Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

Baseball Statistics vs. Electoral Projections

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight was interviewed earlier this month by Dan Rather. In the interview, he talks about his interest in statistics with baseball, how it compares to political projections, and how projections are done. Silver created the baseball PECOTA sabermetric system in 2002-2003, and sold it to Baseball Prospectus in 2003. Silver is a [...]

America’s 10 Most Confusing Traffic Signs

Neatorama has a great round-up of some of the most confusing traffic signs. Included in the list is the above sign in San Francisco, which Neatorama says tells drivers to “just follow along with the general pattern of traffic and hope you don’t die.”
World Usability Day (WUD) is November 13th, and the theme is transporation. [...]

Wazzup, Eight Years Later

The original Budweiser Whassup? advertising campaign ran from 1999-2002. Now, the original cast members are back in a politically motivated video posted to YouTube:

Here’s the original if you don’t remember:

Tech for Obama

Just in case you need another reason to vote for him, Tech for Obama has just released a new video explaining why Obama’s tech policies are important for the future of America:

Senator McCain has been criticized for being out of touch with technology (see my previous post). Wired Magazine rated Obama better on 4/5 technology-related [...]

Designing a Better Ballot

The design of the ballots in the 2000 election was a huge issue. The ballots in Florida (and perhaps elsewhere) were not properly designed and certainly not user-tested. AIGA (America Institute of Graphic Arts) tackled this problem and their solution was featured in the New York Times: