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In the first of this series, I tried to persuade you that your computer was human-illiterate, and we defined and discussed usability, memorability, and learnability. In the second, we discussed Tognazzini’s Paradox: how the hardest part of designing an effective program is often what seems the most trivial—sometimes simply a matter of changing a single […]

In the first of this series, I tried to persuade you that your computer was human-illiterate, and we defined and discussed usability, memorability, and learnability. In the second, we discussed Tognazzini’s Paradox: how the hardest part of designing an effective program is often what seems the most trivial – sometimes simply a matter of changing […]

In the first of this series, I tried to persuade you that your computer is human-illiterate. We discussed ways that people try to improve this, including usability testing. I introduced you to Alan Cooper’s About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (you did go out and buy it and read it, didn’t you?) which […]

(A version of this series was first published in the newsletter of the Informatics Section of the American College of Emergency Physicians) Those of you who know me (or maybe have just heard about me) know that I am a zealot about user interface design. With good reason! Those who think they are computer-illiterate are […]

Redundancy vs. diversity Redundancy with a stock of identical parts to replace failed components is a standard way to make industrial processes more reliable. For an ED mission-critical computer system, which needs to be up and running 24/7/365, one way to implement this is to have a backup server always ready to go, with recent […]