines. It seems ludicrous even to approach a problem like this by trying to fix 100 million websites one at a time than to fix the handful of important search engines. As hard as natural language processing is, fixing a single point of failure is almost certainly easier than muddying up millions of them.

I don’t quite know how to express my feelings about the shooting this morning at Gabrielle...

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:08:04 -0500

I don’t quite know how to express my feelings about the shooting this morning at Gabrielle Giffords town hall-ish gathering. For the moment, I’ll resist any impulse to point fingers—I’ve no idea what motivated the gunman, and see little profit in jumping to conclusions.

Instead, I’ll take heart from the many people praying and wishing the best for Rep. Giffords and the other victims of the attack. Perhaps we’ll take this opportunity to remind ourselves that our political opponents are people like us, with families and lives and dreams and who, yes, when pricked, do bleed.

The Vaccine-Autism Fraud

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:29:26 -0500

The Vaccine-Autism Fraud:

It now comes out, convincingly and conclusively, that the 1998 study showing a link between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is not only wrong, but a complete fabrication, intended to support a lawsuit against the makers of the vaccine.

Andrew Wakefield and anyone else involved deserve to go to jail.

On the grace of fortune

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:02:07 -0500

It is a convenient lie that we achieve success by hard work alone. (It’s also a very popular one, especially on the web.) We’re often uncomfortable with the role accident inevitably plays in our (or others’) success, crucial though it is.

There are accidents of birth, of association, of timing, and surely many others. If you happen to be in the right place at the right time, you can make amazing things happen—but it’s still very possible to do everything right and yet not succeed.

Pure luck surely isn’t the ticket, either: a quick look at all the disasters caused by winning the lottery suggests fortune alone can’t make a success. You must do a lot of hard work to be ready when luck catches you.

I say it’s a convenient lie, because thinking we’re in control—that, if only we work harder, we’ll be sure to achieve the success we want—is a strong motivator for us to keep at it. Working harder is surely a good thing. But remember fortune when you consider others: they may have worked plenty hard, only to be dealt a poor hand.

To put it another way: forgive your own flaws rarely, and others’ often.

Now I think about it, Assange & Zuckerberg are opposites: one threatens the ability of...

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:59:06 -0500

Now I think about it, Assange & Zuckerberg are opposites: one threatens the ability of governments and corporations to keep secrets from the public; the other, the ability of the public to keep secrets from corporations.

A Study in Emerald

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:59:07 -0500

A Study in Emerald:

“A Study in Emerald” is a short story by Neil Gaiman—a dark, Lovecraft-influenced take on the original Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet.” It’s lovely, and he’s now made it available free from his site, complete with authentic alt-Victorian advertisements.

Breaking the Design

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 14:28:31 -0500

I can’t quite shake this concept of avoiding directness and simplicity in design to arrive at a better product—counterintuitive as that ought to be. Along comes Barry Schwartz (who I still regret never taking a class from) with another angle on the issue.

Schwartz talks about societal reliance on rules and incentives “to spare us from thinking.” Overreliance on rules and incentives prevents disaster—but they do so by ensuring mediocrity. Incentives shape the way we think about questions, and encourage us to think in particular ways—usually ways that are self-interested.

Using incentives to shape behavior is a key area of thought and research in politics and economics, and also in design. We’re instructed to make our interfaces as clear and obvious and navigable as possible, because that’s what the user wants—as Steve Krug puts it, the user is screaming It’s the title of Krug’s book. “Don’t make me think!”

That doesn’t seem right to me. Surely we do want our users to think. We don’t (usually) want them to think about the interface—rather, we want them to think about what we’re selling (or what we’re saying). Is the “don’t make me think” model of design promoting a culture of users that gloss websites rather than engage with them?

We already know that users See, e.g., “How Little Do Users Read?”skim rather than engage content on the web, they gloss text instead of reading it, they bounce off to other pages quickly, following hyperlinks, advertisements, and any of the other distractions our designs (not to mention the browsers they sit in) provide. I’ve always thought (and I think it’s a common perception) that the best way to combat the myriad distractions of the modern web is by keeping the design from getting in the way of the content.

Maybe, instead, we should be placing the design squarely in the way of the content. Rather than simplifying the experience, we should make it more involved, drawing the user in through more complex interfaces. Such an interface must work not by staying out of the user’s way, but by engaging the user in a way that delights and fascinates without annoying or frustrating.

Aarron Walter discusses one way of approaching this with his talks on Emotional Interface Design—going beyond mere usability to create interfaces that are playful and fun. It’s not the only way. It may be as simple as For example, Thinking For A Living. breaking the flow of the text, or it may require more complicated arrangements.

An interface that gets out of the way of its user is not a bad interface. But let’s agree on on this: a design that’s so usable that its users are free to ignore the content it’s presenting, though not a disaster, is still a failure of design. Let’s make our users think.