Enter Ambassador Solutions and Tuitive – two firms who get IT. Two firms who understand that while solid technology and robust visual design are vital, those efforts are in vain if not properly harnessed for the benefit of the often-forgotten element in technology endeavors: the human being

Join us for a complimentary event on September 22 to learn about the benefits of user-centered…HUMAN-centered…design, and what it can mean to the success of your projects. We are also holding a complimentary luncheon after the presentation to offer you a great opportunity for further discussion and networking. At the event, we will show you how a user-centered design process can help you:

• Cut time to market in half
• Reduce project cost by more than 30%
• Ensure the application has all the features needed by the business users
• Dramatically improve customer experience
• Get software projects done in half the time

Register Now

Details
Date: September 22, 2009
Time: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center
7435 North Keystone Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240-3247

Agenda
9:00 – 9:30 AM: Registration and refreshments
9:30 – 10:30 AM: Human-Friendly Design…A Proven Approach.
Jon Arnold, President – Tuitive
Travis Smith, User Experience Analyst – Tuitive
10:30 – 11:00 AM: Seeing is Believing. The benefits of VISUAL project requirements.
Kory Geyer, Solutions Strategist – Ambassador Solutions
11:00 – 11:30 AM: Before and After. A demonstration of visual requirements modeling in action.
Jason McIntosh, Senior Consultant – Ambassador Solutions
11:30 – 12:00 PM: Q&A, Surveys, Raffle
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Lunch and Networking

Register Now

For more information, contact Krista Sellery.

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The researchers built a prototype to study the potential of such a feedback device in the form of “LEDs assembled on a stick”. In the study, ecologically conscious participants showed positive behavioral changes (i.e. mean water consumption decreased by approximately 10 liters), although this was not maintained after the removal of the display.

The paper is based on the assertion that ambient displays are suitable for a constant and subtle persuasion by providing continuous and unobtrusive feedback. show-me gives the user feedback and an impression of the amount of water going down the drain. This impression is achieved by exploiting the metaphor of the drain being closed, and the water level increasing within the closed shower. The imaginary water level is visualized in the form of LEDs that are vertically assembled on a stick. During operation, one (additional) LED is lightened up for every five liters of water consumed. In multiple different trials it was discovered out that an amount of 5 liters per LED was ideal: a high water consumption would stay within the 16 LEDs limit, while a lower water consumption is still sensibly shown within 4 to 6 LEDs.

“The prototype also triggered some interesting side effects. A couple used to argue that one of them always took longer in the shower and consequently used more water. After they installed the display, they learned that the woman used only half as much water, even though she spent more time in the shower. This discovery stimulated the man to further reduce his own water consumption.“

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This week we have our longest, and certainly one of our most interesting episodes to date. Jared and Robert met Joshua Muskovitz on the IxDA discussion list when Josh posted an innocent-enough question to the list: what do you call someone who sits squarely on the fence between interaction design and implementation? How do I market myself while job hunting when I have been in the industry so long that I have a really broad range of skills?

Josh certainly does claim a wide range of skills, from interaction design and Usability to front-end development, back-end programming, and business development. That brought up the question an employer might also have when reading his resume… “Is this guy for real? Can he really do all of this stuff well?”

As with most debates that Jared and Robert delve into, this one got messy, fast. But it also became very interesting. I knew I had to find Josh and invite him on Userability. I’m glad I did, as it made for a great podcast. Tune in to hear the debate, and if you have an opening for a man like Josh, won’t you let him know?

Have a serious UX question? Send it in and Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. will answer it with a healthy dose of levity. Please send your deep, vexing questions to us at userability@uie.com. We’d love to feature you on the show!

We want to hear your take on this debate. Can someone do all the things that Josh can, really well? Can he fit into a corporate structure, or does he need to find a small operation who can really put all his tools to work? Get the debate started again in the comments

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This collaboration with leading human interface research centers provides additional support for NEC’s existing HI development designs, and incorporates “Usability modeling” as an important new tool for efficient, low-cost development of easy-to-use HI for a wide variety of products.

In July 2009, the establishment of Usability guidelines covering e-government related issues raised a great deal of attention towards improved Usability. In the HI development field, providing easy-to-use products that meet the demands of a diverse range of users is now taken for granted and assuring the effectiveness and validity of these products is increasingly important. However, the vast majority of conventional HI evaluation has taken place only after a product is delivered, not at an early stage of development when changes in HI are easier and cheaper to make.

Consequently, NEC has systematized the process of HI technology development into design and evaluation categories. NEC has decided to complement the strength of its existing system-based organization with an innovative human-based approach that analyzes user behavior models and psychological mechanisms. The globally renowned experts of PARC and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon in the cognitive psychology field are now contributing to this new human side of NEC’s HI research and development.

NEC, PARC and Carnegie Mellon announced the results from their partnership at the 2009 HCI International Conference in San Diego on July 24th.

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1. Applications by their nature are task focused. They consist of optimized user interfaces for handling certain types of actions and data. In other words, a singular focus on actions like tracking a flight, looking up a stock price, checking the weather -and that’s it.
2. Mobile devices also force software designers to focus on only the most important data and actions in an application. There simply isn’t room in a 320 by 480 pixel screen for extraneous, unnecessary elements. You have to prioritize. This naturally forces out unnecessary elements.
3. Applications can leverage the rich set of capabilities of a mobile operating system. Web sites have a long way to go to deliver really rich UI.

To illustrate this, consider the difference between reading a news story on the Associated Press news mobile application and the same news story on the Miami Herald Web site. The mobile app is focused on one task (reading the story) while the Web site is chock full of extraneous detours, calls to action, and general interface debris. This detracts from the content and thereby the primary task of reading. No wonder the mobile application User Experience is in high demand.

A similar difference can be seen by comparing the local search experience on a Web site and a mobile application. With the touch of a button, the Yelp mobile application lists restaurants around me ranked by quality of reviews. In most Web browsers (without HTML5 and the geo-location API), I need to type in a query and wade through a set of results. Pogo-sticking back and forth between Web sites and search results to find something near my actual location with a good rating.

Tags: mobile, User Experience, interface, search
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This advertisement conveys the ability of this product to operate underwater. Although the ad could have done without the use of the actual words “ice berg”.

The above ad is creative, illustrative, and gets to the point without deviating the viewer from the main point of view.

The catch in this ad is that the details women are likely to notice first have something to do with your socks, no matter what you may be wearing elsewhere.

This ad shows you how effective these boots can be towards fighting off all kinds of weather and surroundings.

The catch with the above ad is that the super glue advertised is strong enough to save an object in the nick of time.

This ad is incredibly creative as you can see the deceased body laying on the side of the road covered by a blanket containing the label of the drink which caused this death. It’s an eye-opener.

This lotion or product is meant to be perceived as very accommodating to your skin.

This ad shows you how powerful the shutter smile effect can be with this camera. It can even capture the physically “unseen” to the naked eye.

The 3M Micro Projector is so effective that even a bird has placed one in its bird house!

The above ad is clean, organized, and shows clear use of proper colors and shadows.

This nasal inhaler is so effective that even the worst of stuffy noses can be unclogged.

This ad is very persuasive and cut-throat. It illustrates how easily one glass of alcohol can act as a blockade when operating a motor vehicle.

The irony in this ad is so great that it simply becomes eye-catching.

This ad displays organized use of dark colors and originality in its manipulation of a photo.

If it were possible this ad would take motion photography to another level. Intricate works of art such as this one are rare to find.

This ad is trying to convey the selling point of its product, mostly the slogan that states no matter the situation or surrounding “Your movistar number always survives”.

Car advertisements are a dime a dozen, however, clear and illustrative pieces such as the one above are a bit more rare.

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This ad gives way to how it’s possible to use simple objects to create attractive, complex, works of art.

This ad quickly executes its purpose and leaves you with a hint of gravity defying inspiration.

How better to show how animals and humans could co-exist in an area but to show the viewer how easy it is to blend in.

This ad takes your imagination on a wild ride as it uses creative venues to create an amazing digital work of art.

The above ad conveys to the targeted audience that your cattle is safe no matter what, even from the most awkward and unprecedented of situations.

This ad not only illustrates its point through the use of objects and clothing, but it also uses motion to create a better understanding for the viewer.

The above is a creative and effective ad that has the very potential to motivate alcohol consumers to find use in a designated driver.

Modeled after a great work of art founded hundreds of years ago, this is to show you that creativity does not always come best with originality.

This ad shows the viewer that no matter how hot it may be in a room, Perierr carbonated water remains fresh and desirable.

This ad could’ve possibly been illustated a little better but it still gets the main point across. It’s basically stating that watching this channel is so suspensful that you wouldn’t know what to expect out of the commercials.

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Content will only take you so far if you don’t listen to what your users are trying to say.

While you’ve probably heard the saying, “Content is King,” the sites that reign supreme in today’s Web world don’t just produce great content, they create a culture of passionate participants and a community of conversation. It’s like BoingBoing author and editor Cory Doctorow said, “Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.”

The broadcast and communications media of the twentieth century, the age of radio and television, phone and fax, are giving way to the conversation media of the twenty-first century, the age of Digg and YouTube, Facebook and Google. This is a profound paradigm shift towards the cooperative creation of content by an entire community, a shared endeavor that makes every participant both creator and consumer. No longer is content created and distributed by a small group of professionals, and no longer are conversations held between a single sender and a single recipient.

There are a number of flavors of the new media. For social networking sites like Facebook, content just gives users something to talk about. Sites like Wikipedia use conversation as a means to generate an entire encyclopedia’s worth of collaborative content. Sites like Digg create communities where the quality of content is determined solely by the amount of conversation it generates, where recommendations and discussion – not the whims of the editor – are the difference between forgettable and front page news.

The sites that are best able to harness the power of conversation media will help to shape the next generation of web media. All it takes is to create a community that rewards participation and encourages users not only to consume, but to start contributing as well.

Instant Conversation – Just Add Comments?

While content-driven sites can often benefit from conversation, you can’t just add a comment form at the bottom of each page and call it a day. A community is built around active, eager participants. Your site has to give them a reason to get involved. This means understanding your users and creating an attractive, compelling community. Users participate for a number of reasons. Here are some of the big ones:

• “Look what I made!” People love to express themselves. It’s very rewarding to share your creations with an audience of appreciative fans. Sites like YouTube give users both the means to share and the social tools to converse with their newfound audience.
• “Look what I found!” Sharing a particularly exciting or interesting discovery is gratifying. Sites like Digg let users share their discoveries and let other users share their opinions by creating conversations around the content that keep it lively and entertaining.
• “Look what I know!” Some sites are built around groups of people who want to get better at a shared task by talking about it. There are Google Groups and niche sites for every conceivable subject and they’re used join discussions, answer questions and share skills. Members can get help and also offer their own assistance.

These three examples share a common theme. The YouTubers that post the best videos, the Diggers that share the most interesting stories and the community members that provide the most assistance are all rewarded by the recognition of their peers. Peer recognition is the most powerful incentive to contribute to a community and to engage in conversation, and creating a culture where members are recognized for their participation will help ensure a lively conversation and an active community.

Creating Many-to-Many Conversations

There is one site that best exemplifies the new breed of conversation media. This site does not generate content and provides few features, yet it is one of the fastest growing sites in history and has entered like no other into the everyday language of modern life. I’m speaking, of course, of Twitter. Twitter’s profound effect on online conversation is, at first, hard to explain. Text messaging beat them to the character limit and blogging beat them to personal broadcasting. No, the secret to Twitter’s success is that by lowering the transaction cost and making conversations both ubiquitous and personal, Twitter enables communication on a scale never before seen, and that has been truly groundbreaking.

The broadcast media of the twentieth century, like radio, television and newspaper, offer widespread distribution of content, but give the consumer no creative control. The communications media of the twentieth century, like phones, faxes and text messaging, are all about one-to-one conversation. The conversation media of the twenty-first century, however, are a complex network connecting each member to an entire community, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute.

This kind of complex, many-to-many conversation has the potential to create large, vibrant networks of like-minded members. The size of the community is limited only by the incentives it provides its members to participate in conversation. Sites that create a culture of conversation break down the barriers of traditional broadcast and communications media, turning consumers into contributors and a group of users into a community.

About the Author

Rein Henrichs is a web developer with a background in print and web design. He’s passionate about creating usable interfaces of all kinds and likes to talk to people about the web, Usability and writing good software on his blog. He likes it even more when people talk back. Send him your thoughts via twitter at @reinh

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IAApps organizes all the different tools into 4 categories:

1. Interface Modeling
2. Prototyping
3. Screen Capture
4. Usability Testing

Each category is then further organized by OS platform:

1. Mac OSX flavors
2. Windows flavors
3. Web

I found the navigation somewhat clumsy. Rather than navigate the menus, I’d prefer a tool “site map” – a single page with all of the tools listed under each category and operating system so that I could quickly scan for what I want. You almost get that “Show All Listings”, but not quite.

Aside from that, I think the site can be a valuable resource by providing a definitive directory of all the software applications User Experience professionals need, and a way for us to rate the tools.

I’m going to head over there now and rate some of the tools myself.

Related posts:

1. Review: 16 User Interface Prototyping Tools
2. Rapidrabb – an online prototyping tool
3. Design Tools

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• Networked: able to get itself online and thereby read and write Internet content or run services from “the cloud”
• Consumer: designed and intended for everyday use not solely professional or specialized tasks
• Device: a form factor made for a particular use or set of uses. Technically, a digital device because of integrated electronics.
• Platform: you can build on it. Developers can create software for it or hardware to integrate with it. Content authors can publish to it.

Let’s look at some examples:

Gaming consoles like the XBOX 360, nintendo wii, and Playstation 360. These devices connect to the Internet to provide access to news, media, and entertainment content, while also allowing game players to communicate and collaborate with each other online. Gaming consoles are designed for a wide range of consumers and their living rooms. Developers can not only build games for the platform but also Web services like video streaming and ebook-and-Twitter-on-Xbox-010609.htm”>social networking.

Smart Phones like the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, any Android phone, and more. These portable devices connect to the Internet for gaming, tools, news, local information, search, and just about anything. Smart phones have a broad set of capabilities that developers can build against and often integrate/promote application stores to provide consumers access to additional software.

Media Players like Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader and Apple’s iPod music, image, and video player. These devices go online to access media content like books, movies, TV shows, and albums. Musicians, Authors, Podcasters, Bloggers, and more can package up content for consumers to purchase on these devices. In the case of the iPod, developers can also build applications and games.

Networked TVs like Samsung Internet@TV, LG Broadband, and Sony Bravia HDTV. These 10 foot living room experiences use Internet access to deliver video, image, and news content to people’s TV sets. Developers can build widgets and media experiences using platforms like Yahoo!’s Connected TV Widgets.

Netbooks & Tablets like the much-rumored Apple tablet, and the popular stripped-down laptops known as Netbooks. These portable devices are all about Internet access. While developers can build as they always have for Web browsers and operating systems like Windows to run applications on these devices, other development capabilities like iPhone OS and Google’s Chrome OS may be forthcoming.

Tags: technology, mobile, sensors, context
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Mobile app stores can provide access to the few services that matter online. Therefore they can deliver the top sites that most people care about and actually use on a daily basis. Mobile app platforms can lure developers away from building applications for the Web with integrated capabilities (multimedia, sensors, monetization, etc.) and consistent run-times (no cross-platform and cross-browser development). Mobile stores actually make it possible for services to be found through smaller catalogs, structured data, and browse/merchandising features.

The Few Services that Matter
The top 50 Internet properties (PDF of comScore rankings) represent a disproportionate amount of Web traffic. Consider that 157 million of the 193 million total US Internet audience visited Google. So if a mobile application platform has representation of the top 50 sites on the Web, they have a huge amount of coverage for core Web behaviors. Essentially most services people could access on the Web, they could then access on a mobile app. If they begin using their mobile apps more than the URLs in their desktop Web browser, that’s a problem for Web applications. Current data shows this is exactly what’s going on.

Rich Capabilities
Many mobile application platforms are attractive to developers because they have technical capabilities that leave the Web browser behind. In order for Web applications to really compete with native mobile applications, they’ll need some serious enhancements. Many of which are in active development in HTML 5 and proprietary solutions from companies like Google:

• The ability to run offline. In HTML 5 AppCache and Database make it easier to run apps offline and Google has built this into Gears & Chrome
• The ability to run more efficiently. Javascript performance improvements and the ability to run background threads that do processing that would otherwise slow the browser to a crawl (Web workers in HTML 5).
• Access to operating system resources. Making use of sensors, audio, image, and video output and inputs as well as local file stores. The video and audio element in HTML 5: embed audio/video on a web page like you embed images today (no plugins).
• The ability to render graphics and animations quickly and elegantly. For example, Apple’s iPhone supports Quartz, Core Animation, and OpenGL ES. Quartz is a powerful 2D drawing engine for creating vector graphics, bitmap images, and PDF content. Core Animation is the technology that adds smooth motion and dynamic feedback to your user interface by creating an illusion of motion. OpenGL ES is the interface for high-performance 3D graphics on mobile devices. HTML 5 includes the canvas element: a way to draw graphics on a web page using Javascript

Findability
Lastly, though many complain about the difficulty of getting found within large mobile application store inventory. Their chances are still better than on the open Web. As an example, Apple’s App store (perhaps the most popular store now) has 65,000 applications. Google indexes and searches over a trillion Web pages.

App stores also maintain structured data about applications. That is, developers provide titles, categories, descriptions, screenshots, release dates, pricing, and more to app store owners when they submit their application. This creates a structured set of data that can be searched against. On the open Web, search engines are often trying to stitch a lot of these attributes together themselves and as a result, fall short. Structured data provides more (dependable) ways to enable people to find services. Lastly, app stores have built in browsing and merchandising features so apps are not solely dependent on people’s search terms to be found. As a result, the chances of sticking out in an app store are much improved.

Tags: mobile, apple, search, technology, Web applications, javascript
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