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December 05, 2002
Usability and profitability
First design (see below) and now usability makes the mainstream press this week. Find out why BusinessWeek thinks that Usability Is Next to Profitability. Usability devotees will not learn anything particularly new, except for interesting factoids like Jared Spool is a "lecturer" (is that a euphemism for adjunct?) at Tufts University. I used to live just up the street from Tufts. Who knew they were doing such cool stuff? Here's hoping we'll see more like this. Maybe they could be helpful for those who have had little success with Nielsen-like ROI calculations in terms of convincing their managers to do usability. "Ah, it's in BusinessWeek so it must be credible. Dilbert, let's do usability today!" Ok, I'm being just a little facetious (or cynical). Just a little.
Comments
Generally lecturer is a title given to non tenure track teachers for annual or one-time appointments. Adjunct professors tend to be more permanent part time teachers with tewnure track credentials. Of course there is no real standardization. -- Posted by -challis on December 6, 2002 05:10 PMI prefer the phrase 'on the faculty' to 'adjunct' or 'lecturer'. Officially, I'm an adjunct professor. Or so I'm told. Jared -- Posted by on December 10, 2002 04:42 PMOh, the funny thing is that they interviewed me for 90 minutes to get that factoid... -- Posted by on December 10, 2002 04:43 PMAh, you got a bit more than that one factoid :). I think the closing quote was more profound than some might think at first glance. The design firm I worked at in the mid-1990's had this great presentation that included some slides that showed the lifetimes of a handful of products (I remember cars and phones). And their point was exactly that...where we are in the lifetime of the computer is very much parallel to those folks who dealt with the Model T. Alas, they don't have it on their site, and I didn't manage to save a copy before leaving, but the visual was definitely compelling...someone else may need to recreate it! -- Posted by Beth on December 10, 2002 07:41 PM
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IDblog is Beth Mazur tilting at power law windmills. A little bit Internet, a little bit technology, a little bit society, and a lot about designing useful information products. Send your cards and letters to .
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