Shouldn’t take you long to guess what I’ve been stewing on today (thanks John!)

Research-Based Web Guidelines: Navigation (Navigation on Right)
Research shows that users click on topics in the right margin with much more efficiency than topics placed on the left because they are located much closer to the scroll bar. This allows users [...]

Paging vs. Scrolling (Longer passages, not search results)
Participants stated that they found the Paging condition to be “too broken up,” and that they had to “go back and forth” quite a bit to search for information. It is possible then, that for searching as well, viewing more of the document on a single scre
(tags: usability [...]

Jason Kottke has a list on his blog today of movie adaptations of books and which he has seen/read.
Personally, I have had too many horrible experiences of movie adaptations almost obliterating the beautiful mental imagery I had of favourite books.
So, who wants to make another list with me of movies adaptations where warnings should be [...]

User experience and usability are two different things. And usability does not always imply a system or interface that does not require any learning, or any enquiry, or any challenge on the part of the user.
I constantly find myself trying to walk a balance between using ‘convention’ where it is most appropriate, but also looking [...]

got a blog? this might interest you. Have you heard that Feedburner now support email subscriptions? Just copy and paste a little code into your template and they’ll do the rest. I signed myself up and received one of my own emails this evening, and it was a very satisfactory experience. So, if you want [...]

oooh, we’ve got *lots* of juicy goodness in todays links. (Lots of research for me today!).
Enjoy

Coming of Age in Ethnography (GotoReport)
‘recognizing the points of possible distortion when observing and analyzing the behavior of others’ (along the lines of my earlier post re: group behaviour and performance)
(tags: enthnography user-research informationarchitecture)

The User Advocate: One Size [...]

interesting piece in the SMH this morning suggesting that bloggers and ‘internet pundits‘ are ‘exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society….. “They’re not representative of the larger audience, but what they’re saying does matter” . Makes me wonder about the ethical responsibilities for people with disproportionately loud voices. Then makes me wonder whether, as [...]

A More Accessible Map (a list apart)
guidelines for making pretty interactive maps friendly and accessible
(tags: maps accessibility)

Emotionally Centred Design (Don Norman)
why are these so compelling? Is it the joy of immediacy after so many years of slow, clunky websites? Or perhaps it is the pleasure of the fluid movement, with information overlaying the maps.
(tags: maps [...]

have you seen the UPA 2005 Salary Survey? [warning - PDF]. Paul Sherman, who authored the report made a note in his summary that ‘The average salary for males was $82,882; for females, $74,316′. I’m not even sure if I’m surprised or disappointed. Any thoughts? (via WebWord) ALSO: via Lela: Google in [...]

assuming I can get out of work in time, I’m hoping to go over to Bondi Junction and see Cory Doctorow talk about ‘the digital future’. Reviews of the Melbourne talk sound good. Details of the Sydney talk are here.