{"id":855,"date":"2004-09-08T09:40:18","date_gmt":"2004-09-08T09:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=855"},"modified":"2004-09-08T09:40:18","modified_gmt":"2004-09-08T09:40:18","slug":"fitts-law-and-other-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/855","title":{"rendered":"Fitts&#8217; law and other wisdom."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While surfing the exquisite Dustan Orchard&#8217;s 1976design blog this morning, I came across this post: <a title=\"Link presentation and Fitts' Law | Blog | 1976design.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.1976design.com\/blog\/archive\/2004\/09\/07\/link-presentation-fitts-law\/\">Link presentation and Fitts&#8217; Law<\/a>.  Fitts&#8217; Law is a UI guideline that says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div align=\"right\"> &#150; Paul Fitts<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Tog goes into this more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asktog.com\/basics\/firstPrinciples.html#fitts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s%20law\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nOf course, me being me, I immediately thought of this not as UI guideline but as a piece of life wisdom.  The targets I&#8217;ve been setting for myself lately are <i>huge.<\/i><br \/>\nIn much the same vein, I picked up these pieces of wisdom from the lovely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caterina.net\">Caterina Fake<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Nothing frightens true entrepreneurs because nothing can be allowed to interfere with their vision. They have the same passion as artists and writers. Just as an artist creates a painting from scratch, so entrepreneurs can realize their own dreams in precisely the same way &#150; by turning an idea into reality, earning a livelihood from it and, hopefully, making a profit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div align=\"right\"> &#150; Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;The challenge for business leaders in the twenty-first century is to assume the mantle of spiritual elder for their cultures, so that life doesn&#8217;t become trivial and grey for all the people who spend most of their life at work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div align=\"right\">&#150; Jim Channon<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The first one really struck home for me, because that so epitomizes the way I work and what I&#8217;m always trying to do &#150; dream stuff up and then make it real.  The second one got me because that&#8217;s where my previous full-time employer failed &#150; while they were constantly doing the old &#8220;Look!  Shiny!&#8221; routine, dandling parties and little favors about, they didn&#8217;t really keep those of us in the trenches inspired to bend over backwards for the millionaires in the upper echelons.  (Except for the founder &#150; him, I <i>definitely<\/i> admire.  Some of the others, though, were hellspawn.)<br \/>\nAnd now here I am, trying to do amazing things on a shoestring budget, and getting tired of shoestrings.  Oh, well &#150; story of my life, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While surfing the exquisite Dustan Orchard&#8217;s 1976design blog this morning, I came across this post: Link presentation and Fitts&#8217; Law. Fitts&#8217; Law is a UI guideline that says: &#8220;The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.&#8221; &#150; Paul Fitts Tog goes into this more here. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-dN","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}