Bosworth on Physics, Psychology, and Software


Adam Bosworth almost always makes me think, so I jump at a chance to listen to him or read what he writes. He recently gave a talk in NYC as part of the Google Speaker Series and Darryl Taft wrote up a report at eWeek.

Bosworth talked about how physics and psychology affect which applications fail and which succeed. His examples: AJAX, PDAs, and natural language recognition. His recommendations:

  • Keep it simple and stupid--even if that requires more clicks
  • Use AJAX where it makes a difference--not just the geewhiz factor
  • Make your tools transparent and fast
  • Support bottom-up learning

Google's success, of course, can be attributed to these (and other) ideas.


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Last modified: Thu Oct 10 12:47:19 2019.