Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Blog

  • When Human Brain Needs an Update

    Chris PirilloSome
    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…

  • Usability and Business Applications

    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    .

  • Weekend Reading (10)

  • Music and Creativity

    To me music is an essential part of the creative flow. In short: no music,
    no creativity. But I wonder — do some genres of music lead to more creativity
    than others? I guess it all boils down to personal preference. A number of people
    might go all creative listening to classical music or jazz, others might prefer
    some more alternative styles or even heavy metal. I tend to have frequent atmosphere
    or mood swings as to what music I listen to, with each having it’s own
    particular style.

    Personally, while working, I enjoy ambient music and trip hop, mixed with jazz
    and occasionally some electro or house. My favorite streaming channels come
    from the folks at Soma
    FM     and Netmusique.
    Soma FM’s Secret Agent stream is lovely and I enjoy the short sound clips
    inbetween songs from movies such as James Bond and Ocean Eleven. Close to bedtime
    I switch to Soma FM’s Beat Blender to relax and enjoy the mix. Most of
    the time I have either one of these streaming channels playing. So what music
    do you listen to while working? Any streams I should add to my favorites?

  • Style Master 3.5 Quick Review

    Style Master 3.5Due
    to rapid gain in popularity of CSS-based design among web designers and developers
    more and more specialized WYSIWYG tools are becoming available to edit stylesheets.
    Westciv’s StyleMaster
    3.5     is going to seduce both the novice user as well as the confirmed stylesheet
    expert. Style Master 3.5 has an intuitive and complete interface — configuring
    the various dialog boxes to fit my personal preferences was done in a mere 5
    minutes.

    Some interesting options include Support Watcher to crosscheck compatibility
    of different elements and Live Preview to instantly view changes in an HTML
    document. Personally I enjoyed using the Statements List dialog box together
    with the Properties dialog box to quickly make adjustments to specific rules,
    while still being able to handcode if required. However it must be noted that
    while Smart property editors (context sensitive editing) is a very practical
    tool, it will, unfortunately, considerably slow down the application.*

    Style Master 3.5 includes a number of helpful wizards that generate layout
    elements, navigational elements as well as link styles, among others. These wizards
    are great tools to learn CSS by example but also a valuable timesaver for more
    experienced coders. Style Master 3.5 comes with comprehensible help files, tutorials
    and links to online resources, weblogs and books.

    Priced at a more than reasonable $59.99 Style Master 3.5 is available
    for both Mac OSX and Windows    . The application instantly seduced me by it’s
    ease-of-use, robustness and assortment of options and features. Give
    it a try    !

    * Tested on Windows XP, P4 1.5 GHz and 512MB RAM