Category | Insights

Don Norman introduced a design concept years ago on the tradeoff between knowledge in the head and knowledge in the world. It is a great concept for thinking about how to present information and where the memory burden is placed. An ATM device is designed with knowledge in the world. All the information needed to use the device is there on the display. Learning is not required. This is the right way to design an ATM. At the other extreme is knowledge in the head.  Knowledge in the head does require learning, but can be much more efficient. Pilots who need to react quickly in an emergency...

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I had a great experience at SIGGRAPH 2011. For those who haven’t heard of SIGGRAPH, it is one of the world’s largest annual conferences for computer graphics and interactive techniques. This year almost 20,000 people from all over the world came to learn about, talk about, and show off the latest trends, technologies, products, and research findings in the field. Some daily highlights for me were sitting in The Studio workshops where an instructor would take you through new workflows in software packages such as Photoshop, Maya, Realflow, Zbrush, and Unity. In between workshops you could...

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As meeting facilitators and trainers, we’re taught to engage the audience.  We use the Socratic Method, move around the room, and scan students’ faces to get feedback on how we’re doing.  We can tell if we are going too fast, too slow, and whether our attendees have stopped paying attention. But what about virtual meetings?  Simple things like reading a quizzical look on the face of a student or gauging the overall energy in the room become much more difficult.  We’ve probably all “multitasked” on a conference call (which is really just a euphemism for not paying attention),...

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_D71VRIHbg

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TiER1 recently asked current and past clients (and partners) to give us the skinny on how we’re doing in terms of client satisfaction. Forty-six people from a variety of industries responded to the survey, and while you might think we paid them to say nice things about us, we didn’t!  Our clients have spoken – and here’s what they had to say: When asked the likelihood to recommend us to friends/colleagues (on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being extremely likely), 91% gave us an 8, 9, or 10.  When asked how we compared to other firms: 84% said we were above average or exceptional...

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