He Who Has Ears... Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. A wonderful, must-read letter of resignation from a State Department diplomat....

Bored and Depressed So now I'm bored with my job, bored with user experience evangelism, bored with trying to make a difference. It seems others are, too—Peter has dropped out of blogging, Christina's not well, and others seem to say it just doesn't matter. From my perspective, user experience attention does matter&e#151;it's just that we are Cassandra on the walls of Troy....

Mailer Nails It Although I'm sooo not a Pat Buchanan fan, this article in his magazine is a nice interview with octegenarian Norman Mailer. Love him or hate him, Mailer's always fun to read.

When It All Slips Away So it seems that "the powers that be" are looking for someone to be the user experience architect. Trouble is, I think I'm very qualified for it—I'm the only one in the team with any experience in this area. Yet no one bothered to talk to me. Maybe I've got it wrong—maybe it's just one guy's opinion that they should appoint/hire/anoint someone as the UEA....but if it's true what I think is true, then there'll be hell to pay....

Doing What I Ought Too bad that I rarely get to do what I should be doing here. Instead, I find myself formatting Microsoft Word docs and Excel spreadsheets (people, Excel is a spreadsheet program, not a word processing program!). Instead of writing them or editing them, I'm just...well...formatting them. Not exactly the best idea for my skillset, I'd say. Rather than being a technical writer or, even better, a user-experience architect, I'm a glorified admin.

Comments...grrr I'm having trouble editing my enetations comment behavior: I want respondents' web pages to open in a new window, not the comment window...which has no resize capabilities. Thoughts?

Usability Matters Redux I'm starting a column for an in-house magazine. The audience consists primarily ofapplication developers, especially Web app devs. As the only in-house editor/writer type, I get to edit, design, solicit for articles, and write for the the magazine.
So I thought, "Hey--a captive audience! I can wax philosophic about usability, user-centered design, and human-computer interaction." Gee...nice to have the forum.
Initially I'm planning on dealing with these topics:

• Definition of terms such as HCI, usability, information architecture
• How to differentiate between user and customer
• Why functionality testing and usability testing differ

Whadya think?

Whither OZ How stupid can people be? Apparently, pretty stupid. Implications: perhaps we should arrest China because their Internet laws are a violation of the First Amendment.

Anne Galloway corrected my example that I used...but I still maintain that my analogy is appropriate. That is, I remember in the 80s when a county in Texas sued Adam and Eve, Inc., for violating the community standards in Texas. A couple had ordered some soft-core porn from Adam & Eve, received the merchandise, and were then arrested....I'm troubled by this.

Always Apologizing Seems like I'm always saying "I'm sorry" in listservs, blogs, and in person. I'm reminded of John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon saying, "Never apologize, Lieutenant, it's a sign of weakness." Perhaps so...but in the exchange on Peter's blog, I just wanted to highlight the post hoc fallacy that seems so rampant these days. Didn't mean to be politically incorrect...then again, wait a minute--perhaps I did...
:)

Tomorrow Never Comes
I'm mad at Amazon.com for not letting me know they couldn't deliver a present. I sent a housewarming present to Peter more than a week ago. But because he'd moved he hadn't updated his Amazon shipping address. So nothing's gotten from SF across the Bay to Oakland.
What galls me is that the systems should talk to each other somehow. You put a USPS change-of-address form into action, other folks should digitally pick up on it...at least in the area of those who ship stuff.
Grrrr.....

It's Right Because I Say It's Right!
Sometimes I get so freakin' tired of justifying my professionalism, my job, my abilities. And I am so godawful tired of hearing, "Oh, well, that's just your opinion."
No, it's not "just my opinion. I say things professionally that I base on education, experience (experientia docet. and the thinking of so many others (rhetoric, information architecture, human-computer interaction, interaction design, and so on).
Now, don't get me started on deadlines....

New Books Out
I've just ordered Christina's book and Jesse's book from Fountain Bookstore in Richmond. Nice to support folks whom you know.

Social Networks
I've been reading a lot of stuff about social networks. Part of the issue seems to be incredibly common-sensical: we communicate with subsets of people, each of whom also communicates with sets of people. Two questions:

1. How do we find out definitively who talks to whom?
2. How do we value instances of communication?

September 11
Still too sad...I almost can't work today.

busy....
Well, like all bloggers, I find I sometimes hit a brick wall. So that's why I haven't written. Plus, Germar was here...and there. We went to New Orleans for Southern Decadence. Whew! Take a lot outta ya....
More later. I'm tired.

So, Once Again, What is IA?
Christina has done it again: She leads me to great sources, such as this one from Jeff Lash. He's done a great job of tying in the history of the Web, the backgrounds of people who used to work on it, and how information architecture not only appeared but was [and is] so needed.
Nicely done, Jeff!

Language Changes
Don Norman rules!
Many thanks to Christina for pointing this out.

The Evils of Visio
I wonder if I have enough time to write this...because Visio has soooo many problems.
I just finished a two-page diagram/drawing (I'm not sure what it is I produce in Visio). Cluttered, silly, ugly, and difficult—that's how I see it. The lack of transparency, blurs, layers, make it a difficult tool to use in illustrating a concept. It's pretty good, I'll grant you, at depicting network diagrams...and it's not too shabby for showing some relationships. But try to get at all abstract and it falls apart.

Sad Movies
Some people like scary movies, watching them late at night while alone. Not me. I don't like to be scared in that terror-filled way of, say, Blair Witch Project (the last 20 minutes of that movie terrified me, despite the three loud assholes behind us who were drinking beer and smoking cigars in the theater). That rush of adrenaline gives me a headache in a different way than a roller-coaster ride would.
Instead, I tend to watch sad movies alone at night. Don't know why...maybe it's the personal nature of sadness, something that's not easily shared like joy or anger or righteous indignation.
Last night I'm watching Waking the Dead. Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly create a realistic love and heartache that's too palpable, too realistic: I found myself almost not able to breathe from the sadness of the movie. The sense of loss, the spin into madness, and the fact that the movie leaves you wondering what's real...and realizing that it doesn't really matter.
whew...gotta go back to editing tech docs now for relief.

Water, Water, Everywhere
When you drive a motorcycle, you run the risk of getting wet. Granted, this summer has been one of unbelievable dryness, even for Virginia...but this morning, right as I started to start my Enfield, the rain began coming down. Thank goodness I'd bought a rain suit last week. But in the haste to get ready, I flung my backpack behind me...and my mobile phone fell out. Sheesh...