I’m sitting at a Starbucks, watching with amazement at how many people coming in and going out can’t properly operate the doors. In usability circles, these are a classic example of what are unaffectionately known […]
Author: Peter Sheerin
Peter Sheerin is best known for the decade he spent as the Technical Editor of CADENCE magazine, where he was the acknowledged expert in Computer-Aided Design hardware and software. He has a long-standing passion for improving usability of software, hardware, and everyday objects that is always interwoven in his articles.
Peter is available for freelance technical writing and product reviews, and is exploring career opportunities in interaction design. His pet personal project is exploring the best ways to harmonize visual, tactile, and audible symbols for improving the effectiveness of alerting systems.
Privacy Icon Problems—Ignoring Design & Testing Rules
Several recent attempts at designing icons meant to clarify how your information will be shared on the web have underscored how important it is that the existing symbol design rules and organizations be involved in […]
iTunes Makes Me Afraid
I’m completely syncing my iPhone to my ThinkPad for the first time in a long while, in preparation for installing iOS 4, and keep running into software behaviors that are the antithesis of good product […]
The Dragonfly Effect at Cooper
I recently attended an open house/guest lecture at Cooper in San Francisco. Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University and her former student Robert Chatwani (now of eBay) described how social networking on a small individual level […]
Tech Writers as Outsiders—a Good Thing?
In The Technical Writer as an Outsider: How Ambitious Are You?, Tom Johnson talks about the appropriate place in software development to get the technical writers involved, and makes some interesting observations on what the […]
iTunes: Numbers Never Lie (but they confuse)
After importing my 33 GB worth of CDs into iTunes, I am being perplexed by Apple. Tunes says I have 3646 songs on my NAS. It says I have 3629 songs in the library that […]
My LinkStation Live Killed my iPod Sync
Just a simple UI problem. Easy to forsee. Painful to experience. I decided to turn on the LinkStation Live web sharing while synching my iPod for the first time with a new library. (Just 3600 […]
iTunes RIPs
And not in a good way. One of the paramount features of computer software–or any automation–must be to absolve the user from having to perform tedious or confusing (or worse, both) actions which the computer […]
Save Me From The Evil Back Button
This experience is one of many reasons why I have a love/hate relationship with web-based software. I had just finished composing a message on a Yahoo group, and went to hit the post button. But […]
Elevator Door Open/Close Symbol Confusion
The Hold that elevator! post, describing the confusion created by two sets of open/close buttons, on The Cooper Journal renewed my interest in a question that has long bothered me, and which may even have […]