UXCheck: Great quick & dirty tool for evaluating your website

Ever in doubt about the usability of your website?  Here is a quick & dirty tool to help you suss out where your impediments to your users "grokking" your system. The heuristics are based on the Nielsen Norman Group list of 10.

UXCheck

Apple baby iPhone for Women?

Rumors out of Asia swirl about a new "baby" iPhone 6 that will still fit in a handbag.  I see the allure of smaller when the newest phone size will not fit in your skinny jeans and "phablets" require you to have a hiker's backpack to carry.  It all reminds me of the Bic Pen debacle...



Via ITWire

Women want an Apple watch? Why, Yes, we do!

High fashion and wearables are a match made in heaven! Apple's watch is in vogue. Jonathan Ive gave a personal "how-to" for Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld.  It was also featured on the cover of Vogue China.   How do you make a wearable desirable? Make it useful, beautiful, and coveted by the hoi polloi.







Via Mashable

Haptics make us happy!

My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Brightbill, had asked us to write an essay about what we see for the future. I wrote that someday we would be able to wear gloves that would take someone's temperature, "see" their blood sugar level, and take their vital signs.

Some kids wrote about space adventures and monsters. I wrote about what would impact our health. Mr. Brightbill thought I was a way ahead of my time. Turns out not by much. Haptics are becoming very prevalent in the medical field.

I think haptics will have so much more impact for accessibility.

Look what it can do for the visually impared with the iPhone interface.

There is even haptics research and use for Second Life!

I think Mr. Brightbill would have proclaimed this Genius.

Augmented Reality and Foursquare

I just signed up for Foursquare and navigated to my favorite Mexican restaurant in Austin and left a tip for folks.
I am really excited about how AR and mashups can really work. What if I left a note about the margaritas? Not to get the salt?


Someday, will the afore-mentioned notes/reviews/tips hover over the margarita glass? Or our beef in the supermarket?
Will the product information overlay the meat giving me fat content and where the cow came from? What if you could get real-time reviews over-layed on the product? The possibilities are endless!

My thesis was about using the electromagnetic fields around a theremin to control a huge art exhibit of student submissions. We defined the range of the theremin signals and depending on how close/far you were to the theremin electromagnetic field - that is how rapidly you could source through the artwork.

I also used an electromagnetic plate to program the weight and electronic field of an apple moving up/down and away from the plate. Depending on the state of the apple and how far/near it was to the field- certain audio files were triggered. It also affected the rate of play of the audio files.


I love the idea of using our surrounding space to check on our correspondence, products, friends!

If you are going to quote a Usability Expert...

... at least get their name correct. We had a obscenely compensated consultant give us a demo of Microsoft's Sharepoint's capabilities for our company intranet. The consultant was as confident in his usability knowledge and skills as he was loud. We hired him from "X" consulting firm in South Austin. They are a very highly regarded Microsoft solutions consulting firm. The only problem is he kept referring to Jakob Nielsen as "Neils Jakobsen" with the emphasis on the Nordic soft pronunciation of the "J". Very pretentious. Very wrong. Actually, lame.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 2nd Day: Afternoon: Last session

My last session of the day was "Craft + Activism = Craftivism" by Kate Bingaman-Burt. Finally, someone who knew how to project to an audience! Kate gave a brief overview of the current craft community and her family ties to the late 70's/early 80's movement. She hoped that after seeing the movement ebb and flow that people would adhere to the strong tenets of making handmade items. She was afraid with the popularity of the "look" of hand-made items there would come a backlash against the production and philosophy of one-of-a-kind items. The ubiquity of a hand-made "style" in stores (yes, Wal-Mart and Target included) begs for a requisite recoil. Her delivery was fresh and she wanted to remind folks that the exact reason crafty items came into being was to be "anti-consumerism". Her work on "Obsessive Consumption" chronicles her work and how she fosters craft thinking/making. She also created the neat illustrations for "Handmade Nation", which was a book and then a subsequent documentary on the craft arts movement.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 2nd Day: Afternoon

My first session after lunch was "Everything I Know I Learned from Video Games" presented by Dave Werner of Minor Studios. He explored the current immersive state of gameplay and extrapolated some theories on where we are going in the future. He gave a shout-out to Bioware for their upcoming story-driven franchise game, Star Wars: The Old Republic. One of the best features of this panel is how engrossed the audience was and how many questions Dave entertained at the end of his presentation. It was a very engaging session. He is the Creative Director for the game, Atmosphir. He demonstrated the game and described it as "Mario meets Legos". In the game you could build levels and also cooperatively develop the game with friends. It seemed fun. The upshot is that the game is free and the revenue will be supplied by folks wanting to buy better weapons, masks, head-gear and the like. The animation style seemed fun and accessible. Meaning anyone could play almost immediately and you can share. Awesome. I give this session an "A".

P.S. There is also a Beta test sign-up on the site. Sweet.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 2nd Day - Random

Two books that came up in conversation yesterday to help creatives:

(1) A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future

and

(2) Managing Creative People: Lessons in Leadership for the Ideas Economy

the first one I endorse wholeheartedly as it helps to deconstruct what constitutes "right brain" thinking and how making associations makes you smart. The second book I am really looking forward to. One of the other HOW Design Conference attendees, Briana Malaspino from Lodge Cast Iron suggested this book. She said it really helped her understand the creative mind set and foster better relationships in her group.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 2nd Day

We attended the "Design That Matters" session presented by Michael Osborne. If you were feeling tired, uninspired- this was the right session to attend. He showed us the non-profit work he had done from the "Hearts" campaign to the 501(c)3 firm he started named "Joey's Corner". This session had alot of social conscience and a healthy dose of "do what you can do". It made me feel like going out into the world and changing my little piece of it.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 1st Day: 2nd Afternoon Session

My afternoon session got off to a creative jolt. "Group Brainstorming: Caffeine for the Creative Team" presented by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield was an excellent bracer after my huge chicken fried steak for lunch. They outlined 13 brainstorming principles for groups. They also hawked their books "Caffeine for the Creative Team: 200 Exercises to Inspire Group Innovation" and "Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain". One of the chief ideas that I felt had merit was to limit a brainstorming session to less than an hour and a half. They called these sessions "brainsqualls" because they came and went quickly and produced many possibilities. They also suggested announcing the brainsquall session to give people enough time to generate ideas. This workshop was chock-full of great tidbits and it was liberally sprinkled with fun arty-sketchy-doodly exercises. And, I met some great people at my table. We also got to play with play-dough. How bad can that be? I give this session an A.

HOW Design Conference: Austin: 1st Day

We got off to a rousing start to the morning with "Overcoming Creative Roadblocks". This was an interactive workshop. The "takeaway" was that creative folks need to anticipate requisite questions from the non-creative people in our processes who can be our "roadblocks". Several rounds of brainstorming from each table's respective "roadblocks" garnered a small list of "roles" that could suck the life out of a project. Some of the identified roles were: CEO, VP of marketing, Product Manager and Creative Director. The ultimate exercise of the morning was to put ourselves into the "shoes" of the trouble-maker and counter any of the expected questions from the roles' various perspectives. Our group had a lot of fun with this one. Kudos to the presenters Marcus Hewitt and Eric Zeitoun. They kept the session moving while wrapping up the key points to each drill. I wish they had interjected a little more of their experiences in the workshop. Overall, I give the session a B+.

After taking the photo of Diego

I discovered that the turtle, Diego and wave-runner had been recalled. Apparently, the paint that made him quite dusky is tainted with lead. So, the maimed Diego and accessories have been trashed. Sigh.

Things that make me go hmmmm...

This is Diego as an action figure. (Please forgive the missing limbs- the cost of adventuring, I guess).

But it has struck me over the last few months that this representation of Diego is much darker than this one (see right). I am not making any judgements- only observations.

Project Runway: lower expectations?

So now that Project Runway is jumping ship to Lifetime TV- what are we to expect? "100 ways to slim down for the next challenge"? Or perhaps "Desperate Betrayal: The Generic Contestant Story"? The last time I was invested in the show was Season 3 - and Jeffrey's "hubris" put me off the show for a while.

It is like going from Italian Vogue to Women's Day. I'm just sayin'.

Ladies- take off your shoes before running from the monster (just a tip)

One of my pet peeves is horror films where the "girl about to be killed" is in impossibly high heels or the basic business heels that you can't do your best sprinting. Two notable exceptions lately have been "True Blood" (Episode 10) where Sookie was being hunted through Merlotte's by the serial killer (Renee nee Marshall) and "Enchanted" where Giselle is going after the dragon and has the lovely presence of mind to take off her heels before climbing the downtown New York skyline. Brava! Finally! No heels when being pursued by a serial killer, dragon, monster, slasher... whatever!

Genius! Ingenio! Or in my household "Henius!"

Okay, I must just say that the Volkswagen commercials with Brooke Shields are "Genius!". For a flagging economy and specifically sagging car sales- these series of mockumentary style commercials are priceless. And whoever the stylist is on these (perhaps Brooke herself?)- the clothes are au currant and fabulous. I want some German Engineering!