Archive for March, 2004
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Monday, March 15th, 2004
So this morning I was in the liquor store to get, ermm… well, booze.
Yeah, yeah, I know I said morning. No, I’m not losing it, just that it
happened to be the most convenient time during the whole day. Anyway, so in
front of me there was this guy paying his drinks. The cashier goes: “are
you from England?”, the young man on the other side anwers: “No,
Canada actually.” To which to cashier responds: “Oh, no good…”
Now at this point I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud. I’ve
never seen a canadian guy so baffled. You should’ve seen his face: “What?
They’re actually making fun of me here? In Europe? What’s that all
about?” Of course what the clerk actually meant was: “Oh, my guess
was no good.” Go figure…
Dave if you’re reading this, you know we love you man. This one is for
you. In the meantime enjoy yourself at SXSW 2004. By the way, many congratulations
with the deserved awards for the CSS Zen Garden. Rock on!
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Saturday, March 13th, 2004
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Friday, March 12th, 2004
While worldwide the news was dominated by the terrible bombings in Madrid,
Spain software developer and browser maker Opera was the rising star on the
Oslo Exchange. The stock jumped from its NOK 10 introduction price to 11.40
later in the day. Opera raised about $16 million in cash to spend on development.
Although I doubt they will take the desktop browser market by storm any time
soon their software for mobile devices is impressive. In my opinion their focus
on mobile connectivity and software is a good strategy. On another note
it seems investors are picking up tech shares again, a renewed interest so it
seems. I’m still waiting for Google to go public.
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Thursday, March 11th, 2004
Some
mucho smart people have ranted
about and analyzed
the Lockergnome affair in much detail. What Lockergnome did is incomprehensible
for rationally thinking people. That’s a fact, right? I really have a
hard time believing they can justify the change to themselves, or their audience
for that matter. I do however think Pirillo is a smart guy and he’s a
funny geek on occasion. But this time I guess he missed a few braincells —
and it surely isn’t funny. Anyway, this whole Lockergnome debate reminds
us of the harsh truth. The human brain can’t adapt as fast as technology
develops.
While I think the current Lockergnome website is deplorable I can see how the
decision came to be. Not the reasons they mention per se, something a bit more
psychology related. Let me put it this way: how do you feel when upgrading your
favorite software or application? I always think it’s a bit scary. Sometimes
new software releases will require users to adapt to a new environment, new
tools or lost features. While my subconscience knows that a new release will
eventually make me achieve my goals faster or better, I have a hard time seeing
the long term benefits as opposed to the short term required investment in time,
money and efforts.
Coding with web standards is pretty much the same. Yes, it took me some time
to kick the old habits and abandon my WYSIWYG editor. But you know what? In
the end it made me a better designer, and I now know why it was and is worth
the short term investment in time, energy and gallons of coffee. Don’t
get me wrong, I’m still struggling and web standards isn’t coding
nirvana. But it sure is a hell of a better place than tables. Can you imagine
any designer worth his salt throwing his comps together in Photoshop 3 —
or people serious about IT using Windows 95? Probably not. Though I could argue
that anyone serious about IT should not use Windows at all.
So Chris, why the fear? You of all people…
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Tuesday, March 9th, 2004
Some of you may (or may not) be familiar with the acronym ERP
or Enterprise Resource Planning. “ERP applications are a type of business
management software designed to help companies automate day-to-day tasks, such
as taking orders, keeping books, and managing human resources.” Over the
last decade or so every self-respecting and competetive company implemented
an ERP system. Popular vendors include Oracle, SAP, J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft
and Microsoft, to name just a few big players.
It has been known for a while that most ERP
systems fall short on overall usability. Last week I, together with some
fellow students, was invited by SAP
to visit their headquarters in the Netherlands and testdrive their latest R/3
release. Let the fun begin, oh boy, where do I start. See, I’m pretty
confident their system does work in terms of bare-bones functionality —
it’s just that it’s hidden behind a plethora of usability issues
and poor user interface design. It’s such a shame that the technical ingenuity
of these systems is not maximized (or even used at all) because of a mediocre
graphical user interface.
From what I was able to test it seemed noticeable SAP tried to improve some
usability features in comparison to previous releases, but the overall achievement
was pathetic at best. Poor information architecture, unclear navigational widgets
and dubious iconography, the whole system felt unnecessary complicated and extremely
difficult to use. Moreover, placement of diverse elements was unlogical in their
context of use.
For some years now it has been acknowledged (both in research and practice)
that ERP systems can add significant value to business processes (if implemented
correctly). It still strikes me as odd that crucial factors to success such
as usability and design have been neglected, or relegated to an inferior priority.
Next time a company fails to implement an ERP system succesfully — mostly
due to employee reluctance — they might want to think twice about how
usability
and design influence their rate of success.
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