Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Sound and vision
These days I'm generating far more data on Flickr and on Last.fm than I am here. Does that say something about a change in balance between the visual, sound, and the written word, in my current interests?
Probably. I recently acquired a Squeezebox 3, and that's definitely had an impact on how much I'm listening to music, what I'm listening to.
I hope to blog something more extensive about it here shortly, but in summary, it changes everything, but the interface to large music collections really needs addressing.
If you have 1,000+ albums, numerous loose tracks, and so on, seeing a collection through 'browse album' (one at a time) is laborious to say the least. There's a loss of context going on. It's easy enough to flip through a bunch of physical objects - CDs, vinyl - with hyper-rapid recognition. Having to *read* text takes more time. And there's a loss of context: items that 'sit next to' one another, for example. Tagging with 'genre' and so on is all well and fine, but requires somewhat more application than messing around with a pile of physical objects. And genres are of course all or nothing, whereas physical objects can have transitions, gradients, gradual movements from one into another.
The Squeezebox search function is weird: it doesn't seem to work on 'initial letter'. So an artist search on 'K' will not throw up Kasabian or Kate Bush among the first items, but rather a load of items with 'k' in the artist tag text.
So the Squeezebox is a great leap forward but there's a long way to go.
Hope to come back to this.
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Friday, March 17, 2006
Windows Live
This results display for Windows Live Beta is questionable. The 'scroll bar' to the right seems to be a little short of the usual functionality. How do I know where I am? There doesn't seem to be enough visual info to enable me to instantly make that assessment.
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Monday, March 06, 2006
Cambridge conference in April
The Intelligent Environments Group at Microsoft Research Cambridge has organised the International Symposium on Intelligent Environments for 5-7 April. The keynote speaker is Don Norman (hurrah!), and there are plenty of other interesting people involved.
Registration - online - is free of charge (see the link above), and accommodation is available at Homerton College for the reasonable sum of £60 per night.
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006
DRM = bad user experience
Interesting piece at Sterophile of why DRM is a bad idea for everyone including consumers, in their coverage of a speech by Dave Goldberg, general manager of Yahoo Music, at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles. ...the part that caught our attention was his analysis of how DRM discourages consumers from purchasing legitimate music files, since it imposes restrictions on the use of that music that illegal alternatives do not. "We believe that music should be in my car stereo, in my home, on my phone—anywhere but on my PC, where it could crash on me," said Goldberg.
This was exactly the same point I made in January to the All-Party Parliamentary Internet Group inquiry into DRM the UK. If you make using legal products into a consumer nightmare by using DRM, you'll drive consumers further into using illegal ones. DRM is a great way to alienate your customers, and also an excellent way of losing sales. And David Goldberg of Yahoo Music, part of the very industry that is foisting DRM upon us, has now said so. Cool.
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Audio transcription utilities
Researchers often find that standard tools don't meet their needs: digital audio devices that can record are often designed primarily for sound reproduction of prerecorded material, with recording an afterthought (poor quality, risible quantity). And for transcribing recordings, most tools offer insufficient precision for dealing with voice rather than music. We are seen as consumers rather than producers, and it shows.
Mads Rydahl, husband of anthropologist Kathrine Kroijer Hoersted, has just put together a transcribing tool for ethnographers, so it has some features that are particularly useful. As Katherine says, you operate the play back of your sound file using keyboard shortcuts while transcribing in Word. When you press "pause" and then a little later "play" it automatically rewinds 5 seconds. You can also adjust the playback speed... and it is very simple to use. Visit the TransScriber page to download. (Windows only at present.)
Other tools now available include another called Transcriber (MacOS, Windows, Linux), primarily aimed at speech researchers but of much wider application, Listen & Type (MacOS), Transana (Windows, Mac version in preparation), which also handles video.
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Doors of Perception 9
John Tahackara has just announced that the next Doors of Perception (Doors 9) will take place in India in 2007.
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Monday, February 27, 2006
PAS 78 launch
PAS 78: Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites, commissioned by the Disability Rights Commission, will be launched at an event in Hammersmith, London on March 8.
..."A very limited number of free places available (sponsored by DRC) and once those have gone the remaining places are subject to a fee. So if you are interested in attending, book your place now. Call BSI on 020 8996 7620"
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Remote controls
The Squeezebox 3 is a lovely product, but I wonder what possessed them with the remote (left hand side). It's an integral part of the product, but doesn't seem to have been treated with the same tlc as the Squeezebox unit. No rhyme or reason to relative button size, shape and position. Following a formula perhaps? Feels tacky. Lessons to be learned from the Sky remote here...
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Blog falls apart
Yes, the archives are a complete mess. I am also, as always, highly dissatisfied with - the lack of - certain developments at Blogger HQ. So what was with the great Google takeover? I'd rather see improvements to the platform than blue hoodies mailed out from Mountain View (blue is not my colour).
Thinking about a migration to Wordpress...again.
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Upcoming vs. Eventful for events
In response to my last post, about Upcoming, I've just had an email from Mark Vanderbeeken in Turin, who points out that Eventful's feature set is better than that offered by Upcoming.
I haven't had a chance to compare the two yet. And on the other side, I'd suggest that with Yahoo! backing it, Upcoming is likely to improve somewhat. And Upcoming does already have a number of people from this community on board (including those at Yahoo! Europe itself). It also seems a bit of an overhead to post to the both.
Decisions, decisions...
Postscript.
Mark now tells me that Eventful can auto-update Upcoming. Have Yahoo! missed a trick here?
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Events calendar
After over three years of slog, I've decided to stop maintaining the events calendar elsewhere on this site. Just no time, and there are other priorities.
However, I know that a number of people who did use that calendar are signed up on Upcoming - in fact, I've even spotted fellow UX-er Martin Ortlieb there, as well as Joshua Kaufman and Nico Macdonald. And the best solution for all seems to use such a shared calendar system (which is what Joshua, Nico, me, and the US end were debating last year). Otherwise it's just too much hard work for one person.
So can I suggest, if you're involved in any of these communities/lists - ethnography, IA, usability, UX, etc.:
- if you have or know of an event to post, please post it to Upcoming (as well as anywhere else)
- if you're interested in finding out what events are on, please check Upcoming. There's quite an HCI/IA/social software community there already.
Please let people know about Upcoming and encourage them to use/post. (Any shared calendar system needs critical mass, posters and users, or it just won't work). That way, the whole cross-posting and intermingling of communities thing, which is what we were trying to achieve before, will survive.
I'll aim to post info on events I know about on Upcoming from now on.
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Paul Mercer, Jonathan Ive
Slashdot reports today a New York Times story about the Samsung Z5 portable MP3 player - to appear on US shelves 5 March - and the involvement of Paul Mercer's team. Mercer has done work for Apple.
The original iPod concept is looking a little tired now, with limited on-board functionality, poor battery life etc etc. Presumably Mercer's company Iventor doesn't have Jonathan Ive on board (though the company name certainly suggests it).
The backend is satisficing stuff. What will count is whether product design and interaction design engage. So how much does who contribute to the final product? Presumably Mercer/Iventor won't be going for Apple's click-wheel interface, unless they want a lively lawsuit on their hands. I'm watching the space with interest.
1:31 PM|
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My apologies
Apologies to regular readers here. I've been hyper-busy recently, not just with clients, but with projects like Open Rights Group.
Hope to resume normal service this week.
1:29 PM|
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Yes, Razr is crap
Scott Weiss was in town last week, talking at UK UPA on a cross-device/network study his team have carried out recently. Yes, the Motorola Razr came second from bottom in the uability stakes from 13 devices. I'll shut up about this now.
Scott has some interesting video footage of people using mobiles. He's still debating how to best set up such lab studies in the future: mounting means non-natural handling but good video. Handheld means natural treatment but probably low-quality video. I think in the next study he's opting for the latter.
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
Tonight's ethnography talk fully booked
The talk I'm giving tonight at Microsoft House in London is fully booked and has a waiting list of dozens, I believe. Please don't turn up on the off chance of getting in - there's no chance at all.
1:21 PM|
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HassleMe
HassleMe is a lovely new tool from the people at MySociety. It generates reminders, either for yourself or others.
It could do with some development e.g. generating some day-of-the-week reminders - or for me, specific time of day reminders - which are apparently in the pipeline, but a good starting point.
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EPIC conference proceedings
Some time ago I downloaded the conference proceedings for the EPIC - Ethnographic Practice in Industry - conference, which took place at the back end of last year. This document is the record of the papers submitted, rather than the talks actually given.
Over Christmas, I finally got around to reading some of the papers. It's a really interesting collection, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's involved or interested in this field.
Here's that link to the pdf again: http://epic2005.com/EPIC%20Conference%20Proceedings-Draft.pdf
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Sunday, January 08, 2006
Things I loved in 2005
The rise and rise of documentary cinema, and in particular My Architect, a very moving - and informative - account of Louis Khan's son's search for exactly what his father was about. (A model for the Khan's Capital of Bangladesh - along with many other architectural models, including that for Fallingwater - can currently be seen at the Guggenheim Bilbao).
Citizens on the internet: the take off of Open Rights Group in the UK, and similar groups in Ireland, Canada and elsewhere. Open Tech, very ably organised by Dave Green, where ORG took off. And the excuse all this has given me for catching up with Lawrence Lessig's writings (Free Code).
Musical discoveries: Sufjan Stevens, The Arcade Fire, Polar Bear, Nouvelle Vague doing Guns of Brixton...Pandora.
Mash-ups: Practically everything Mark Vidler has done, particularly Shannon Stone, Strung Out, and Abba and the Bunnymen; and DJ Food's Raiding the 20th Century (I know, I'm a bit late to this particular party).
New perspectives: peering into the upper-floor windows of 30 St Mary Axe (the Gherkin), and hearing about those windows from the neighbours...
Shows: Faces in the Crowd at the Whitechapel
Meltdown: seeing Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, and Yoko Ono. A different kind of trance music. It was also Patti's Meltdown that introduced me to Antony & the johnsons.
Work: doing ethnographic fiedwork here, there and everywhere. The first EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry) conference in the US. The People Inspired Innovation conference (though in my view nothing in recent years has beaten Dust or Magic at Oxford in 2004). A superlative usability awards do in London, for the first World Usability Day, due in no small measure to Sarah Ronald at the Pru, Louise Croft-Baker and all the UPA volunteers, and Bill Thompson.
Couch potato: Smooching around parks (Hyde, Regent's, Dulwich) in the summer sunshine with picnics and without. Getting my hair done by the lovely Alex and Joanne in Westbourne Grove, before visiting the glorious kitchen shop next door. Lunches and dinners with friends at favourite restaurants in London, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Brighton, Bilbao and Brussels. Sitting in a marvellous Suffolk pub with great folks from the Beeb, NASA...
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Saturday, January 07, 2006
Trance butchers
Over at music blog Soul Sides - one of my faves - Oliver takes aim at some of his fellows over the question of site design:
"I will very briefly say that the one thing I noticed in many of these newer sites is my age-old pet peeeve: step up your design game. You don't need super-duper professional templates, but a clean, simple, uncluttered page isn't much to ask for.
"And no more black backgrounds with big fonts and multi-colors. It looks like someone slaughtered a zebra at a rave or something."
Lovely image...
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Friday, January 06, 2006
Pandora
Following a chat with Matt Jones about online music, I've been exploring Pandora over recent weeks.
I still haven't made up my mind about its worth, but it is good fun...
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World Usability Day
We had the UK WUD 2005 inquest last night at Wagamama.
Lots of positive things and losts of lessons learned from this first World Usability Day.
I think we'd welcome comments from anyone who took part, and from those who didn't, about what could be done better for 14 November 2006.
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UK UPA talk on ethnography
I can confirm this will be on Thursday 19 January. Details are still to go up on the UK UPA website, but should be there shortly.
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Friday, December 23, 2005
No Sony, we don't want to carry bricks in our bags
I've just bought another Sony Vaio laptop, to replace one purchased a couple of years ago. And was stunned to find, on opening the box, that the mains power adapter is significantly larger and heavier than the one for my previous Vaio. In fact, it's larger than any other mains adapter I own. It most closely resembles one of those 1980s brick-style mobile phones that needed an attache case all of its own.
Luckily, the output on my old Vaio adapter is the same - they so rarely are - so I'll be continuing to use it.
It's all very well selling laptops on the basis of minimal device dimensions and weight, but people invariably need also to take the mains power unit wherever they go. What's the point in going to all the trouble of designing a light and slim laptop, and not bothering to think about the inevitable mains power unit too?
1:17 PM|
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London Olympics and voting interfaces
Interesting story - for interaction designers - in much of the UK media about voting for the Olympics venue in 2012. IOC members voted by pressing numeric keys to represent candidate cities. A Greek member claimed - at the time - that he didn't have time to vote. But votes were registered for all members present. And now there's a claim that someone voted for a city he hadn't intended to vote for.
The Times story points out that London and Paris used adjacent numbers, though doesn't specify the Madrid number (it was confusion over Madrid and Paris that is at the heart of the dispute).
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Thursday, December 15, 2005
Today I receeived an email from Amazon:
"As someone who's purchased Electronics from Amazon.co.uk you may be interested to know you can now purchase the Philips Streamium Wireless Music Centre -- Store your entire CD collection on a 40 GB hard disk and listen in every room for only..."
Only one problem. My current music storage amounts to some 115 GB, and it's growing, as only part of the collection is digitalised. So The Philips Streamium will not do what Amazon claims.
This reminds me of the recent Vodafone claim to me that I'd only have to housekeep my Blackberry - on the website - every three months or so. I fact, I had to perform the first housekeeping after five days. But then the Vodafone store manager only received "one or two emails a week".
Which in turn reminded me of when I got my new mobile phone this autumn: the allocated memory for texting ran out after four days.
Do these people ever do any user research - or even review their own customer data - to see how users really behave, what their requirements really are? I doubt it.
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Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The secret life of the self-employed
There was yet another article last week in the press about people who work from home working in pyjamas. In fact, I reckon the most F-FAQ for the self-employed is 'Do you work in your pyjamas?' (when in the office).
The answer is, of course, 'No!', and 'Never!' with a suggestion of 'are you out of your mind?'
But...
Many years ago, I had a good friend in Barcelona who worked - works - as a translator, and she favoured a sort of dressing gown affair, that kept her warm during long hours at the desk-face. And I can assure you, that flats in Barcelona can be very cold in the winter (most people in Spain have no central heating, most homes suffer from damp, and Spanish winters can be fairly icy). And I - at the time - suggested that the ideal garb might be some sort of one-piece romper suit. We laughed at the very idea.
And lo, I recently went into Gap in Oxford Street, and they seemed to have an entire department devoted to non-street wear, including something they call Gap Body, which seems to be an adult romper suit in two parts (top and bottom). Ideal for keeping warm during the winter months. In fact, the assistant even suggested that you could get away with wandering down to the newsagents in this stuff.
I may yet convert to the other side...
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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
The 'Knowledge' and computers
Can you do 'the knowledge' on a computer? No, say the black cab drivers of London. You need to drive around the streets to physically imprint all those highways and byways on your brain.
So a little strange that it's been proposed that the powers that be are seeking to test 'the knowledge' by computer. It strikes me that what they would be testing would not be 'the knowledge', but something else.
When was the last time you took a black cab in London and the driver got lost? It's never happened to me.
Perhaps these people could better spend their time getting London's appalling mini-cab drivers - who don't do the knowledge - up to speed on routes, rather than trying to fix what isn't broken.
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BlackBerry saga draws to a close, but not before I go ballistic
I finally went ballistic on Sunday, when I discovered that my BlackBerry was downloading email from November...2004.
Apparently the BlackBerry Internet service completely ignores 'mark as read' tags in gmail (according to the Vodafone 'engineers'), and is oblivious to email date stamps too. The trip to Bilbao - two days of no GPRS - triggered a kind of overall reset, where the system went back to square one with all my email.
So I eventually found a solution: completely empty my gmail inbox and start again. And then I at last started getting email for November 2005 again.
So the technology is determining my behaviour; I have to adjust my behaviour - and all my data - in order to get the damn thing to work at all. And nobody at Vodafone could work this out. What a waste of time.
10:37 AM|
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EPIC
EPIC - Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference - took place in Seattle last week.
You can find the conference blog and lots of others stuff on the EPIC website, including session abstracts and the full proceedings.
I couldn't make this first edition, but I'm sincerely hoping it was so successful that there'll be another next year.
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Thursday, November 17, 2005
Broken, part II
Apparently I have broken the BlackBerry/Vodafone service. Or that's what I'm hearing at one removed, after some seven hours of phone consultations with tech services (apparently the Vodafone "engineers" are not "customer facing" and don't speak to the hoi polloi, like you and me, only through intermediaries - leading to some pretty hilarious Chinese whispers).
Apparently my trip to Bilbao last week has triggered some untoward process where the Vodafone server is trying to upload all my gmail from ancient history (read 2004 onwards). Apparently, the Vodafone server is seeing all my gmail history as unread, even when it's marked as read. Apparently.
Apparently the problem is being posted onto their message board.
Too many 'apparently's there, but it's all I've got to go on until some darn thing resolves itself.
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This service is broken
Against my better judgement, I acquired a BlackBerry this month.
This week, I've so far spent around 5 hours on the phone with Vodaphone, trying to reanimate the thing. [That follows more than 3 hours at the Vodaphone store the previous week, as they tried to set it up.]
Apparently, emailer devices - being bears of very little brain, I suppose - go and do their own thing if you travel between countries (even where the mobile operator is one and the same), and that's what happened to me last week. I went to Bilbao, and it seems GPRS extends not much further than the airport and the city centre, so going as I always do into greater Bilbao killed my email, and - apparently - my BlackBerry.
We - me and the technical services people at Vodafone - have tried everything. We've removed and replaced everything removable. We've dumped Vodafone and signed up for Orange and O2 and gone back again. We've removed gmail and reinstated it. We've sent umpteen test emails to a variety of locations. And I've been merrily sitting here issuing network commands - under instructions - and so forth from the device, all to no effect. When I could have been doing something much more productive.
I receive yet another phone call from Vodaphone. Next stage is apparently for the 'engineers' to get involved. I'm waiting to hear...
So, not very inspiring if you're a frequent traveller.
(And I haven't even started on BlackBerry usability...Or on how crappy Vodafone customer services is until you get a number for somebody useful who 'actually knows what they're talking about'...)
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Tuesday, November 01, 2005
World Usability Day
Usability is now on the home page of the BBC News website, with World Usability Day-related stories on the website from Max Gadney and Bill Thompson and Tom Stewart.
And in the run-up to the UK usability awards on World Usability Day, I've just about had my fill of press offices. Are press offices the new call centres? (Or are call centres the new press offices?) They certainly sometimes seem to be God's way of saying "not bloody likely".
A warm round of applause for Dave Green, David Hawdale, Dave Cook, Suw Charman, Bill Thompson, Sarah Ronald, the whole UK World Usability Day team, and all lovely souls in companies, nominated or not for the UK UPA usability awards, who make things happen, rather than trying to frustrate them.
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Saturday, October 29, 2005
I'm particularly obsessed with phones right now, partly owing to a fraud thing.
Latest letter hightlights from the supplier: "I write to confirm that we acknowledge that the purchase of telephones pertaining to the above numbers was carried out without your authority or knowledge...we have disassociated you from all charges...the accounts have been disconnected..."
But it would be useful to connect to a human being who could discuss....
Apparently human beings are in short supply...There's only a call centre with no info.
4:24 PM|
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24/7 or 9-5?
I'm truly stunned - yes, I am - that on a Saturday daytime (when its shops are open?) Vodaphone cannot answer sales phone calls, but merely generates a standard recorded message. This on their business phone line. Perhaps they don't want to sell to business on Saturdays...
2:12 PM|
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World Usability Day awards in the UK
UK UPA - the UK chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association - is making its first awards for digital products this Thursday in London, with Bill 'scraggly-hair' Thompson kindly presenting the same. [Thanks Bill ;-)] We hope to make this an annual thing, to coincide with World Usability Day (3 November).
There are some very worthly winners, though I think it's a pity there weren't more UK products in the final vote. I nominated Audioscrobbler/Last.fm in the peer-to-peer category, amongst others, but they didn't get through to the vote.
10:19 AM|
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Interaction design job at Last.fm
Last.fm is currently looking for a designer with usability and interaction design experience. Job based in London.
See the ad.
10:12 AM|
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All pinked out
Dave need-to-know Green had a go at me the other night about recent telephone rants (and yes, he has the same experience of rogue messages when charging his Motorola V3), so I'd kind of promised myself that I wouldn't rabbit on about it any more. And then I saw the new 'pink' phones from Motororola and Siemens.
The Pink Motorola V3 Razr is the same colour as Madonna's leotard on the Hung Up video, and is presumably aimed at the 'gurlz'. [No doubt the colour is no coincidence: Motorola's website shows its Rokr phone zooming in to Hung Up, avec pic of Madonna, on it's home page.]
I've already commented on other posts that the V3 strikes me very much as a 'guy phone': smaller female hands makes this device both initially difficult to manipulate in general, and also pretty difficult to use for texting. I can't see guys buying this model in any great numbers. Are the visual messages of the Pink Razr in conflict with the interaction? Will women who buy it end up being stuck with a phone that's tricky for them to use?
And the Siemens Poppy CL75? What can I say. Ghastly, with a poppy running across both sides of the clamshell. Some cack-handed attempt to appeal to women? To 7-11 girls?
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Sony Vaio website or how not to sell computers
I'm going to put my old Sony Vaio laptop out to pasture and get myself a new machine. I can't say I'm keen on a another Vaio (for various reasons), but trawling around to see what's out there, I visit the Sony website to check out what they have.
Selecting 'Vaio & Computing > Vaio Laptops' on the UK website, I'm presented with a series of model codes which mean nothing to me - I can't even keep the model code for my current laptop in my head.
And selecting a series code at random - FS - from the six presented, I'm sent to a page that tells me to 'select a model' - by model code - from the 14 listed. Most of the model links seem to have identical tool tip text, and much identical underlying material.
Series codes and model codes mean nothing to anybody except staff at Sony. These days, most of us have a hard enough time remembering our own phone number, never mind random alphanumeric strings generated by someone else. Does Sony really believe that this is a way to sell anything to anybody (other than perhaps full-on geeks and those on the autistic spectrum)? Or have they yet to discover user-centred design?
3:28 PM|
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iTunes
Apple seems to be releasing upgrades to iTunes like there's no tomorrow. I think it was only last week I downloaded 6.0.0. Today I'm being offered the next release. There is such a thing as 'too many' when it comes to software releases.
3:22 PM|
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RSA Intellectual property charter
Last week, I attended the launch of the RSA's new charter on intellectual property, now called the Adelphi Charter. There has been praise from many quarters for the Charter's attempt to provide some framework principles for any decision on IP extension, and it has the merit of being short.
You can find a pdf of the charter at http://www.thersa.org/acrobat/adelphi_charter.pdf and there's some background info at http://www.adelphicharter.org/.
There's been some UK TV news coverage (in the context of bird flu drugs and IP) and articles in the press too:
Copyright for the digital age, by Bill Thompson: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4348970.stm
Protecting the public domain, by James Boyle: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1591467,00.html
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