Senior UX Specialist at Elsevier

As of 1st of October I am no longer employed at Reed Business. Instead I am Senior Usability Specialist at Elsevier. So instead of working with products for the Dutch market I am now working on global products for scientists and research administrators.

It felt like a fairly good time to take on something new. Together with my colleague I had succeeded in making UX a part of the business, which was the reason I was hired and I was finishing up the two projects I was working on and felt that I was ready to take on new challenges. The last thing I heard was that UX would be it's own department and exist on the same level as marketing (with much less staff, unfortunately). So in less than two years time we made UX an integral part of the business, of which I am quite proud.

This far working at Elsevier has been really great! Not that I did not like my old job (quite the opposite) but I feel a closer affinity to the business now. After all, working with law enforcement, lawyers and procurement officers is not quite the same as working with products for scientists and being part of a team of 40+ people from Chennai in India to Dayton, Ohio is a great way to grow professionally. A big plus is that I can discuss things like test plans and interaction designs with more experienced colleagues and learn from their mistakes and learn new things.

In terms of my Dutch skills I hope they won't suffer to much. Even though the business language has switched to English much to of the day to day activities are still in Dutch.

Some shameless bragging - Stapel & De Koning the movie is live!

Since I started working at Reed Business I have been working on a rich information site for the Dutch police - Stapel & De Koning.

The marketing team put together a short commercial about the product which went live today. Right now it is only in Dutch but I plan to upload a verison with subtitles in English as well.

Setting up Ruby on Rails 3 on a CentOS 5.4 VPS (or a tale of how a prototype turned into a specification and needed to be hosted)

For my work I had developed a prototype in Ruby on Rails to be able to do usability tests on the more dynamic parts of a new website.

However as the project progressed and the design was refined based on usability testing, it became much easier just to update the prototype rather than to change the original specifications.

As the project grew it became more and more cumbersome to keep everyone in the 40 plus people team up to date with the latest changes in the prototype and making sure that the team had a common vision of what the end product was supposed to look like. My only way to demo the site was to either take screenshots or run a server locally from my virtual machine running Ubuntu where I ran my development environment.

Running a Rails server centrally in a Microsoft centric organisation is easier said than done and I had to look outside the company for hosting providers. Eventually I settled for Hostingrails.com's virtual private server option (VPS for short, a virtual machine).

Purchasing the VPS subscription was quite easy and within a couple of hours I got an email with my credentials. But getting the server up and running turned out to be much more cumbersome than I originally imagined. I am by no means I Linux guru but I have spent enough time tinkering with various Linux and Unix distributions to not shy away from the task of configuring a server.

The server ran CentOS 5.4 and which is a Red Hat distribution sans the commercial parts. This proved to be the first hurdle: I was used to using fink on Mac OS X when installing the odd x11 application or apt-get on Ubuntu but yum (CentOs's frontend for the rpm package manager) or worse yet rpm were both new to me.

I started out using using a guide I found on assertivemagazine.com "Setup a Ubuntu VPS for hosting ruby on rails applications" but CentOS is no Ubuntu and that became quickly became abundantly clear to me. First off all the server didn't come with yum installed. Which meant that I had no "user friendly" front-end for package manager and that getting one (in this case yum) up and running was the first order of business. I had no choice but to get acquainted with rpm.

Let's walk through the process step by step (this post assumes basic knowledge of the vi editor for editing text files and I am not saying that this is the right way, it's just the way I got it working).

Step 1. Adding users and disabling root access with ssh

To add a user first log in to the machine using ssh (type: ssh root@) and once inside create a new administrator:

1. Create a new user using: adduser
2. Add an admin group using: groupadd admin
3. Run visudo and give the admin group the right to run the sudo command by appending %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
   to the end of the visudo file.
4. Add the user you created to the admin group using usermod -a -G admin
5. Log in as the user you created to make sure it works.
   
6. Disable ssh access by root by making sure that the line beginning with PermitRootLogin is uncommented in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and set to: PermitRootLogin no
7. Restart the ssd service using service sshd restart

Step 2. Getting yum up and running (getting acquinted with rpm)

Since yum wasn't installed from the get go I had to figure out how to install it using rpm. Luckily I found an older obsolete post that helped me to figure out what I needed to do "Install yum with rpm on CentOS". Based on the approach described there, an page about rpm and manually copying the links in the CentOS package repository (which had moved since the article was written) I figured out that the command I needed to run was the following:

sudo rpm -Uvh
http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-libs-2.4.3-43.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-2.4.3-43.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-iniparse-0.2.3-4.el5.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-devel-2.4.3-43.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-python-4.4.2.3-22.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-urlgrabber-3.1.0-6.el5.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-3.el5.centos.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/yum-3.2.22-33.el5.centos.noarch.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-libs-4.4.2.3-22.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/rpm-4.4.2.3-22.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/popt-1.10.2.3-22.el5.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos-5/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/m2crypto-0.16-6.el5.8.x86_64.rpm

Step 3. Making sure that the system was up to date

Once yum is installed updating the packages is quite simple using: yum update.
To make sure you have the necessary tools installed run sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools" which among other things installs gcc which is needed for the Rails installation.

Step 4. Installing what yum can't provide (git and sqlite)

Strangely enough yum didn't have a version of git in its repositories nor a recent version of SQLite, which both are needed for the Rails installation.

4.1. Installing Git

1. Install the necessary libraries if they aren't already installed: yum install gettext-devel expat-devel curl-devel zlib-devel openssl-devel
2. Download the git source code: wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.6.tar.gz
3. Untar the source code once the download is done: tar xvfz git-1.7.6.tar.gz
4. Install the sourcecode by first moving to the directory where the files were expanded: cd git-1.7.6.tar.gz
5. Then issue this command: make prefix=/usr/local all
6. Last but not least run: make prefix=/usr/local install
7. Check if git is working using: git --version
   

4.2 Installing SQLite

1. Download the source using: wget http://sqlite.org/sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.23.1.tar.gz
2. Unpack the it using: tar xvzf sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.23.1.tar.gz
3. Move into the folder with the unpacked source: cd sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.23.1
4. Run ./configure
5. Make and install the package using: make && sudo make install

Step 5. Installing rvm and Ruby on Rails

Finally the last stretch of the journey. All that is left is to install rvm and rails:

1. Download and install rvm: bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)
2. Add rvm to your path so that you can invoke it as a function by appending: [[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
   to your .bash_profile
3. Reload .bashrc for the changes to take effect by running: source .bashrc
4. Test that rvm works by: rvm -v
5. Install Rails using: rvm install 1.9.2
6. Set it as default Ruby version using: rvm --default use 1.9.2
7. Update the gems to make sure that you are up-to-date by running gem update --system and gem update
8. Because of the non-standard sqlite3 installation you need to run the following when installing the gem: gem install sqlite3-ruby — –with-sqlite3-include=/usr/local/include \ –with-sqlite3-lib=/usr/local/lib
9. Finally install Ruby on Rails by running: gem install rails
10. Test that it works by running: rails -v

That's it.

Sources:
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Deployment_Guide/s2-users-add.html
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-sudo-allows-people-in-group-admin/
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Network/SecuringSSH
http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/RPMS/x86_64/
http://www.softpanorama.org/Utilities/rpm.shtml#Installation_Removal
http://www.how-to-linux.com/centos-52/install-git-161-on-centos-52/
http://tech.wangyaodi.com/2010/08/26/install-sqlite3-ruby-on-centos/

A week with Boxee box

I received my Boxee box last weekend and I thought that I would share my views on the device now that I have spent some time getting to know it.

Boxee could best be described as a media streaming solution that you can hook up to your TV to enable playback of media stored on other devices on your network as well as a mini operating system in that it allows you to browse the web, run flash content and install apps to access content from media sites such as Youtube and BBC.

I bought the Boxee box because my previous media solution, a Dvico Tvix, died after three years of use. I made the decision to buy a Boxee very much on a whim, it could just as well have been a Popcorn hour or another streaming media solution. But what made me decide for Boxee was the fact that it supports Flash, it has quite a number of apps available and would amongst other things allow me to watch Swedish news on my TV in addition to allowing me to play all the media that I have stored on my NAS.

The reviews that I read before making my decision where quite negative but all of them stated that the product had great potential and could grow into something quite fantastic with future firmware updates.

So undeterred I ordered one and a few days later it arrived at my office.

Initial impression was quite good. Boxee has clearly taken inspiration from Apple when it comes to the packaging and the Boxee Box's box (try saying that fast) came in a sleek black box with a minimal amount of stickers proclaiming its virtues. The box itself takes up as much space as a stack of CDs and looks like it's part of its underlying surface. Installation was a snap and within minutes I was up and running: accessing network content and running apps. But then it became clear why it had received so many mediocre reviews.

If its possible to divide up one's impressions in functionality and usability the Boxee is a two-faced beast. It has fantastic functionality and can play basically anything you throw at it. But the usability of the device is on par with a D-Link router config interface from ten years ago.

What's great
- It has a qwerty keyboard on the backside of the remote. It's really convenient compared to the onscreen keyboard of the PS3.
- It plays basically anything you throw at it.
- It supports Flash.
- There seems to be good developer support and apps for various video sites are being spun out in rapid succession.
- The browser has HTML5 support.
- Sleek design of the physical box itself.

What sucks
- Every action takes a lot of interaction with the remote. In order to try to simplify the device the there is only a navigational button, a play/pause and a back button on the front side. Going back from deep within a menu structure therefore requires tons of clicks on the back button instead of adding a "home" button. Another instance where an extra button would have been nice is the annoying screen when you start an app asking if you want to add it to your favorites. This could have been solved by a favorite button.
- The only indication of which way you are holding the remote is the little Boxee logo. I frequently find myself holding it upside down.
- The remote has no back light making it even more difficult to master when the lights are out.
- There are no volume controls on the remote forcing you to fiddle around with the TV remote to control the volume.
- Boxee really tries to push the paid content that it offers through its movies and tv-series channels. That means that the networked shares are tucked away in a maze of menus.
- The remote lacks a goto function meaning that you cannot jump to a specific part in a movie but instead you have to scan through it.

Final words
In conclusion I would say that I am not disappointed with my choice. It's just that the Boxee could have been so much more if they spent more time doing proper usability testing. Don't let the cutesy graphical interface fool you - it's just a visual polish on a very flawed interaction design. A tell tale sign is the angry comments from users on the offical Boxee forum which mostly revolve around usability issues and the Engadget article "How would you change D-Link's Boxee".

Pictures

The Boxee box box

The Boxee running

The home screen

The interface for accessing remote files

The apps screen

The boxee remote (up is left)

The qwerty keyboard on the back of the remote

CSS3 generators

I find myself using CSS more and more where before I used to be relying on Photoshop or its CS brethren. No more creating gradients in Photoshop or awkward hacks with the float property to create a rounded corner effects.

Assuming this might be interesting to more people than myself, I have compiled a list of tools that I've used for my latest project:

• Layer Styles - very photoshop-like CSS generator (Thanks for the tip @francisrowland)
• WestCiv's CSS3 tools - bunch of stuff including gradients, transformations and shadows
• CSS3 Generator - the works (shadows, stroke, you name it).
• CSS3 Gradient generator - just gradients.
• CSS3.me the only generator that generates Opera and IE code but is limited to border-radius, box-shadow, background-gradient and opacity.
• CSS 3 maker - nice generator that lists browser compatibility (including Blackberry and iOS).

For a comprehensive guide of CSS properties and their Opera prefixes have a look at The Art of Web's CSS section.

I have yet to find good guide to IE9 and CSS3 but if you need to develop something that looks decent in IE9 you can have a look at Microsoft's IE9 Guide for Developers.

The mantra is simple: Research, Design, Test and Repeat!

In an undisclosed city at an undisclosed company the catering contract ended and the company set out finding a new supplier. As the new year started so did the new catering company. This is a tale of how a perceived cost cutting measure turned out to cause massive frustration and costing more.

The old system
In the previous system the primary principle was that the personel themselves entered the products they wished to purchase through the use of a barcode scanner, thus eliminating the need for service personel.

However, as with all systems where people are required to self report their purchases, conscientiousness is a limiting factor.

The system certainly wasn't without it's share of usability issues since some of the barcode scanners wouldn't work unless being held at precisely the right angle. Another issue with the system was that many products lacked barcodes and required the user to scan a barcode next to a picture on a big board. Sometimes there wasn't even a picture but just a name.

It might sound complex but users quickly picked up speed using the system.

The new system
Therefore it came as quite a surprise to what extent the new system failed to live up to its predecessor when the the new system was introduced at the beginning of 2011.

Gone were the barcode scanners and instead they had been replaced with a touchscreen with a number of categories which each held a number of items. These categories and the names of the items seemed to stem from some internal record keeping or backend software. For instance "soup" was to be found under "Start" whereas chocolate sprinkles (which the Dutch like to put on their sandwiches) was sorted under "Meats & Cheese". Other items would be spread out among the categories with certain flavours of items only being available from within certain categories. A vegetable croquette was thusly tucked away under "Start" whereas other kinds of croquette would be considered a kind of snack. Some items were given a colour coding with dubious results such as "Green meat". Never mind the use of green and red as the only means to distinguish between categories.

The visibility of system status was poor due to the currently selected menu item disappearing when selected. The system also caused high cognitive load since the principle of "recognition rather than recall" was disregarded. Most of the items in the system looked nothing like their real life counterpart.

No use what so ever was made of the laws of gestalt (visual grouping) and the order of items within each category was completely random. It was therefore not possible to scan for a certain type of item and instead the user was forced to read the labeling for each item until the right item was found.

The system was only available in English despite a large number of its users being Dutch. This might not sound as such a big deal unless you consider that there are quite a large number of items that are more or less specific to the Netherlands. Items such as Hagelslag (the sprinkles mentioned earlier), broodje croquette (a fried ragout roll in a bread) and broodje haring (a herring in a hot dog bun) can be translated but would seem strange to someone not familiar with the Dutch cuisine.

Last but not least the checkout process only allowed you to delete one item. If you had done two mistakes in a row you would be greeted with a message saying "Error cannot void!" and the only solution was to start over from the beginning.

Everybody suffers
Before the system was even launched an email was sent out to all employees in the company telling them to be patient with long queues initially as the people familiarized themselves with the new system. Change management is a tricky business and there is almost always an initial drop in performance when a new system is rolled out. But weeks passed and the queues did not subside but a number of other things did happened:

1, Extra personel was added to alleviate users in distress.
2, One of the checkout machines was replaced with a cashier to aid users new to the system or guests visiting (which in itself is contrary to the business goal of using the system to begin with).
3, An extra board was added next to each machine with pictures of the items and where to find them in the system.
4, All users were invited to a session to ask questions about the new system
5, All users were invited to a second session dubbed "How to pay: walk-through" to get training on how to use the new system.

When talking to users of the system it became clear that people began making their own lunch or started only buying a set of items that they knew how to find thus impacting the financial gain for the catering company and reducing the satisfaction a user would get from their lunch.

Conclusion
So my concluding point is this: instead of investing in usability research during development the catering company is forced to invest heavily in after sales support going so far as providing training for a system which was going to reduce costs and shorten the lines. Something as simple as doing discount usability testing with a few users would have nipped many of the problems listed above in the bud and saved the catering company a lot of money down the road.

The mantra is simple: Research, Design, Test and Repeat!

Blogger doesn't keep settings

Yesterday I emailed some drafts for upcoming blogposts using mail2blogger to my Blogger account. Somewhere along the line Blogger had forgotten my settings, which where set on saving incoming emails as drafts. Instead the emails where published directly. To anyone who read my draft blog posts and wondered if the author had suffered a stroke - I apologize.

And to the engineers at Blogger: that is a big fat UX fail right there!

Got root? You bet ya! My impressions on rooting my Android phone

"Got Root?" is a greeting in unix nerd circles and like most puns it has made it onto t-shirts, posters and mugs. Root is the name of the administrators account on a Unix system and therefore having Root means that you have administrators privileges. In the era of smart phones, iPhones, thingamabobs and do-hickeys Root has been made into a verb.

Rooting means getting root access on your Android OS smartphone. So far so good but rooting your phone allows you to do all kinds of neat stuff that you can't otherwise such as enable tethering (using your phone as a modem), move apps to the SD card to save space, install new versions of the OS, set the phone to the language you want and run all kinds of cool/geeky apps. For a more in depth info on the benefits check out this page over at Android Police. On a side note: rooting is somewhat different to jailbreaking on iOS because jailbreaking allows you to circumvent the limitations set by Apple such as only being able to install apps from the official distribution channel - the iTunes App Store. Android OS does not have the same restrictions.

Thhaar she blows! running the su command to test root access.

I rooted my HTC Hero back in june. I grew more and more impatient with HTC promising to release an official update to Android OS 2.1. I had the phone since November 2009 and it was increasingly becoming evident that Android OS 1.5 wasn't as polished as I wanted it to be: The Phone interface lagged so much that I missed calls, the LED indicators didn't work and the headphone jack was a plug and pray experience. Rumours about the update started circulating sometime in April then HTC said they would release it in June, then July, then August and so on. So I took the step over to the dark side.

Now rooting isn't for the faint of heart since it can potentially brick your phone and it will probably void your warranty. But as an early adopter took it upon myself to try. I read up a little on rooting on the internet and followed the instructions here.

Since I had basically no experience with using custom ROMs (modified versions of the OS) I chose VillainRom because it was used in the example I followed. Installation was easy and within half an hour I was running Android OS 2.1 and the lag was much improved and the LEDs and the headphone jack worked as advertised. However the first couple of releases of VillainRom that I tried had their fair share of problems. I began with version 10 but it was only when I installed 10.3 that I got a phone with the same level of stability and battery performance that I had before the upgrade. Yesterday I upgraded to version 12 and it works really really well and the few issues I had with 10.3 have all been resolved (such as the sketchy notification function).

So would I advice anyone else to Root? If you just want 2.1 on your Hero you can use the official update (it was finally released in September in the Netherlands) but depending on your needs I would still recommend it for fellow early adopters out there.

After all it's a nice feeling being able to stick it to the man!

DfC Cologne - the tale of the roadtrip, the conference and winning a mug

A couple of weeks ago my fellow UX specialist Miranda de Groot and I visited Design for Conversion in Köln. Since we had already blown through the funds allocated for conferences this year we wanted to keep it as cheap as possible so we booked rooms at a F1 hotel in Frechen and went by car.

I thought F1 would be bad but I had no idea how bad. Especially since other colleagues who had stayed in a F1 during their studies said things like "het valt best wel mee, hoor!" (trans. it's really not that bad). But man! it was bad. The interior decorators must have been inspired by cruise ships from the Soviet era and cleaning certainly wasn't high on the priority list.

So after a night of of uneasy sleep in Frechen we packed our things and headed into Köln and the conference. Funnily enough: the same truckers that sat outside de entrance when we had arrived where (still?) sitting there when we left.

The venue was really cool, it was located under the main railway line and reminded me a lot about the clubs I used to frequent when I lived in Berlin.

The conference itself was an "unconference" which in this case meant that there was a mix of presentations and team based work. We were divided up into nine teams to work on cases for either Xing, Greenpeace or Coop (three teams per case). Miranda got to work on a sign in form for Green Peace and I got to work on how Coop Switzerland could improve the communication of their corporate sustainability.

Here are our take aways from the conference part:

Kath Straub (Usability.gov) - Persuasive technology, design beyond the task
Twitter: @kas

• The car sales man is a good intuitive psychologist in that he/she will try to find your trigger points by asking the right questions.
• Persuasion is often about finding an emotional hook like Coco pops saying that they help your child's immune system.
• Use a conversational tone of voice because it simulates an authentic conversation (like a time keeping system that says you have done good when you fill in your report).
• Persuasion and usability can be conflicting for instance a lotterty ticket is an example of a persuasive but hardly usable design. But it doesn't mean that usability doesn't matter.
• We need to make sure that we integrate our different communication channels such as email, web and twitter. Kath uses the example of an airline that emails you asking if you want them to check you in for a small fee.
• Through the social media space we have access to "similiar strangers" which are people that we don't know but have the same experience or same problems and we will use their experience when making our choices.
• Don't forget about usability! If they can't use the product than persuasion doesn't matter.

Peter van der Putten (PegaSystems) - Authenticity a left brain approach
Slides: Authenticity a left brain approach

• Be authentic. If you have have a system with a greeting when the user logs in then make sure you get the name right (reminds me about the rule about not breaking the fourth wall).
• Be one. Make sure you have control over the user experience across your different channels.
• Authenticity is about being reliable and trustworthy like when the neighborhood butcher would remind you if you forgot to by eggs that day.
• Avoid the uncanny valley (odd use of the term, normally it's used about humanoids) but what Peter meant was that you don't want to get to personal and exoid because it's experienced as uncomfortable.

Nicholas Mohr (Sapient Nitro) - Using data to improve online experiences
Slides: Using data to improve online experiences

• Web Analytics is hot with Coremetrics and Unica being bought by IBM and Omniture being bought by Adobe.
• Web analytics is about getting a competitive advantage by looking at what has happened, why it has happened and what is going to happen.
• Web analytics should drive strategy by helping you to understand customers, get business intelligence, uncover gems, drive/help marketing efforts and innovation.
• Web analytics needs to be used with methodology otherwise you will only be able to figure out what has happened but never why.
• A/B-testing is a good start is not enough. Nicholas compares it to sandpaper, it smoothes out small bumps.
• User experience is about observation, understanding modeling and innovation and in the understanding phase web analytics data should play a major role.
• Web analytics needs to be used for continuos improvement of existing web sites by measuring performance based on the KPIs.
• To improve the online user experience you need to use web analytics to identify issues, use usability testing to understand why, validate the fixes by e.g. multi-variate testing and use web analytics to optimize.

Paul Hughes (Lava Design)

Twitter:@paulbhughes

Paul easily held the coolest presentation. He did not use PowerPoint but instead he drew his presentation on a roll of butcher paper. The drawing was filmed an projected on a screen behind him.

Much of what Paul said falls into the category inspirational but here where some concrete tips such as that there are three levels of design: components - the form and function, connections - the system and the processes and context - the strategy and the policy surrounding it. He used Apples media strategy and Philips work on hospitals to exemplify. In Apples case the iPod is the component, iTunes the connection and redefining personal music the context. Good design should be about all three.

However I have my doubts about his examples. Much of the innovation that we see around us are driven by chance and not by strategic thinking (Apple bought SoundJam years before they released the iPod). In the medicinal world Viagra and Rogaine are examples of successes that came to light by chance. Both where developed for the treatment of heart disease but alternative uses came to light when patients refused to hand in their left over pills when the clinical trials ended. But regardless of the serendipity factor he has a point about looking at the broader context and not just the function of a product.

Paul also talked about branding and how it is important that actions and communication happens in parallel in order to establish trust.

Cases, competition and Coop Switzerland

Each of the three sponsors had brought a case and we got divided up into nine teams to work on them, three teams per case. At the end of the day there was a presentation round and a semi-finalist was chosen per case. Those three teams then went to the finals where a winner was chosen by the sponsors. My team won and I we each got a mug with "member of the winning team" printed on it.

My team worked on a case about how to improve communication about corporate sustainability at Coop Switzerland (funnily enough their representative was a Swede who had grown up in Switzerland). Their problem was that there was a myriad of certifications and marketing campaigns but they where unsure about how they where perceived as a brand and they did not have any marketing research data (at least not with them).

We developed a concept where consumers could earn points and badges through making sustainable choices when they shopped. All of this was backed up by a status transition system, tracking and the ability to cash in the points earned. We began with a brainstorming session where we wrote concepts down on post its. The post its where then clustered and we choose a cluster of post its as basis for our concept which we then worked out on paper.

Sadly, Miranda wasn't so lucky when it came to the cases. She got to work on how to persuade people to sign a multi-page form for Green Peace. That wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for that one of the constraints was that they weren't able to change the form, only the surrounding pages.

Check out videos of the speakers and the case presentations.

Design by Fire 2010

Thoroughly enjoyed Design by Fire Conference 2010. The highlight was of course Bill Buxton's talk on Natural User Interfaces. This year's conference was a huge improvement over last year's due to a better lineup of speakers. The only downside (however minor) was the building where the conference was held - it got really cramped outside the auditorium in the pauses. Here are my take-aways:

Bill Buxton - NUI: What's in a Name?
Book: Sketching the User Interface Slides: -

- Everything that we think of as new is at least 10 years old such as multitouch, the mouse, touchpads and smartphones.
- There is a long process which Buxton calls "the long nose" before technology reaches mainstream which he demonstrated by showing a Casio Calculator watch from 1984 with gestural recognition and video from 1983 with demoed the "pinch zoom" now popularized by the iPhone.
- Good design is about being a good thief and know your history (and by extension E-bay and Amazon is a great place to find prototypes of new products).
- Natural User Interfaces are about exploiting the skills that we have acquired over a lifetime. Natural is meant in the same sense as it is natural to button a shirt or tie a shoelace.
- The same skills might not be suitable in all situations for example controlling the inflight entertainment system in the same way as Microsoft Kinect is just bad.

Claire Rowland - The psychology of creativity
Twitter: @clurr Slides: Psychology Of Creativity

- De Bono's theory on hats has no scientific basis in studies on adults but seems to work well for children with developmental problems.
- Certain traits within the Big five seems to have a link with how creative a person is such as scoring high on openness and low on conscientiousness.
- Intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation in in stimulating creativity. But "recognized geniuses" such as Darwin and Newton probably had both high intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
- Brain storming is actually a less good in generation new ideas than individual work but people seems to get energized from brainstorming sessions. Probable reasons for the lack of creativity are social loafing and group think.
- It's important to switch team members from time to time. Working with the same people every time hampers creativity.
- It's important to try to reconceptualize. Why are we doing this and for whom?
- Janusian thinking (after the many-faced roman god) - try to think of the opposites of a problem at the same time such as thinking of social and anti-social aspects of a service.
- Absurd stimulation - put stuff on the office walls to get people thinking and discussing.
- Look at something unconventional to prime your brain to come up with unconventional solutions.
- Lie down, the decrease in noradrenaline stimulates creativity.

Andrei Herasimchuk - Turning the Corporate Battleship with Design
Twitter: @Trenti Slides: -
- Kickstart your projects with a picture because it helps non creative people grasp what it is that you are trying to do and it makes you accountable.
- Eliminate busywork which means stop doing with any sort of documentation that isn't an integral part of the project such as extensive specs on prototypes.
- Print out your designs and put them on the walls and get as much space as possible for whiteboards and other means of collaborative sketching.
- Get version control and make sure all team members use it.
- Get the designers away from the computer since it is a production tool and a silo.
- Do design reviews but only with peers. Don't invite management.
- Standardize on a toolset. Only when everyone in the team has mastered the product you can start thinking about acquiring more tools.
- Structure is lika good playbook but you must be able to change the play on the fly.

My apologies for the crummy pictures.

Improving the slider control in Android OS

One thing that's frequently annoying me when using my Android (OS version 2.1) phone is the fact that there is no instant feedback when using the slider control. Earlier versions of Anroid used to have more of these types of issues but like Brenton Klik points out in his article about scrolling, some of the problems have been solved.

An example of mitigating the problems with feedback and touch interfaces is the soft keyboard. When typing the letters pop up in a box above the pressed key. That way the problem of your fingers blocking the view is somewhat resolved.

However the sliders do not have the same built in feedback. When using the sliders it is quite hard to determine what you are pointing at, especially if you are trying to select a position on the slider that is close to the edges of the screen.

But the solution is quite simple. If you were to combine the feedback from the soft keyboard with the slider control you would end up with a slider control that provides instant feedback (like the picture to the right illustrates).

There are already implementations that does basically the same for the web. That means that if you are developing web applications for mobile devices you can solve the problem right now. Hopefully Google will pick up the ball and implement a similar solution in an upcoming Android release.

The UX Bookmark: A huge list of Style Guides and UI Guidelines

Great source of inspiration. Check it out:

If you are a graphic designer or an interaction designer and have ever been tasked with creating a style guide or UI guidelines document (both are different and I’ve had the pleasure to work on both of them creating templates and the actual documents for brands and products), this list should help you out as a consolidated list of references. This list is going to be constantly updated (and will ultimately be a monster list, it’s quite modest for now) of publicly accessible style guides and UI guideline documents on the web. If you find any links not working or would like to suggest one that is not on the list, feel free to comment and let me know.

1. 3M
2. ABB Brand Identity
3. ACDSee Brand Style Guide
4. Air Products Identity Standards
5. Ameritech Graphical User Interface Standards and Design Guidelines (This one is from the Internet Archive)
6. AMAIA Residence Brand Manual (PDF, 816 kb)
7. Android User Interface Guidelines
8. Apple Human Interface Guidelines
9. Barbican Brand Guidelines for Print / Web / and Plasmas
10. BBC Future Media Standards & Guidelines
11. BBC Global Experience Language (GEL)
12. Belfast Zoo Brand guidelines
13. Blackberry and RIM wireless handheld UI Developers Guide (PDF, 1.3 mb)
14. BlackBerry Branding Guidelines (PDF, 300 kb)
15. Brick brand guidelines
16. Cargill Identity Style Guide
17. Cambridge University Brand Manual
18. Cunard Brand Guidelines
19. Easy Group Brand Manual (PDF, 2 mb)
20. Eclipse User Interface Guidelines
21. Federal Identity Program (Canada)
22. GOOD Technology Brand Identity Guide
23. Gnome Human Interface Guidelines
24. Heineken Brand Manual
25. iPhone Human Interface Guidelines
26. Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines
27. KDE User Interface Guidelines
28. Kew’s Brand Guidelines (PDF, 5 mb)
29. Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines
30. Microsoft Surface User Experience Guidelines
31. MITRE- Guidelines for designing user interface software
32. Novozymes’ brand guide
33. The New School Visual Identity Manual (PDF, 6.5 mb)
34. The New School Web Style Guide
35. Nokia Design and User Experience Library
36. Oracle Technology Network Guidelines
37. Palm User Interface & Human Interface Guidelines
38. RSA brand standards
39. SAP Interaction Design Guide for Internet Application Components
40. SAP Design Guild
41. SAP User Interface guidelines
42. Silicon Graphics Indigo Magic User Interface Guidelines
43. Skype Brand Identity Guidelines
44. Spelman College Visual Identity Guidelines (PDF, 1.3 mb)
45. Reuters Brand Center
46. Taligent Human Interface Guidelines
47. WebEx brand style guide
48. Web Style Guide 2nd edition
49. Windows User Experience
50. Windows User Experience Guidelines
51. Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
52. Windows XP Visual Guidelines (There’s a download section to the right to download WindowsXP DesignGuidelines)
53. Yale Web Style Guide
54. Yale’s Visual Identity
55. Yahoo! Style guide

via The UX Bookmark

Me vs. Windows XP: Setting the default printer

I installed Bullzip PDF printer since I was lacking the built in print-to-pdf functionality that Mac OS X has had since it's first release. After the installation I discovered that the PDF printer now was my deafult printer and there was no way of changing that in the print dialogue (where I expected to find it).

Turns out that you need to open Printers & Faxes in the Start Menu and in that dialogue right click on the printer of your choosing and set it to default in the contextual menu. Nifty!

My next project will be to figure out how to set up profiles for economy printing en full colour printing like you can in Mac OS X, but that's for another day.

Me vs. Windows XP: Stop Outlook 2007 from auto-archiving and more

At work we use Microsoft Outlook. It's a pretty competent mail program although lightyears behind Apple Mail.

Disabling auto-archive in Outlook 2007

After a couple of weeks I noticed that Outlook did strange things to my old emails. They suddenly got a weird symbol and attachments could no longer be viewed. After some googling I found out that this was actually a feature called "auto-archive". I'm sure that it makes sense from a system administrator's perspective but for me as an end-user I suddenly had to open Internet Explorer and connect to the server to view old emails. Needless to say, it was really really really annoying. After some googling I found the answer.

So, if you like me find it a nuisance just:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Other (great name) -> Click the auto-archive button

there you uncheck the first check box and you shall be bothered no more.

Making your emails available offline

Ever since the upgrade to Outlook 2007 I haven't been able to access my emails offline. This too requires mastery of the treacherous Microsoft Outlook menu system.

To make Outlook 2007 download the mails from the server so that you can read them offline repeat the following step for each folder (haven't found a quicker way):

Go to Tools -> Send/Receive Setttings -> Click "Make available offline".

Then click Send/Receive and it will download your emails. Fantastic!

It's a great time to be a retrogamer

Oh, what times we live in. There difference between in graphical splendour between the current console generation and the 8–  and 16–bit era is simply enormous. Just compare the pixelated Nintedo 8-bit games of days of yore to the near cinematic detail of the games on the Playstation 3.

For me there is very little correlation between the number of pixels, transparent shadows and dynamic lightning and the experience. In fact, it seems that the more advanced the graphics are the higher the risk that the game will become boring and and quickly forgotten. Story and gameplay is sacrificed for cinematic effects. I grew up with a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in the US) and before that I played games on the familiy's Macintosh Plus.

 

The problem with most of the games for the Macintosh Plus were that they where too simplistic (there were a few exceptions like Dark Castle). Most games were just about repeating the same stage over and over and beating your highscore (like the cult classic Stuntcopter). The games on the Mega Drive on the other hand were immense and even though the console quickly was graphically outperformed by the Super Nintendo the games were amazing. Sonic the Hedgehog came bundled with the system and it became in many ways my mental image of what a great game was.

Sonic the Hedgehog - Truly awesome

I have heard many theories about why the 3rd and 4th generation console games were superior. Though I agree that to some extent it is certainly a big part nostalgia I believe that the most important reason were consoles that had grown powerful enough to have engaging stories while the graphics where not powerful enough to take the initial attention away from poor gameplay. No generation of consoles has been free from awful games, there certainly were awful games on both Sega's and Nintodo's 8- and 16-bit systems but to me no generation was marked by so many truly craptastic games as the first generation of CD-based systems such as the Mega-CD, 3DO, Amiga CD and Philips CD-I.

The Sega Mega-CD, the first of many add-ons intended to extend the longevity of the Mega Drive, was released in Europe in 1993 and I got one for Christmas that year. The joy was short-lived because despite the Mega-CD was one of the most advanced systems at the time the games were some of the suckiest known to mankind. Sega had sacrificed gameplay for jerky full motion video sequences. Most games were simply a matter of watching a cut-scene and pressing a button at the right moment. If you succeeded you went on to see the next cut-scene. It still baffles me to this day that the designers behind the games would think that the games would be fun to play. After the initial wow effect had settled all you were left with was some truly awful gameplay. After a few evenings trying to persuade myself that Cobra Command actually was fun to play I quickly went back to playing my, by then considerable, collection of Sega Mega Drive games.

Cobra Command in action - Press the button in time or the scene will repeat (oh, no!)

In fact, the disillusionment with the Sega-CD soon made me quit playing games on consoles altogether. My dad had brought a Power Macintosh and I started playing games on it instead. Despite the popular rumour that no games were available for the Mac there were actually quite a number of quality titles being released such as Marathon, Fallout, Doom, Civilization, Sim City, Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, the Warcraft series and most of the Lucas Arts titles.

Then in 1997 things changed, me and my friends discovered emulation, the running of old games on new hardware through software called emulators. All of a sudden we were playing the classics from the Mega Drive/Super Nintendo-era on our, at that time, modern computers. And so I'd thought that I would never own a console again but everything changed with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii in 2006 and the possibility to download old classics and play on the console, much the same way that you can buy music from the Apple Music Store.

It was a game changer, all of a sudden there where a storm of sequels en remakes from the 8-/16-bit era: Mega Man 9 & 10, New Mario Bros, Castlevania Rebirth, Contra and soon Sonic 4.

My stance on gaming changed as well: the Wii made me realise that not everything post Super Nintendo was crap and that I actually missed out on some great games. I even bought myself a Playstation 3 and I have not been disappointed.

It's a great time to be a retrogamer!

Links:

• Nintendo Life (reviews of old Nintendo and Sega games)
• Angry Video Game Nerd (James Rolfe's reviews of old games, beware strong language)

Me vs. Windows XP: Getting rid of the annoying beep

Moving from Mac to Windows can sometimes be bewildering. Since I got my Dell laptop I have been annoyed on a daily basis by the PC speaker "beep" that the computer emits when the volume is changed. The beep is set to increadibly loud no matter the volume. This breaks quite a number of usability principles but also causes me to jump out of my chair when I'm in the middle of editing using headphones as not to disturb my colleagues, and without thinking decide to change the volume.

On Mac OS X the beep that is emitted correlates to the new volume that you set: turning down the volume emits a lower beep and turning up a higher. But not on Windows there the beep is always set to "blast your eardrums out" level (at least on the Dell that I have).

So today after doing the same mistake of changing the volume with headphones on I went searching for a solution and after reading some forum posts by self thought ninjas suggesting that I resort to registry hacking I finally found it.

Basically you need to go into the Device Manger in the Control Panel. Change the View to show all devices, click on the Non-plug and play- drivers and right click on the Beep (yes, that is the name of the device). There in the dialogue you can turn it off by disabling the device.

Surely, a master Information Architecht was used because I cannot even begin to comprehend how someone could have dreamt up such a usable solution.

Redmond I salute thee!

Me vs. Windows XP: Sorting the Programmes menu

Still getting used to having to use Windows XP as my main productivity tool. It is very obvious that it is a 9 year old operating system.

When installing programs they just get appended at the end of the programmes menu. This means that after a while it gets really hard to find anything unless you have fantastic spatial memory. To use the famous bucket metaphor: my bucket finally flowed over and I decided to find a solution.

After some googling it turns out you can sort the program menu alphabetically by right-clicking on an object in the menu when expanded and select "Sort by name". There is a registry hack to enable this permanently but for now I do it every time I do something new and it works reasonably well.

UX Lisbon day 3

Last day of the conference featured a different setup than the previous two. Instead of smaller workshops there was a series of short lectures for all the attendees in the main auditorium.

Dan Saffer - Designing for (and with) New Technologies

#odannyboy Slides: -

Dan held a presentation about the progress of technology and how the need for it comes later and how the designer is being tasked with bringing meaning to the technology. He used touch screens as an example of a technology that has been around for almost 30 years but is just now seeing mainstream use. Though I agree with Dan and found his talk interesting I think that this is an oversimplification since it is not only about inventing the need but also about bringing down the cost of the technology so that consumers can afford it. I still remember going with my dad to his work to look at their company's only CD-ROM equipped PC. It was so expensive that only a trained librarian was allowed to use it.

I found it interesting that apparently Jonathan Ives started out designing kitchen appliances and that some of the design language in that field was transplanted into the computer field with his designs for the iMac. But then Jonathan Ives has been accused of copying Braun to.

Donna Spencer - Design Games

#maadonna Slides

Donna's presentation was about different games (techniques) for idea generation and problem solving. The games she presented included Design the Box, a game where the team gets tasked with designing the box for the new product and Divide the dollar, an exercise in prioritizing by dividing a set amount of money to the various functionalities. She also talked about metadata games for sorting out terminology such as asking all the members of a team to name something or writing down all things they can think of in a certain category.

More information at: designgames.com.au/

Luke Wroblewski - First-Person User Interfaces

#lukewdesign Slides

Luke talked about, you guessed it: first-person user interfaces. He explained how we have gone to increasing levels of abstraction in the interfaces that we use to interact with computers, beginning with with circuit boards to punched cards to CLIs to WIMP to Natural User Interfaces finally arriving at the 1st Person UI. Luke showed some applications sporting a 1st person UI such as Layar and presented a list of features he considered signifying for the new UI paradigm:

• The possibility to navigate the space around you like with Google Maps Navigation.
• The augmentation of the immediate surroundings like with the Layar Browser.
• The interaction with nearby object like the various barcode scanner applications for mobile devices.

Lukes touch interface reference guide

Steve Krug -The Lazy Person’s Guide to a Better World: Advantages of Doing The Least You Can Do™

#skrug Slides: -

Steve talked about the benefits of discount usability testing: testing frequently with few participants. He warned about the lure of fixing the low hanging fruit first because it leads to the more serious problems never being fixed. Like he pointed out in his most recent book he pointed out that you must "focus ruthlessly on the most serious problems".

Eric Reiss - Killer Content or Content that Kills?

#elreiss Slides: -

According to Eric there is only one reason to innovate: to solve a problem. Innovation simply for the sake of it or to satisfy one's ego is counter-productive. Inspired by his friend Lars von Trier he wrote the web dogma 06 which just like Triers dogma manifesto is a reaction against what he perceived as bloat (in Trier's case it was Hollywood over-the-top mega-budget products). Funilly enough one of the thinks Reiss talked about was that the "About us" section is a construct of internal politics and therefore should be removed, but I have found on one of the sites I tested that it was one of the most visited sections (but on the other hand that could have been a result of other bigger problems on the page).

Susan Weinschenk - Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?

#thebrainlady Slides

Susan's talked about how much of good web design speaks to the unconscious part of our mind. We humans are irrational and that is not something that we can change through training or reasoning. Examples of this are all around us such as ads suggesting the possibility to mate, how we are fooled into buying because of scarcity (the lines at the iPhone release being just one example) and the need to be part of the flock (social websites).

Understanding the irrational nature of our mind is important for good design. Susan said the brain consists of three parts (very simplified): the old brain - responsible for identifying objects that we can eat, mate with and avoid, the mid brain - stories, faces and names and the new brain - responsible for conscious processing. All parts of the brain are important when designing websites.

She gave some fun examples of people saying that cookies in the jar with fewer tasting better and how our innate fear of losing makes us spend more when we are tasked with taking away features from a car with all the extras in comparison with when adding features to the same car stripped bare.

Larry Constantine - Designing for User Performance and User Success

Slides: -

Seeing Larry Constantine talk was probably my only OMG moment at the conference due to his book Software for Use being one of the first HCI books that I ever read. The only thing cooler would have been if they had brought Jeff Raskin back to life (The Humane Interface was the first HCI book I read).

As Larry Constantine himself noted he was a bit of an outlier among the presenters since he works in the automotive industry. He talked about how UCD doesn't work in his field and how they employ activity centred design. An example he gave of this distinction was in designing navigation systems in cars where a UCD approach might endanger the user by keeping her from watching the road by introducing functionality that the user wants but is distracting. Focussing on the activities that she needs to perform instead allows Larry and his team to design solutions for users on the road without compromising safety.

Judging from the comments on twitter after the conference I there was a lot of people in the audience who didn't agree.

More information about Larry's thoughts on UCD and activity centered design.

Jared Spool - The Dawning of the Age of Experience

#jmspool Slides

Jared began his talk complaining that all the good subjects had already been taken and proceeded to dance to Beyonce's Single Ladies, generating roars of laughter.

He began his talk with how the success of Apple has put user experience on the agendas in the board rooms around the world. He talked about how Apple's iPod in many ways is an inferior product in comparison with other mp3 players but the total user experience, the combination of design and business stategy, makes up for it's shortcomings.

The increased attention to UX means that there is a greater need for skilled UX designers. He used chicken-sexing as an example of how practise makes perfect and how being a good designer is something you learn but not open to introspection (which was a fun twist: normally chicken-sexing it is used to explain implicit v.s. explicit memory). Jared talked about how the ever decreasing size of design teams requires the team members to be multi-disciplinary and that you there fore need to create teams based on skills and not on what their business cards says.

Jared listed three attributes of successful teams: vision - what will the product be five years from now, feedback - test with users regularly and culture. He talked about the need for allowing people to fail, going so far as giving examples of companies throwing parties for the people responsible for failed projects.

David Gómez-Rosado - Want magazine launch

#dahveedgr

The day ended with the launch of an online magazine about UX.

http://wantmag.com/