Sakai has had some fairly serious usability problems since its inception. The development community has been aware of these problems for some time; however, the efforts toward improving the situation have been sporadic and fragile to date. Today, I’m happy to point to some tangible signs that this is changing, and that we have a good chance of seeing some real improvement starting with the next release.(For all you HCI students out there, they even do UX walkthroughs).
Speaking of users, the Common Craft Show is a nice example of short online training videos that remind me of the interface development technique of paper prototyping. You should watch this one about social networking and del.icio.us. Note that they provide captioned versions, and a transcript. (I show a bit of Jakob Nielsen's video about paper prototyping to my HCI class, it's amusing).
Two bonus things:
- The author of Debunking the myths of innovation is interviewed on the UIE site. Here's a couple of sentences:
I think it's pretty rare that "the best" idea among experts in any field becomes the dominant, mass popular leader. HTML is not the "best" programming language. Certainly few computer scientists believe Microsoft Windows is the best operating system, and very few doctors believe Airborne is the best cold remedy.
- The New York Times has given up its online paid service Times Select. Now your T-Fried is free, but you will see ads :)
