Author Archives: Xavier

Understanding Biases

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Xavier

Bias is a com­mon human trait and cog­nit­ive bias affects all of us. Wiki­pe­dia defines ‘cog­nit­ive bias’ as “the human tend­ency to draw incor­rect con­clu­sions in cer­tain cir­cum­stances based on cog­nit­ive factors rather than evid­ence”. Bias is an out­come of … Con­tinue read­ing →

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In defence of Ferrari

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Xavier

These past few days, a video of a Fer­rari engin­eer explain­ing the com­plex­ity of the Fer­rari F10 For­mula 1 racing car has been mak­ing the rounds. Every blog post or dis­cus­sion forum I have come across so far seem to … Con­tinue read­ing →

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Book Review: Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Xavier

Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think has been the book I recom­mend for any­one inter­ested in under­stand­ing usab­il­ity. His second effort, Rocket Sur­gery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Find­ing and Fix­ing Usab­il­ity Prob­lems, expands the idea of one of … Con­tinue read­ing →

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Is technical communication a part of user experience?

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Xavier

Is tech­nical com­mu­nic­a­tion a part of user exper­i­ence? Abso­lutely. Without Doubt. One major inter­ac­tion that a user has with a sys­tem is the doc­u­ment­a­tion accom­pa­ny­ing the product, either as prin­ted manu­als or their elec­tronic cous­ins. In fact, any text that … Con­tinue read­ing →

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Defenestrating Tables & Indices

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Xavier

Is it time to stop cre­at­ing those page-wasting Table of Con­tents and Indices in a world where manu­als are no longer being prin­ted? We deliver all of our doc­u­ment­a­tion as PDFs to our cus­tom­ers (except for that rare mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­als … Con­tinue read­ing →

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more than 100 percent

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Xavier

Dig­ging through my phone’s pho­tos today, I found this photo of an Ubuntu install. Think­ing back to the incid­ent, The latest ver­sion of Ubuntu was out (the Jaunty Jack­alope ver­sion) and I was installing it on my laptop. The install­a­tion … Con­tinue read­ing →

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about the name

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Xavier

As a kid, I tore pages out of my note­books and make paper rock­ets out of them. The grave­yard adjoin­ing my house served up good thermals for my planes to stay up in the air for longer times and also … Con­tinue read­ing →

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Wireframes for the Wicked

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Xavier

In this SXSWi 2009 panel, Nick Finck, Donna Spen­cer, and Michael Angeles talk about wire­frames, par­tic­u­larly the vari­ous types of wire­frames. The best part of the panel is the Q&A ses­sion that fol­lows the presentation.

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to err is human

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Xavier

One recent after­noon, I got draf­ted into review­ing and edit­ing a bunch of error mes­sages for a product. It was sup­posed to be a quick one hour work. But these assign­ments never really turn out be an hour’s job. All … Con­tinue read­ing →

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Book Review: Designing the Obvious

Posted on August 15, 2009 by Xavier

Tar­geted at people who have heard the word usab­il­ity but not sure how to pro­ceed fur­ther, Robert Hoek­man, Jr. in his book, Design­ing the Obvi­ous, does a good job of explain­ing usab­il­ity and how to use user-centered design con­cepts in … Con­tinue read­ing →

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