Friday, December 10, 2004

3 Years

Well today is December 10th, which means that I've been at my job officially for three years. It's amazing how fast the time has gone. The good news is, I stilll feel like I have I have a lot to add and I can facilitate change. Which is a pretty big thing, I mean, for the most part I feel like I am still learning and growing.

High Tech Cat


As you can see Rufus is a high tech cat. He traded in his sqeeky mouse for a computer mouse (Optical of course, cause you can't clean a regular mouse out when you don't have thumbs). And like most of us, he rests his head on the keyboard when he is frustrated with the computer, or trying to figure out the best way to get to the next level in Star Wars: Republic CommandoPosted by Hello

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

User Centered Application Testing

Application testing has been a big part of my workload lately. One application we use internally creates these very old and very propietary file formats that are downloaded into these very old propietary application. Well lately it has been having "issues". Under certain situations the file created has spaces in it. Well of course the propietary system throws a hissy fit everytime that it encounters a space.  Of course whenever the system has one of these little fits we have to fix it and figure out what happened. Now I am also doing Information Architecture for a design. Having these two things on the brain at the same time, it hit me all of the sudden if I create a user profiles for my Information Architecture, why not create user profiles form my applications, especially for my testing.

So lets say this application is for a loan. Well there several ways to fill out a loan application. So I create 5 to 10 user profiles ranging from a young adult to a retired couple.  Then I create an xml file with all values that my application has, and fill it out according to which user profile I am working on. Then I load the values in to memory and test from there. While this isn't completely worked out in my head I thought I would jot down the theory behind the idea.

 

On Another Subject

Okay, so the skater punk of my youth, thinks that these two clips of Danny Way jumping the 75' gap is just amazing. If he was in the air any longer it would require a pilot's license.  Clip1 Clip2 

Warning: Kids don't try this at home. Because even if you do figure out a way of building the ramps and are able to pull off the jump, your little brother will tell the neighbor kid, and he will tell his Mom and his Mom will tell your Mom and your Mom will be standing in the middle of the ramp with her arms crossed giving you that, I am really disappointed in you/I am so mad at you right now/wait till your father gets home look. And we all know that look means "grounded for life!"

Monday, December 06, 2004

User Centered Design

Tonight I am doing a little research on User Centered Design. User Centered Design goes hand and hand with Usability and Information Architecture. Here are some links that explain the advantages much better than I can.

It happens to all of us

When you work with clients, be it internal clients in your company or doing freelance work and have clients that are not as educated as one would hope, we all run into these little communication issues. These little issues usually are amazingly frustrating. So here is a site dedicated to them. clientcopia

Information Architecture

In implementing any good website you need to layout the information in a logically format and flow. This is called "Information Architecture". Truth betold this is just as important to how useful and usable your website as the design. Now I know that some designers out there would disagree with me, but if the navigation doesn't make sense, people aren't going to stay at your site for very long.  However there isn't nearly as many online articles on IA as there are for making those apple-like gel buttons in photoshop. So here is a list of some articles that I find useful.