- Nudge Policies Are Another Name for Coercion (New Scientist) — This points to the key problem with “nudge” style paternalism: presuming that technocrats understand what ordinary people want better than the people themselves. There is no reason to think technocrats know better, especially since Thaler and Sunstein offer no means for ordinary people to comment on, let alone correct, the technocrats’ prescriptions. This leaves the technocrats with no systematic way of detecting their own errors, correcting them, or learning from them. And technocracy is bound to blunder, especially when it is not democratically accountable. Take heed, all you Gov 2.0 wouldbe-hackers. (via BoingBoing)
- Country Selector — turns a dropdown into an autocomplete field where available. Very nice! (via Chris Shiflett)
- Ebook Users Wanted — Pew Internet & American Life project looking at ebooks, looking for people who use ebooks and tablet readers in libraries.
- The Public Library, Complete Reimagined (KQED) — the Fayetteville public library is putting in a fab lab. [L]ibraries aren’t just about books. They are about free access to information and to technology — and not just to reading books or using computers, but actually building and making things. (via BoingBoing)
ENTRIES TAGGED "user experience"
How crowdfunding and the JOBS Act will shape open source companies
New regulations could mark the end of proprietary finance.
Currently, anyone can crowdfund products, projects, causes, and sometimes debt. Current U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations make crowdfunding companies (i.e. selling stocks rather than products on crowdfund platforms) illegal. The only way to sell stocks to the public at large under the current law is through the heavily regulated Initial Public Offering (IPO) process.
The
The complexity of designing for everywhere
Author Rachel Hinman on the future of mobile design and UX.
In her new book The Mobile Frontier, author Rachel Hinman (@Hinman) says the mobile design space is a wide-open frontier, much like space exploration or the Wild West, where people have room to “explore and invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information.”
In the following interview, Hinman talks about the changing landscape of…
Data Jujitsu: The art of turning data into product
Smart data scientists can make big problems small.
Having worked in academia, government and industry, I’ve had a unique opportunity to build products in each sector. Much of this product development has been around building data products. Just as methods for general product development have steadily improved, so have the ideas for developing data products. Thanks to large investments in the general area of…
Design your website for a graceful fail
Mike Brittain on the resilient user experience.
A failure in secondary content doesn't need to take down an entire website. Here, Etsy's Mike Brittain explains how to build resilience into UIs and allow for graceful failures.
Publishing News: DoJ lawsuit is great news for Amazon
The DoJ sues Apple and five major publishers, Yahoo files patents to put ads in ebooks, and B&N one-ups Amazon.
Amazon does a happy dance as five of the Big Six publishers and Apple are sued by the DoJ. Elsewhere, Yahoo looks to increase revenues with ebook ads, and B&N lights up its Nook.
Everyone has a stake in the digital reading experience
Louis Rosenfeld says a good reading experience is shaped by everyone involved.
In this video interview, Louis Rosenfeld, publisher at Rosenfeld Media, LLC, says ownership of the digital reading user experience is shared between authors, publishers, device manufacturers and readers.
Commerce Weekly: EBay's TV tie-in
EBay for iPad lets you make offers based on the TV program you're watching.
The new Watch with eBay function within eBay's iPad app shows products related to whatever television program you're viewing. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)
Four short links: 11 November 2011
Technocracy's Blind Spot, Progressive Enhancement, Libraries and ebooks, and Library Fablab
Mobile analytics unlock the what and the when
Flurry's Sean Byrnes on mobile metrics and tablet apps vs phone apps.
Flurry's CTO Sean Byrnes discusses app life cycles, the specifics of user engagement, and the difference between smartphone apps and tablet apps.
Scrolling, flipping, and clicking
Oliver Reichenstein on digital screens and the user experience.
There are more open questions and unresolved issues than solutions when it comes to digital screens and user experience, says Oliver Reichenstein of iA, Inc. In this interview, he addresses some of the major UX issues, talks about why iA Writer works and highlights some larger issues behind online news revenue problems.
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