useit.com -> Recommended Websites -> Spotlights -> 1997 Spotlights

Spotlighted Links From 1997
(and a few from 1996)

Please note that some of these links may have suffered linkrot. They did work as of the date when they were recommended, but the Web is a highly fluid medium.

December 19, 1997
The announcement of the Fourth Conference on Human Factors and the Web it now available. It will be sponsored by AT&T Labs in New Jersey on June 5, 1998
December 10, 1997
Results from the 8th GVU survey of Web users are becoming available. Main finding: modem-speeds continue to dominate with 77% of respondents who knew their speed connecting at 56K or less (same as last survey). Relative to the last survey, Web-users' household income is down ($53K instead of $58K); presumably this is not because using the Web makes you poor but because broader segments of the population are getting online.
December 7, 1997
Upside interview with C|net CEO Halsey Minor: incredibly rare case of a CEO who understands how people use the Internet (a single exception: I disagree with his comments on clickthrough which is the only reasonable way to pay for Web advertising)
December 1, 1997
NetInsider interview with Steve Johnson: can interaction design be an art form? (Johnson is the author of the recent book Interface Culture)
November 10, 1997
InfoWorld has an interesting article about next-generation user interfaces
November 1, 1997
Some television stations are borrowing the worst of Web design: cluttered screens with competing design elements (reading this article from the New York Times requires users to register)
October 27, 1997
Why you often get your fingers burned by high-design kettles
October 14, 1997
The Journal of Electronic Publishing's special issue with case studies of eight online journals
September 14, 1997
The Economist has a great survey (as usual) about telecommunications; they agree with me that voice is just another datatype, but then computers are just another telecoms device! (better hurry reading this: they will probably take it down soon - stupid use of the Web IMHO)
June 28, 1997
Ideas from the newspaper industry for using print media to promote online media (many of these ideas can also be used by other industries)
June 9, 1997
The July 1997 issue of Scientific American had a feature story about the low productivity of computer users
May 24, 1997
Dale Dougherty explains why it is a better Web business model to help users buy than to try a hard sell (one more reason advertising doesn't work on the Web!)
May 16, 1997
Why IBM's sitemap is good in theory but less good as currently implemented
May 7, 1997
Philips corporate design future vision site (rather heavily designed website, but interesting project)
April 11, 1997
Report from the WWW6 design panel (scroll down destination page for story)
March 23, 1997
The New York Times' James Gleick correctly says that "the failure of push is preordained"
January 11, 1997
Ha! Slate has caved in and will no longer charge a subscription fee. Microtransactions will rule the Web as I have said since August 1995.
January 7, 1997
The implications of every Web page being a component of the Web as a whole.
December 22, 1996
The Economist has an interesting analysis of the way electronic communication and the Internet change human language (especially English)
December 10, 1996
The results of the latest Web user survey are in (over 15,000 respondents). A major finding: users' bandwidth is still dropping, with 72% connected at 28.8 or below (up from 61% a year ago).
January 1, 1996
The Fourth WWW Conference had several interesting user interface sessions. The most important paper at the conference was the Millicent Protocol by Steve Glassman and colleagues from DEC's Palo Alto Systems Research Center. Finally, we have a credible way of processing microtransactions over the WWW (though the term "milli" in the title is an exaggeration since the protocol is best suited for maybe 0.1 cents per transaction). Support for low-cost content purchases will really drive high-quality web design: content providers can only do a high-quality job if they get paid enough to hire good designers and writers, but users will only pay up if the payment is small.

Other Years