Its the week of User-centered design at the Des/Dev center over at Macromedia.com:

Flash 99% Good - Written by Kevin Airgid and Stephanie Reindel. This is chapter 8 of the Flash99% Good book that has been made available both as HTML and PDF download at Macromedia.com. Chapter 8, "The Future of Flash," covers Flash as a front end to web services, Flash and broadband, and the future of Flash usability.

Ready, Set, Go: Usability Testing - Written by Elizabeth McLachlan and Leanne Waldal at Otivo.com. Goes through the process of setting up a usability study. With a brief look at how you plan for, conduct, recruit users, execute and analyze the results of a usability test.

Start Now: Develop with Users - Written by Jared Braiterman, Ph.D.
jaredresearch.com. Knowing your audience. Creating profiles and scenarios to design a site that meets the needs of your target audience.

[Via Flazoom]

Nice to see Macromedia showcasing how Flash MX can be used to create hightly user-friendly, hard-hitting AND accessible presentations with "Macromedia Executive Presentation"

Its a job well done. We get to see a nice clean user interface, good streaming and video in Flash MX, integrated well with clean Flash content.

I hope Macromedia will make available an article that goes into detail on how the presentation was done, and the work that was put into making it. It is a good showcase of how to make a good presentation with Flash MX.

[Via Flazoom]

Studiowiz has had a major overhaul, and the site is fresher than ever. If Keran McKenzie and the other people over at Studiowiz can keep this up, its going to be a great resource to keep going back to! :-)

[Via Pnut's Thoughts]

Its released, the Flash 5 player for Nokia Communicator 9200 series

[Via JD on MX]

<obligatory rant>
Please don't let it take 2 years to get Flash MX to various cool devices, pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top?
</obligatory rant>

Chris MacGregor has written a very good reply to Jakob's latest addition to his "Flash 99% Bad" paper. You did notice that he has added text to it now, text that I am sure wasn't added because of the job he now has gotten for Macromedia, after all - he is a serious researcher and have more integrity than that, right?

Read Chris's: The Cooler: An Open Letter to Jakob 'MX' Nielsen

Nielsen himself weighs in on the announcement with an addendum to his Flash: 99% Bad column, but unlike the other posts, Nielsen's is filled with factual errors and misplaced back-patting. Let's take a look and correct the errors and offer credit where it is due

Chris knows a whole lot about Flash and usabiltiy. If you are interested in this debate, you should take the time to read what he is saying.