Small Bits on Usability
- Thomas Barnett comments that “The U.S. is pushing a secret PowerPoint briefing to allies on Iran, trying to convince them that the WMD question is drawing to a head there.” Maybe they’ve read “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint,” and would prefer data to being pitched? I’ll (ahem) pitch my lesser-known Hamlet in Powerpoint.
- Jacob Nielsen writes “User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems.” His description of the problem is much better than his solutions (encrypting and signing all data doesn’t protect you against a buffer overflow, and turning all security settings on will help “train” users to turn them off to get things done.) Nevertheless, I’m happy to see usability experts looking at security.