Saturday, June 25, 2005

User interface design - Edward Tufte - deep discussion of project management

I have been meaning to write an entry about wireless project management. As background, I found a very rich and thoughtful discussion about project management interfaces at Edward Tufte's website. For those who don't know, Tufte is one of the deep thinkers of our age on effective use of visual displays and information design. He is opinionated, a purist and deeply original thinker.

Jun 25, 2005 12:44:29 PM | Wireless User Interface

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Form factor fallacies another Jim Chard guest entry With little fanfare or recognition, handheld devices are replacing laptops and tablet PCs. The advantages are both obvious and subtle. Handhelds are always on; they don’t require time-consuming boot-up time. They are more cost effective. A company can buy 5 to 10 times as many handhelds as PCs for the same amount of money. Replacement for rugged use in the field becomes an expense item, not a capital item. It is certainly more convenient to keep your computing resource in your breast pocket or hanging from your belt than back in the truck or hotel room, or worse, dangling painfully from your shoulder. Even more importantly, the PDA form factor is more appropriate for use in the field than a laptop or tablet. As long as bandwidth provides speedy updating and local data storage accommodates megabytes of data, the wireless handheld makes the laptop appear...
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How to analyze a handheld user interface - project management as an example An earlier post described a terrific discussion at Edward Tufte's web site about building effective project management user interfaces. I have had recent experience with handheld interfaces to project management systems and want to add some thoughts about that. The critical place to look is at who will be using the handheld interface to the project management system and why they are using it from the field. As soon as you ask these questions, the discussion is shifted. Desktop project management systems are used by project managers, trained in the complexities of gantt charts, resource leveling, float dates, critical path analysis, budget planning, etc. etc. These are experts looking for a powerful tool with lots of options and complex visual displays. They want to browse around among many interlinked projects and tasks, selecting the views and operations consistent with their job of managing all the many disparate pieces. Why get...

Jeff Bonar

Founder and CEO of software company delivering mass-market wireless business software.

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