Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Had to take a flight out of Newark airport on the morning after the move from daylight saving to winter time. The preceding evening I took good care to set my alarm clock and wristwatch back the required hour, and took off to the airport in the morning. And when I got there, I was … Read more
Flying to the States on a Continental 777, my favorite jetliner, alternating my attention between my notebook and the video screen in the seat back in front of me. The latter is a new model, fitted to every seat in the cabin. The technology has been evolving ever since I stared flying to America back … Read more
I’ve mentioned the headup publisher widget before. This nifty add-in identifies entities (places, people, companies, books, etc) mentioned in a site it’s installed on, marks them up with a dotted underline, and when you mouse over them a small pop-up comes up with information, news, photos and videos about that place/person/whatever. That was then. Now … Read more
One gripe I have with the help systems in many consumer software applications: they’re written with the assumption that we users are all clueless newbies. Take the Microsoft Office tools: they have many advanced and powerful capabilities; it is both interesting and useful to know what exactly they do. But the Help system only gives … Read more
Just got a letter from the UK, and it had this colorful stamp on it. For an instant, I felt that special twinge of joy that an interesting stamp elicits; only after a moment did I remember that (a) I no longer collect stamps, not since I was a kid I don’t, and (b) none … Read more
My relatives returned from a trip to wonderful Firenze, and shared some terrible experiences trying to get their rental car back to the rental office in that ancient city’s dense traffic. Which brought to mind my own experience in the matter some years back. I was trying to steer a course through all the one-way … Read more
One sign of the times is that movie halls are closing one by one around us, victims to the surge in electronic alternatives. We know this from direct observation – they really are closing – but I had an unexpected demonstration of this fact in a TV ad. The ad was by the Hot cable … Read more
Was filling up the car at a gas station when I noticed a bicycle chained to a signpost at the corner. Well, part of a bicycle… As you see, this bike has been there for a long time (enough to develop serious rust), and in the meantime it lost wheels, seat, handlebars and more. Only … Read more
More from Amir’s visit to Japan: This staircase gives access to the trains at a Tokyo underground station. Given rush hour crowd density, its designers did well to split it in two, to separate the up and down streams of commuters. But note how the two sides are of different width. Someone characterized the traffic … Read more
Amir is back from Japan, and sent in some interesting photos attesting to that country’s outstanding and different ways of solving life’s daily problems. For starters, here is yellow path marked out on a Tokyo sidewalk, whose surface is textured with the little rubber bumps that are so annoying at some airport terminals. Turns out … Read more