By
Tunde Cockshott, on October 8th, 2009
Amazon has just announced that Kindle is going global – or at least it will be sold in 100 countries, arriving in UK on 19th October. Sony has just released the second generation of its ereader. At the same time Apple is rumored to be in talks with publishers about selling books through iTunes with enhanced functionality and content. These would be available via their much hyper tablet device. So it appears that ebooks may be finally ready for mainstream adoption.
The question is what advantages do ebooks really offer? If Apple is to offer enhanced content and functionality, what will be the killer features which will make enough of us abandon paper in favor of digital?
So far the Kindle and other ereaders have offered, portability, mass storage, long battery life (but not as long as that of a traditional book), book marking,
Continue reading The age of Book 2.0
By
Andrew Dean, on June 15th, 2009
The more user interface and user experience design I do the more I feel our tools are still very crude. While computing power and potential ways of delivering that power and interacting with it are racing ahead, we are still using very simple, almost stone age tools.
We use different types of modelling, personas, user modelling, task modelling etc to try and abstract and simplify how users may behave. We try to impose an abstract model onto the complexities of user behaviour. At the heart of our suppositions is that users are rational beings who engage with sites in a goal oriented fashion. They enter our site with a distinct aim or set of aims and we assume they will stick to this aim unless our design or the content of the site thwarts or fails to satisfy them.
Yes, personas are good in the sense that they allow all members
Continue reading Modelling Tools
