Solving technology problems, one at a time
Saba People Cloud provides for settings changes through the UI for theme styles and labels. This may not be suffiicient to achieve the workflow and usability improvements you need. To do more significant theme changes,
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Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, since we have been looking at learning systems, is the idea of friction. My definition of friction is anything that either lowers our expectations of the results we can get from a particular tool or process to the point that we either change our expectations of the results or abandon them altogether.
Examples of friction include: bad usability, frustration, unexpected results, bad user experience, steep learning curves, cognitive overload, lack of critical mass of the right participants, hardware problems (slowness, breakdowns, etc.) – in short just about any sort of obstacle. It is anything that gets in our way enough to make us change what we hope to get out of the process we are engaged in, even if only slightly. Friction plays a part in how we choose to use devices, apps, and services and even what route we choose on the way home.
Continue readingSometimes a web app hits it square on target for me, and for once, Google Docs has done that with its new Drag to list to upload functionality. It’s as direct as dragging something to a folder with no intermediate step. Nice!
Continue readingWhen there is a workforce performance or knowledge gap to fill, trainers understandably think first of using training to fill it. But is more training really always the best answer? Depending on the skills involved and the characteristics of the audience, process improvement, usability improvement, training or performance support may all be worth considering.
After a couple of months of watching Microsoft’s teaser “Mojave Experiment” commercials on TV, I finally got around to looking at the Mojave Experiment site. The TV commercials (unlike the web commercials) give the impression
Continue readingA colleague at work needed to know how to turn on captions in Windows Media Player. I started to write her a note explaining it, but needed to check exactly how to get to the setting since I knew how to do it in older versions but not 11.
This turned out to be just another opportunity to experience Microsoft’s creative approach to usability.
Here’s a snapshot of the the player. Note, there is no "File" menu, no Open command, nothing that appears useful unless you are purchasing music from their store or ripping from an old CD. And really, aren’t "Rip" and "Burn" SO 2006? Who even cares about ripping CD’s anymore?
From many sessions helping seniors with their computer problems, I’ve gleaned some idea of how they think a computer should behave.
Note that the ideas listed here only apply to the current generation of seniors. It is doubtful that when the current generation of children grow old, they will have the same requirements.
My usability wish list:
My first attempts to work with Vista have definitely been an “experience”. I’m trying to get a Lenovo ThinkPad set up for use primarily for Qwizdom and Powerpoint, which would seem to be well within the limits of what Microsoft intended, but you almost have to wonder if they ever tried Vista on a laptop before releasing it! What a mess!
The default size of windows is often just a little too big for the screen. I’ve double and triple checked the screen resolution – it is set to maximum. We did set the default font size larger than the minimum because it is too hard to see otherwise.
Yet the windows are all over the place in sizing – sometimes they are correct, sometimes obviously wrong, with title bars above the top of the screen or dialogs with Accept/Cancel buttons below the bottom of the screen.
Continue readingAs you add modules to Drupal, the “Edit” screen of each node can start piling up a lot of optional filters and settings that you can apply to the node. These include comment settings, input filters, image pickers and browsers, authoring settings, etc. The general term for all these added features on the node edit screen is “fieldsets.”
Most of them are collapsed when you first open the screen, which makes it easy to scroll down to the “submit” button or the lower fieldsets. However some modules set themselves to be open by default. This can be a problem if you have to edit a lot of nodes – it causes a lot of extra scrolling and is visually confusing.
I’ve been using a Blackberry 8700c through Cingular for a couple of years now, and I really like being able to check all my email accounts on it and using the google apps wherever I happen to be. Typing on it is pretty easy. However there were many reasons I was looking for a replacement.
