In a followup to a previous post, Breaking the Cycle of Poverty in Korea through Education: A Social Business Proposal I saw some very exciting news that the Korean government will move to provide long-term full tuition coverage student loans for poor students starting 2010.

It even stipulates that the students are only required to pay back the loan after they find employment over a maximum 25 years. It also supports living expenses.

More detailed article on ??? ?? (sorry, in Korean) says that the conditions of the loan are:

??? ?? ???? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?? ??? ????.
?? ??? ????? ? ?? 1~7??(?? ???? ??? 4839?? ??)? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? C?? ????? ??. ????? 8~10?? ??? ??? ?? ??? ?????. ?? 1?? ?? ???(?? ?? 4?? ?? 4000????)? ?? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ? 200??? ???? ? ?? ??. ???? ?????????? ????, ?? 1~7??? ??? ?? ??? ?? ?? ?????? ????.

Very encouraging indeed. This does remove some of the barriers the poor students had to accessing higher education and bettering their lives.

Still remaining is how to make inroads into the issue of supporting poor kids while they are in school and bridging the gap between them and kids who get private extra-curricular education (???).

Update 2009-08-24
Some opposing opinions about the new loans. (in Korean)

The article claims:
- If you postpone repayment after graduating, you still get charged interest;
- Given the current employment market, most graduates will not be able to afford the repayment schedule;
- Loans mean that grants given to low-income students will reduced;
- This may be grounds for raising tuition, since you payback after you graduate;
- For the government providing the loans, this is another long-term, low-risk way of financially exploiting parents and students.

Vuitton. Not

Photo from a recent trip to Hong Kong.

Telsa Roadster Hot Wheels

The Tesla Roadster was included in a pack of Hot Wheels my wife bought for our 3 year-old son on a recent trip to the US. Nice.

Why does it not surprise me that there is a wiki page already on this toy.

Classic Apple icon design by Susan Kare

You can tell a lot about how much someone knows you by the gifts that they give. A good friend gave me this gift today after returning from a trip to New York.

He bought it at MoMA and the label said it was on sale for $3.95 from its original price of $14. The edges are all curled, but I don’t care, it’s a Susan Kare classic! The only thing that would have been better, would have been a mousepad showing a Moof.

Axure Pro

In a follow-up to 10 tools for creating wireframes and prototypes I did a quick comparison of some of the features I think are valuable in a wireframe/prototyping tool. Here a brief summary of the categories:

Master Templates: As any information architect knows, the home page is different. However most of the subpages have navigation and layout elements that are repeated. It’s nice to have a master page or template features that allows you to manage these common elements.

Multiple Themes: Whenever you test wireframes with users, a clean, professional wireframes gives the impression that the designs are final, and the users are apt to be less critical. Providing hand-drawn wireframes are less intimidating and show that it is a work in progress and users are more likely to comment on them. Some tools provided themes that made the wireframes look hand-drawn.

Basic Shapes: A good set of basic shapes and objects makes for less work and more time sweating over the details.

Custom Shapes You’ll always find something lacking in the basic set or you just prefer some objects to looks a certain way. More importantly, you may want some objects to be aggregated into usability-proven patterns that you use over and over again. Think Yahoo Design Patterns.

Annotations: As much as we wish all wireframes are self-explanatory, you’ll need to communicate the wireframes to stakeholders, developers, designer and others at some point. Being clear about how the elements are supposed to work is always better than a nasty surprise before launch.

Interactive Mockup: Testing the wireframes with users is the best way to get feedback on usability issues. Why not have interactive mockups created automatically as you create your wireframes? And if the tool generates HTML, your developers may love you more.

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The list is organized in order of price. Can’t beat free:

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You may ask which are my favorites? I think Axure Pro is the most comprehensive and UX professional-friendly, but a little pricey when you have to buy multiple licenses for it to be effective as a team collaboration tool. I didn’t like the fact that it’s Windows-only. When I was running a UX team a couple of years ago, really hated the fact that I had to decide between Visio (Win) and Omnigraffle (PC).

This is why I found myself leaning towards an online solution, iPlotz which overcomes the platform issue and also allows for online team collaboration and commenting. However iPlotz doesn’t have a strong interactive mockup features for testing with users, nor does it have the ability for custom symbols. If these additional features are planned for the future, it would definitely be at the top of my list.