Many geeks have a variety fetish, and love new things. Especially if they are shiny, useful or not.
A software geek loves new software, especially if she wrote it herself, and may happily ignore the time spent learning to use it. Some geeks are even in denial about this sort of thing.

If true, this is bad news for non-geeks who have to cope with new software versions. (more…)

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Reading the first couple of chapters of Donald Norman’s Things That Make Us Smart got me thinking about user-interface design. He’s talking about how for ‘reflective’ tasks, where you contemplate information, you need different kinds of tools than for ‘experiential’ activity, where you just take in information. What’s intriguing is what goes wrong when tools give you ‘experiential’ interaction, e.g. a video clip, when you need support for reflection - reasoning and creativity - such as comparison support. Comparison support is useful for deducing new information from observing differences and similarities between different data. (more…)

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