Flat

The Master said: “When the noble man eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Way and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can […]

Ignore

No, I’m not talking about a system error message like Windows’ infamous “Abort, Retry, Fail?” I’m talking about active cognitive ignoring. This occurred to me as I’ve been using an electronic medical record system called DocuTAP. It has many very, very busy screens, each with a hundred or so items from which to choose. But […]

Information Design 2

God is in the details –Mies van der Rohe The primary function of an ED tracking system – at least if you look at it from the right direction – is to display relevant, timely data to the user. A tracking system may do other things, but this function of data display is arguably its […]

Anticryptography

We all know what cryptography is: cryp·tog·ra·phy, n. 1.    the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, esp. code and cipher systems, methods, and the like. Cf. cryptanalysis (def. 2). 2.    the procedures, processes, methods, etc., of making and using secret writing, as codes or ciphers. 3.    anything written in a secret code, […]

Icons, Pedagogic Vectors, Forms Design and Posture

Icons and Pedagogic Vectors We all have trouble remembering a program’s graphical icons. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has a standard for icons – an icon must be interpreted correctly by 2/3 of  test subjects. In usability and error-prevention terms, a 1/3 error rate is poor, but reality is even worse – an experimental study […]