Information Visualization (and some whiskey, too!!)
Very nice example of the discipline called "information visualization." This is the field best represented by Edward Tufte's amazing books and courses. On one small notebook page, the complex distinction between the different varieties of scotch whiskey is beautifully...
User Experience Experts are in Demand
As an independent user experience (UX) consultant, this year has been very busy, with more and more companies and clients realizing that user experience and usability is a critical component of any product or device's design and and development process. Want to know...
What Facebook Can Learn From Netflix When Disrupting the User Experience
I love it when journalists don't let big companies get away abusing their customer's experience. Here's the latest user experience blooper, pointed out by Scott Davis at Forbes Magazine: Any time you mess with the user experience, you’re going to risk backlash. If...
Design Tools Get the Human Touch
I was recently interviewed by Beth Stackpole for DesignNews magazine on how traditional CAD and design tool software is being made over to deliver a more natural and compelling user experience for engineers and designers. Here's my section of the article: Beyond...
Perfecting Military Medical Solutions
View an amazing collection of new military healthcare devices in the battlefield! "With the growing swiftness and capability of today's technology, medical tools are increasing in their specificity to meet military healthcare needs. The combat environment calls for...
EMR Vendors Stress Usability to Attract Physicians
Going back to my beginnings in the new field of building "user-friendly" software in the early 1980's, usability began a long history as a potential product differentiator in a competitive field. Now, with the onset of a multitude of EMR software programs coming to...
EMR Usability – Standardization vs Usability and Innovation
This is a classic debate - whether it is nobler to be consistent or to be usable! EMRs have notoriously been both inconsistent and also very unusable. So, what to do - fix the inconsistencies or fix the usability issues? The problem is, fixing one of these issues...
“In Google we trust” – Students poorly advised?
It has become part of the internet vernacular to "Google" something to find out more about it. Once googled, how reliable are the results listed? Are featured listings more truthful or informative than lower-ranked listings? A new study coming out of Northwestern...
NIST, ONC plan measures, testing to improve health IT usability
I've worked in healthcare usability for a long time and with the impetus to move all of healthcare to electronic platforms, there have been many, many unusable implementations of EHRs and EMRs. The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and Office of...
You’re not a user experience designer if…
It is very comforting that the "User Experience" field has become more popular and well-respected over the years. That makes me, as a UX professional, feel good about the work we do. However, as Whitney Hess points out in her blog post, There’s just one problem: not...