Author: Christopher Fahey
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The Holy Grail of Information Architecture
In a recent blog post, Garret Dimon claims to be hot on the trail of something fabulous: I don’t have the details worked out yet, but I’m slowly putting together a vision of how we can really document web applications in a pragmatic way. The primary driver is to create something that people can understand,…
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Usability Foxes Guarding the Henhouse
On the NYC-CHI mailing list today, someone from a big web shop wrote this: My company is dismantling its focus group and usability testing lab, due to a chronic lack of space and clients’ growing reluctance to allow our agency to do testing on our own work. Behavior‘s thinking has always been that it takes…
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HR Block’s Software Strategy: “You got people”
Soylent Green? The new formula for software success? People. H&R Block‘s new slogan, “You got people”, coincides with their apparent transformation into a hybrid of their old business as a tax preparation service company and their new business as a tax preparation software company. They’re positioning themselves within the software market as a different kind…
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Early Adopter vs. Efficient Person
As a UI developer, I want to be an “early adopter” of as many new technologies and gizmos as possible. Even if they’re clunky, non-helpful, efficiency drain tools, I feel like it’s my obligation to be well-informed about the latest gadgets and websites. So I’m often downloading trial versions, and occasionally checking out a friend’s…
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Back to the Future: New Poor, New Slums
A strange part of the US real-estate boom is the housing construction boom. Across America, brand-new housing developments are sprouting up like kudzu vines, tearing down forests and farmland to build new housing as fast as possible. Behind this are many factors: immigration, ongoing white flight from the cities, the growth of suburban sprawl, the…
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Dreamgirls and the Self-Referential Musical
I saw Dreamgirls this weekend — it was great! I’ve been to my fair share of movies where the audience broke out into enthusiastic and spontaneous applause before, but they’ve almost always applauded some kind of triumphant action scene, never clapping and cheering for an individual performer. Which is to say that they are applauding…