Website Response Times An Article by Jakob Nielsen www.nngroup.com Users really care about speed in interaction design...A snappy user experience beats a glamorous one, for the simple reason that people engage more with a site when they can move freely and focus on the content instead of on their endless wait. 0.1 seconds gives the feeling of instantaneous response. This level of responsiveness is essential to support the feeling of direct manipulation. 1 second keeps the user's flow of thought seamless. 10 seconds keeps the user's attention. A 10-second delay will often make users leave a site immediately. uxperformanceinteraction
Against Canvas An Article by Alan Jacobs ayjay.org Even with all the features and plugins, Canvas presumes certain ways of organizing classes that might not be universal, just typical. And if (like me) you’re an atypical user, you have to choose between constantly fighting with the system or gradually doing more and more things the way Canvas wants you to do them. This, by the way, is why it’s never true to say that technologies are neutral and what matters is how you use them: every technology without exception has affordances, certain actions that it makes easy, and other actions that it makes difficult or impossible. A technology whose affordances run contrary to your convictions can rob you of your independence — and any technology deployed on the scale of Canvas will inevitably do that. It will turn every teacher into an obedient Canvas-user. I don’t want to be an obedient Canvas-user. technologylearningux