Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not
true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.
In earlier research, Tom Landauer and I showed that the number of usability problems found in a usability test with n users is:
N (1-(1- L ) n )
where N is the total number of usability problems in the design and L is the proportion of usability problems discovered while testing a single user. The typical
value of L is 31%, averaged across a large number of projects we studied. Plotting the curve for L =31% gives the following result…
Software engineers go crazy for the most ridiculous things. We like to think that we’re hyper-rational, but when we have to choose a technology, we end up in a kind of
frenzy — bouncing from one person’s Hacker News comment to another’s blog post until, in a stupor, we float helplessly toward the brightest light and lay prone in front of it,
oblivious to what we were looking for in the first place.
This is not how rational people make decisions, but it is how software engineers decide to use MapReduce…
In the speech in which she committed to keep governing despite calls to stand down, the prime minister made reference to extending powers for the security services. Those powers –
which include regulation of the internet and forcing internet companies to let spies read everyone’s private communications – were a key part of the Conservative campaign, which failed to
score a majority in the House of Commons.
Let this pledge be duly noted on the permanent record of the Internet. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, but I’ll be finding out soon enough, and I plan to go out mad as
hell…
Imagine I’m in a desert, and there are two wells where I can obtain water. If I want to go to the nearest well, which well do I visit? Clearly, it depends one where I am standing.
It’s possible to draw a line dividing the desert. To the ‘left’ of the line, it’s nearer to go to the well on the well on the ‘left’, to the ‘right’ of the line, it’s closer to go to
the well on the ‘right’…
