Jason Hong's Confabulations

Well, this was bound to happen sooner or later, but there was a recent phishing attack targeting members of the CMU community. And, no, this wasn't an experiment from our research team.


SCS Computing Facilities has received the following announcement from campus
Computing Services.

*** To verify the authenticity of this message, see Security News &
Events at ***

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Phishing Emails Sent to Carnegie Mellon Accounts
WHEN: Feb 21, 2008

HOW: Fraudulent emails have recently been sent to Carnegie Mellon
email accounts claiming to be from the "CMU SUPPORT TEAM
" asking people to reply with their "CMU Webmail
account" passwords.

...

This is a digital online book that demonstrates a variety of user interactions. It's really beautiful and well done.

http://www.rubenswieringa.com/code/as3/flex/Book/

I just posted a comment to Lambda the Ultimate trying to clarify some misunderstandings about user testing and HCI. Here is the original comment, and my reply is below.


I just created an account to reply to the above post. Just for background purposes, I teach human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, and am part of the School for Computer Science.

I believe the above poster is making a similar argument that Doug Engelbart made a long time back about the difference between tricycles and bicycles. More specifically, if ease of use was all that mattered, then we would all be riding tricycles.

However, I believe that the above post shows a common misunderstanding of the nature of user tests, and human-computer interaction more broadly. Specifically, HCI is not just about ease of use for "walk up and use" interfaces. We advocate that designers should understand the context of use, set appropriate goals, and measure that we are achieving those goals. Like security or…