Caveat emptor

A football agent being interviewed about the negative impact of his profession on the game was asked, shouldn't negotiating be left to the players' union, the PFA? Well, he replied, the PFA are nice people, but they're mostly former players, not businesspeople. If I was buying a house, I wouldn't trust a bricklayer to do … Continue reading Caveat emptor →

Remember, I’m just a bit of software

Unlike some people, I'm partial to a spot of anthropomorphism, which is why I was delighted to receive this email after ordering some cards from Moo... Hello Matt I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine … Continue reading Remember, I’m just a bit of software →

On User-Centred Design and the Wrong Kind of Penguin

A delightful letter to today's Guardian contradicts the fashionable received wisdom of modernist architects as purists riding roughshod over the interests of users. Defending Berthold Lubetkin's 1934 Penguin Pool at London Zoo, his daughter Sacha writes: I was astonished to read that "nobody thought to ask the penguins" about the design. My father steeped himself … Continue reading On User-Centred Design and the Wrong Kind of Penguin →

RIP my Tablet PC

It's been a while since my trusty work-issue Compaq Tablet PC gave up the ghost, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it. We'd been together more than three years, the TC1000 and I, and the day the man from IT pronounced it dead (a motherboard issue, apparently) it felt like a bereavement. A … Continue reading RIP my Tablet PC →

Help me, Usability Man!

Is this door with the sign that says other door the other door or is the other door that doesn't say other door the other door? Originally uploaded by mattedgar.

Pattern: Bundle of identity

The Enlightenment philosopher David Hume proposed that identity is nothing but the bundle of our past experiences. Don't test me on this, because I just read it on Wikipedia, but it seems like a good place to start this piece of introspection on the need for a unified identity. It goes like this. Context: I … Continue reading Pattern: Bundle of identity →

Payment friction: why is there a queue at the checkout, but not at the shelves?

discuss.

The first Great Western

From Simon Thurley's fascinating Buildings That Shaped Britain we learn that Isambard Kingdom Brunel had only once travelled on a train when he designed the gloriously non-standard Great Western Railway from London Paddington to Bristol. Now that, for good or ill, is the difference between innovation and design.

Text – gets to the parts that cameraphones just can’t reach

There are places a cameraphone just cannot, umm, go. Places like the men's toilets at King's Cross Station. (Stay with me on this one.) There you'll find a sticking plaster product design solution that would be at home in a Don Norman book: a hand-dryer so sleekly built into the wall that someone's sellotaped the … Continue reading Text – gets to the parts that cameraphones just can’t reach →