curiousLee

Need it now!

My sister-in-law Mary, who works at a large architecture firm, told me a funny story about a recent BlackBerry text entry gaffe. A co-worker was on a job site and needed a certain numbered document sent over in a hurry. So she used her company issued BlackBerry to e-mail a message to someone back at the office saying, "I need 428 now." As is probably common with BlackBerry users in a hurry, she momentarily confused the shift key with the unlabeled ALT key (with funky half moon icon and located where you might expect shift should be), and document number became the letters S-E-X. Without re-reading the contents of the screen, she sent the message "I need SEX now." Yes, the ALT key even capitalized the letters. The e-mail recipient calmly replied asking if she really meant what she said. I'm sure the co-worker blushed the full spectrum of red.

[Note: I originally wrote that my sister-in-law Mary made the BlackBerry error, but it was actually someone else at her office. I've corrected the text above.]

Thinking Shneiderman

The gang at Older Wiser Wired (OWW), AARP's community of practice advocating web usability for older adult audiences, has published an interview with Ben Shneiderman. Shneiderman is the founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at The University of Maryland (1983-2000), and author of the book Leonardo's Laptop - Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. The interview coincides with Shneiderman's free-to-the-public discussion on Universal Usability this Tuesday, October 7th at AARP Headquarters. I'll be making the commute down to DC to take in the event with wife Amy, who is part of the OWW gang (which I'm joining next month). I'll try to moblog the event and lunch if I have a GPRS signal.