Less than half the population of the world has the manual dexterity to wiggle their fingers at the speed of 50 words per minute or better.
–Dr. Alan Lloyd, seminal typing instructor.
Computer professionals often seem to have unrealistically high expectations of what the “average” typist can do. For example, according to this Wikipedia article (as of [...]
I do not put much faith in Hick’s Law. I’ve seen it misapplied and drastically misinterpreted. Its limits, and edge-cases, are not widely known. I am convinced that it is generally not a dominant factor, even when it is relevant. I don’t agree with many design choices it is used to justify. In [...]
Interesting, and useful tidbit:
Just a curiosity, but it happens that in a yes-no binary response test, the reaction time to select “no” is longer than for “yes.”
Source
This is worth investigating further, but tonight I’m bushed. If anyone has any more information, especially quantitative data, I’d love to hear it.
EDITED TO ADD: IMLocation now runs on Leopard.
I thought maybe it might receive more attention if you, the Mac OS X software-buying public, were aware of the situation. The third-party software that you’re paying for, depending on, and hoping to run on Leopard, we cannot test on the final release build until we can run [...]
I was watching BBC News on EyeTV this morning, and caught the tail end of a horrific story about hundreds of French patients who received crippling, and sometimes fatal, overdoses of radiation.
Earlier this year, a major scandal erupted in France when it was discovered that between 1989 and 2006, two radiotherapy units had accidentally given [...]
To prevent particularly bad slips (errors while performing the physical actions required to achieve a goal), Apple makes certain keys hold keys. That means you have to hold them down for a while before they do their thing, unlike any other button that you just tap to use. This prevents accidentally engaging the [...]
I used to do “this” when writing. Don’t make the same mistake. Good copy is vitally important, because text is still best way to explain an abstract concept to someone.
I believe language and grammar should be descriptive. I wish grammar and language were more usable. I think its/it’s, to/too, etc. are [...]
I currently distribute IMLocation bundled on a disk image (details on why that format sucks but why I still do it).
Like many users, I will try out an application while it’s still on a disk-image before deciding if I want to install it. So I test to make sure IMLocation runs well off of [...]
This article has been updated and moved here.
Here’s a rogues gallery of terrible error messages I’ve encountered personally; along with what the programmers and designers should do to fix them.
I’ve been saving this screenshot for years (To be exact, since January 10, 2000):
An unexpected error occurred, because it cannot be found.
[OK]
Seriously, WTF? This is one of the best (worst?) examples of [...]
