This is a continuation of my previous post on review systems. Having looked at some of things that make your average review system less-than-useful, I started to wonder about how improvements might be made. I completely ignore the problem of dealing with long-form text, so erm… ‘machine-reading’ of actual reviews is outside the scope of this solution.
(updated 2008-01-06). Continue reading
Ranking and rating are activities that are almost entirely subjective by nature. They are based on a (usually unknown) value system. In the case of online review engines, the value system of a reviewer is seldom captured by the systems in question, and the value system of the person querying for reviews / rankings is also usually an unknown. Continue reading
In my first post on holistic design, I talked about how designers are sometimes better positioned to approach a project with a holistic mindset (compared to software engineers / developers). This post covers some ideas about how to keep the ‘whole’ in mind even when, as software developers, we have the urge to “divide and conquer”.
The acorn seed: a tiny thing, with the enormous potential to become a mighty oak tree. The realisation of this potential is often used as a metaphor for evolutionary design – but this leads to several unhelpful perceptions.
The acorn doesn’t ‘evolve’, in the Darwnian sense, into an oak tree… far better to realise that the acorn is an oak tree. Continue reading
During the initial phases of a project, and in particular during the design phase, it becomes necessary to decide upon what is actually being built, along with its constituent parts. In short, this is when the team decides how much complexity they’re going to bite off and chew. As it turns out, people aren’t very fond of chewing… Continue reading
Years back, sitting in computer science classes, we heard about the software methodologies of the day. We also wanted to claw our eyes out with sheer boredom. Even in the halls of academia, where all that is theoretical and impractical can find many happy adherents; even there, the usefulness of the SDLC was questioned.
We students had already made up our minds – we were never gonna use these antiquated processes invented by European men with names that sounded far more antiquated and fuddy-duddy than I’m sure they actually were. We were going to carve out our digital futures with wit alone… Continue reading