I just read the essay by Edward R. Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within.”

As an example of why not to use PowerPoint for technical reporting and presentations, he details its use by NASA in the analysis of the causes of the space shuttle Columbia disaster. His conclusion, and that of others, is NASA’s use of PowerPoint with its presentation limitations to communicate the data on the takeoff damage, while the spacecraft was still safe in space, grossly affected how it was interpreted by NASA management and thus resulted in the deaths of the Columbia astronauts. Powerful stuff.

Other examples of PPT’s inadequacies include showing statistical data in table format displayed as PPT slides (they are completely incomprehensible), the Gettysburg Address as a PPT presentation (pretty funny) and several references to business presentations of various purposes.

Several factors contribute to the skewing of information when using PowerPoint: limited space for meaningful test, segmentation of the message with slides, bulleted lists, hierarchical display of text, and useless phluff. Mr. Tufte continues to make the case that PowerPoint has a high signal to noise ratio, an extremely low transfer of information rate, dilution of information, and absurd style sheets, templates and effects. I can’t agree more. I hate PPT presentations and don’t use them myself. He favors text documents with paragraphs, sentences, diagrams and space to completely tell the story. I agree and by distributing handouts for meetings, people have something tangible to take away.

Put some creativity and effectiveness in your next presentation. Don’t use PowerPoint. I recommend this booklet for anyone needing some good reasons not to use the ubiquitous and dubious software – ever.

A super simple technique on a site to tell humans from spamming apps:

Ask a question on your comment form like:  "six plus seven equals what?" and validate for the correct answer.

As technology presents us with more options for creating web sites, there seems to be two very different and contradictory directions site design is going. One is rich media driven, with Flash at its core, and the other is web standards stressing usability, accessibility and compatibility.

Well done, highly interactive, rich media sites are incredibly engaging, and the direction big money is pushing the web, but they are rarely standards compliant and often are bashed for poor usability and accessibility. These sites communicate their messages effectively to their intended audiences. Mission accomplished.

Web standards are based on are undeniably sound basic principles: separation of content, structure and presentation; and accessibility, usability and compatibility. For sites whose audience requires these benefits, web standards makes total sense. My problem with most compliant sites I see today is they are visually similar and boring. I read somewhere, someone describing them as decorated not designed. It’s true.

Enter stage left, common sense.

The reason all the standards compliant sites look similar is because it is very difficult to mark-up a web page that has an intricate design with many images and requires pixel level accuracy. This can be done in a fraction of the time using tables and spacer gifs, and render properly in all browsers. And besides, there are just as many hacks and workarounds in standards development as old school HTML.

Why use Flash in a self-gratuitous intro sequence, or fancy navigation menu that creates a technological obstacle to a site that doesn’t need the benefits of Flash anywhere else? Many a site has been built using Flash that can be just as good without it. This misuse is what has given Flash such a bad rap with the user centered design people.

Let’s not let the tail wag the dog. Making a site using web standards just for the sake of doing so, or using Flash where it is not needed are both equally inappropriate, especially at the expense of your client.

Surely there’s common ground and a practical approach. Sites should be developed based on their purpose and intended audience. If that demographic can use and enjoy the site, fine. Others outside of that group are not important. Writers write books to a certain audience. Movie directors make movies that are not for everyone. Web producers should have that right too and not be criticized.

Choose the technology or methodology carefully based on the benefits of its use and the cost of using it. Each project has specific requirements and they should dictate the most suitable way to go, not personal preference, or trends.

...I'd say so. MGM Grand

The first site I saw like this - where the viewer is immersed in a photo-heavy environment - was a Vodaphone site a couple years ago. Since then there have been several notable ones, but this site has great scene transitions and video with a lot of cool after effects. 

They've used a conventional navigation menu in addition to the clock-like one to improve usability, but it seems if the clock-like one was better designed they could have gotten by with just that interface alone.

TypeCulture Academic Resource - a directory, archive and educational aid for design students, educators and professionals who are seeking information about type; its history, manufacture, use and artistic significance.

Information architecture, communication, graphic design and presentation, Mr. Tufte is the man. Whether your a Graphic Designer, or a Project Manager his knowledge will help you. Check out the Ask E.T. section to learn more.

on Squidoo

When and Where
Monsanto on Friday, November 10, 2006 from 8:00a.m. - 5:00p.m. The conference is filling up fast. Only 100 participants allowed to register.

How Much
$30 before July 31st and $45 after August 1st. All proceeds from registration fees are used to fund conference logistics. The conference continues to be maintained by a "grassroots" organization -- all planning, coordination, presentations, etc. are done by user experience practitioners for user experience practitioners.

Keynote Speaker
Dirk Knemeyer. Dirk will be presenting "The Future of Digital Product Design."

Interactive Poster Session
New this year -- a poster that will be created by participants during the conference. We'll provide a space for you to share your favorite research, technique, and tool sites and we'll publish it after the conference for all attendees.

Click for Agenda

Registration
When you register for this year's conference, you'll be asked to complete a section with your personal information. You'll then be asked to pre-select the sessions you would like to attend. This allows UX06 to ensure that they have the proper facility arrangements for each presentation. Spaces will fill up fast, so register as early as possible to ensure you get to attend the sessions of your choice.

After you complete registration, you'll see a link to PayPal. A special thanks to Gateway CHI for kindly offering their PayPal account as a way for us to collect registration fees. Your registration payment is a separate step and can only be completed by using a PayPal account that is either linked to your bank account or by using your credit card to pay your registration fee.

All proceeds from registration fees are used to fund conference logistics, meals, etc. If you cancel your registration, your fee WILL NOT be refunded. Registration for STLUX06 is open now through November 1st. Register by July 31st to receive the Early Registration discount. For security reasons, no on-site registration will be allowed; if you want to attend, you must register by the November 1 deadline. Register using the link below: (a big thank you to Maritz for the very generous donation of their registration tool)

https://www.meetinghq.com/group/101005647?wslid=attendee

Questions?
Jennifer Ruffino
jennifer.ruffino@monsanto.com
314-694-4649

I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for over a year. Although the idea of an exclusive way to make business connections seems great, I have some reservations about the idea of exclusivity and accuracy. The concept of endorsing someone, a mini testimonial, is totally self-serving. How can that lend credibility to one’s self-described professional abilities?

The social fabric created in LinkedIn - the ability to see who is linked to whom and the degrees of separation - is interesting, but what real purpose does it have? I guess it allows one to use someone to gain access to someone else - a connection pimp. I haven’t really connected with anyone via an existing connection and I view this site and my participation as an experiment and don’t have any expectations. Only time will tell if this virtual network has validity.

If you are a member, contact (mail at jamesbielefeldt dot com) me, let’s get connected.

When working with vendors there’s always the risk they will jeopardize the outcome of a project, hurt your relationship with the client and cost you a lot of money. It’s best to try to minimize this risk and the best way is with a service level agreement. This contract should require a signature, be a binding, legal document and contain clauses that specifically address potential problems.

Some general recommendations:

• Clearly state your expectations on quality.
• Establish the fact you are their client and they work for you, not your client.
• Define communication channels and the proper protocol. This is essential in maintaining control.
• If possible, keep ownership of all deliverables.
• Outline responsibilities for all phases of the project.
• Require they follow best practices and deliver good work. Have a clause that states you can audit their work at defined intervals, or when the project is suspected to be affected.
• State any loss due to missed deadlines or unacceptable deliverables is their liability.
• Require detailed plans and necessary documentation demonstrating they know what they are doing.
• Determine lead and tag times, turn around times and expected response times.
• Have a change control process that details how changes are approved and incorporated into the project’s scope.
• List the consequences for failure to meet requirements and the escalation/arbitration process.

These are just some basics requirements any good service level agreement should have. Remember this is an agreement so it is important to review this with your vendor, discuss each requirement and customize it so both parties can really agree to follow it.

Truer words were never spoken. Great post by Seth Godin.

There have always been good resources for JavaScript online. But recently there’s been some robust libraries created and made available that do everything from animation to AJAX. These libraries are ways for novice developers to quickly implement complex JavaScript functionality into sites while adhering to good programming rules.

One problem with some of these libraries, if used in their entirety, is the file size they can add to a web page. Often it is best to just incorporate the code that does what you need and delete the rest – if you know how to do that. Here are a few of the most popular.

Script.aculo.us   

“script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, compatible and, ultimately, totally cool JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly, Web 2.0 style.”

jQuery  

“jQuery is a new type of Javascript library. It is not a huge, bloated, framework promising the best in AJAX - nor is just a set of needlessly complex enhancements - jQuery is designed to change the way that you write Javascript.”

Yahoo! User Interface Library 

“The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources.”

Interesting online viewing from Flash In The Can.

GMunk | Joshua Davis & Stephan Sagmeister | Ben Fry

Forms on the web are vulnerable and subject to malicious behavior. With the explosion of forums, wikis and blog comments, programs having been created to spam these useful communication mechanisms. Often these forms do not require any authentication. Users can simply complete the form and submit it to post their comments.

A newly popular technique for prohibiting malicious applications from submitting forms are CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) Security Images. These are images created at runtime that have a random sequence of numbers and letters that are distorted so only humans can interpret them.

CAPTCHA image
 

There are several code examples and small libraries online that illustrate how to implement this feature, just Google. Here are a few:

ASP
http://www.tipstricks.org/

PHP
http://phpsec.org/articles/2005/text-captcha.html
http://www.evolt.org/securing_forms_random_image

ASP.NET
http://www.hotscripts.com/Detailed/43986.html
http://www.lanapsoft.com/products.html

While this is great for forms exposed to the public, many developers are also using them on login forms. I don’t understand this practice. One would think a properly implemented password would be sufficient. The image just complicates matters and some are barely legible by humans. I know Yahoo! displays them for subsequent attempts to submit an authorization form, but not on the first try. I guess that’s a compromise for usability’s sake.

The two most common ways to price interactive work are Fixed Price and Time & Materials. Each method has its pros and cons that greatly affect the buyer and seller of the services.

Fixed Price

Fixed Price is popular with ad agencies and communications firms doing interactive work. It’s how they have traditionally priced their services and is client friendly, because with Fixed Price the risk to produce the job, at the quoted price, lies with the seller. When pricing a project this way it is imperative that the project’s requirements are determined and the scope is tightly controlled. Any complications, rework, or excessive man-hours because of underestimating required time, unseen issues, or inexperience are the cost of the seller. The only time the price is usually renegotiated is when the requirements change, or the buyer requests a change of scope.

When calculating a Fixed Price estimate is it important to figure in contingencies for the unknowns and potential problems, in addition to a profit margin. Counting just man-hours usually means an unprofitable situation. There are several ways to include these cushions: applying a multiplier, padding hours, and adding a risk contingency cost based on project requirements are a few.

Time & Materials

Because of the difficulty of gathering requirements and establishing a detailed project scope, Time & Materials is how most IT companies price their services. This method puts the risk on the buyer to get the project completed within their budget and can be unfavorable in competitive environments, or unacceptable in RFPs. An estimate with a price range is usually proffered with the proposal/contract. Initial estimates can range in excess of +/- 25%. Most buyers like the price to be accurately estimated, but this arrangement is more flexible than Fixed Price. Additional estimates are often given as requirements become available, or as work is completed. Any changes are simply billed when they are incurred.

Do not mix the two methods. Real problems arise when a solid price is quoted in a proposal/contract that has been calculated using Time & Materials formulas. Even if you plan to bill using Time & Material costs, it rarely adds up and the initial price quote is all the buyer cares about.

Each method is effective when used appropriately. Rather than always pricing work the same way, let the market and project dictate which method is best.