Papers, references, books

Could have used this three years ago, but better late than never.

Usability on mobile is getting worse.

Although apparently people are getting better at understanding what a hamburger menu is.

• Natural language interfaces
• Centralized social networks
• "the death of the filesystem"

Still terrible: the impact of illegible UIs and constant unnecessary UI changes on older users.

Mobile OS with a design that emphasizes spatial navigation, gesture-based interactions that work well on devices of varying sizes. Not beautiful but seems like there'd be something soothing about working on one of these devices.

"People's trust in the cloud — in technology — is based on a trust that it will work predictably and at their direction." - @grimmlem

Quick, not-fully-baked thought: Twitter's successful because it's a better place to have conversations than Facebook or Google+. It's public by default, so new people can join conversations. It doesn't have the fiddly UIs that Facebook and Google+ have for comments on posts (sometimes it feels like Facebook/Google+ let you have conversations in comments only grudgingly) partially because there is no distinction between a comment and a post.

I'm not really sure what role the 140 character limit plays here, if any. (It means that it's always easy to scan your feed without worrying that you're missing something, but that's more about the reading experience.) Keeps it flowing, keeps it about the conversation?

• How to avoid modal dialogs
• Designing visual hierarchy
• Writing UI labels and descriptions

"... if it takes you more than 5 seconds to think of an appropriate icon ..." then don't rely on an icon there. Nielsen/Norman on icon usability.

• To continue to use this as my home base - homebrew CMS, archive accumulated over years.
• To selectively cross-post to Tumblr, Twitter, whatever
• To be more usable on mobile one down
• To have an interface that lets me see social interactions from Tumblr, on-site comments, maybe Twitter/FB shares, all in one place - ideally, the same place I consume RSS
• Basically I want to blur the line between reading and writing, and I want to interact with the walled gardens without being trapped there
• (stretch goal) integrated with Notational Velocity Making local filesystem blog integration work

Detailed diary of designing a syncing engine for a note-taking app.

In case I want to remember what clear design thinking looks like, or (heaven forbid) if I end up working on a product that involves syncing.

From New York's School of Visual Arts. Don't have any of these books, but want them all. (That's right: I don't own a single Tufte book.)

"Visualizing Fitt's Law" reviews a basic principle of UI design:

• "Basically ... the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."
• "Although the basic message is obvious (big things are easier to select) it is the precise mathematical characterization that is exciting ... small increases in size for small objects make it much easier to select them (whereas small increases in size for big objects don’t make that much difference). And the same applies for changes in target distance."

Ben Chun's got a new blog on his experiences teaching computer skills to high school students.

Let's say I want an MSDN subscription. I don't, but somebody might.

• Ok, the MSDN site is easy enough to find.
• Ok, on the nav bar up top I see a link to MSDN Subscriptions. So far so good.
• What the hell? Where's the "sign up" button? "Existing subscriptions" ... "Associate your subscription with your Passport" ... ah ok. "Don’t have a MSDN Subscription? Learn more here." Nice how well they hid that.
• Good fuck, what is this! Well, maybe Explore Purchasing Options.
• Best page yet! A big shiny button that says "Buy & Ship"! I'm in the home stretch.
• Oh. This is ugly. And not what I want. Let's go back a step ... right, I wanted the small-text link Buy or renew MSDN Subscriptions directly from Microsoft.
• And we're in ... to a site with a completely different look and feel. But looks like I'm in the right place.

Yeeeech.

From BoingBoing:

MIT researchers have designed a software tool that measures "visual clutter". According to the scientists, the system could someday help designers create better displays, maps, and data visualizations and steer our attention in various ways. The prototype tool, written in MATLAB, is freely available.

Yet Another List of Stuff. Lots of pretty pictures though, which are obviously useful here. (via MeFi)

Mostly basic principles of survey design, so applicable beyond software. Plenty of useful nuts and bolts stuff.