Inductive reasoning is quite simply put an educated guess. It is reasoning based on a specific and/or set of observations from which a generalized conclusion is derived. The trouble with deriving “laws” from natural observation is that observation is unavoidably affected by individual perception. For example, a fish swimming inside of a fish bowl has a drastically different vantage point than an individual standing on the outside of the bowl looking in. Therefore, the perception of events being observed by one individual might not be the same as the perception of another. For this reason, the conclusions can at best… Read More…
When visiting TurboTax.com, the first thing that strikes me is the overwhelming clutter of the interface. There is no clear flow to the site or distinct call to action and no call to action means no “Instant Gratification”. If I visit a site and do not find what I need in the first few seconds after landing on the page, I am off to ask Google to try again. If anything my initial instinct after visiting the website was to hit the back button. While this might qualify as a Change in Midstream, I am fairly certain it is not… Read More…
Without question, the discovery phase of development is an essential aspect of the development process. Perhaps the most essential aspect of development in the sense that it provides a footprint, from which the site’s framework will be planned, developed, deployed and if all goes to plan, eventually launched. The material covered in Web-Redesign 2.0, Workflow That Matters, covers and suggests the use of several documents during the discovery phase in an effort to help simplify and organize what can otherwise at times be a very difficult process. During one of the videos the presentation touches on “Good vs. Red Flag… Read More…
There are several steps I take when initially defining a project that in my experience will save you a great deal of time and frustration later on in the design and development process. It has also been my experience that the majority of issues relating to design are almost always the result of a failed communication during the discovery phase. Company, Product and/or Service Research The first thing I ask of a potential client when meeting with them for the first time is for them to take a few minutes to tell me a little bit about their organization, product… Read More…
When asked to write about someone who has contributed to the history of the computer or the internet, I chose Blaise Pascal. Honestly, I chose him for the simple reason that as a teenager I went through a phase where I only coded using the PASCAL programming language. I know odd reasoning… however, PASCAL was developed as a programming language by Niklaus Wirth in the late sixties and was named in honor of the French mathematician Blaise Pascal. I figured in order to have such a profound effect on someone like Niklaus Wirth, Blaise Pascal must be worth checking out… Read More…
Re: “Courtney Love does the math”, by Courtney Love. (http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/) Courtney Love presents the fact that only 30 of every 32,000 albums released annually go platinum as evidence that we have become a boring society. This amounts to 0.09375% and while this may seem to support her conclusion that “the status quo gives us boring”, I would suggest that this is in fact a symptom of a far greater problem. In my opinion, the real issue lies not with the record companies but with society itself. The fact that only a small percentage of albums are successful is evidence that… Read More…
(Images in this article may be clicked on for an expanded view.) For our assignment we were asked to review the following articles: http://www.mathmotivation.com/science/carvalue.html http://www.mathmotivation.com/deductive/advertising.html http://www.mathmotivation.com/money/internet-advertising.html While I found the articles a tad elementary, they work well to illustrate the basic principle that math surrounds us and is represented in nearly every facet of everyday life. The idea that math is useless is completely without merit and demonstrates a lack of fundamental understanding for the scientific principles that govern our universe. Each day we use math in the most rudimentary and routine aspects of our life. Everything from the amount… Read More…
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