Smartphone Research Continued

Updated reading for project:
The Inmates are running the Asylum, SIG CHI 2005 conference, Mobile Usability, Designing with Standard and various sites. A full reading and research list will be posted in the next couple of days. Created a short list for the smartphones, they are as follows:
Motorola Q - good phone but maybe too simple, Blackberry 8800 - solid and it's own browser, Palm Treo 750W - good phone and Windows Mobile. I need to decide if I want to run with Windows Mobile or is this not common enough to facilitate a frequently occuring task? Project plan for the tests will be created shortly with further details on the tasks and the scope of the project.

Usability Research

Running through EBSCO Academic premiere. Found many articles on usability. Did not find articles on Smartphones and Usability. Looking for the better Smartphone for tests. Palm Treo 700p, Motorola Q and Blackberry 8800. I really want to focus on a browser that is as similar to Firefox and Explorer as possible.

Charts for little numbers

I was recently reading a presentation and came to the next slide and it had your standard bar chart. However, something seemed odd about the chart. It was tracking across the months on the x axis, six to be exact. However, the numbers for the y-axis were so low, we're talking six and under that the chart seemed overdone or even pointless. Are there cut off points or limits to bar charts and the type of content that should be presented? Would this have been better suited for another representation (pie chart, just numbers, a list?) Does presenting this information possibly detract from any amount of credibility because the numbers come across so low and unimportant? When I first saw it, I wasn't impressed but what if those numbers represent something major? In this instance a well designed table could have provide more impact. Maybe a graphical depiction of each month with the numbers inside.

I'm reading(or skimming) through How We Reason. In one of my Information Architecture classes we've touched on sensemaking. I've also seen some posts on Jared Spool's site referencing the Paradox of Choice, which should be showing up soon. So I figure I'd pour through these three books over the next several weeks and see how they're related and overlapping. I'm interested in seeing how these topics can assist information architecture and usability. Especially as users begin to control their own experiences on sites, the choices that they have available are going to be critical. This will be a challenge(the good kind) for information architects.