Selected Articles

• The Beginning of the End or The End of the Beginning? (PDF )
  Keynote Address for the Fifth Annual Internet, Multimedia and E-Business Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, June 24, 2004.
  
• Reducing Outsourcing Risk through Visual Communication (PDF )
  Published in the February, 2004 newsletter of the Society for Information Management.
  
• Usability Issues in the Re-Engineering of Legacy Systems
  Cognetics Corporation has been involved in a number of projects to re-engineer interactive legacy systems. In performing these jobs, it has become clear that the re-engineering of legacy systems raises a series of unique issues. Paper delivered at the Usability Professionals Association.
  
• The LUCID Computing Movement
  In 1999 Charlie led a "call-to-arms" for Logical User Centered Interaction Design, challenging the UCD community to get on board for a Year 2000 Opportunity.
  
• Re-Engineering Legacy Systems
  This presentation to a NIST symposium begins "A legacy is something handed down from the past and now that the computer has been used commercially for more than 40 years, we're finding that a lot of the old systems which have been handed down from previous development efforts need to be rebuilt and re-engineered to conform to current standards." Paper delivered at a NIST symposium.
  
• The Two Step Design Process
  A look at the differences between interaction design and technical design of software.
  
• Technology and Chaos
  An exploration of the role of chaos in business computing and makes some recommendations for how IS departments can improve the return on the investment (ROI) their companies make in computer technology.
  
• Re-inventing IS: The Outsourcing Dilemma
  This article discusses how the role of IS departments must change when technical development functions are outsourced. This article (somewhat edited) was published in the January 27, 1997 Communications Week.
  
• Danger: Construction Zone
  This article discusses net-centric computing in which programs are stored on a server rather than on users PC's. The concern raised is that the trend toward net-centric computing will damage software usability. This article was published in Communications Week in December 1996.
  
• The Trouble with Computers (Book Review)
  This is a review of Thomas Landauer's important book. Landauer conducts a meta-analysis of all "credible" studies on user-centered design and concludes that bad design has a serious negative impact on national productivity. This article was published in the newsletter of the Society for Technical Communications.
  
• Ending the Software Struggle
  This paper discusses why software is so difficult to use and presents suggestions for solving the problem. It was originally presented as a talk to the New Jersey Society for Information Management in September 1996.
  
• Communicating With Users
  Why can't users and programmers communicate? This paper discusses the problem and suggests some ways to solve it. This article was published in the Fall 1996 edition of NetMarketing, a web-oriented supplement to Advertising Age.