tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-207172632024-03-07T10:31:59.970-08:00YABOUYet Another Blog on Usability, ... and tech related stuff.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-49225684668572941512008-11-25T22:55:00.001-08:002008-12-03T10:42:28.546-08:00CanUX - Banff - Nov 16th-18th, 2008<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkbChdiryTk_V5DlQcBJtdFTYFmrN8MRpYHVLw2zj9u2FTlzeJlOP6g02ISdEArI2lNGwQDKie-pYCf-g3qSgX08S56NL2LkEL_0oDPnkjh57EyLxgxzgwrbsvD9qwIZI98Jb/s1600-h/DSC08122.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272828863299083170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkbChdiryTk_V5DlQcBJtdFTYFmrN8MRpYHVLw2zj9u2FTlzeJlOP6g02ISdEArI2lNGwQDKie-pYCf-g3qSgX08S56NL2LkEL_0oDPnkjh57EyLxgxzgwrbsvD9qwIZI98Jb/s200/DSC08122.JPG" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; float: right; width: 200px; height: 150px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></a><span style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><br /></span><span style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"></span><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: left; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><a href="http://canux.nform.ca/" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">CanUX</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> - Banff - Nove</span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-size:85%;">m</span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-size:85%;">ber 16th-18th, 2008</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b><span style="font-size:85%;">Introduction</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">Th</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">is is a seriously s</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">maller conference than I have attended for a long-time, and I was looking forward to the intima</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">cy in contrast to the large scale organization and co-ordination that you get at conferences like CHI. T</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">his conference puts a cap on</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;"> 70 people - with the intent to keep it small and focused. It is organi</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">zed by </span><a href="http://www.nform.ca/"><span style="font-size:85%;">nForm</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> Exp</span></span></span></b><b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="font-size:85%;">erience Consulting, based on Edmonton.</span></span></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The first session was a design slam:</span></div></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> </div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Design Slam</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8y0DqtjYlD6ErRifpLRkiUAS78GbsFTZ-EVTE6HPLFJ9hWxloW7pfNrI2ZCWY8u2apDYbTGuPudmtH_PRFJsnlsmyPMNfIMM5lusSAN5XZG-WaXTT9m37xINxv2p8nUXzwSq/s1600-h/DSC08127.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272829449941897266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA8y0DqtjYlD6ErRifpLRkiUAS78GbsFTZ-EVTE6HPLFJ9hWxloW7pfNrI2ZCWY8u2apDYbTGuPudmtH_PRFJsnlsmyPMNfIMM5lusSAN5XZG-WaXTT9m37xINxv2p8nUXzwSq/s200/DSC08127.JPG" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; height: 150px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></a></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxFg9yXCaeWfh6jqKNlMBHSfYfEMf_PLH64tPIHBnd4fipaypS7ZhJSU-xwrSXO2qbzPDc0-DfIQIVI-ZiYTgoTkldO4PfIS_qSedhCzvuMahKWJbXqpIo4TmeZwxUI61JvNRh/s1600-h/DSC08138.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272830029547607490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxFg9yXCaeWfh6jqKNlMBHSfYfEMf_PLH64tPIHBnd4fipaypS7ZhJSU-xwrSXO2qbzPDc0-DfIQIVI-ZiYTgoTkldO4PfIS_qSedhCzvuMahKWJbXqpIo4TmeZwxUI61JvNRh/s200/DSC08138.JPG" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; height: 150px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></a></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "></span></span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272830876884886114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgvsqGiGQFFLwebTn44LQsNmXyBmvrTddT983tazZfR0CTR6x2dsxbRTxmg6tAwPIfwcOiEDg2LAaGJa6yDCf9PxFPa7ZRGmAK_drU9CKohSpSjFn2tBBWbMiLv6MyHHRYNKuG/s200/DSC08141.JPG" style="margin-top: 0pt; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; height: 150px; " /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">We started the conference with a hands-on design activity. The 'clients' were a somewhat ailing airline: Best-Jet, serving North America internal flights, and also running vacation destination trips to</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> Mexico. In turn, each of the four employees of the company, in their respective roles - CEO, operations, sales, marketing, gave their respective concerns about the company, and the changes that they'd like to see, and they also provided a bit of customer feedback data. </span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">The task was broad - to create a plan to improve experience for customers; but it mustn't cost too much because of financial issues the company is facing. The experience needed to be accessible, and personalized.</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Each table - of about 7 people - were the consulting company, and needed to come up with a competitive pitch. In all the responses from each table were remarkably similar. Most teams had considered a few primary personas: the business traveller, the vacation traveller, and families. Teams had particularly looked at the common needs these personas had, and created a proposal to address these needs, as well as the issue that had been raised of the lack of engagement of cabin staff.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The pitches presented to the client were also aligned by considering the experience before, during, and after the flight, and teams advocated piloting the improvements in a phased approach.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Here are some of the suggestions that were scoped out:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Before:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Build an on-line profile, based on existing infrastructure of frequent flier miles.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Profiles can be used as the basis to building 'groups': frequent travel partners, families.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Develop a system that captures info to provide a more personalized experience based on preferences, and enables in-flight options to be automatically 'turned on' for assigned seat.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Advance info. about food options, entertainment options (even this level of info. doesn't exist today - and passengers are forced to make decisions about what food to consume before the flight, and what personal entertainment to bring - without knowing what will be offered in-flight).</span></li> </ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">During:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Profile info. of customers enables cabin staff to serve needs, increases function and meaningfulness of job, increases job satisfaction, and motivation.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">If seat gets switched, profile gets moved automatically.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Using profile info. to define seating zones, such as the family-friendly, work, and sleep zones.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">In-flight internet access - enabling business travelers to access documents in the cloud, online shopping etc.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Provide the option of in-seat screen internet access + keyboard (as opposed to having to manage a laptop on-flight).</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Enable plug-in in-seat screen use - direct from laptop - so that all documents can be accessed via the in-seat screen. Use of a privacy screen with this.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Enable automatic uploading of photos to your favorite online site. Provide option to make public for an in-flight slide-show, that collates photos from passengers and shows them on a channel of the in-seat entertainment system.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">In-flight chat options, multi-player gaming options (like Virgin America is planning to provide).</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Travel destination information, ability to purchase local attraction passes.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">For destination travel, enable co-branded flights ("the fun starts before you board the plane").</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Partnership with Google for online info. system: AdWords & AdSense</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Partnership with Amazon: Kindle - use on aircraft, and rental for vacation; pre-loaded with material related to your profile.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">In-flight survey, rewarded with milage points.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Automated in-flight notifications sent to 'your flight collection contact', updating arrival info.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Faster existing aircraft - utilize all 3 exits.</span></li></ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div></div></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">After:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Update profile with data from flight. Personal analytics of flights: games played and scored, movies watched, photos etc.</span></li></ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The Design Slam worked well as a first session. It got us to know each other, and think broadly about changes that could be made to an end-to-end user experience.</span></div> </div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b><span style="font-size:85%;">Web Form Design - Luke Wroblewski</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b></b><div id="gpxw" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b></b><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_506gznc6fcs_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><b></b></div> <b></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Luke kicked off the second day of the conference with a presentation on web form design.</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">He started off by giving plenty of illustrations of web forms that suck, and using big numbers to help us realize the inpact of having bad form design: such a numbers of forms that are filled in for ebay, given that 30,000 people in the US alone make their living off ebay, and it being the 30th largest economy in the world. The main structure of the presentation revolved aound considering 10 fixes to (an old version of ) a form that users need to complete to use Boingo (the wifi connection service).</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Luke kept the audience attentive during the two hour session, not least by his relaxed and engaging style of presenting, as well as simply having insightful and interesting content; but he also engaged the audience in a game of web-form-design bingo! Prior to delivering the content, he requested that we note 10 ways that the Boingo form could be improved, and then during the presentation we matched our answers to his suggestions. This provided a bit of fun, and a game-like quality to the presentation.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The top 10 suggestions that he gave were:</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">1. Create a clear path to completion for the user</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">2. Fix labels - in this case by top aligning them</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">3. Minimize the help and tips required</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">4. Provide validation in-line: example - user name availability</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">5. Make a distinction between primary and secondary actions</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">6. Make it clear what's going on, when actions require some time to process</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">7. Clearly communicate an error has occured, through top-placement and visual contrast</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">8. Remove fields that ask for info. that is not needed</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">9. Improve form organization: examples: grouping of questions, speak with one voice using natural language</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">10. Employ gradual engagement: enable them to experience your product (even a bit of it) prior to requiring them to sign-up</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Luke emphasized that these principles work for small and simple forms, as well as large and complex ones. Large complex forms can typically be made much simpler, by striping out unnecessary segments. A quote, that his team back at ebay apparently put on their slides when purusing an endeavor to reduce form complexity: "no one raindrop believes that they are to blame for the flood." Finally, the idea of gradual engagement is somewhat new online, and something that we will see more and more of. Inspiration for this comes from Will Wright, creator of Sims, and Spore, who has emphasized that people should have success with your product within the first 5 minutes.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Luke's materials on web form design can be found at:</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><a href="http://www.lukew.com/"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.lukew.com/</span></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <a href="http://www.lukew.com/ff/index.asp" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.lukew.com/ff/index.asp</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <a href="http://www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel/"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel/</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://www.uie.com/articles/form_design_wild/"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.uie.com/articles/form_design_wild/</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.lukew.com/</span><span style="font-size:85%;">resources/web_form_design.asp</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">UX Swimlanes - Yvonne Shek</span></b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b></b><div id="ador" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b></b><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_50777hgs8d2_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><b></b></div> <b></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">This presentation was about creating swim lanes for use in design. Swim lanes are a bird's eye view of a story, scenario, or working component - that shows the user's experience, business processes, and under lying technical systems that support the story.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Yvonne presented an</span><a href="http://nform.ca/blog/images/Swimlane_example2.gif"><span style="font-size:85%;"> example of swim lanes</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">, that supports materials tailored for execs and project sponsors (comics), project managers, ux, mid level business, and tech / architecture types (tools and systems).</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Swim labes are used very early on in the project ideally, in order to get everyone on the same page & buy-in. They help to define the process, and the scope. Developing swim lanes involves understandint the user, their goals, motives and tasks, and also maps out the start point, end point, and outcomes.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">More materials on swim lanes can be found at:</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://nform.ca/blog/2008/04/swimlanes-for-the-win"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://nform.ca/blog/2008/04/swimlanes-for-the-win</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://www.affectivedesign.org/archives/240"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.affectivedesign.org/archives/240</span></a></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Session - Banff Centre, Creativity</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b></b><div id="dsz7" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b></b><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_508r9x3txcr_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><b><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></b><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_509g2bfn8hq_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><b><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></b><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_510hr2gm8dv_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><b></b></div> <b></b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Trainiers from the Banff Center provided 3 options for creativity leadership experience: (i) collage creation (ii) drum rhythm from around the world (iii) improv</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">I chose the improv class, and enojoyed an afternoon of creativity and leadership awareness improve techniques. The introduction to this reviewed the ideas around improv, and we started off by partnering up to engage in a unique form of introductions, comparing the environment youcome from (where you grew up), with the environment you are currently in. This enabled us to focus on who we are, rather than the standard details about what we do.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Much of the session involved experiences improv activities, starting withe the class 'red ball' activity: </span> </div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">o improv ball-throwing with everyone in a circle</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">o improv ball-throwing in pairs, repeating the sound of the ball, and making a new one</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">o improv reflection mimiking, with one person the driver, and the other the follower, then both 'following'</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">o improv statues, with each new statue, resulting from the previous</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Some important insights from this session included:</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Learn to banish the inner critic, either through working quickly - and not giving it time to surface, or by boring it away. If you move quickly, and 'just do' then unique ideas are surfaced. If you lull it to sleep then you can free yourself from its contraints.<br /></span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Attend to non-verbal communication to better understand what is being communicated.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Don't over-think things. Allow ideas to emerge.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Other professions (music, sports) are primarily about practice - as leaders we need to create opportunities to practice.</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">If teams can work together well, they can improvise, and find new inspiration and ideas. They are likely to produce fruitful, impactful work, and these may devaiate, and be better than, initial plans.</span></li> </ul></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://canux.nform.ca/2008/10/15/a-better-method-designing-with-developers/"><span style="font-size:85%;">A Better Method for Designing with Developers (Jerome Ryckborst)</span></a></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="wma7" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_511dthkv7fk_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /></div></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><a href="http://tinyurl.com/fiveSketches"><span style="font-size:85%;">Slides</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Jerome created the five sketches technique to instill good thorough design-processes in his work place, in a situation where there were no designers, and developers did design. In previous situations he had got tired of design falling at the end of the process, with insufficient attention paid to it. Jerome developed a method, inspired by several areas: parallel design (multiple designs), Six Hats (de Bono), and Conative preferences (your doing style: generator, implementor, conceptualizer, optimizer).</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Parallel design is at the heart of the method - and is a technique that comes from Bill Buxton. The intention is to saturate the design space. It involves having several developers independently propose designs, and combining them. The process as a whole starts with a discussion of the problem, and defining the problem. After this each developer sketches 5 ideas, and the sketches are presented. Ideas from the sketches are then mashed up, analysis conducted, and a sketch written.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Some of the benefits realized by employing this '5 designs-or-else" have included increasing and improving creativity fitness levels, changing corporate culture, increasing the engagement of employees and saving time and money. Jerome has also found use of the technique influences future design.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div></span><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Show and Tell Reception</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="t3ct" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_512g37km9gx_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_513dncw2bcm_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_514f5sgj6fg_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></div> </div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The show-and-tell reception was fun. From data visualization and artistic work, to a cartoon creation site for kids, through the IA redesign of a government city website, through swim lanes that were used as the backbone of a coporate presentation that utilized photo-based cartoons. </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://canux.nform.ca/2008/10/23/sketchboards-good-design-faster/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Sketchboards: Good Design Faster - Brandon Schauer</span></a></b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="ctvh" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_515d95pkhd5_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_516tchc2mhm_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span><img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_517f5nm82fm_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /></div> </div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Brandon extended the emerging theme of the conference - of sketching, getting stuff done quickly, and exploring multiple ideas. In contrast to using wireframes, he'd been looking for a method that avoids unnecessary details, reveals the best of multiple solutions, & gets everyones input and buy-in. </span><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span> </div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The solution incolves plenty of sketching, creating sketchboards, sharing and incorporating feedback, bringing it altogether and working in a sprint. The process involves both exploratory sketching for getting initial ideas out - which involves getting out lots of rough and varied ideas, and refinement sketching.</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Exploratory Sketching</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">So, we had a go - first with exploratory sketching - using a 6-up template - and filling the page with multiple ideas in 6 minutes. The project that we were given was to engage with some aspect of 'Facebook for the Intranet'. The ideas here is just to free up your mind and get some ideas out. Here's mine:</span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="mjt3" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_521gh3tkxg9_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /></div></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Brendon provided some techniques and resources to help with exploratory sketching:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Word Play</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;">: Consult lists of words, (e.g. autocomplete, booklist, quicklook, tabes, steps, starts, drag & drop, tags and tag clouds, trees, work areas, </span><span style="font-size:85%;">etc.).</span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Inspiration libraries</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;">: use a good screen capturing tool, and photo tool and build your own huge inventory of different things that you can do.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Conceptual models</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;">: any idea that you have is just a point in space, so you need to find out the rest of the space - use spectrums, 2x2's, grids. e.g. 2x2 Active to Passive, Anonymous to Familiar.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li> <li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Presentation, Leah Buley</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;">: </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/guestbf976e/ux-team-of-one-347500" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">How to be a UX team of one</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> (presentation on slideshare). </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li></ul></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b><span style="font-size:85%;">Refinement sketching</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">After exploratory sketching comes refinement sketching, where you move into one or two of those ideas, and focus on those better ideas. This sketch should be on the 1-up page. </span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">In order to get people to focus where you want them to:</span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">use designer markers: - cool and warm gray</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Switch out line weight</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">double trace</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Using cross-hatching to take the focus away from certain areas. </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></li> </ul><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Also at this stage, take time to create call-outs; but not to the level of wireframes, and even here do multiple sketches where beneficial.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Sketchboard</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">The sketchboard stage usess a very large sheet of paper, and you'll get input from the whole team. The board should be filled with sketches. On this board requirements and personas can be added, steps and processes should be laid out. Bradon also had a handy tip - to use drafting dots to reposition pages, which are more flexible than tape, and can be repositioned on the fly.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> </div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <b><span style="font-size:85%;">Facilitation stage</span></b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The facilitation stage is where, ideas are shared, and a discussion is facilitated. At this stage there can be a lot of drawing going on, on top of the sketchboard. It becomes this annotated living document, that everyone can draw on. Pass the pen - if you don't like how this is drawn - then pass the pen to them. Lot's of standing. You can also assess who is engaged, and who is not.</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><span style="font-size:85%;">Sprint</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Bringing this all together, and making it work typically involves a 5-day sprint:</span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Monday: Brain dump, start sketches</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Tuesday: Assemble sketchboard, Share and review sketchboard</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Wednesday: Create higher fidelity designs</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Thursday: Share higher fidelity designs, Refine designs</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Friday: Keep refining designs, complete designs</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Sprints are exhausting, and need to be scoped. Brandon commented, that he'd once worked on a week long sprint that was only about the left-hand nav.</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">This process is therefore about enabling the right ideas at the right time, having a lot of ideas, and making a design activity that everyone can get involved with.</span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://canux.nform.ca/2008/10/15/session-visual-thinking-in-practice/" rel="bookmark"><span style="font-size:85%;">Session: Visual Thinking in Practice (Dave Gray)</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span class="feedback"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span class="feedback"><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">David Gray is all about making very simple visuals of things that are complex or very confusing. One of the points that he made that resonated with me, was that we ground children in reading, writing and arithmetic; but not drawing - and we loose the freedom that we have to draw, and we very quickly wind up thinking that we can't. This session - about how to draw - followed well from Brandon's, which encouraged us to draw as part of the creative process.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">David taught us symbols - the visual alphabet [insert picture].</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="c4.b" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_522csrntsdf_b" style="width: 160px; height: 213.333px; " /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">The visuals on the left are all pretty much linear, and next comes the creation of contours and shapes - shown on the right.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">David impressed upon us that by using these shapes, we can draw anything that we can imagine. We need to calm the inner critic that teaches us that we can not draw.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Next David got us to draw stick people. Here are mine:</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="z56a" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_52396bgjjcp_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">One reason that poeple have an inner critic, saying that they can't draw is that they think that they really need to make it look real.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Next we drew a person on a bike. Here's mine:</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="ep9r" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_524cm5vwm4j_b" style="width: 160px; height: 120px; " /></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">A useful prinicple applied here was to think about the big shapes first, and move to the little, and to start with how something is connected to the ground.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Next we tried to tell a story, and draw how we would make toast. Here's mine</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;"></span><div id="bx6o" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div id="zz6q" style="text-align: left; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <img src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=ag967pbkkw_519gm2vdmfk_b" style="width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></div></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">In story-telling, David got us to recognize the nodes and the links, that help tell that story.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> <span style="font-size:85%;">Sometimes, by making a story visual - you can expose problems, or breakdowns not recognized beforehand.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">The final excercise had us drawing after conducting an affinity excercise:</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Step 1: take a pad of stickies and write all your ideas down on stickies - one-by-one as you go. Ask them to write down ideas first, and ask them to bring them up later. Taking the social out of it at first, and then getting them socialized later, in order to inhibit inhibitions, and enable flow.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Step 2: one at time, each person come up, read their sticky notes, and put them up - unorganized - on the board.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Step 3: affinity diagram - putting questions as headings.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">Step 4: take one question - and draw the solution.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">References for David (who is also the author of "VP of No")</span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/davegray" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.squidoo.com/</span></a><a href="http://www.squidoo.com/davegray" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">davegray</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><a href="http://www.xplane.com/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(85, 26, 139); "><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.xplane.com/</span></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><b><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></b></span></span><b><span style="font-size:85%;">In Conclusion</span></b><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div> <div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></div><div style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span style="font-size:85%;">I recommend CanUX. Don't go with colleagues - then it's easy to make friends with new people that you meet there, and the small numbers of attendees encourages a feeling of friendship. I liked the fact that many of the sessions incorporated activities, and were very hands-on.</span></div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span></div>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-2040976702847169732008-04-29T20:39:00.000-07:002008-04-29T20:46:57.300-07:00Flight Patterns<a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html">Astronomy picture of the day</a> is awesome today. It's <a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0804/flightpatterns_koblin.mov">a movie showing the flights taken over the US over a few days in 2005</a>. It's nice to be able to figure out the cities for yourself without the mark-up. Interesting to think about discoverability being satisfying.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-15380610030819999432008-04-07T08:02:00.000-07:002008-04-07T08:14:14.920-07:00Small movies for screen captureThere is a small <a href="http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/ui-design-clips">Magnolia shared bookmark site</a> that is a step towards a repository of UI webclips.<br /><br />They use <a href="http://jingproject.com/">Jing</a> to capture small screen movies.<br /><br />These kinds of tools allow you to automatically upload movie files to the internet and auto-capture them.<br /><br /><a href="http://skitch.com/">Skitch</a> is another option.<br /><br />If you're using a Mac you might try <a href="http://www.shinywhitebox.com/">iShowU</a>.<br /><br />With all these tools - take a careful look at where your files are being stored if you're doing company confidential work.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-4329637272176458142008-01-27T23:34:00.001-08:002008-01-28T11:08:14.692-08:00iPhone out-of-the-box<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Multimedia-player-iphone.svg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbH7PWJjAlViSSiKuV_rKPXDJjQ3AY9003LAzmJuwi61kn1vKpwHSz7lTtK1iVDzjee8RoU2XiKh73JZYVE5xwuLV9mTGFebGI1715W4MvrBMnSDrwANGkJ-BdUVr4Hbvb4P5M/s200/iphone.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160456654704374482" border="0" /></a><br />I purchased an iPhone on Friday, and so far I'm really liking it. The ease at which I'm getting up-to-speed with it way surpasses my typical OOTB experience with consumer technology. I'm starting to feel that it probably lacks the ability to customize and personalize that I'm beginning to look for; but after only 2 days with this gadget my jury is currently out as to whether keeping the ability to customize minimal (or maybe hidden - I've yet to to find out) has greatly contributed to making the product so user friendly for initial use.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Multimedia-player-iphone.svg"><span style="font-size:78%;">Image by Rugby 471</span></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here are a few of the things I've loved so far:</span><br /><br />o I didn't have to activate the phone in the store<br />This improved my user / customer experience immensely! And the activation once I got the phone home was easy.<br /><br />o Using my iPhone is fun<br />It's bright, interactive, fun - a pleasure to use this phone - I keep getting it out to play with it. That's such a change from my past experience of cell phones (my most recent prior to this being the T-mobile Wing), which I eventually just wanted to hide back in the box and hit with a big hammer.<br /><br />o It has an unlimited dataplan<br />How cool is that! I love that it never needs to inform me and make me feel guilty about how many megabytes I've downloaded :-)<br /><br />o Google Maps<br />It comes with Google maps and is partly GPS, as it picks up my location. That was a really fun thing to first see on my phone and successfully use (I found Green's restaurant in SF with it, and got some great lunch there).<br /><br />o Google Apps<br />It works with various Google apps well - I have put Google Reader, Google Docs, Picassa Web Albums, and Google Calendar to be accessible from my 'home' screen.<br /><br />o Email accounts<br />Setting it up to receive email from my 3 accounts was a breeze.<br /><br />o Interaction<br />The interaction style is mostly intuitive, e.g. turning the screen, sliding my finger over the screen to see my additional web pages etc.<br /><br />o Security passcode<br />It was easy for me to create a passcode for data security.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here are some things that are have caused me some issues over the last two days, and which mostly continue to do so</span>:<br /><br />o Interaction<br />Some parts of the interaction don't seem all that easy, for example, after 2 days I'm still having difficultly zooming in on some web pages - they just don't seem to want to zoom, and some websites are so heavily embedded with links I keep navigating to new pages, rather than zooming.<br /><br />o Volume<br />I'm disappointed that I need to turn the volume fully to the top for calls. This seems to be a <a href="http://mybiggestcomplaint.com/iphone-volume-there-isnt-any/">common thing that people are disgruntled about</a>.<br /><br />o Contacts<br />From reading around a bit I've learned that it's impossible / pretty difficult - I'm not sure which yet - to take contacts from an old SIM card to get them on the iPhone. I have a set of 350 (completely different) contacts in the old Palm Desktop app on our Windows machine at home. By reading on the web I realized that I could export these in vCard format, and import them into the Apple Address Book on my Macbook. That all worked surprisingly well - but this was a long contact list, and many of these contacts are not required on my iPhone, so I created a new group in Address Book called iPhone. Then I plugged my iPhone into my Macbook in order to get the interface up that lets me edit my syncing options. I was looking to uncheck the box 'automatically sync', and also edit the info on the Info. tab to only import my 'iPhone' group from Address Book. ... But too late - the good rule-following computer did what it was supposed to do and downloaded everything. So now I have 'All' contacts and a subset of these called in a group called 'iPhone'. I want to delete the 'All' group from my iPhone; but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. <a href="http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1343151&tstart=165">This person has the same problem</a>.<br /><br />To fix this I tried to delete the 'All' group in Address Book (a pain; but I reasoned that I could reinstall it afterwards); however, deleting it I found out, also deletes those duplicated addressed in my 'iPhone' group. 'Edit-undo'. So my planned work-around doesn't do the job either. Anyone?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update: I decided to delete all my contacts in my Address Book in my MacBook, then sync my iPhone taking me back to square one - no contacts. I de-selected automatic syncing on the iTunes syncing 'summary' tab, and selected to sync only the iPhone group on the 'info' tab. Then I imported the vCard contacts into Address Book again, and re-created my iPhone group, and then did a sync with the iPhone. It's better - I now have two groups on my 'iPhone': 'All and 'iPhone' which seem to contain the same addresses. It's a waste of space to have this duplicate set though, and again I'm wondering how to delete a group.</span><br /><br />o iPod<br />All our (i.e mine and my husbands joint) music is on our Windows machine on my husband's drive. He has it all in iTunes on that machine and there's a lot of music that we've accumulated over the years. It's a non-obvious procedure how to get any of this music on to my iPhone. I've been syncing my iPhone with iTunes on my MacBook. My iTunes on my MacBook has only 1 album in it. I can get to our complete set of music via the 'shared' folder in my iTunes app, that my husband has made available. It won't sync. stuff that's shared - which is quite reasonable though frustrating for me. It seems that Apple doesn't really cater to people who, in every other way but legally presumably, jointly own music.<br /><br />o Transfer of Financial Responsibility<br />This is not an iPhone technology issue; but an AT&T customer service (and therefore user experience) issue. So far I've been given three phone numbers and have spoken to two reps... here we go...<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Update: Latest phone call with customer care rep told me I have to return to the store, where I complete a form, and then make another call to customer care to tell them I've done so. ... this is starting to negate Apple's good work in enabling online activation... </span><br /><br />o Sound defaults<br />It came with sound for email delivery enabled, and so succeeded in annoying my husband through the first night while I slept peacefully through!<br /><br />o It's a gadget cool enough for my eight year old son to be envious<br />That should be on the 'good' list right? Well yes - but it's hard to keep his hands off it. Still, he was pretty disappointed to learn it doesn't come shipped with games - although I didn't tell him about the nicely bookmarked 'kids' websites that are provided.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here are some of the things that at first glance haven't seemed completely obvious to me; but are on my list to find out how to do over the next few days:</span><br /><br />o Choose / create icons for the pages / apps I've added to my 'home' screen - currently the images of webpages all look pretty much the same.<br /><br />o Customize the home screen - arrange the order, hide to a 'second level' some of the default apps that appear there.<br /><br />o Work out what 'favorites' is all about and the best way to use 'favorites'.<br /><br />o Sort out the 'contacts' issues detailed above.<br /><br />o Sort out the iPod / iTunes issue detailed above.<br /><br /><br />This journey of getting to know my iPhone has been an enjoyable experience so far - that's how getting any new gadget should be; but rarely turns out to be. More interestingly the iPhone puts people in a position where, for the most part, they should be able to understand the issues that they are running into, and have the language to go investigate them - for example "How do I delete a group in mt contacts?" All too often in getting new gadgets like this the issues encountered have turn very technical all too quickly, rather than containing themselves in the space of some sort of logical problem-solving that non-geeks can understand and work through. Technical issues that loose people in jargon and geek-speak also cause interest to wither very rapidly, as well as the desire to spend time making the gadget at hand actually work. And so they get relegated to the 'cables and crap' draw. So this time as a consumer I'm thrilled, and I'm looking forwarded to being able to do more and more with my iPhone over the coming weeks.<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/out-of-the-box" rel="tag">out-of-the-box</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Apple" rel="tag">Apple</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/user%20experience" rel="tag">user experience</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/iPhone" rel="tag">iPhone</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1149150880853888162006-06-01T01:13:00.000-07:002006-06-01T01:59:53.126-07:00Websites as Graphs & 1000 PaintingsThese <a href="http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm">graphical visualizations</a> of web pages are so unbelievably cool looking and a particularly nice way to vizualize complexity and simplicity in web design.<br /><br />Sala has released the <a href="http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/">applet</a> so you can put any web address in and look at the structure visually. So I follow the link to the <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/tags/websitesasgraphs/">flickr collection</a> of these graphs, and immediately see graphs uploaded by <a href="http://www.gyford.com/">Phil Gyford</a> - whom I know, a bit. Hmm - seeing the same names as I traverse around the web, maybe the internet world isn't that big after all.<br /><br />Sala is a very busy guy - he's also <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/30/one_thousand_paintin.html">getting famous</a> with the selling of <a href="http://www.onethousandpaintings.com/home/">1000 paintings</a>. Have you bought your number yet?<br /><br />And for fun, here's the graph of this blog:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/yabou_graph.0.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/200/yabou_graph.0.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/websitesasgraphs" rel="tag">Websitesasgraphs</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/onethousandpaintings.com" rel="tag">onethousandpaintings.com</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1147746649070085362006-05-15T19:00:00.000-07:002006-05-19T14:17:25.740-07:00The DCamp experienceSo DCamp was definately worth attending, (check out the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/dcamp/">photos</a> - Dcamp put a smile on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/smilesss2u2/145429142/">my face</a>!) and I'm certainly going to be looking out for other unconferences in the future. The event was well attended, had a great level of participation, well supported in the offices of <a href="http://www.socialtext.com/">Socialtext</a>, and well sponsored (<a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.baychi.org/">BayCHI</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.socialtext.com/">Socialtext</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.oreilly.com/">O'Reilly</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.intuit.com/">Intuit</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.ebay.com/">eBay</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.iftf.org/">IFTF</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.aol.com/">AOL</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.enthiosys.com/">Enthiosys</a>, <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.embyra.com/">Embyra</a> & <a target="_blank" title="(external link)" href="http://www.uzanto.com/">Uzanto</a>). <a href="http://www.rashmisinha.com/">Rashmi</a> and Stacie did a great job of pulling the whole thing together. There are a number of things that of course need to be organized before an unconference - such as location, food, and sponsorship ...and t-shirts (as modeled here by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/smilesss2u2/145428622/">Rashmi</a>). The t-shirts were just great - cool design and all that, yeah yeah... but the best part was that women were identified as a target market (!!! shock and awe !!!) and I was able to pick up a T that I wasn't for once, going to pass on to my husband. This one is mine!!<br /><br />On to the sessions: I was able to be at DCamp Friday evening and Saturday from midday, and attended the following sessions (links go to the 'official wiki notes'):<br /><br />* <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi?open_source_and_usability_session">Open Source and Usability</a><br />* <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi?Remote%20Methods%3A%20Ethnio%20and%20MindCanvas">Remote Methods</a><br />*<a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi?agile_design_development_and_usability"> Agile Design, Development and Usability</a><br /><br />Some of the interesting take-aways from the sessions:<br /><br /><ul><li>Open Source and Usability</li></ul>Kguzik has created a great set of notes out of the discussion in this session, that mainly are suggestions, tips for how usability can be promoted in the world of open source. (see Kguzik's notes at the <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi?open_source_and_usability_session">bottom of the 'official' notes for this session</a>).<br /><br /><ul><li>Remote Methods</li><ul><li>Provided an overview of Ethnio and The Mind Canvas</li><li><a href="http://http://ethnio.com/">Ethnio</a>:</li><ul><li>Ethnio is cool because you can do "live recruiting" on a website and aside from that extra is seems to have all the benefits of the other remote usability technologies.</li><li>Live recruiting works through intercepting people after they have just performed or tried to perform an action. It's very targetted recruiting. </li><li>The participant only needs to install a small plug-in, and they haven't had any trouble with participants doing that. It uninstalls afterwards. </li><li>The audio and video is merged into a FLASH file for later use (smaller size than avi). The resulting recording is whatever the full screen resolution of your participants screen is. </li><li>Currently runs with IE and Firefox (but is currently not Mac compatible.<br /></li><li>All connections are encrypted under SSL.<br /></li><li>Currently not a lot of opportunity to do collaborative notes - but they're working on that.<br /></li><li>Ethnio records all the click-stream data and notes can be tied to this data.<br /></li><li>Custom tags can be created in the fly.<br /></li></ul><li><a href="http://themindcanvas.com/">The Mind Canvas</a>:</li><ul><li>One intention is to make user research activities more fun!<br /></li><li>Provides tools for prioritization tasks - the task has the user divide up a pile of money instead of traditional prioritization tasks.</li><li>Card sorting tasks have been implemented.<br /></li><li>The Mind Canvas also includes vizulation tools for the data collected.<br /></li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>Agile Design</li></ul>This session generated far more questions than answers. One of the interesting issues that arose (but that was not resolved) was around timing and the integration of user research. User Research takes time - to what extent can we and should we adapt user research methods to meet the needs of Agile development processes? How can User Research be more active in driving the design process? The issue can be summarized as: Are administrating quick methods - that may be bad - worse than collecting no data?<br /><br />For those who went to this event and are interested in carrying the conversation on, there are two ways: (i) <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi?dcamp_reunion_dinner_ii">reunion dinners</a> that are being organized, and (ii) a <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/dcamp/">mailing list</a>.<br /><br />See you at the next unconference...<br /><br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DCamp" rel="tag">DCamp</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/unconference" rel="tag">unconference</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/palo" alto="" rel="tag">palo alto</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/design" rel="tag">design</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/user" experience="" rel="tag">user experience</a>.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1147325053095510162006-05-10T21:17:00.000-07:002006-05-10T22:58:37.786-07:00About Unconferences...At <a href="http://www.baychi.org/">BayCHI</a> <a href="http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20060509a/">last night</a> Kaliya Hamlin, <a href="http://www.identitywoman.net/">Identity Woman</a>, gave an insight into the running of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference">unconferences</a>. This was great timing for the <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi">DCamp</a> to be help in Palo Alto this coming weekend.<br /><br />Kaliya defined unconferences as lying between a conference with a structured agenda and a cocktail party - this is where unconferences live. She outlined the important elements of a successful unconference:<br /><br />The invitation and how it is framed, the wiki where ideas and tentative plans can be posted, as well as a list of who will be there (it has been amazing to see the list grow for <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi">DCamp</a>), and the welcoming on the actual day. Kaliya gave examples of having public sign-in lists, big, sometimes illustrated. Name-tags are essential because identity is essential. Activities that have worked in the past have included having attendees represented by their caricature, and having people bring or develop logo's related to their work.<br /><br />The opening session is an important element too, and have in the past included rapid-fire intros, gathering together in a circle (no matter how many people), and using introductory games.<br /><br />For agenda creation, Kaliya described how <a href="http://barcamp.org/">BarCamp</a>, <a href="http://www.brainjams.org/">Brain Jams</a>, and <a href="http://www.seattlemind.com/">Mind Camp</a> have all had folks stick their ideas up on white paper walls. Postit notes have been used at <a href="http://www.openspaceworld.org/">Open Space Technology</a>, <a href="http://www.windley.com/events/iiw2006a/announcement.shtml">Internet Identity Workshop</a>, <a href="http://recentchangescamp.org/">Recent Changes Camp</a>, and <a href="http://www.mashupcamp.com/">Mashup Camp</a>. Agenda development is often done through public discussion - descriptions of what the agenda topic is and questions and answers around that. At this point topics get added to the agenda, and topics merge, and split etc. Wiki's are used for archiving the schedule and subsequently the content that is generated during the event.<br /><br />Sessions tend to involve activity, team work, and discussion. People need to be participating and learning, and like being a successful mentee - participants must drive the learning and make sure that they are in the right space to learn. To fuel all this, plenty of food (geek and otherwise) is an essential part of any unconference.<br /><br />Unconferences do not have traditionally keynotes typically, or typical plenary sessions, though there is usually a closing circle where the highlights are shared etc.<br /><br />Kaliya talked through lots of other interesting techniques and activities that have been used at these sort of gatherings:<br /><br />o Interview and Sculpt - for creating an agenda for an unconference of 40 people or less. This is a time-consuming technique that works through the participants being interviewed prior to the event, and then an agenda being developed using the gathered data.<br /><br />o <a href="http://wiki.advocacydev.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SpeedGeeking">Speed Geeking</a> - like speed dating; but speed geeking! Essentially moving from project to project.<br /><br />o <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting">Podcasting</a> - to take the conversation outside of the event.<br /><br />o <a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-worldcafe.html">World Cafe</a> - lots of cafe tables, each table of people has the same question and they work on it with discussions and sketches etc. then after about 20 minutes one person from that table moves to the next. Interesting way that ideas and conversations develop.<br /><br />o <a href="http://www.tobe.net/">Dynamic Facilitation</a> - where the facilitator supports the flow of conversations and charts concerns, data, problem-solving, and solutions.<br /><br />o Spectrogram - where a semi-controversial question is asked and participants are instructed to spread (physically / spatially) depending upon their views. Then people are interviewed publicly about their perspective.<br /><br />(Other techniques include Appreciative Inquiry, Collective Maps....)<br /><br />During the evening we got a great taster of one of the kinds of activities that can take place at an unconference. Kaliya facilitated an activity where we got together in pairs to interview each other for 5 minutes each about our conference going experience, and when we had felt most alive, inspired, and proud. Subsequently we joined into groups of 6 and retold the stories of our partners to the larger group, pulling out the shared elements of what makes us feel alive, inspired, and proud at conferences. The results of this exercises can be seen on the <a href="http://cognexus.org/id41.htm">Dialogue Map</a> that was made using <a href="http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/tools/compendium.htm">Compendium</a> software.<br /><br />Now I'm feeling more prepared for <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi">DCamp</a> - see you there!<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DCamp" rel="tag">DCamp</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/unconference" rel="tag">unconference</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/BarCamp" rel="tag">BarCamp</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Kaliya Hamlin" rel="tag">Kaliya Hamlin</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/BayCHI" rel="tag">BayCHI</a>.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1146086537314109212006-04-26T14:11:00.000-07:002006-05-19T14:16:35.173-07:00DCamp - an unconference on design and user experienceI've signed up for the <a href="https://www.socialtext.net/dcamp/index.cgi">DCamp</a>, an unconference on design and the user experience - a conference in the spirit of how conferences really should be. Two particularly attractive elements of this are that it's free - so you can attend even if you're unemployed right now, and the content will be what we, the participants, want it to be. This really is the <a href="http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/participate.html">participation age</a> ... yes - I haven't left Sun yet ;-)<br /><br />You can read more about it at <a href="http://upcoming.org/event/69247/">upcoming.org</a>, and on <a href="http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/06_04/announcing-dcamp.html">Rashmi's blog</a>, and at <a href="http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20060512/">BayCHI</a>.<br /><br />The event takes place on Friday May 12th (6 PM to ~) and May 13th (8 AM to ~) at the offices of Social Text. Hope to see you there.<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DCamp" rel="tag">DCamp</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/unconference" rel="tag">unconference</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/palo" alto="" rel="tag">palo alto</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/design" rel="tag">design</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/user" experience="" rel="tag">user experience</a>.Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1144873015448384192006-04-12T12:30:00.000-07:002006-04-12T14:55:51.450-07:00I have a new job!My news - and why I've been so quiet for a while, is that I'm moving from <a href="http://www.sun.com">Sun Microsystems</a> to <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, to do more User Exeperience Research.<br /><br />It is of course wonderful to be moving to Google; but sad to be leaving Sun.<br /><br />During my 5 years at Sun I've learnt lots (though never enough!) about developers and systems administrators. I've enjoyed working on developer tools projects (a couple of my studies are oneline: <a href="http://ui.netbeans.org/usability/Jun_04_02/ProjectManagerReport.html">1</a>, <a href="http://ui.netbeans.org/usability/Oct_19_01/index.html">2</a>); I've worked on Sun's Desktop: <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=SUNW">Java Desktop System</a>, the <a href="http://www.sun.com/software/n1gridsystem/">N1</a> (datacenter management software), a project on collaborative technologies for the internet; and <a href="http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/index.xml">Java Enterprise System</a> (Sun's middleware offerings).<br /><br />At Sun I got to work with a bunch of bright, dedicated folks, and work in a company that is at the forefront for implementing remote working. Learning to respond to the challenges that brings has been very worthwhile. I have had great managers, enjoyed being mentored (I was lucky enough to have <a href="http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/bios/bios-hoogen.html">Ingrid Van Den Hoogan</a>, VP Brand Experience and Community Marketing, to be my mentor at Sun), and I have personally enjoyed mentoring at a distance colleagues in Europe.<br /><br />I've used many user research methods during the course of my time at Sun, worked with developers, architects, marketing folks, and sales, and got to visit customers in their places of work in Scandinavia, Europe, and the US (never got to Asia or Australia - darn!). Due to working with the <a href="http://www.netbeans.org/p://">NetBeans</a> team in Prague, I have have made friends who live in the Czech Republic, and am looking forward to visiting them - just for the fun of it, this summer!<br /><br />Sun has also provided me with great training opportunities both internal and external. I have learned about Contextual Design by taking <a href="http://www.incent.com/company/about.html">Karen Holtzblatt</a>'s <a href="http://www.incent.com/coach/workshops.html">Contextual Design Workshop</a>, heard <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/">Edward Tufte</a> present one of his <a href="http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses">courses</a>, participate in <a href="http://www.netobjectives.com/index.html">Net Objectives</a> course on <a href="http://www.netobjectives.com/courses/c_ooa_effective_use_cases.htm">Effective Use Cases</a>, attended <a href="http://www.acm.org/cscw2004/">CSCW '04</a>, <a href="http://www.dux2005.org/">DUX'05</a>, and most recently completed <a href="http://www.well.com/user/riander/">Richard Anderson</a> and Lillian Svec's <a href="http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/ucsc/publicViewHome.do?method=load">UCSC Extention</a> course on "<a href="http://www.well.com/user/riander/mguxgrps.html">Managing User Experience Groups</a>".<br /><br />Sun, has provided me with opportunities, some good friends for life - I hope - and been a great place to develop my career. I'll miss it - and <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=SUNW">totally root for the company</a> - but I'm so ready for the new opportunities and challenges that Google has to offer... can't wait to get there now!<br /><br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag">google</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/sun microsystems" rel="tag">sun microsystems</a><br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1141196201459748422006-02-28T22:44:00.000-08:002006-04-12T14:51:18.493-07:00The Ethics and Politics of Search EnginesLast night I attended an interesting panel "The Ethics and Politics of Search Engines" sponsored by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University. There were 3 panelists:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.norvig.com/"> Peter Norvik</a>: Director of Machine Learning at Google<br /><a href="http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/"> Terry Winograd</a>: Professor of Computer Science: Human-Computer Interaction at Stanford<br /><a href="http://epl.scu.edu:16080/%7Egbowker/"> Geoffrey Bowker</a>: Executive Director of the Center of Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University.<br /><br />The panel was moderated by <a href="http://www.scu.edu/ethics/about/people/directors/executive/hanson/">Kirk Hanson</a>: Executive Director, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and a brief introduction was given by <a href="http://www.scu.edu/sts/about/leadership.cfm">Susan Star</a>, Senior Scholar Center for Science, Technology, and Society.<br /><br />One of the most interesting discussions centered on objectivity and bias in search page results. For example, Google claims objectivity and impartial results in algorithmic ranking, which (of course in a center for ethics, and social science research) invited concern that the bias is simply in the algorithm (which is created by humans to work in a certain way), rather than direct human manipulation. Still, the panelists praised Google for not hand manipulating search results (in comparison with some other search engines) and while they understood the reasons for the algorithms being secret ((i) because advertisers try to 'game' the ranking mechanism, and (ii) for competitive reasons), would like to have some 3rd party oversee the algorithm design to ensure 'fairness'.<br /><br />Another interesting discussion concerned legality and transparency of results, two of the panelists had shown what happens if you do searches under <a href="http://www.google.cn">google.cn</a>, and <a href="http://www.google.com">google.com</a>. Peter Norvig's example was searching for 'bird flu', which brought in 94 million hits on <a href="http://www.google.com">google.com</a>, and 52 million hits on <a href="http://www.google.cn">google.cn</a>. Geoffrey Bowker's example was searching for 'democracy' which brought in 145 million hits on <a href="http://www.google.com">google.com</a>, and 139 million hits on <a href="http://www.google.cn">google.cn</a>.<br /><br />Peter's reasoning for showing this was that while yes, things are censored in China, and Google has no choice, at least they are bringing quite a good service into China for their users. Google feels that it is more important to provide a search, even if they need to compromise it. Geoffrey's reasons for providing an example was different, he is concerned about which 6 million results were missing, and the role that censorship is playing.<br /><br />While Peter claimed the <a href="http://www.chillingeffects.org/">chillingeffect.org</a> is enabling Google to be transparent about what's missing, Geoffrey noted that while <a href="http://www.chillingeffects.org/">chillingeffect.org</a> goes someway to providing transparency, it should in no way be taken for transparency.<br /><br />Geoffrey pointed out that the default filtering for users of Google is "use moderate filtering". At this time, if you search using Google for 'breast cancer' without any filtering enabled (i.e. change the defaults) then the top hit is for '<a href="http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites">The Breast Cancer Site</a>' which is the site that enables users' clicks to fund free mamograms for women who may not ordinarily get them - go on - go click that button now! If you search for the same search terms with moderate filtering enabled (i.e. the default) then this same site does not feature in any of the results. Of course Google would not really intend or want for that to happen; but the question is raised: who should determine what is ok to filter.<br /><br />We learned at the panel, (if we didn't know it already) that Google does not filter search results (unless filtering is enabled as in the default); but has put ethical choices into ads availability through filtering. So, in the famous <a href="http://www.google-watch.org/playboy.html">PlayBoy interview</a> that the Google founders gave in 2004, Sergey Brin commented "...we don't accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine. It's just personal preference. We don't allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don't try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to the advertising.<span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;" >"<br /></span><br />Another concern that was raised with the Google search algorithm is that is rewards the popular. As Terry Winograd put it "People who get more attention, get more attention because they got more attention." This is how Google's search algorithm works, since the essence of it is based upon page ranks. What can Google do to support the less popular, and circumvent some of this self-fulfilling popularity going on? The question was raised about personalization of search. Peter Norvig admitted that while there is much interest in this, currently it's difficult to see how it will work in the wide domain of search. The example he provided is that it works well in smaller domains: if I buy jazz at <a href="http://www.amazon.com">amazon.com</a>, I'm probably likely to buy jazz again, and am unlikely to switch to rap, so Amazon can have a fairly high degree of confidence that if they suggest some more jazz to me, I might well be interested. The search domain is dissimilar in that people are typically doing searches to find out about something new. It makes it difficult to effectively benefit from personalization approaches.<br /><br />The questions that the panelists have posed:<br /><br />- What is fair?<br />- To whom do you pledge allegiance?<br />- What role should self censorship play?<br />- Questions of intellectual property<br />- Questions of storage of information<br />- What is 'truth'?<br />- What role should governments play?<br />e.t.c.<br /><br />Will be debated and tested for a long time to come...<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag">google</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/search" rel="tag">search</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ethics" rel="tag">ethics</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1140078971053670432006-02-16T00:11:00.000-08:002006-06-01T01:35:07.716-07:00Yahoo! opens pattern library.Yahoo have <a href="http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/implementing_a_pattern_library_in_the_real_world_a_yahoo_case_study">written about</a> the process of creating a pattern library, and now <a href="http://developer.yahoo.net/ypatterns/index.php">released it</a> under a <a href="http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/license.txt">BSD license</a> . I'm sure that this is probably a lot to do with attracting developers and generating goodwill; but also hope that it will reduce duplication of effort and poor practices, and speed up the development process. The design patterns all have accessibility sections - which is great to see. Yahoo! aren't the first to relase DHTML / AJAX widgit libraries like this though, also see:<br /><br /><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-ajaxslt/">Google's open source AJAX libraries</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.activewidgets.com/" title="activewidgets.com">ActiveWidget</a><br /><br /><a href="http://prototype.conio.net/">Prototype</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blueshoes.org/en/javascript/" title="blueshoes.org">Blueshoes</a><br /><br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Yahoo%21" rel="tag">Yahoo!</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/AJAX" rel="tag">AJAX</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/pattern" library="" rel="tag">pattern library</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/accessibility" rel="tag">accessibility</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1138681730667390502006-01-30T20:11:00.000-08:002006-02-16T00:36:37.970-08:00Dilbert - gathering product requirements from 'the generic guy'.See, I'm not sure who the guy in <a href="http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20060129.html">this Dilbert cartoon</a> is supposed to be. Is he the project marketing manager, who hasn't a clue what he's doing? Is he one of the project stakeholders who is similarly clueless? I'm pretty convinced he's not the user, 'cause I've never heard a user refer to the software they use as "my software". There are often sufficient usability flaws for users to want to distance themselves from anyone who had anything to do with designining the product they have to grapple with every day to get their work done.<br /><br />Still, this depiction is spot on in characterizing some of the chicken-and-egg type discussions that can take place at project inception. Ted, isn't much of a visionary though is he? ... guess that's why he's called <a href="http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/the_characters/html/character4.html">'the generic guy'</a>. The question just remains, is that 'generic marketing','generic engineering', or 'generic executive'?<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Dilbert" rel="tag">Dilbert</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/requirements" rel="tag">requirements</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/users" rel="tag">users</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/stakeholders" rel="tag">stakeholders</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1138075078212825902006-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:002006-01-30T20:29:07.566-08:00Convention, consistency, familiarity ... and the Gmail delete button.Well, here's a case of when the guideline of 'make interfaces that are consistent with users' existing experiences' won the day. Now <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=32608&hl=en">Gmail has a 'delete' button</a>. And, I have to admit I was using the feature, even when it was buried under the dropdown. So I've been saved a few clicks, and my mental model of how to deal with a ton of data feels complete again. But it's a shame the adventure of email without a delete button had to end.<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/customers" rel="tag">customers</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google" rel="tag">google</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/design" rel="tag">design</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/heuristics" rel="tag">heuristics</a>.<br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1137999761507336542006-01-21T23:01:00.000-08:002006-01-22T23:38:35.643-08:00"Who says customers can't tell you how to innovate?"A colleague from the field of interaction design recently commented "Who says customers can't tell you how to innovate?" and provided an illustration of a customers' design idea collected through some user research a number of years ago, and details of a recently shipped product that now (these few years later) uses the latest technologies to create the design that the customer envisioned.<br /><br />My reaction is that if the research and design community is making such statements, that's rather arrogant, and probably going a bit far.<br /><br />I think the statement that our community more frequently makes is that users are the experts at 'real life use'; but not necessarily the best people to design the next version. That customers can't tell us how to innovate, is a much more extreme view. Of course, this statement, made in its milder form, still does not mean that customers' design ideas are irrelevant, ... as was aptly shown by the example my colleague gave.<br /><br />Designers can be expert at design if those designers have access to sufficient details about different types of user requirements, contexts of use, and task analyzes. If we couple that with appropriate training and design experience, then designers can make expert design decisions. Despite the 'research data - design' link that my colleague gave, most user researchers and interaction designers have been in situations where they have had to listen to customers explain what they <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">believe</span> they would like to see designed (in contrast to concerns and pain points). Often times the designer knows, either through previous usability tests, or through other design experience, that those design ideas would just not work, or would provide a worse experience for the user.<br /><br />If we, as designers, haven't built up a good understanding of our users and their environments of work, ... the likelihood of customers creating better innovations than designers is presumably higher than it would otherwise be. Whether or not we have a good understanding of our users and their environment of work, it is surely the case that there are people in those work environments that we are designing products for, that may well have design suggestions should could be the next best thing. Of course this will happen, because these customers are living with the issues and frustrations (whether large or small) everyday. There are innovative thinkers in every field. And if our customers' design ideas are flawed, as user researchers we should listen, question, and analyze, so that we can uncover the frustrations and formalize the requirements that our customers are hoping their designs will address.<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/customers" rel="tag">customers</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/HCI" rel="tag">HCI</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/design" rel="tag">design</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/user+research" rel="tag">user research</a>.<br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1137223503583082262006-01-13T22:20:00.000-08:002006-01-14T12:17:35.416-08:00Girls' Middle School Inaugral Scholarship Breakfast - with Robin Jeffries.I sometimes get to attend events that Sun Microsystems decides are worthy causes to sponsor - and to be seen at. Over the past few months I've been a guest at the <a href="http://www.anitaborg.org/index.html">Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology</a> Women of Vision awards where Sun's <a href="http://research.sun.com/people/mybio.php?uid=28941">Radia Perlman</a> won <a href="http://www.anitaborg.org/womenofvision/winners05/rperlman.htm">the Women of Vision 2005 award for Innovation</a>, and the <a href="http://www.witi.com">Women in Technology International</a> San Jose conference where Sun's <a href="http://www.witi.com/center/witimuseum/halloffame/2005/bbauer.php">Barbara Bauer </a>was inducted into the WITI Hall of Fame. Attending these formal dinner events, has been extremely interesting, and it's been wonderful to be able to learn about and celebrate the achievements of these wonderful women who work in technology as well as meet them in person.<br /><br />This week the event I was invited to was the Inaugural <a href="http://www.girlsms.org/">Girls' Middle School</a> of Mountain View Scholarship Breakfast. This event was especially appealing to attend, because a former Sun colleague, <a href="http://anitaborg.org/aboutus/bios/jeffries.html">Robin Jeffries</a>, was giving the keynote and receiving an award for her services to technology. Robin's keynote speech was really wonderful. There were two stories in particular in her talk that I cherished hearing about, and Robin has endorsed my re-telling them in my own words:<br /><br />The first story is about the challenges of being a working mother. By the time Robin was just about to have her second child, she saw a job ad with 'her name written all over it.' She had recently identified her interest in the area of HCI, and was very eager to apply for the job. However, this was difficult timing. The hiring manager at the company she was applying to was extremely keen to have Robin work for them, and she's imagined over the subsequent years how he'd had to ask HR things like, "Is it ok for someone to go on maternity leave as soon as they join the company?" In the end she flew out for an interview taking her baby when he was just 6 weeks old. She arranged for baby-sitting by an agency and early in the morning the baby-sitter called to cancel. She was unable to arrange for a new sitter, since the agency were not yet open, and called the company she was interviewing at only to find her interview couldn't be delayed as she was making a presentation at 9:00am. So, she had no option but to take her baby with her. She set him down, and cross her fingers, .... ... ... and he was as quiet as anything throughout the presentation, cooing, and quietly gurgling in all the appropriate points of the presentation! Robin had thought that with all the complexities that she'd completely blown the interview, that didn't turn out to be the case at all, and they happily hired her.<br /><br />And how can I relate? Well my story isn't as dramatic; but I did once do a telephone interview at home with my then 9 month old grabbing hold of my legs, to get my attention. As he got louder and louder in his demands, I had to resort to putting him in his crib, shutting the door, and doing the interview in the yard! I felt bad, but he calmed down afterwards with lots of love and cuddles, ... and I also landed the job!<br /><br />The second story explains Robin's "ah-ha" moment that sparked her curiosity in HCI. Robin had been creating some software down in the basement of the company that she was working at (where programmers were always put) and was visiting her work colleagues up on the 3rd floor, where she was able to notice someone using her software. The software was HR related and the administrator using the software at that point in time was supposed to type in an employee ID but instead had started to type in a name. As soon as the error message started appearing she'd realized her mistake; but had to wait through the gradual appearance of the very clear and long explanatory error message that Robin had written to cope with this very situation. Back then the text appeared one character at a time on the screen, and it took a rather a long time before the administrator could begin working again. Robin noticed her sitting there tapping her fingers while the text arrived. This lead Robin to wonder how she could correct this - it was obvious that the error message needed to be shorter as the administrator had quickly figured out what was wrong. Robin thought about what the shortest form that error message could be. She thought through what an actual conversation would be like around this error, and that probably all one person would need to say to another for them to notice such an error would be "huh?". So she duly went back to her development environment and implemented this. The very next day, while she was sitting in the basement programming, she heard a commotion and someone knocking on the door and bursting in, in floods of tears proclaiming, "your computer just said "huh?" at me!". And this is when Robin realized that learning to develop systems that would appropriately support users in their tasks, was a much more complex and interesting subject to pursue, and hence this became her lifelong career.<br /><br />Many thanks to Robin for letting me recount these delightful stories here - she told me these were her two favorite stories of the presentation too.<br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Robin+Jeffries" rel="tag">Robin Jeffries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/HCI" rel="tag">HCI</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/WITI" rel="tag">WITI</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Anita+Borg" rel="tag">Anita Borg</a>.<br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1137113477208038412006-01-12T16:29:00.000-08:002006-01-14T11:08:09.096-08:00Jan 10th Sun - Oracle AnnouncementThrough working at Sun I was fortunate to attend the Sun Oracle Town Hall / Press Conference held at the Oracle Headquarters in Redwood Shores on Tuesday. It made for a fun (given Scott and Larry's humor) and happy (given the news and initiative announcements) afternoon. Scott and Larry in witty repose joked around to open the event. Scott began by asking if Oracle was going to buy Sun, "A simple yes or not will do". Larry replied to the tune of "You'll see it in the newspapers, ... Oracle's strong preference is to do everything hostilely." The joking and teasing continued through talking about the issue of making deals and doing business with each others rivals. Scott summarized the situation by saying "So, you aren't totally faithful, and we aren't totally faithful either, (pause and reflection) ...Maybe you less so than us." To which Larry responded, "We are talking about IT, yes?", and Scott replied "My wife is in the front row. I don't know where yours is."<br /><br />The announcements made at the Press Conference are great news for Sun:<br /><ul> <li>Oracle is signing a second 10 year license to use Java</li> <li>Sun and Oracle announced that the middleware stacks from both companies would work well together.</li> <li>Sun will be packaging Oracle's Enterprise Edition Database Software with four-processor Sun Fire V490 and with servers that use the UltraSparc IV or IV+ processors. This means that using Sun Servers will Oracle database will be 25% cheaper than equivalent IBM or HP systems.</li> </ul> You can find out more by browsing through the <a href="http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/oraclepromotion/">Sun Oracle Kick-Off 2006 Press Kit</a> on <a href="http://www.sun.com">Sun.com</a><br /><br />More blogs about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/java" rel="tag">Java</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Sun" rel="tag">Sun</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Oracle" rel="tag">Oracle</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/News" rel="tag">News</a>.<br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1137051818197211952006-01-11T22:26:00.000-08:002006-01-16T21:38:26.276-08:00Google Pack Installation Experience.<a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> released <a href="http://pack.google.com/">Google Pack</a> this last week. There has been plenty of blogging about this, so my look at Google Pack will have a specific focus, on the install experience. I was particularly curious about this because Google are taking a number of products, not just their own and creating one install experience with one license agreement. Despite the critics, I think having arranged for this to happen, is itself, quite a feat. So I downloaded, and am equally impressed with the ease of the download experience - although I do note a couple of usability issues that it would have been nice of them to have dealt with before launching. I opted to download all the products, and the installer recognized I was already up-to-date with a couple of the products. The installation experience basically takes about 3 steps: license, install instructions, installation panel; but this can be lengthened if you decide you want to get more software as part of the pack. Wish all installations were this easy.<br /><br />What follows is the procedure that I went through including the couple of usability issues I came up against. You can open any of the screenshots in a new tab or window to see them full-size:<br /><br />Step 1: Screenshot of license page (web-page):<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen1.2.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen1.0.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Step 2: Simple 3-step install instructions (web page):<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen2.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Step 3: Install starts and a pop-up window displaying a 3-tab feedback panel is there to guide you through the process:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen4.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen4.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Part way through the installation process you can see that it is clearly telling me which software has been newely installed, which software is already up-to-date, for which software I already have a premium version installed, and which need to be downloaded. The two progress indicators that are provided, deliver very clear feedback.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen5.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen5.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This screenshot shows the installed software:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen6.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen6.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The preferences panel is suitably clear and simple:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen7.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen7.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Here's my installation, pretty much completed:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen8.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen8.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Upon completion a new window is opened to tell me that Norton Anti-virus could not be installed. This panel provides a poor user experience. As long as I agree it plans to change my premium version for some lesser version, and provides a default to 'fix this'. I don't consider the down-grading of my software to be a fix! This is a confusing message to the user, and not a constructive or helpful user experience:<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen9.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen9.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Step 3: My installation is complete!<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen10.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen10.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Moving to the 'Installed Software' tab I clicked on the link to the right to 'Get More Software',<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen11.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen11.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />and ...<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/1600/screen12.gif"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5033/2086/320/screen12.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />... it was only then that I discovered that RealPlayer had not been included as default as part of the Google Pack. While I already had RealPlayer installed on my machine, this was annoying to me because I wanted it to be included in the Pack so that I could have it updated through the update mechanism. From this UI it's not clear whether there's a mechanism for adding a single product to the installed pack, and I didn't want to go through the software detection process again for all of the products I had just installed. I didn't see an option to select the desired software for myself earlier in the process. Perhaps Google don't want to give this option on the first installation. For me finding out at the end that Real Player not been included as part of my download, was a user experience issue. (<a href="http://google.weblogsinc.com/2006/01/09/thoughts-on-google-pack/">Brad Hill - the unofficial google weblog - also comments on this issue</a>)<br /><br />My summary of the installation process for Google Pack is that aside from the two usability issues I experienced, the process is pretty slick. It takes just a couple of clicks through a couple of webpages, and a well-designed pop-up to detect and install software components. There were two Google releases this week announced at <a href="http://www.cesweb.org/default_flash.asp">CES 2006</a>, <a href="http://pack.google.com/">Google Pack </a>and <a href="http://pack.google.com/">Google Video</a>, while both are fantastic concepts, only this one could have been said to have been executed well. The final word goes to naming the missing components... <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060109/google_software_package.html?.v=1">why isn't StarOffice included in this bundle</a>?Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20717263.post-1136968062842531182006-01-10T23:13:00.000-08:002006-01-14T14:58:34.943-08:00Tagging and Social Bookmarking, SDForum SIG<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Attended an insightful evening 2 hours ago with founders from:<br /></span><ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.digg.com">digg.com </a>- Kevin Rose, founder</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.kaboodle.com">kaboodle.com</a> - Manish Chandra</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.delicious.com">del.icio.us.com</a> - Joshua Schachter</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.wink.com">wink.com</a> - Michael Tanne</span></li> </ul><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > at the <a href="http://www.SDForum.com">SDForum</a> <a href="http://searchsig.wordpress.com/">Search SIG</a>.<br /><br />For those new to these sites, here's a one-line summary of each one:<br /></span><ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.digg.com">digg</a>: Allows posting of stories and provides access to stories that fellow users think are great. Go digg something!</span></li> </ul> <ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.kaboodle.com">kaboodle</a>: Allows you to bring together your shopping considerations and mine those shopping considerations of others.<br /></span></li> </ul> <ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.delicious.com">del.icio.us</a>: A site of favorites - you know the rest</span></li> </ul> <ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.wink.com">wink</a>: uses algorithms that rank tags to determine search results<br /></span></li> </ul> <span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> weren't presenting at this event, and while <a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo!</a> was represented by <a href="http://www.delicious.com">del.icio.us</a>, it would have been nice to see search guru's from these two big mainstream companies in public conversation with these smaller firms who are finding new innovative methodologies to search using tagging and social bookmarking, rather than traditional page rank. But this evening was about showcasing those having something new and innovative in the arena of tagging and social bookmarking.<br /><br />Can we trust tagging? - is the most basic question that should be asked, and the panel felt that the judgment is in the users. Given the appropriate tools, the users will get rid of spag (spamming tags) and the like. <a href="http://burri.to/%7Ejoshua/">Joshua Schachter</a> reminded us that no one taxonomy is correct, and currently tagging is the newer, and seems the better way to go to collate quality search results. The biggest challenge for search engines really is relevance - for example, is it possible to do a full text search that uses tagging to bring the things of relevance to the top? The real intent of searching though tagging is relevance and quality of hits. Take a look at <a href="http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Mindset</a> for another interesting way to provide results of relevance.<br /><br />The panelists agreed that regarding supporting appropriate behaviors and not forcing people into socially awkward corners was something that designers of search software using tagging and social bookmarking need to be very careful about. A quick vote was taken around the room for the numbers of people had the problem with <a href="http://www.linkedin.com">LinkedIn</a>, that they had a load of unanswered invites sitting in their 'inbox', because they felt these people were not close friends; but they socially felt bad about saying "no - I don't want to connect". ... That was most of us then. The panelists felt that the better direction was to avoid the "will you be my friend?" question; but to emphasize the connections between interests and content. This may mean that your best friends might not be your best connections because they may not share particular interests with you; but someone who is a stranger to you now, may be one of your best connections based upon interests and topics of focus.<br /><br />What about setting standards for tagging? Take a look at <a href="http://www.tagcommons.com">TagCommons</a>, for one early approach.<br /><br /><a href="http://forrester.typepad.com/charleneli/">Charlene Li</a>, from <a href="http://www.forrester.com/my/1,,1-0,FF.html">Forrester Research</a> closed the question and answer session with 3 predictions for the coming year:<br /></span><ol style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;">An ecosystem will develop, of being able to track what is good</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;">There will be an inevitable couple of social disasters</span></li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;">There will be a different cast of characters in this space, not just the innovative crowd (present and featured at this event) but to include the traditional search space, and media.<br /></span></li> </ol><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > At the end of the session 3 minute demos are encouraged from the audience, and as a sneak pre-view we saw:<br /></span><ul style="font-family:arial;"> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.loomia.com/">loomia.com</a>, which will be launching in 3 days time. For now see:<br /><a href="http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/recommendations">conversationsnetwork.org/recommendations</a> and <a href="recommendations.loomia.com">recommendations.loomia.com</a></span> </li> <li><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.opinmind.com/">opinmind.com</a>, that allows you to mine blogs for opinions. Note: you can put things like google vs yahoo into this - hmm, it's fun!<br /></span></li> </ul><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > After attending this search SIG I'm going to be looking out for the next one. Just hope that they don't choose the second Tuesday of the Month every time, since that clashes with <a href="http://www.baychi.org">BayCHI</a>.<br /><br />More blogs about <br /><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/searchsig" rel="tag">searchsig</a>.<br /><a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/"><img src="http://static.technorati.com/pix/tbf.gif" alt="Technorati Blog Finder" /></a></span>Jennyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02893390256695787858noreply@blogger.com0