Why WSJ Mobile App Gets ** Customer Reviews

A confusing startup screen that offends existing subscribers dooms The
Wall Street Journal's iPhone app to low ratings.
	
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for July 5:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-startup-screen.html

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Usability Week 2011 conference

  * Toronto: July 11-15
  * New York City: August 1-6
  * San Francisco: September 25-30
  * Austin, TX: October 3-7
  * London: November 13-18

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

DEADLINE to save $200 on Toronto registration THIS FRIDAY July 8:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/toronto/agenda.html

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USABILITY IN 44 COUNTRIES

I looked through the registration lists for the Usability Week conferences
for the first half of the year. We hosted the event in 4 countries during
these 6 months but had participants from 44 countries.

It's getting more noticeable every year that usability has truly become a
global concern.

Here are the country codes of the countries that participated in Usability
Week so far. Let's hope for even more in the second half of the year.

AE AT AU BE BR CA CH CN CZ DE DK EC EE ES FI FR GR HK HU IE IL IN
IT JP KR LT LU LV MX NL NO NZ PE PH PL RU SE SG SK TH TR TW UK US 

(How many of these countries do you even recognize :-)

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GREAT MUSEUM, IFFY NAME

This weekend I went to see the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.
Great museum and well worth the 3 hours I spent there.

  > http://www.waltdisney.org

I would have stayed longer, but some members of my party got impatient.
Herein lays the problem: What does "Family Museum" imply? That's it's a
museum for families? (I.e., particularly suitable for kids.) No, this is a
museum primarily for grownups, with information about the creative process
and the business adversities Walt had to overcome in his early and
mid-career stages. (And it's superb for people with an appreciation for
these topics.)

In this case, you have to parse the museum name so that the word "family"
is connected to the word before it, not the word following it. The museum
was founded by Walt's family to tell his story.

This is a standard usability problem whenever you use multi-word phrases
as link anchors, navigation labels, menu items, etc. Always consider
whether users might parse a phrase by connecting the words in a different
manner than you intended.

(Disclosure: The Walt Disney Company, but not the museum, is one of our
consulting clients.)