We were in the grocery store the other day, and my husband asked me why I always buy salmon filets, but never salmon steaks. The answer was easy: I hate picking bones out of my fish. Same reason I buy navel oranges…I don’t like spitting the seeds out.

Fast forward to Saturday night. We were out to dinner with some good friends. When the waiter came to take our order, he told us about the skate wing special. Clay asked, “but is the skate wing user friendly?” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but my ears perked up at those words. He went on to explain that the skate wing has a lot of cartilege, and if it isn’t picked out in the kitchen before being presented to the diner, all the fun goes out of eating a skate wing. The skate at Dish in Virginia Highlands is, in fact, user friendly.

But now we were on a roll, talking about the usability of different cuts of fish. I told my salmon steak story, and Clay told me of a way to solve it. Fish pliers. This handy culinary accessory can be used to remove the bones from fish before it’s served. I looked up fish pliers on wikipedia, and alas, no one has created an entry yet (Clay?!). But a quick search of Sur la Table yielded a nice pair. Simply run your finger over the uncooked filet to find the bones, and pull them out with the pliers, leaving the flesh intact. Because, as my friend says, it’s all about the gear.

This Valentine’s Day, spread the love by showing your users that they’re important. Here are some ideas:

1. Post a survey on your site and allow users to tell you why they visit and what they’re looking for. Give them room to provide comments. Probe your users on what they’d like to see. Wondering how that new purchasing interaction is working? Ask them. Give them something in return.

2. Get out of the office and go to your users. Watch them as they interact with your product or site. Be unobtrusive. Give them something for their time.

3. If your site has users with some sort of disability (and whose doesn’t), put yourself in their shoes. Try to see what it’s like to hit tiny buttons with limited motor mobility (wear some gloves). Put on glasses that are the wrong prescription and try to read tiny text. Close your eyes and try to navigate with a screen reader.

4. Review the logs from your support line or live chat. Follow up with users to make sure their problems have been solved, or they got the information they needed. Let them know it’s important what they think.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I have been thinking a lot about some of the ideas behind what people call Web 2.0, and why it is that people take the time to rate sites, make intricate videos and post them, and create detailed networks of people, content, and media. One of the most interesting things about all of this, to me, is that it provides a great window into what people want, what people will watch, and what people will take time to create or share.

My friend Tzu-Wei sent me this video. I thought it was neat.

Ah, Big Wheel, that great American source of endless fun for generation-Xers, how fondly I remember you. The original Big Wheel, of course, was introduced in 1969 and had its heyday in the 70s (thanks, Wikipedia). Probably keen to the fact that many of those folks who rode Big Wheels in the 70s now have offspring of their own, the Big Wheel has been re-introduced recently.

Well, Finley and I fell into this trap. As a consequence, our twins each had a shiny, new ‘All American’ Big Wheel with bells (literally) and all on Christmas morning. The All American did not disappoint, at least not initially.

Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes, we were reminded of another endearing quality of the Big Wheel: the pedal that won’t stay on:

This, mind you, after Santa’s helper meticulously followed the instructions for assembling the Big Wheel, including following to the letter an explicit warning about putting the little tabs in appropriately to attach the pedals. Here, you can see the little tab, which must be inserted teeth-facing-away-from-Big-Wheel into the little slot in the pedal.

The problem is, it doesn’t work.

Alas, I guess another generation will have to learn the virtues of pedaling the bare axel of a Big Wheel. But fear not, the manufacturer in their wisdom offers Big Wheel Pedal Retainers in packs of 3 for $3.50, shipping included!

Truly, the Big Wheel deserves a place of honor in the hallowed Hall of Planned Obsolescence.

I have been using MS Office 2007 for awhile, and I like it. There is a learning curve but once I learned how to use the new toolbars, I found them intuitive and easy. I have always had a few Office hangups - where I make the same mistake, over and over again, for years. For example, in Word 2003 I always wanted to insert a table using the Insert menu (duh), forgetting EVERY TIME about the Table menu. But I digress.

Fitts’ Law is a mathematical model of user motor control. It states that the time it takes to move from one position to another is a function of the distance to and size of the target area. So, a big button close to where your mouse pointer currently is, is easy to hit. A tiny button, far away, not so much.

A nice post about how Fitts’ Law was used in the UI design on Office 2007. Found on Peter Bogaards’ InfoDesign Newsletter:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/08/22/711808.aspx