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

iPhone Tip: Enable Caps Lock

Here’s a quick tip for all of you iPhone users:

Settings > General > Keyboard > Enable Caps Lock

Now, when you quickly tap the Shift key twice on the keyboard, it will turn blue and become a Caps Lock!
Why wasn’t this enabled by default? I have tried, on numerous occasions, to figure out how to enable [...]

Smart Dust Leads to Smart Parking

It’s always cool to see presentations from CHI (and related conferences) end up in commercial products. At the time they are presented, they usually seem far-fetched or appear to have no real-world application (but, of course, we need crazy ideas and unconstrained thinking).
Smart Dust (CHI 2002) is being used commercially by a company called Streetline [...]

Little ditty, about TomTom and Garmin

Like it or not, devices are converging. With phones like the Motorola MotoZine ZN5, we are finally seeing a promising convergence of point-and-shoot cameras with mobile phones. Phones like the Nokia N95, BlackBerry, and HTC Touch are some of the first convergent phones capable of many things like GPS, Email, and Web browsing. However, the [...]

Facebook Crosses the Line (Again)

Facebook is notorious for launching features seemingly without any user research. In 2006, Facebook launched the “News Feed”, which led to an unprecedented backlash in social networking. Ironically, two years later it seems that all Facebook users have gotten acclimated to the News Feed and now enjoy the feature. (It was actually the lack of [...]

Usability Emergency: Japan Needs Better Phones

Usability specialists take note: Japan is in dire need of an easy-to-use phone with features they are accustomed to (mobile TV, credit card payment, GPS). It’s an interesting problem, since cellphones are radically different between the US and Japan. Japan is on the cutting edge, and mobile phones in the US are relatively outdated before [...]