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Wasting Time on the Net Since 2001! Welcome to my Internet home. This is a place where I share interesting thoughts and news about what's going on in my life. Mostly for friends and family to keep up to date with what I'm doing. I also write about information related to web development, usability, human factors, HCI (Human Computer Interaction), computer security and privacy issues. |
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| Yahoo Internship | 8.02.2007 | ||
After a few weeks of anticipation, I am finally here in Sunnyvale California!What am I doing here you might ask? For the next 3 months, I'll be doing an internship at Yahoo! I'll be joining the user experience design search team involved with studying new interface concepts & designs for image, multimedia and other search tools. I've only been here 2 days and am enjoying the weather. I'm not a big fan of the over population of vehicles that consume the roads here. I'm a huge proponent of public transportation and will be exploring the public transportation options in the area. It will be interesting to see how taking the bus, light rail and riding a bike will work out. I'm looking forward to getting my mind into some exciting projects at Yahoo! |
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| Job Search | 2.19.2007 | ||
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I recently started a job search and have found several sites useful. I thought I would post some of the job boards here for your convenience... But Mostly for my convenience  I will be using these job boards to help target web design/development, & usability engineering/user centered design/interaction design positions. I can't wait to find that next opportunity for challenge and growth! Job Boards Design Jobs Usability Jobs
Other / General
I'm sure there are many other useful job boards on the net. If you know of any other great job boards for Web design/development and usability let me know! |
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| CSS Conditional Comments | 2.17.2007 | ||
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Ever wondered how to position CSS correctly in both Fire Fox and Internet Explorer without using conditionals with server side code, such as PHP, or some ugly client side JavaScript hack? A lot of us get frustrated when developing CSS for a standards compliant browser like Fire Fox only to have everything in Internet Explorer display elements in a completely different and unexpected way. We work hard at trying to position elements with pixel precision. Unfortunately the reality is that browsers don't all work the same. Of course this is nothing new. Recently I was trying to resolve some CSS positioning differences between Internet Explorer and Fire Fox. I didn't have the luxury of being able to access and tweak the server side code, nor did I want to use a lot of JavaScript to dynamically write out all the differences for each selector property values. After a little research, I discovered a way to use conditional statements within HTML using comments. How does it work? Most of us already know how to use a typical comment in our HTML markup: <!-- some comment --> When Microsoft launched IE 5, they included a way to check for versions of IE using comments. They have since continued to include this method from IE 5 to IE7. A conditional comment is formed in this way: <!--[If expression]> HTML <![endif]--> If you wanted to detect IE 5 browsers you would do this: <!--[if IE 5]> HTML <![endif]--> If you wanted to detect IE 5.5, 6 or 7 you would just place that number after 'IE'. Leave out the number to snif out all versions of IE. Other complex statements ! (negation) Use the negation to select all versions except the one specified[If !IE 6] will select IE 5, 5.5 and 7 lt (less than) Select any versions less than the one specified[If lt IE 6] will select IE 5 and 5.5 lte (less than or equal) Select any versions less than or equal to the one specified[If lte IE 6] will select IE 5, 5.5 and 6 gt (greater than) Select any versions greater than the one specified[If gt IE 6] will select IE 7 (and any later versions that may appear) gte (greater than or equal) Select any versions greater than or equal to the one specified[If gte IE 6] will select IE 6 and 7 (and later) How do you target browsers other than IE The best way to target browser other than IE is to do the following: <!--[if !IE]--> HTML <!--[endif]--> Determine which stylesheet to use Here's an example of how to use these conditionals to help determine which style sheet to use. To use a style sheet catering to IE: <!--[if IE]> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie.css" /> <![endif]--> To use a style sheet catering to Fire Fox: <!--[if !IE]--> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="FF.css" /> <!--[endif]--> For more information, checkout: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/ccomment_ovw.asp |
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| Usability of the Banana Explained! | 10.02.2006 | ||
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I found this interesting video that describes the usability of a banana! Actually, it's a couple of guys talking about how God designs things well (or something like that). I found it entertaining from the usability perspective. Usability of a bannana!... |
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| Usability at Walmart Stores: thumbs up on pricing labels | 6.5.2006 | ||
A couple weeks ago I went to Target and noticed how unreadable their price tags were. I wrote about it and suggested improvements. See previous entry for Target price label photoToday I went to Walmart and noticed their price labels were much easier to read. The unit price was displayed in a box in the upper left and the color in the box is red. The price in that red box is also smaller. The price which customers pay is displayed in a larger font and the box background color is yellow. This is a great example of gestalt principles which I mentioned in my last entry about the terrible Target price labels. Both prices are separated, colors are used and font sizes differ to help readability. My suggested changes were right on with the Walmart price labels! That was nice to see. Perhaps Walmart has conducted a few usability studies with their labels where as Target has not? It's obvious (at least to me) that Walmart is doing a better job with their pricing labels and I would bet on the fact that they have probably done some usability tests with their pricing label designs... either that, or they just got lucky with such a readable label. |
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| Usability at Target Stores: thumbs down on pricing labels | 5.25.2006 | ||
Recently I went shopping at Target in Rochester, NY to get a few things and noticed how their price tags on the shelves were displayed. I'm not exactly certain whether these pricing labels are new, nor do I know how long these price tags have been in place. Maybe these price tags are now standard at all the Target stores across the nation! Perhaps it's just a New York law to have pricing labels displayed this way.If you look at the really bad image to the right (taken with my Sony Ericsson camera phone... sorry about the fuzzy focus), you will notice a bunch of numbers in bold at the top. Can you figure out the price of the Airwick air freshener? Is it: a: 222.654.94 b: 222.654 c: 222.65 d: 654.94 e: 4.94 f: .94 g: I'm confused Upon first glance I chose g: I'm confused. But after further inspection and logical deduction, I realized the correct answer to the price of an Airwick air freshener replacement was actually e: 4.94 This is a great example of bad usability. It is not clear or easy to distinguish the price of the products. Gestalt principles are not used effectively. We can not tell what the price is right away because we can not figure out the difference between the unit price and the individual price. To improve on the design of the price label, I would suggest putting a box around the price you would pay at the register. The price you would pay for an entire box should be displayed in smaller font. How many people purchase entire boxes or pallets of product at a Target store? I would guess not very many. Another way to improve usability & readability would be to put a bigger space between the unit price and the individual price. Put the Gestalt principles to use! Imagine how difficult it would be to read the pricing on products that are higher priced! I don't even want to think that hard! |
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| Eye Tracking for web usability | 3.9.2006 | ||
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| I got published! | 2.14.2006 | ||
Thanks to a friend of mine, Matt Desmond, I got published in Transworld Snowboarding magazine.
A few months ago Matt asked me to help him take pictures of him snowboarding in his Santa outfit. He wanted to send his friends and family a fun Christmas eCard. He also sent the photo into Transworld which was chosen for publication. I was unaware of this and thought it was fun news when he told me this photo was in this magazine! Hmmmm... It makes me want to take all my photos out and try getting those in circulation! Of course that would be more of a business venture. I may put up an ecommerce section on this site to try and sell some of my photos. Yet another project to add to my list of things to do! |
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| Graphical Passwords! | 2.9.2006 | ||
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Recently I did some computer security research for a presentation on authentication & identification. I found some research being done at Rutgers that got me very excited! This research is on the topic of user authentication using images for a password instead of a string of characters. This research is a great example of human factors and usability being used in conjunction with computer security! This is a huge area of interest for me. There is so much more research that could be done in the area of computer security in regards to human computer interaction. After you read this post, imagine incorporating an eye tracking system for input to a program like this one! We all know that passwords are easy to steal especially because we don't pick difficult ones. The few of us who do use difficult passwords usually have to write them down! Because there is a rise in websites that use passwords, people often create the same password for multiple websites. All these things weaken a password. Computer scientists at Rutgers University-Camden have developed graphical passwords to enhance your computer security. In the Rutgers-Camden study, users picked 10 icons, which then were scrambled with approximately 200 others. In order to gain entry into the system, users found shapes, such as triangles, that used their chosen icons as the corners, and clicked inside that shape. Users then repeated the same game 10 times. 
"The main idea behind our model is to allow a user to prove knowledge of a secret, without revealing the secret itself to either the authenticating party or a potential observer," says Leonardo Sobrado, who was part of the research team. "The question, or challenge, changes every time and so does the answer. But the secret knowledge stays the same." To accurately simulate a graphical password system, you must not reveal the pass-icons to any potential observer. In fact, you should not as much as point or click to a pass icon in a way that would reveal to an observer that you're identifying a pass-icon. Doing so completely defeats the purpose of the system. Once you have clicked anywhere inside the convex hull, the system will re-arrange the icons. You should set the icon speed low enough so that you can track some of the pass-icons as they move. This will make it easier to find them on the next screen. If a pass icon leaves the screen, a new one will replace it. If you want to test this technology, you can download the program or simply run an interactive simulation. And for more information, The Graphical Passwords Project home page contains several links to technical papers. |
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| Gas Leak | 1.11.2006 | ||
Last spring my car started to leak gas really bad. The gas literaly sprayed out of the fuel hose whenever the car was on. I took my car in to get it fixed last fall when I came back to Rochester and got ripped off by a repair shop called, "Joe's Riverside Auto Repair". During the process of fixing my gas leak they claimed to have broken the gas guage and told me I would have to pay for it. They fixed the leak and the thing they broke and I payed for it. I should have put up more of a fight and complained more. This was the first time I had to deal with an auto repair shop. I learned a lot and will deal with situations like this a bit differently next time when a shop breaks something.The leak was fixed for a couple of months but then started to leak again. When I took my car in for an oil change at a place called Pep Boys Auto, I told them to take a look at the leak and give me an estimate. They said there was a crack in the fuel line because a clamp was tightened too much. They gave me an estimate of around $150 to fix it. They also told me that Joe's Riverside should fix the problem if they had a warranty for their work and because they caused the crack. The Pep Boy employee claimed that they would fix it for free if they had fixed it originally. I took the car back to Joe's and complained about it but they did not want to fix it for free even though they had tightened the clamp on the fuel line too tight which caused it to crack and leak gas again. I don't plan on spending more money than I have to on this beater car. Today it was super warm outside (60 degrees!!!) so I decided to get under my car and take a look at the gas leak again. I put some putty stuff on it a couple of months ago but the stuff didn't harden so the leak continued. Today I tried some different stuff and put it around the pipe where the clamp is. While I was under the car, I took a picture of it. I'm amazed at how rusty the bottom of the car is! I could do some realy interesting photography just on the underside of the car alone! That would be a fun project and could get very abstract. Anyway, not to get too off the subject... I put some of this metal filler stuff on the pipe. I'll put some more on it tomorrow sinse it'll be warm again. Hopefully this will help. However, if the leak is coming from the other side of the clamp, I'll have to figure out something else sinse that side is all rubber. Hmmm... Perhaps Duct tape will do the trick? Or maybe some Elmers glue. Wish me luck! |
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