Usability Notes - by Chris Baker

Apple re-invents the wheel!

Exciting usability news! According to news reports from The Onion, Apple are working on a revolutionary new computer with no keyboard...

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OK, it is a joke - tweaks Apple nicely though (the marketing hype; the guy who says "I buy anything shiny made by Apple"; the short battery life and high sales price etc. etc.). I loved the automated sentence completion tool (I ALWAYS want to write sentences about Aardvarks....). Anyone wanting to be thoughtful about this could however think about the usability paradox between "what could be simpler than one big button?" and "everything is just a few hundred clicks away."

Confusion at Paddington

When, long ago I was working as a copy-editor I got the copy-editor's disease of noticing odd things about written things all around me. But I don't think I got it as bad as a colleague who took to marking up a restaurant menu. These days, every now and then something I see gives me the usability disease.

What does this sign mean? (If you will, please take a guess before reading the rest of this post).

The crossed out circle usually means "Don't do whatever is show crossed out " (e.g. if it were a cigarette, the sign would mean No Smoking). Maybe this means "Don't make gestures that are rude in Greece", then. Working along similar lines, someone I showed it to suggested "No Shouting". What did you think?

Actually, it is a Keep Out sign. Since seeing this at Paddington Station in London, I've seen a few more. I suppose the crossed out circle is either a red herring or a sort of double negative for emphasis (like "Don't you ever do that, not never!") Weird, hey?