Two Books for Summer Shelves

Two books have jumped out at me so far this year as thought-provoking. Neither is about usability and both will stimulate a better appreciation of the world into which usability fits.

The first is a new classic. "The New Media Reader", edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, is winning fans from those who glance at its contents list. If you don't know who Theodor H. Nelson is and the significance of "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate"; if you are not familiar with the contributions to computing of Bush, Turing, Wiener and Licklider, then this book is even more essential to you, than for the people who just want the keystones of network history all in one place. I've never seen a book so perfectly compiled to save teachers and students illegal photocopying. (Many texts here are now quite hard to find elsewhere.)

Delightfully, it also deals with the other disciplines that have fed the development of new media: Laurel, and Boal on theatre; Borges and "The Garden of Forking Paths"; Haraway, McLuhan, Turkle, and Winograd and Flores theorising about how people use media; Suchman on situated action; Bolter on writing; etc, etc... It's like a party full of your best old friends.

There is also a website with promising support features for the book, linked below.

The other book is entirely different but just as broad in its disciplinary reach. Harvey Molotch has brought a unifying vision to product design and the many elements that come to together to form stuff. "Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to Be As They Are" (which does not come accompanied by a useful website, but does have good onboard illustrations), provides an overview of factors and detailed specifics in a readable mix.

Talking of a toaster, Molotch comments that: 'It does not just sear bread, but presupposes a pricing mechanism for home amperage, government standards for electric devices, producers and shopkeepers who smell a profit, and people's various sentiments about the safety of electrical current and what a breakfast, nutritionally and socially, ought to be. Any particular toaster also contains the trends in fine and popular art that give it a particular look and texture of operation, including - in many models - a human satisfaction in the sound and sight of the pop-up moment. There are merchandise critics, trade associations, advertising media as well as the prior range of goods within which it must fit - wall outlets for its plugs, bread slicers calibrated to a certain width, and jams that need a crusty base. There is a global system that yields a toaster's raw materials, governments that protect its patents, a labor force to work at the right price, and a dump ready to absorb it in the end.' And that is just the start of an odyssey.

Launching the book last month in London, Molotch (pictured) demonstrated a modified easy-to-clean garlic crusher and described how it came to be made in metal not plastic. He also showed the new stuff - plastic but with moving parts - that had come as a prototype out of a stuff-maker, a tool that interprets a program of an item into the thing itself.

Books, then, that show the future by way of the past...

Associated Link: New Media Reader website

Use Your Users’ Language - And Use It Well!
Source: Multilingual Search, 20 March 2010
 
British English is very different from (US ) American English and Australian English. It is so very important to use your users’ language.

Cyber-criminals don't need Technical Skills
Source: SFGate, 19 March 2010
 
The unexpected downside of great usability.

Advice on Designing Mobile Sites and Apps
Source: Poynter Online, 18 March 2010
 
Series of useful tips from a recent panel discussion.

Website Usability and Conversion
Source: UsabilityBlog, 17 March 2010
 
Useful presentation on the relationship between website usability and conversion.

Tips for Usability Testing with Children
Source: Econsultancy, 16 March 2010
 
Not even chocolate will help you here.

The Hygiene Factor of Usability
Source: inspireUX, 15 March 2010
 
Is it true that usability can no longer take us 'beyond lack of dissatisfaction'?

The Business Benefits of building Accessible websites
Source: Econsultancy, 13 March 2010
 
There’s a good business case for making your website more accessible to the UK’s disabled community.

Internet access is 'a fundamental right'
Source: BBC, 12 March 2010
 
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The Net generation, Unplugged
Source: The Economist, 11 March 2010
 
Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?

Rewriting the Human-Computer interaction Handbook
Source: CIOL, 10 March 2010
 
Indrani Medhi of Microsoft Research India has developed text-free user interfaces (UIs) to allow any illiterate or semi-literate person on first contact with a computer, to proceed with minimal or no assistance.