Software, Design and Decision Making

Here's a page I laughingly believe someone may be interested in - my musings on software design, design in general, and the future of the Internet.

By the way, I'm violating a few of my own tenets: Too many topics. The wrong font - serif fonts are easier to read because there are more visual clues. If there was more prose here I might change the font, but everyone loves the look of these Helvetica spawned characters, so I went with it. The typical argument is that it gives the page a cleaner look - assuming you just want to look, and not read ;-)

Spreadsheets: 25 Years in a Cell - A very interesting article by Ziff Davis Technology Editor Peter Coffee touching on the viability of sophisticated decision making aids vs. simple aids. I believe this article leads to the question 'Can software replace experience?' Some of the links off this article are also very interesting. In keeping with the philosophy that everything linkable should be linked, I almost linked to Ziff Davis for you, but it's a Flash only site, and a violation of some kind some kind of intestinal thing on my part.

Situated Software - An interesting article again touching on the (over)sophistication of software, and its (in)ability to be everything to everyone. I have already emailed the author, Clay Shirkey, regarding contextual design (Google), but I love his clear, real world examples.

Useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website - As far as I'm concerned, the site on useability.

 

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