From dan at thecsl.org Sat May 2 10:32:06 2009 From: dan at thecsl.org (Dan MacNeil) Date: Sat, 02 May 2009 10:32:06 -0400 Subject: [Cadre-politics] status: writing sample Message-ID: <49FC5966.4000608@thecsl.org> We have some very, very strong applicants for our VISTA spots. Below is a writing sample You might productively pass a big chunk of the weekend at: http://www.findingcasamance.com/ ...and the associated blog roll ### Saturday December 29th, 2007 9:37 AM In the village I spend most of the time listening. I listen for 10 hours a day on average. People telling me that I'm not contributing or chatting. My retort is that I'm trying hard to listen/understand (the verb is the same in pulaar). I say that you must understand the language in order to speak it. This isn't like learning french- there is no textbook with themed chapters. To learn about cooking, body parts, building materials, animals, natural, etc. the world is your textbook. You find some cool kid to be your language teacher. While you are hanging out, while your helping herd the cows, while your pulling water, while your sitting around a fire, while your watching the soccer match devolve into a riot- thats when you learn the language. Sometimes words need no explaination, other times explanation requires a game of charades, a bit of french and if -Si Allah Jaabi/Inshallah/God is Willing- you understand and you memorize the word. I largely stopped carrying around a notebook to write little bits of vocabulary down. I find it to be counterproductive much of the time. Instead of the course of the conversation continuing after I picked up some vocabulary- the topic switches to writing and how I am writing. That I am writing takes center stage and everyone stares like zombies at the fact that I'm writing and that I'm writing pulaar. Kids crown around, the adults aren't far off- its kinda like one of those nightmare scenes on TV when you are in class and you are only wearing your underwear. Everyone looks and stares at you- language is optional in these moments. My strategy as is called the Keyword approach. When I learn a little vocabulary, I say it a few times to make sure the pronounciation is correct. Then I think of english words that have a similar sound to it. For example the pulaar word for smoke is "churnkey." I started off my saying it sounded like "turkey." Then as I heard it a few times I decided that "churn key" was alittle better because the "ch" in churn matches the "Ch-aa" sound in the word better than the "t" sound in turkey. From dan at thecsl.org Mon May 4 13:28:01 2009 From: dan at thecsl.org (Dan MacNeil) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 13:28:01 -0400 Subject: [Cadre-politics] free food + drink $1000 grant Message-ID: <49FF25A1.3090604@thecsl.org> This month, the the 501 tech club is raffling off a $1000 grant as a door prize. I've missed the past few meetings. In the event that each business card gets to make an entry, I'd love company for free food and drink. http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=YQKFZOYUVBYZJUBLRXTL&src=email From jgrenier at thoughtsonsales.org Mon May 4 14:49:39 2009 From: jgrenier at thoughtsonsales.org (James Grenier) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 11:49:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Cadre-politics] free food + drink $1000 grant Message-ID: <46599.2821.qm@web506.biz.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'd like to make this one too. Anyone else? --- On Mon, 5/4/09, Dan MacNeil wrote: From: Dan MacNeil Subject: [Cadre-politics] free food + drink $1000 grant To: cadre-politics at lists.thecsl.org Date: Monday, May 4, 2009, 1:28 PM This month, the the 501 tech club is raffling off a $1000 grant as a door prize. I've missed the past few meetings. In the event that each business card gets to make an entry, I'd love company for free food and drink. ??? http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=YQKFZOYUVBYZJUBLRXTL&src=email _______________________________________________ Cadre-politics mailing list Cadre-politics at lists.thecsl.org http://lists.thecsl.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cadre-politics From karen at karenzgoda.org Mon May 4 15:04:05 2009 From: karen at karenzgoda.org (Karen Zgoda) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:04:05 -0400 Subject: [Cadre-politics] free food + drink $1000 grant In-Reply-To: <46599.2821.qm@web506.biz.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <46599.2821.qm@web506.biz.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1FA6D13C-7D14-4462-9A43-CD8386F83F3B@karenzgoda.org> I'd love to go but will be out of town that night. Can others make it? The food there is free and yummy! ...Karen Karen Zgoda, MSW, LCSW Doctoral Candidate Boston College karen at karenzgoda.org http://www.karenzgoda.org On May 4, 2009, at 2:49 PM, James Grenier wrote: > > I'd like to make this one too. Anyone else? > > --- On Mon, 5/4/09, Dan MacNeil wrote: > > From: Dan MacNeil > Subject: [Cadre-politics] free food + drink $1000 grant > To: cadre-politics at lists.thecsl.org > Date: Monday, May 4, 2009, 1:28 PM > > This month, the the 501 tech club is raffling off a $1000 grant as a > door prize. > > I've missed the past few meetings. > > In the event that each business card gets to make an entry, I'd love > company for free food and drink. > http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=YQKFZOYUVBYZJUBLRXTL&src=email > _______________________________________________ > Cadre-politics mailing list > Cadre-politics at lists.thecsl.org > http://lists.thecsl.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cadre-politics From dan at thecsl.org Sat May 16 10:57:36 2009 From: dan at thecsl.org (Dan MacNeil) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 14:57:36 +0000 Subject: [Cadre-politics] status: usability Message-ID: <4A0ED460.80207@thecsl.org> The prophets [Jakob],[Joel] and [Tog] proclaim good programmers watch users using their software and bad programmers assume they know what users want. Swetha Chandrashekar and I spent Wednesday watching users. [Jakob] http://www.useit.com/ [Joel] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html [Tog] http://www.asktog.com/columns/077InclusiveDesignPart1.html Our big goal was to find if the [new] version of the site was better than the [old] version of the site. We visited a clubhouse for people with [mental] illness and tested our assumptions. [new] http://mvh.omacneil.testing123.net/ [old] http://mvhub.com/ [mental] http://www.iccd.org/article.asp?articleID=3 For example, the prophet Jakob says people usually read only the first 11 characters [11 char] of a link. We took the links from the old and new sites, put them on slips of paper and showed them to users one at a time. [11 char] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html The simple act of making up the surveys pointed to some likely problems. We didn't expect many people to guess the purpose of: Community Se Get Your Age We were surprised by links that we thought were fine but weren't. These links: About Contact ... were not ok. People confused contacting web site administration with contacting the agencies in the database. On reflection, reality matches our research. Once a month or so we'll get an email like: "When does your nurse training program start?" "How much are the raffle tickets?" Next week we'll see how we do with About MVHub Contact MVH Our next test was to give people a piece of paper with a bunch of links, including some links from sites that had nothing to do with ours. ... Get Your Age ... Research Add Agency Weather Get Listed Go Riverhawks! We asked people things like: "If you worked for a non-profit group, what would you click to add your group's info to MVHub?" The popular answer was not (as I assumed, it would be): "Get Listed". Putting aside the paper, We gave our subjects a list of tasks to solve using the actual websites. For example: "Get a phone number for the Community Software Lab" "Who is the person in charge of CTI" "Help a homeless person." "Find info about dancing lessons" Almost everyone failed at searching for a specific agency. We have two search boxes "Program" and "Agency". Typing "CTI" into the "Program" search didn't work. Our most recent test subjects had very low literacy. (4th grade?). Even if illiterate people weren't part of our target audience, the results still would be useful. Our previous subjects, (people with graduate degrees in computer science volunteering with us), were served almost as badly by our website. Both groups used the "wrong" search box as their first effort. The difference between the two institutionalized groups was that the CS grads tried other strategies (reading the on screen instructions), when their first quick try failed. In real life, I don't know that the either group bothers with a second try. Sometimes different groups need different interfaces. Linux system administrators grow impatient with clicking "next". Other people don't see '--recursive' as self explanatory. However 95% of the our users are going to be infrequent and impatient. Curb cuts help marathon runners as much as they do people in wheel chairs. We need to simplify, simplify, simplify and test, test, test. Of course, our excitement at the useful work ahead is tempered by pity for those less fortunate than us: http://mass211.org/ From dan at thecsl.org Sat May 16 13:11:42 2009 From: dan at thecsl.org (Dan MacNeil) Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 17:11:42 +0000 Subject: [Cadre-politics] status: usability In-Reply-To: <3b54603hw1mfbmx8b1xc9ui5.1242503201470@email.android.com> References: <3b54603hw1mfbmx8b1xc9ui5.1242503201470@email.android.com> Message-ID: <4A0EF3CE.3010504@thecsl.org> St?phane writes > This is really cool stuff. One question kept creeping up > in my mind -- why two search boxes? I'm taking the liberty of assuming that this question is of wider interest.... Back in 2004, The first design had only one search and only allowed people to search on categories like: "shelter" and "aids". DS and EA did enough usability testing to find out that people wanted to search for particular agencies. They didn't have enough time to re-design the existing search so they bolted on a second search as a temporary workaround. We've known this was a problem for a while, but have been absorbed with hosting (which is ending soon) and haven't gotten around to fixing it. I guess temporary kludges often last much longer than people expect.