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

Designing for Big Data

Jeffrey Veen (Small Batch, Inc.) gave a great talk on data visualization at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco recently (March 31-April 3, 2009). He provides a history of usage of visualizations, including the first subway map (the tube map) and John Snow’s map that is credited with ending the 1854 cholera outbreak in [...]

OK/Cancel Buttons on the Web

I’m a member of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) and I had a great time recently at CHI ‘09 in Boston. Recently, all members of ACM received a postcard with instructions to vote in the board elections. The postcard directed members to a website similar to this:

I had to enter my PIN twice. [...]

Touchscreen Phones for the Blind

Making touchscreen phones accessible seems like an impossible challenge. But, the Eyes-Free Android project is working on it! Skip to about 2 minute mark for the demo.
[Gizmodo]

Revolutionary New Laptop with No Keyboard

The Onion just released one of its funniest Mac-bashing videos yet. It’s the day before the last (and Steve Job-less) Apple keynote at MacWorld, and I think this video is a great follow-up to my last post on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are keyboardless and so is this new laptop dreamed up by The Onion [...]

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are both scary and very promising at the same time. As evidenced by this 60 Minutes video, BCIs are an essential tool already for many disabled individuals. BCIs can provide the ability to use thought in order to type,  produce speech, and control prosthetic limbs.
Could BCIs finally replace the old WIMP (window, [...]