Discussion Archive: February 2009

carbon footprint

Here's a topic for discussion. As usability practitioners, we do a lot of
traveling to see end users. What do you as independent consultants or those
who work in larger corporations do to offset your carbon footprint?
I cringe at the amount of fuel for the plane, styrofoam in takeout meals and
other random things I consume more of when traveling than when at home.
Do you make it a visible charge to your customer? Do you decide on your own
to make a donation as a percentage of your net income?
Other creative solutions? Thanks!

Janna C.

Linking Online interaction with Off-line completion

I'm wondering if any studies or work has been done with improving
success rates where a person has to fill in a form on-line but submit
the some of the results by snail mail (for legal reasons).

A project I'm working on has a major non-completion problem (over
40%), with stuff being sent in the post not being completed
correctly.

Interaction Design for Instruction

Watching my 4 year old laugh and learn while playing games on pbskids.org...

I came up with a question.

But first, a little background: If you haven't seen pbskids.org, please
check it out. It's a large collection of interactive learning games for
young minds to enjoy; lots of interactive puzzles, classic jigsaw
puzzles, music makers, etc... including a puzzle involving the physics
of getting a ball (meatball) to fall from a platform and be guided (by
you) to a landing pad (bowl of spaghetti). The game simulates gravity
and inertia, trajectories, etc...

Talk to the Hand: Dan Saffer and gestural interfaces, by Andy Polaine

Talk to the Hand: Dan Saffer and gestural interfaces, by Andy Polaine
In Core77
http://tinyurl.com/ce9sbq

"Product designers are now service designers," argues Saffer. "We
can't help it. Most of the devices we're making now are part of a
network, or need to work with other devices, or at a minimum have a
website. Our products are now services."

http://tinyurl.com/ce9sbq

So after reading the article - what do you think?