research

Mouse tracking

I've thought many times on using mouse tracking data to evaluate usability
but I never saw a tool for doing this
as many (or most) of us I don't work only with web so this is can't be used
by folks who are working on desktop applications.
recently I find out a online service that do mouse tracking, replays ( as
many others ), but the real difference is that they
create heat maps and shows the mouse movements path, because watching mouse
movements videos can be really time wasting.

http://vulabs.com

I thought about doing my own tool for that joining these 2 (s

Interaction Design and Experiential Factors, What do you think?

The theme of this research is: IxD and Experiential Factors.

The considered experiential factors include (Learnability, usage, error and
feedback, Comfort, Collaboration, Affect, Guidance and support,
Accesability) . Depending on the kind of product some factors can become not
applicable .

The boundaries of IxD here are pretty much similar to those defined in Dan
saffer's IxD Relationship .

Usability = Predictability

"Usability equals predictability."

As in, if you can accurately predict what's going to happen next in an
interaction, it's because the action you're taking is understandable, clear,
logical, makes you feel confident, etc. If you can accurately predict what's
next, the interaction has high usability. If you can't accurately predict
what's next, the interaction has low usability.

Shoot holes in that statement.
-r-

Design Deliverables and Developers

One of the things I am interested as a designer is how we can work better with
developers. If you are lucky enough to work as part of an in-house team you
probably (hopefully) have a stronger relationship with developers than those
of use who only come in as consultants. Often as a consultant, the only
contact we have with the development team might be through the project
manager or technical lead. So we must rely on our design documents to
deliver our message.

Although we would all like our deliverables to be developer-friendly, they
don't always turn out that way.

Tag Cloud Definition

We're including a tag cloud in a web tool we're building. I've done a
bit of tooling about the net to see what convention says about how a tag
cloud is best defined but still no real answer as it seems to vary from
place to place.

My understanding of a tag cloud is as follows:

-Holds the top x occurring tags occurring within the system (x being the
number of tags we want to be in out tag cloud).
-Is shown in alpha order or from most recurring to least recurring (but
this style to me doesn't seem to serve the aesthetic whimsy of using the
tag cloud in the first place.