Friday, May 23, 2003

trackback []

Preferred Terms and CTRL-F Searching Jakob Nielsen has often written about how most surfers are search-dominant. I totally agree. And that includes the under-appreciated current-page search (CTRL-F to get a search dialog box). It still amazes me how many sites ignore this. I think it usually turns up in combination with another useability glitch. For instance, I am trying to find the TV schedule for WCCO. I would think this would be a common objective for users hitting the WCCO site, so that a prominent link for "Schedule" would be provided on the home page. A quick scan assured me it wasn't prominent on their busy, jumbled home page. But I figured, okay, I'm just overlooking it. So I typed CTRL-F, and entered "schedule". Nothing found. I was forced to resort to a careful scan of the navigation links on the left, and eventually I found "program guide". So, my beef--probably arguable in this specific instance, but certainly not uncommon, in general--is the failure to use the most standard, preferred term ("schedule", in this case).. Or worse yet, to display the common term as a non-searchable image. Note: even doing a site search for "schedule" does not readily turn up the schedule. Which is the least they could do, as a synonym for "program guide". It is also amazing how many sites appear not to analyze the searches people do on them. 10:31:00 PM    comment []

trackback []

"Casual Capture" and Privacy I read this article on the switchover from camcorder to digital for car-mounted cop cameras. Clearly brings lots of benefits. Then some days later, I was talking to someone about road rage and hit-and-run drivers, and that got me thinking that, in the not-distant future, people might want the ability to have the same kind of cameras in their personal vehicles. Of course, if it becomes widespread, that has privacy implications, which made me think of this Cringely article, in which he suggests that iris scanning technology could be the disappearance of what I would call "privacy of place". Then this morning I read about HP's "casual capture" concept, which goes beyond my idea of having a camera mounted in your car: "Casual capture is HP's term for a method of taking snapshots that involves a minimum of effort on the part of the photographer. Ideally, the consumer could don an always-on, wearable camera, visit an event such as a party, and afterwards find that the camera had automatically selected and cropped the most memorable images." It is an apt phrase for what they envision. 8:47:28 AM    comment []