November 4, 2003
uiweb: The art of usability benchmarking.
By capturing the current level of ease of use of the current product or website, a reference point is created that can be measured against in the future. It doesn't answer the question of how usable is enough, but if the benchmark is done properly, it does enable someone to set goals and expectations around ease of use for the future.
SF Chronicle: Building a crash-test Internet.
The new test network, called the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network, or DETER, will contain lots of routers and switches imitating the complexity of the real Net. It won't be nearly as big as the real Internet -- the
goal is to eventually hook up 1,000 PCs -- but the researchers hope it will be comparable in behavior.
Technology Review: Everyone's a Programmer.
Even as software collapses under the weight of its own complexity, we’ve barely begun to exploit its potential to solve problems. The challenge, Simonyi believes, is to find a way to write programs that both programmers and users can actually read and comprehend. Simonyi’s solution.
Good Experience: Halloween story: the ghost of Boo!
But the truth isn't anything nearly as cinematic. Boo.com simply forgot the key truth about users online, at least those wanting to conduct a transaction (like, say, buying hip shoes): The only reason users use the Web to do *anything* is because it's a better experience than doing it in the real world.
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