Theo Mandel’s Usability Blog

Very nice overview of heuristic evaluation guidelines for websites.

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Google has announced a new mobile tool that enables users to search using pictures instead of words. Called Google Goggles, it uses the phone’s GPS and compass to help determine search results. This free app works only on Google Android mobile phones.

Goggles can also recognize faces, but Google has decided to block facial recognition until they understand the implications of this new technology.

This is just the beginning of new augmented reality and search technology. Watch for more in 2010!

Google Goggles Review: http://revision3.com/appjudgment/an_ron_ggoggle

News Article: Le Web: Google Goggles to exclude faces

Just in time for the Christmas Holiday! Very thorough list of gifts for UX geeks!

http://www.nickfinck.com/blog/entry/gifts_for_user_experience_geeks_2009/

Interesting blog about Mark Coleran’s futuristic computer user interfaces for movies and TV shows. It’s not always about usability!!

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Theo Mandel, Ph.D. was invited to give a keynote presentation at the User eXperience Russia conference in Moscow, Russia, on October 26, 2009.

Mandel’s keynote, “The (New) Golden Rules of Web Design,” is an new presentation based on a chapter from the well-known book, The Elements of User Interface Design (John Wiley & Sons, 1997). The presentation describes the history of UI/Web interface design and usability guidelines, and then shows how these “Golden Rules” of interface design still apply to today’s web design world.

Mandel’s book was translated into Russian in 2005. It was the first book translated into Russian with the word “Interface” in its title. Many of the attendees at the conference learned their craft by reading this book.

The User eXperience Russia 2009 conference was a huge success. There were over 300 attendees at the conference (http://userexperience.ru/en/).

View the SlideShare presentation.

A humorous, poetic, simple and elegant presentation about bad usability based on the Bad Usability calendar (www.badusability.com/).

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Dustin Curtis wrote a blog article about American Airlines’ poor website design. He received an e-mail from an Interaction Designer within the company explaining the corporate culture at American Airlines with regard to the website. The designer was promptly fired by AA.

<< Follow the blog trail >>

Thought-provoking article about getting geeks and artists together during college rather than afterwards on the job.

Some institutions offer interdisciplinary programs, but more should be done to get students used to working in multi-disciplinary, cooperative work environments.

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After breaking her leg, Bridget Duffy got a close look at the patient experience - by being a patient herself. At the first Gel Health conference, Bridget discusses what she learned - and what has inspired her, throughout her career, to advocate for improved patient experience.

This is a video everyone in healthcare should watch!!

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This Good Experience post discusses an article that hits the nail on the head. With Twitter and other bite-sized nuggets of information, the world is full of instant, immediate “experts” on any topic. Their information is worth the money you paid for them - nothing.

From Good Experience:

“Lots of the popular posts on Twitter, digg, etc. promise “7 ways to…” or “15 reasons you should…” or similar bite-sized snack-nuggets of infotainment. And that’s all fine. The world of bite-sized Internet content is quick and easy to consume, occasionally informative or very funny, and almost always free. No complaints there.

But what happens when we shift so far to the snacky items that there aren’t enough readers seeking the longer piece, written by a subject matter expert? (And by “expert” I mean someone who’s spent longer in the field than the Web has been around.)”

The reference is to Gourmet to All That (New York Times Op-Ed, October 7, 2009) by Christopher Kimball. One quote:

…in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up. They can no longer be coronated; their voices have to be deemed essential to the lives of their customers. …

To survive, those of us who believe that inexperience rarely leads to wisdom need to swim against the tide, better define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google “broccoli casserole” and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

The Onion, a famous print and online parody newspaper, has a hilarious news video parody of Google’s “Opt-Out” policy.

<< View the Video >>

Phoenix Design Week is a celebration of the local design community. It will include a variety of exhibitions, open houses, workshops, presentations, activities, films and other community-growth oriented events.

Come join the fun - http://phxdw.com/index.php

Google, long seen as an enemy by many in the news industry, is making a bold attempt to be seen as a friend with a new service it hopes will make it easier for readers to read newspaper and magazine articles.

On September 14, 2009, the company introduced an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the news articles and share resulting revenue with publishers.

• Read New York Times article
• Google fast flip Website

Intriguing article in Wired Magazine on the history of controversial Craigslist.org, the largest community site in the US.

From the interface design and usability perspective, Craigslist is notoriously well-know for its old-style, link-heavy, basic interface that does not make using the site easy for people shopping for stuff to sell or buy, apartments to rent or dating classifieds. But Craigslist refuses to change their user interface.

 << View the article >>

Very interesting results from a study on twitter usage. It turns out older people are using twitter more than young people - not the results you would expect from a new social networking experience.

“The tech industry has been perplexed by the fact that Twitter has grown extraordinarily quickly even though young people do not tweet nearly as much as their elders do.”

The report on the reach of social technologies, published August 25, 2009 by Forrester Research, said that in the last year, young people almost universally used social media. (Only 3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds do not use social tools online.) These people have been using social media for a long time, though, and they are not driving its growth.

More intriguing is a look at what older adults are doing online. According to Forrester, use of social media among those 35 to 54 jumped 60 percent in the last year. Half of online adults in the United States interact on social networks and more than three-fourths used social media in the last month.  

Articles:

• Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens (New York Times)
• Why Adults Have Fed Twitter’s Growth (New York Times)
• Forrester Report

It’s time for user experience designers to break out their wings! Airlines are beginning to realize that air travel is a shared experience where travelers can share informaton and experiences and the airlines can learn more about their customers!

Jay Vidyarthi, a User Experience Designer and Research Coordinator at Yu Centrik, a usability and design firm in Montreal, says:

“Airlines like Virgin Atlantic are doing ground-breaking work around chat rooms, multiplayer games, e-mail, SMS, and integration with mobile devices on their inflight systems. But most of these developments are focused on bringing existing third-party technology into the air. It’s time for airlines to start fostering social networks of their own, bringing together like-minded transumers and cutting-edge technology.”

<< View the Article >>

While hospitals are implementing EMRs throughout Germany, they are resisting the German government’s push to roll out health cards for individuals. So far, they have refused to purchase the systems necessary to read the cards, saying that the paper process works better and faster for them.

“The concern, as voiced by many health IT professionals, is that busy clinicians and pharmacists would not want to change their workflow for a new system which might run into technical problems. This is despite the fact that many working in the field acknowledge the security and privacy benefits of such a card system.”

 << View the Article >>

New York Times (August 20, 2009) reports automobile dearlers are having trouble using the rebate forms the government designed. Yet another example of unusable forms!!

“In many cases, the administration says incomplete forms or errors in the information submitted by dealers are slowing the process. Workers have reviewed about 40 percent of the applications filed, and many have been rejected and then returned to the dealer for possible resubmission.

Laura Sodano, a sales manager at Curry Chevrolet in Scarsdale, N.Y., said dealers were not told why their applications had not been approved and were having to review the entire form to determine what went wrong.”

<< View the Article >>

The National Federation of the Blind and the Maryland Technology Assistance Program present Web Accessibility Day, September 22nd, 2009. The event will be held in Baltimore, MD.

The Maryland Technology Assistance Program and the National Federation of the Blind Jernigan Institute team up on September 22nd to present a day-long, in-depth look at how to create accessible web content that complies with Federal and State regulations.  The conference will feature:

• Training in how to use web evaluation tools
• Creating accessible PDF’s (portable document format)
• How to liven up your website with graphical content and make it accessible
• Side-by-side evaluations of web content creation and evaluation tools so participants can decide what works best for them
• Opportunities to network with developers, vendors, web accessibility consultants and experts in non-visual access technology
• Exhibitors will present their products during session breaks, and participants will have to oppotunity to learn more about their services

<< View the Event Website >>

Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change in his Gel 2006 video.

Why are so many things broken? In this entertaining talk - one of the favorites of Gel 2006 - Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.

 Watch the Video