90 percent of everything : Usability Blog

Written by Harry Brignull

I’m a big fan of Google Reader, but the process for adding friends is pretty awkward, and seems to be impacting its uptake – at least for me and people on my social network.

Anyway, the friends shared items functionality is awesome and I can’t get enough of it. Please add me as your friend! I don’t care if you’re a complete stranger – if you’re into UX, then we’ve got something to talk about. Here’s how:

First, from within Gmail, you’ll see the Google chat area in the left hand column:

Enter my email address – harrybr@gmail.com – as shown below. You have to ‘invite me to chat’. Conceptually this makes no sense whatsoever, but this is what you have to do to become friends on Google Reader.

Later on, when you log in to Google Reader, you’ll see I’m there in your friend list. Now we can share links and comments. Hooray, now we can enter an endless cycle of semi-work-related group procrastination!

Book now – only 21 places left!

• Impress your prospective clients by developing your repertoire of elitist acronyms and ISO standards
• How to rehash Nielsen / Norman / Krugg publications from the 1990s into your very own book, and become a published author!
• Learn about the benefits of alienating newcomers to the field by switching terminology every 5 minutes (free printable Usability/UX/IA/ID bingo table included)
• Sneak peak of the official UPXDA roadmap of new fashionable phrases for 2010 that will win respect from your clients.
• Add 42% more science bits to your presentations using our free Adobe Illustrator templates, including honeycomb diagrams (add your own buzzwords), graphs-that-don’t-have-numbers-on, and interaction diagrams that leave out key pieces of business logic, guaranteed to leave developers scratching their heads a few months down the line.
• Reduce your exploratory research timelines by 33%, using our new Excel-based persona generator (randomly picks characteristics and user needs from a database of random phrases, then adds a random photo via Google image search)
• Great tips to get your ideas heard in board meetings, e.g. by replacing the phrase "I think…" with "The users said…"
• Apply the rainmaking scam to UX – when your first round of consultancy doesn’t have any measurable effect on their website, convince them they just need to hire you for yet more projects!
• How to write proposals using the zero accountability methodology ®
• Tips on how to coin your own terminology, then spend next year’s conference season doing public speaking gigs around the world!

Only 21 places left! Book now!