ThoughtWorks Chicago Entrance Sign Mockup
Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

This afternoon I threw together a mockup of what the new sign in the entrance of the new ThoughtWorks Chicago office will look like. I worked with Michael, who did the actual design of the sign.

Photoshop is, in fact, quite powerful. I’m becoming really in tune with it, after many years of practice. Photoshop has some really really advanced features that are difficult to understand. I’ve found that once you figure out how to use them, in a one-by-one fashion they become easier to understand. Still, it takes a lot of patience.

In the book I’m currently reading there was some talk about how machines should/could be used to not simply help people do their work, but to take human performance to the next level. That is, computers and technology shouldn’t just be easy to use…they should help people do things they couldn’t do before.

I don’t know if that’s happening today. I see organizations doing things they could not have done without computers, but individuals…not so much. Sure, people do some things with computers that could not have been done otherwise…but on the whole, we’re doing a lot of reading, writing, printing, etc. The stuff we’ve always done, just in a digital format.

Why do I bring this up? Well, today is World Usability Day! Usability is concerned with making tools easier to use and understand. But what I think we’ve lost in all this talk of usability is the idea that we should be helping humans do things that they could not have done at all without the technology we create. It’s not just about being “user-friendly,” rather, we should be “user-empowering.” Right?

Where do you stand on the issue of Usability vs. Human Performance? Weigh in with a comment.