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The Usability Body of Knowledge

Nuno Caldeira — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:19:25 +0000

“The Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) project is dedicated to creating a living reference that represents the collective knowledge of the usability profession.”

http://www.usabilitybok.org/

Just a little *nix joke (mac’s too)

Nuno Caldeira — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:07:58 +0000

Mail me

curl spinkr.com/mymail.txt | bash

wtf?

Nuno Caldeira — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:08:39 +0000

No comments…

Oh thank you... I'll take this way.

Flying back from Amsterdam

Nuno Caldeira — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:04:17 +0000

I am still in Amsterdam, In my hotel room and tomorrow I’ll get back to Portugal. But not before I write some thoughts about this city.

Bicicles in Amsterdam

It’s a nice city, there are a lot of bicicles, and you should be very carefull when crossing the streets or you can cause an accident – bicicles have priority over cars, people… everything.

The city itself has a nice architectural feeling around the water canals (grachts, as they call it here).

But there’s one thing I didn´t like at all:

Everything is paid. Well, this is not a surprise but every monument will ask for an overrated ammount. The city has around 50 museums.

Woth it:

Tropenmuseum
Hop On – Hop Off (Boat)
Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum)
Anne Frank House (Be sure to be in the mood. Otherwise skip.)

Not worth it:

Rijksmuseum (Big queue, big and beautifull building from the outside, 11eur, and very small exhibition)
Food.

Ok, that’s it. Tomorrow I’ll fly back to Portugal..

…a little after the Turkish airlines plane crash…

Truth…

Nuno Caldeira — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:00:48 +0000

“Seems like a mismatch that schools prepare people to be employed, when we need to learn to be UNemployed”

KathySierra

Those of you, who saved some money for the worst days…

Nuno Caldeira — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:05:51 +0000

Start spending it, those days had begun.

Happy 2009!

“Teste da Morte” – Finally without sound :)

Nuno Caldeira — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:22:58 +0000

“Teste da Morte” (Death Test), is a famous portuguese web ad that claims that can tell you how much time you have left. Ofcourse, you must provide your mobile phone number and subscribe to some weekly paid-service.

It’s been around for a month or so and everybody has seen it… and complained about it’s boring mouseover-soundsample.

I could not believe that Google was delivering such an anoying flash-based ad.

- F”#$k you Google!

And now the one and only good part:

Sound was removed.

- Thank you google.

Quickie #4: Featuritis

Nuno Caldeira — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:27:56 +0000

Stop adding features. Too much features blur the main purpose of your application.

Simplicity over Complexity (or How things are getting Simpler) – The Series – Evidence #1 .

Nuno Caldeira — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Complex looking interfaces tend to look great. Take any 3D Modeling application as an example – a lot of buttons and features always look hightech…

…but the truth is: Newer interfaces tend to have fewer buttons, and a cleaner look.

I tried to prove this tendency with an evidence series starting with this post.

Here is evidence number 1:

Space Shuttle versus Space Ship One

Most may think about this like comparing a swiss knife with a fork. Remember, discussion is open if you want.

I think one of the biggest reasons why interfaces are getting simpler and cleaner is that most of the complexity is now kept inside the system, not in the user. Now, computers can handle and evaluate complex scenarios which brings to full-automation a lot of previously man-centered actions.

Thanks for following,

See you on Evidence #2

Quickie #3: Behavior vs. Opinion

Nuno Caldeira — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:47:27 +0000

Usability research is behavior-driven.

The quality data you get from people is:

what they do
what they fail to do
and how they do it

People’s opinion, should never be considered as input for usability research (you may find some usefull thoughts however).