"At the end of the month, Bill Gates is stepping down as chief software architect of Microsoft, and retiring from his day-to-day role at Microsoft, the company he co-founded and led for most of the past 30 years. Michael J. Miller, former PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief, sat down with him to look back at how the computer industry has evolved over that time, and where it is headed."

• Part I - Hits and Misses
• Part II - A Long Sometimes Slow Journey
• Part III - Riding the Internet Evolution
• Part IV - The Problems and Power of the Cloud
• Part V - Windows Work Needs to Be Donen

"This time each year, technophiles are asked to part the curtains and peek into the coming year. While last year brought unprecedented growth in RIA adoption — especially by Fortune 500 companies — RIA adoption in 2008 brings a new onslaught of risks, rewards, challenges and opportunities for companies of all sizes."

Anthony discusses the risks and rewards of RIAs.

"Jared Spool literally wrote the book on usability. As one of the industry’s foremost experts, Jared has devoted his career to understanding why things work and helping people learn to solve design problems. He’s been involved in the field for three decades — well before the term “usability” applied to computers.

Jared is founding principal of User Interface Engineering, the world’s largest research, training and consulting firm specializing in Web site and product usability. He recently carved out some time in between discussing the current state of design to analysts and his responsibilities as a faculty member of the Tufts University Gordon Institute to answer some questions for the User Interface Resource Center. "

"Kevin Cheng is a senior interaction designer with Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Local, and is an expert in using comics as a technique to communicate the key concepts behind a design's intended user experience. UIE's Ashley McKee recently had the opportunity to talk with Kevin about the increasing popularity of using comics in the design process, the five inherent properties of successful comics, the skills needed to create comics, and the best way to deliver comics to key stakeholders. Here is what Kevin had to say about his experiences with comics."

Kevin's presentation from IA Summit 2007 can be found at this link and other resources can be found here.

In this article, the authors describe how to bridge the disciplines of usability and software engineering. Usually, both fields are made up of very distinct populations, talking different languages and using different tools. In the paper, the authors present an agile approach that could provide a basis for collaborative, interdisciplinary user interface engineering. The paper was presented and published at HCI International 2007 in Beijing.

In the latest issue of the STC Newsletter, David Dick reviews Jeff Johnson's latest book - GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design DON'Ts and DO's.

David provides an in-depth review of the second version of Jeff's blooper book:

GUI Bloopers 2.0 describes common user-interface mistakes found in today's software products and services, and provides design rules and guidelines to avoid them. Johnson describes the design decisions that lead to misuse of controls, poor navigation, prose-riddled labels, bad design and layout, faulty interaction, and poor responsiveness. GUI Bloopers 2.0 is well illustrated with hundreds of examples from real products and online services, and stories from his own experience. To compare and contrast good and bad design, Johnson gives a "thumbs up" for good design and a "thumbs down" for a blooper.

David gives GUI Bloopers a "two thumbs up" rating and recommends it for anyone developing software or web applications.

GUI Bloopers 2.0 is supplemented by a Web site, www.gui-bloopers.com, which includes:

• GUI Bloopers checklist: a check list of all of the types of bloopers in the book to facilitate checking software before release.
• Web Appendix: Color Bloopers: two bloopers about poor use of color that could not be included in the book because the book is not printed in color.
• More bloopers: additional bloopers not included in the book, starting with bloopers that did not make the "final cut".

Scott Ambler of Ambysoft wrote a great article with some tips and techniques on prototyping user interfaces.

The quick overview of the tips are:

 1.  Work with real users
 2.  Get stakeholders to work with the prototype
 3.  Understand the underlying business
 4.  You should only prototype features you can build
 5.  You cannot make everything simple
 6.  It's about what you need
 7.  Get a user interface expert to help you design it
 8.  Explain what a prototype is
 9.  Consistency is critical
10. Avoid implementation decisions for as long as possible
11. Small details can make or break your user interface 

Serdar Yegulalp explores six 'speed bumps' that everyone - designers and developers - need to be aware of when writing applications and websites for both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers:

• Quirky Implementations Of Layout Functions
• Proprietary IE-Only HTML Tags
• JavaScript And Automation
• ActiveX
• User Interface And Keybindings
• Planning For The Future

This Boxes and Arrows article is a review of a new book on Interaction Design called Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction.  This book is being released at a time when acceptance of Interaction Design as a discipline is reaching a critical mass.  Clifton concludes "Interaction Design, the book, presents many valuable approaches and background on the industry. Still, one should realize that learning this material is like learning to play the piano."

Barbara Whitaker writes about the importance of usability professionals in this column from The New York Times originally published on July 8, 2007.  Here is the opening paragraph - "SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database.  Enter the usability professional..."

In this article from Boxes and Arrows, Milissa Tarquini (Director, User Interface Design and Information Architecture at AOL) discusses the myth about the importance of being above the fold or in the scroll-line.  The conclusion... "The biggest lesson to be learned here is that if you use visual cues (such as cut-off images and text) and compelling content, users will scroll to see all of it. The next great frontier in web page design has to be bottom of the page"

In this article from ESI Horizons newsletter, Chip Schwartz discusses his experiences with sitting for the first Certified Business Analyst Professional (CBAP) exam in November 2006.  Chip Schwartz is founder and principal of Coresoft, LLC., a senior instructor with ESI International and the President of the DC Metropolitan chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis. 

In this article from User Interface Engineering (UIE), Kim Goodwin discusses the 10 ways to kill good design.  Read the article to learn more about each of these ways:

1. Poor choice of pilot project
2. Not having one consistent project owner
3. Incomplete design or insufficient communication
4. Not getting buyin from top execs
5. The wrong people doing design
6. Not committing resources to design
7. Failure to separate innovation from renovation
8. The inmates are running the asylum
9. Unrealistic expectations
10. Unhealthy corporate culture

This article was originally published by Kim Goodwin on the Cooper Web Site in 2004. You can view the original article here: Ten Ways to Kill Good Design.

This is an interview with Aaron Marcus from AM+A Associates that appeared in the Information Design Journal when Aaron joined the publication as one of their new editors.

Aaron Marcus is president and principal designer and analyst of Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A) in Berkeley, California. He studied at Yale and Princeton, and has been in the field for 38 years, starting as a graphic designer and computer graphics programmer and designer in 1968. He was the first professional graphic designer in the world to use computers. His primary specialties are user-interface design and information- visualization design.

This is a 20 minute podcast from the 2007 South By Southwest (SXSW) Conference by Peter Merholz, who is co-founder of Adaptive Path.

"The world of business and product design is changing. In fact, we have seen a number of trends taking shape that we believe are all pointing to the end of "products.' There is a growing realization that we are no longer designing single, stand-alone, centralized, static things, web sites, or systems. As the internet and digital networks in general become more ubiquitous, more distributed, and more integrated in our lives, we're finding that it's hard to find a "product" that is not also, or even mostly, a service. These service design projects generally involve multiple touchpoints or channels (i.e. the web, mobile devices, and physical spaces, etc.), a focus on long-term relationships, and the need for consistent experience across throughout. In fact, consumers expect more variety, more control, more interoperability, more adaptability, and more consistency in experience than ever before. This has serious implications for business, design, and development."

More on Peter is available at this link.