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Cheesecake
A friend of mine helped me out by solving one of those annoying problems we all have. I had the line of a song (My succatash wish) going through my head and I couldn't place it. He identified the song as Groove is in the Heart by Dee-lite. I thanked him by sending him my Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe. Since I wrote it up, I might as well share it with everybody. And to make sure that KIPlog is not seen as one of those journally blogs with recipes but as a serious source for Web and interface design news, you will find the Jakob Nielsen Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe below mine.
KIPlog Pumpkin Cheesecake
Ingredients
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Special Equipment
9-inch springform cake pan
low cooking pan of some kind, capable of holding an inch of water
Crust
graham cracker crumbs
ginger snap cookies
1/2 stick butter
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Filling
2 8-oz packages Philadelphia brand cream cheese (DO NOT USE THE LOWFAT! What would be the point?)
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
5 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 stick of butter
tsp vanilla extract
honey
cinnamon
nutmeg
ginger
Knob Creek Bourbon
1 can of pumpkin (Libby's if you can get it)
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Method
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Take the cream cheese and butter out of the frig for about an hour to get soft.
Mash the ginger snaps into crumbs, and if you bought graham crackers instead of crumbs, mash them too.
Spread lots of butter on the bottom and sides of the springform pan, mush the rest of butter into the mashed cookies, and press the mixture into the bottom of the pan and on the sides. You won't need to go all the way up the sides perfectly, the cake won't reach that high. Put in a 325 degree oven for 5-8 minutes just to set the crust.
Mush and beat the cream cheese, butter, sugars and cream 'til mixed. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add the eggs slowly, a little at a time, mixing them in. Add the spices according to your taste and mix in. I like more ginger than cinnamon and more cinnamon than nutmeg. Add a dolop of honey. Add the can of pumpkin and bourbon (a shot or so). Mix 'til smooth.
Pour the filling into the pan and center the pan on square of heavy-duty foil; press to side of pan. Put the pan in the other pan with an inch of water or so. This water step can be skipped if you want a more well-done crust.
Put in a 325° oven for an hour or until the top is light brown, the filling is set and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Take it out, chill for awhile (at least an hour, overnite if possible), and try not to eat the entire cake in one sitting.
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Jakob Nielsen's Pumpkin Cheesecake
Summary
Although cheesecake has its role as a dessert, the above recipe tends to discourage usability for 3 reasons: it distracts users from the actual content, it introduces problems to fundamental food interaction, and it consumes resources that would be better spent eating the content.
Cheescakes encourage gratuitous baking: Since we can bake things in a cake, why not bake things in a cake? Baking clearly has its place in pumpkin interaction. However, as my food interaction guidelines discuss, that place is limited.
Studies have shown that large numbers of ingredients tend to confuse cheesecake users and distract users from the actual content. The ingredients in the above recipe tend to serve as a 'container' for the content, which is the pumpkin. In order to allow the users to better find and concentrate on the content, the additional ingredients should be eliminated.
The cheesecake GUI also causes several navigation and accessibility problems, which are solved by separation of the content from the cheescake format.
The cheesecake format causes navigation issues such as "where to make the first cut" as well as accessibilty problems caused by the availabilty of the proper serving equipment. While the majority of eaters have a knife capable of cutting the cheesecake only 54% of Americans have a pie server, much less in other countries.
The rich cheesecake format also produces a heavy tax on eating resources.
It was more than three times as common for users to limit their eating to three-quarters of a piece as opposed to eating a full piece. Even when eating the "full" piece, users only eat about 75% of the crust. Eliminating the cheescake format, allows users to 'download' more of the content faster.
If cheesecake was cheap to produce and if all food content creators could make a cheesecake as easily as they can open a can of pumpkin puree, then perhaps many of these problems would be alleviated. For now, they remain serious issues. I thus recommend that food providers interested in enhancing usability use the following cheesecake recipe.
Ingredients
1 can of pumpkin puree
Method
Open the can and spread the pumpkin puree on a plate. Be sure to spread the pumpkin around the plate in a nice big pile to allow for Fitt's law.
A minority of users will not have the appropriate fork hardware. To allow for these users, provide a text-only description of the pumpkin.
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