Time for Usability studies

Nope, not actually checking the usability of anything 'real', just having another exam tomorrow, and studying for it today - at least after lunch.

As mentioned a few posts back, we're using the "Don't make me think" book from Steve Krug. This book is a good source for personal studies in the area of Usability, but I'm a bit sceptic to if it's enough for an academic course. The book gives an outstanding introduction to Usability and the most important parts in web site design. However, some more depth is needed for an academic course in my humble opinion - making me happy that we recieved a great number of articles in the area as well - giving us knowledge also about the facts surrounding Usability, including different methods, cooperative strategy, tactics and operations, budget proposals and even lectures on mobile usability and eye-tracking with tests of Tobii equipment. Considering all that was included in the course, perhaps I should have been happy about the course. However, I find that what we need for the exam is more to be able to make quotes from famous usability experts than to think and argue for our answers. Considering I'm a thinker, not one to always remember who says what, this was not a good course for me. At least I'm happy with the knowledge gained, which after all is the most important.

One area in this usability course I will consider studying more, is the area of mobile usability. This mostly looks at mobile phones and PDA's, but this is not an area I'll look into during at least the next six months. During this period I'll probably concentrate on Computer graphics, both using OpenGL and 3Ds Max and probably looking at the game mentioned in a previous post, while at the same time learning about the .net framework, esepcially for web applications. I am however considering a project management course as well, but I wouldn't know which other course to skip then :-) That's the curse of finding too many interesting choices...

Well weell - now back to studying :-)