How it feels to watch a user test your product for the first time

Jonathon Shariat. Similar:Breaking: Student consults syllabus before asking question about course scheduleNASHVILLE, TN – Vanderbilt University is…AcademiaAbout the Sinkhole in the Adjunct Faculty Lounge, and Other Mid-Semester AnnouncementsI recently spoke with the Sarah Sutton, …Academia"Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just do…Over the past couple of years, researche…CultureThe t-shirt…

They called it a “flashlight” because early handheld lights weren’t designed to shine steadily

A student’s short story featuring a treasure hunt at an ancestral mansion uses a vintage name for the mistress of the house a vintage name and supplies a butler, suggesting a Victorian Engliand setting. But the story also used the term “flashlight” — an Americanism for what the Brits are more likely to call an “electric…

NYT: G.W. Bush is “super-overexposed” and “so far to our right” — so they omitted his presence from “Bloody Sunday” coverage

The quotes in my headline are accurate, but completely misleading. Saving this for an example in my journalism class, demonstrating the obligation that journalists have to avoid the perception of bias in their reporting. A photographer for The New York Times says the publication did not crop former President George W. Bush and first lady…

5 tips for choosing the right typeface

When it comes to picking a typeface, you can’t rely on gut alone. Making the right choice depends on function, context and a whole host of other factors. But how do you ensure you’re going about it the right way? Here we give you pointers to send you in the right direction…Creative Bloq. Similar:In June…

The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking

I quibble with The Chronicle headline writer’s notion that paper & pencil are “no-tech,” but hand-written notes are valuable. Students tested right after a lecture tended to answer factual questions equally well regardless of how they took notes, but students who handwrote their notes did consistently better on conceptual questions. What’s more, when students were…

Local News in a Digital Age

Local TV news is the “most visible presence” in the news space, according to a Pew study, though most TV stories are routine traffic and weather reports and short, shallow “anchor reads” (in which the well-coiffed announcers read into the camera) rather than the result of thoughtful, original reporting. To paraphrase Into the Woods, “Visible…

Downsides of being a convincing liar

Test subjects whose test papers “accidentally” included the answer key had an inflated sense of how well they would do on a follow-up test that did not include answers, suggesting that the cheaters were not aware how much their performance on the first test was dependent on their access to answers. The people who’d had…