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David Pogues little rant about usability is short, sweet, and hits a few marks well. I particularly liked the anecdote from the days when Palm was doing great usability:
Years ago, I read about a software designer at Palm named Rob Haitani. In designing the address-book program for the PalmPilot, he favored placing the “Add” button (to input a new person’s contact information) at the bottom of the tiny 160-pixel-square screen, but relegating the “Delete” command to a pull-down menu.
His fellow designers argued that those commands are equivalent, and should therefore be displayed with equal prominence. Haitani, however, disagreed. You add people to your address book all the time. But you delete people only rarely–when the die, move away or break up with you. So Add should be prominent, and Delete should be hidden to save screen space.
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Kokoromi’s Phil Fish coins the term “Demake” to denote a videogame sequel or spin-off which purposefully takes a step backwards on the evolutionary ladder, such as going from 3D to 2D. Includes some pretty great examples.
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There aren’t many things nerdier than looking at graphs for fun and entertainment. Via Flink.