End of an Era?

With 7 time World Champion, Micheal Schumacher retiring from Formula 1, he has left behind a huge void in the Ferrari camp and perhaps in F1.

He graced F1 for 16 years and broke almost all possible records. But he would be just a touch disappointed that he couldn't win the Brazilian Grand Prix, his career's final race.

Many believe that F1 minus Micheal will never be the same and may even cease to exist. But as is always the case, with end of one era, a new one begins..

If that's the case perhaps we may now witness the new era of the Spaniard, the 2 time world champion, Fernando Alonso..

Long Live Formula 1..

Cheers!

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation (HE) is defined as "Inspection of an interface against usability heuristics, with the goal of identifying usability issues." It is conducted by 3-5 trained evaluators and it does not involve end users.

Problems can be identified across several UI categories - Branding, Site Strategy, Navigation, Layout, Wording, Graphics, Animation, Color, Fonts, Control Elements, Web Standards, Error Handling etc.

Usually following severity types are considered:

1. Showstoppers – Catastrophic issues that prevent people from accomplishing their goals.
2. Major Issues – Issues that cause waste of time, increased learning and error rates
3. Irritants – Minor cosmetic or consistency issues that slow users down slightly / are a minimal violation of usability guidelines

Here are couple of examples of a typical HE:

Cheers!

Particpation Inequality

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

Click here to read the article by Jakob Nielsen where he talks how participation inequality affects the web.

Cheers!

Frame by Frame Playback in Windows Media Player 10/11

Just in case you have not tried this yet…

You can do frame-by-frame playback in Windows Media Player 10 by enabling ‘Play Speed Settings’. (View > Enhancements > Play Speed Settings)

Cheers!