Many games feature invisibility in some form. An excellent moment I recall from my days in World Of Warcraft was necking an invisibility potion to run past a load of mobs I couldn’t fight, while my rogue friend stealthed his way through. (If only that game had more such emergent highs.) Anyway, the Invisible Bastard joy I want to talk about is probably only applicable to Eve Online, although I’d love to know about any parallels in other games. It’s a thing that stood out for me over the years and something I loved, because it spoke of persistence, human psychology, the value of patience and the delight in being a big meany. I would leave my laptop logged into Eve, with a character cloaked in various star systems, and do nothing, for weeks.
Why would I do that?
(more…)
First time accepted submitter osman84 writes "I've been developing web/mobile apps for some time, and have managed to build up some decent experience about usability. However, as I'm growing a team of developers now, I've noticed that most of the young ones have a very poor sense of usability. Unfortunately, since I was never really taught usability as science, I'm having trouble teaching them to develop usable apps. Are there any good books that make a good read for general usability guidelines for web/mobile apps? I have a couple from my college days, but I'd like something more recent, written in the era of mobile apps, etc."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- 37Signals
- A lot of products
- About Face 2
- API
- basic software usability concepts
- Ben Schneiderman
- Books
- buggy software
- Communication
- Computing
- Garrett
- Heuristic evaluation
- Human interface guidelines
- Human-computer interaction
- iPhone
- Linux
- Microsoft
- online resource
- real software
- Slashdot
- smartphone
- software application
- Software quality
- software quality attribute
- Steve Krug
- Technical communication
- Technology
- Usability
- Usability engineering
- User interface
- Victor Papanek
- World Wide Web
Sunday Showcase shows a collection of work from one photographer- from a startup to an established shooter- each Sunday. Ideally, it will be a nice place to visit, with coffee in hand on Sunday mornings, possibly as you nurse a hangover.
This week showcases a selection of work from Time Spent: Florida as it once was 1972-1982, by Stephen Crowley, a New York Times staff photographer.
If you have questions for Stephen about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.