Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Include Reimbursable Expenses in Revenues for 2002: FASB
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is implementing, with no public comment period, a material rule change on revenue recognition that will significantly affect the consultancy industry. Specifically, at the November 14/15th meeting of the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF) of FASB, the EITF announced that reimbursable expenses from customers must be included in revenue, beginning in 2002. Demand management consultancy Inforte has discussed this issue with many contacts in the investing and consulting communities, all of whom agree that the rule will lessen the quality of reported financial information for hundreds of companies and lead to even more pro forma reporting. Inforte has called for the EITF to delay implementation of the ruling at that meeting for at least three months to allow for public comment. Kennedy Information Consultants News

Global IT Consulting’s 10 predictions for 2002

1) IT consultants that best leverage their client base will not only outperform competitors this year, but also will set themselves up to succeed in 2003.

2) CRM will remain hot. Sales force automation is a top spending priority. But remedial work at clients with failed projects, and expanding successful initial implementations, will offer opportunities.

3) Government spending for IT services at US federal and state levels will continue to expand, replacing financial services as the bread and butter industry vertical for IT consultants by 2005, according to Kennedy Information Research Group.

More…

forUse.com
The professional site of Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood. Larry and Lucy offer some great tools and downloads on the site. Especially good tidbits on Use Cases.

From Jakob Nielsen’s useit.com. Some good points on the dos and don’t of contextual research. Nielsen points out common mistakes made by interviewers who use leading questions. And makes good points about the need for the entire design team to conduct field studies, not just Ph.D. anthropologists.

He also emphasizes observation over asking questions. I would agree that is is good advice for a researcher with limited experience, however, the true value in anthropologic research methods is the researchers’ ability to immerse themselves in context and account for their presence and the bias it brings.

Future Tech: Really Special Forces
A powered exoskeleton could transform the average joe into a supersoldier. DARPA awarded the first grants from its $50 million Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation project to Sarcos, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley funding a legs-only exoskeleton that will be ready for trials by 2003 and a whole-body version that will be ready by 2005.

The exoskeleton will allow a soldier to lift 400 pounds, including bigger weapons, bulletproof armor, better communications devices, and more food, and remain continuously active for at least four hours.

Exoskeletons could be optimized for other combat tasks, too, such as running much faster than ordinary humans, jumping over fences, picking up rubble during rescue efforts, and with AI, save its wearer if he is wounded.

Nonmilitary uses might include cnstruction work, cargo handling, search and rescue, assisting the elderly, and allowing paraplegics to walk.

Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design
Kent Beck is known as the father of “extreme programming,” a process created to help developers design and build software that effectively meets user expectations. Alan Cooper is the prime proponent of interaction design (well, Alan and everyone else practicing as interaction designers), a process with similar goals but different methodology. This compare and contrast interview with Alan and Kent is well worth the read.

Interaction Design as they define it is…
dedicated to defining the behavior of artifacts, environments, and systems. When a software-enabled product is intended to fill an identified need, interaction design defines what product should be built and how it should behave, down to the last detail. Interaction design discovers users’ goals and is therefore concerned with:

Extreme programming (XP) is…
a set of software development practices, originated by Kent Beck. XP developers work continuously with the customer, anticipate frequent changes to the software spec, and develop tests to evaluate when a coding goal is achieved. XP is often boiled down to 12 core practices, which include:

1. Planning with customers
2. Functional testing and unit testing
3. Refactoring
4. Simple design
5. Simple code metaphors
6. Collective code ownership
7. Coding standards
8. Continuous integration of changes
9. Customer on site
10. Open workspace
11. 40-hour week
12. Pair programming

A Brief History of HCI
As seen from the viewpoint of 1996 “A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology” by Brad A. Myers of the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. Thanks Brad!

Digital Imaging Resource
Avi Rappoport recently points some folks on the SIGIA-L mailing list to the digital imaging guide at dig-marar.com. Wow! This site has a wealth of information for people working with digital imagery. They also support several communities including Image Creators, Asset Managers and Publishers.