This is a very interesting article about information scent and predictive software. The concept of information scent is an interesting one, it has been proposed . The article describes the “Bloodhound”; program developed by Ed Chi and Stu Card at Xerox PARC. The program has a predictive model of human behaviour that allows it to predict the path a user would take in traversing a web site for a given target. First Bloodhound takes a snapshot of a web space and then assigns a vector to each page. The software then compares the vectors mathematically and follows the “scent” until it reaches the goal. This is a great example of how HCI research into cognitive models and information process in starting to be applied to design tools.
Eazel shuts down
Eazel was unable to secure additional funding to continue their development of the Nautilus product. Eazel was the brain child of Andy Hertzfeld, who was a member of the original Macintosh system software. Eazel was an open source development project focused on the innovative file and system management model. It is too bad, as Eazel appeared to be on of the first efforts to bring Linux to the rest of us.
So long and thanks for all the fish
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, passed away suddenly on Friday morning of a heart attack. Adams was a great SF writer and was known to embrace technology. He was an Apple Master and had produced a number of video games including A Hitch Hiker’s Guide the the Galaxy, Bureaucracy, and Starship Titanic.
“There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler’s mind.”
Consulting
Expertise
David Crow brings diverse skills to software product design and development, the design of web sites, and web-based applications.
No matter where you are in your product development lifecycle, we’ll work with you to build the best customer experience.
User Experience Design & Consulting
User Research, Requirements Gathering, Information Design, Interaction Design, Site Maps, User Scenarios, Personaes, Contextual Inquiry, Information Architecture, Wireframes
Usability Reviews
User Testing, Discount Usability Methodologies, Expert Evaluation, Product Evaluation, Competitive Evaluation
Papers and Publications
About
David Crow is a skilled interface designer and researcher. His areas of expertise include design and development of software products, Web sites and Web applications in financial services, and enterprise software applications.
David’s work is focused on helping companies design, prototype and build revolutionary applications quickly. No matter where you are in your product development lifecycle, he can work with you to build the best customer experience.
Career biography
David’s most recent project was with CIBC in Toronto, Ontario. Working with technology and business partners, he designed interfaces and conducted usability testing for new bank functionality.
Prior to joining this Canadian financial institution, David was an interaction design lead with Reactivity. In the role, he designed novel user experiences, serving as a interaction designer for early-stage and established software companies.
He gained valuable experience for this role as a member of the Human-Computer Interaction team at Trilogy Software in Austin, TX, where he served from September 1998 until June 1999.
David previously worked as a Senior Research Engineer at Rockwell Collins where he was a part of the interdisciplinary research at the Army Research Laboratory’s Advanced Displays and Interactive Displays Federated Lab. He conducted ethnographic research of dismounted ground troops to build innovative technologies to be deployed in the year 2025.
Education
David earned a Masters of Human-Computer Interaction with a specialization in Analysis and Evaluation at Carnegie Mellon University. David’s masters research focused on collecting contextual video data about how people use the Web to design and build more effective Web tools and applications.
Industry service
David has served on the committees of several industry-related conferences including CHI 2000 as the co-Chair for Demonstrations, and the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. David is an active member of ACM, AIGA and SIGCHI.