Thursday, April 28, 2011

ROX

Amplify’d from www.adobe.com
ROX: Return on Experience

Thursday, May 5 at 11am Pacific

User experience (UX) plays a significant role in why IT projects fail. UX has a direct impact on the ROI of new IT projects and often unlocks value hidden in existing IT investments. This webinar will help you:

  • Understand how successful CIOs build a case for UX and its role/investment in your project
  • Evaluate the skillsets and knowledge required to leverage UX successfully
  • Prepare to optimize projects over time based on understanding and acting on UX issues
  • Deliver great experiences that map to both business needs and consumer demands
  • Support your internal customers with better tools and platforms for consistent multi-channel delivery
  • Speakers:

    Patricia Seybold, CEO of Patricia Seybold Group

    Ronni Marshak, EVP of Patricia Seybold Group

    Ben Watson, Principal, Customer Experience at Adobe

    Register for this webinar and you’ll receive The Seybold Group whitepaper: “Developing Apps for Improved Customer Experience”.

    Read more at www.adobe.com
     

    Wednesday, April 27, 2011

    Adobe helps found new Customer Experience Professionals Association

    Responding to a greatly increased need for a centralized and interactive community that brings together the growing field of all those who develop, manage, optimize and envision how organizations interact with their customers, the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) launched today with a number of leading companies signed as Founding Corporate Members and Gold, Silver and Bronze Sponsors.

    The mission of this new organization is essentially directly in line with where Adobe is going as a company, both in terms of their own customer experience and more importantly, in our enterprise platform mission to deliver outstanding customer experiences for the customers and employees of our customers. Here is the mission of the CXPA:

    The Customer Experience Professionals Association is a global, non-profit organization that supports the professional development of its members by enhancing networking, providing research and education, establishing standards, promoting the industry, and creating a better understanding of the discipline of customer experience.

    Original post at Adobe helps found new Customer Experience Professionals Association

    Disclosure: I was part of putting this in place for Adobe where I work.

    Sunday, April 17, 2011

    Web video powers global innovation

    From Chris Anderson's talk at TEDGlobal 2010.





    Saturday, April 09, 2011

    Control music and viz with your heart

    Classically trained musicians control a music composition and a graphical visualization through their personal heartbeats.

    Amplify’d from infosthetics.com

    heart_chamber_orchestra.jpg

    Heart Chamber Orchestra [heartchamberorchestra.org] is an audio-visual performance during which 12 classical trained musicians control a music composition and a graphical visualization through their personal heartbeats.

    The musical score is generated in real-time by the heartbeats of the musicians, who read and play this score from a computer screen placed in front of them. As a result, the installation forms a feedback loop in which the music literally "comes from the heart". Technically, each musician is equipped with an ECG (electrocardiogram) sensor. A computer monitors and analyzes the state of the 12 hearts in real-time. The acquired information is then used to compose a musical score with the aid of custom-made computer software. While the musicians are playing, their heartbeats influence and change the composition and vice versa. In addition, abstract computer graphic imagery is generated to establish another sensual and narrative layer.

    Read more at infosthetics.com
     

    Friday, April 08, 2011

    Insert Your Card - a user story

    It’s 8:58 PM on a balmy Friday night and the local wine merchant is about to roll down the steel cage door. Why is always at these little Friday night soirees that no one ever brings enough imbibe to keep the silver tongues dancing?
    Andrea’s breath leaves a trail of whispered steam that plots her hurried pace to the limited vintage selection down the corner. As she hurries towards the hopeful neon, she contemplates whether uncorking a few screwtops might just elevate the priority of adequate resourcing for the next informal meeting of the minds.
    Once in the store, her years of amateur sommelier practice pay off and in no time she hoists her well stocked basket in front of the cashier, proudly presenting a couple hefty Riojas balanced by her favorite wispy Bordeaux, the instantly classic and far too expensive ’82 Lafite. ’83 was just not the same.
    $108.49.
    Her wallet is already in her hand and she quickly pulls 5 crisp twenties and sets them on the counter as she unsnaps the change compartment…empty. A quick glance at the new girl behind the counter gives no glimmer of recognition and in despair she starts to prioritize Spain over France, lining up the soldiers to choose one to fall first.
    The clerk doesn’t skip a beat. Reaching her hand beside the register, she whips out a strange telephone like device and hands it to Andrea. “We take debit.”
    “What? Debit?”
    Then it hits her. Somewhere in the retsina-accompanied fog of her Friday night glow she remembers the quick scan she took over a pamphlet in the bank scant weeks ago. Diving into the card section of her Ferragamo wallet, she procures the mag-striped novelty that she has just started using to deposit her paycheques and hands it to the clerk.
    Swipe.
    Tap tap tap.
    She takes it back from the clerk and squints at the screen.
    ENTER YOUR PIN.
    She assesses the clerk’s helpfulness and clips the support request down to, “…same as the bank machine?” As if expecting this, the clerk nods quickly and looks down at the machine.
    They stand facing each other, engaged in this strange new transaction as it starts to move ahead quickly.
    APPROVE PURCHASE? 108.49
    Yes.
    CHOOSE ACCOUNT.
    Chequing.
    THANK YOU.
    She hands it back to the clerk and the chatter of the miniature matrix plays a strange harmony to the crinkling of plastic bags encasing the precious guarantee that great friends and good conversation will ensue for a few more hours.
    FREEZE.
    I single plastic card falls to a well worn counter, the bounces echoing in the eery silence of a wine shop frozen in time.
    What just happened?
    The world changed in an instant. A cultural and practical change on this level that has such profound implications on how we manage (if you believe that rampant consumerism is a form of managing) our financial systems and status is predicated by only a few significant phenomena, such as banks, money, RRSPs and other instruments of investment and preservation. But lets ponder for a moment the complexity of those instruments and the apparent simplicity of the much more sophisticated system that chattered and tapped and quietly streamed the transaction across the web-i-verse.
    Do you take this for granted? Yup.
    Should you? Yup.
    Why? Recently the topic of walk up UX has been floating in the hallowed XD and enterprise halls at Adobe. The term itself is kind of walk-up, right? I think you instantly grok what it means and why it matters.
    And while this mundane and antiquated example of boring old-people technology is well behind us, what is interesting is that it has persisted through generations of PC form factors, mobile phone types, fundamental shifts in network and networked technology and it still works just as good as it did when it launched. Will Square replace it forever? Will the bank and payment machines of the future do away with the bulky terminals and the oft too long wait for a 56K phone line connection to take us screaming into consumer bliss.
    What won’t change is that a great user experience that makes sense the first time you experience it, and a value proposition that inspires you to finish the task, will never go out of style. That’s walk-up UX.
    In a recent discussion on IXDA, an energetic thread on the user experiences that changed the world popped up and interestingly almost all of them had great walk-up UX. Interac and debit appeared a few times on the list, and more recently in banking the PNC Virtual Wallet was mentioned a few times as well. The other thing that was notable was that many of them had little or no UI such as QR codes, EZPass, DropBox and RFID, while others had much more sophisticated and complex UIs, such as Skype, Traktor, PayPal and ZipCar. This indicates, and should come as no surprise, that the user interface is pretty much an open book in terms of complexity and sophistication and a great user experience ensues either way. But that’ another story.
    It was a great party.
    Note: I know finding an ’82 Lafite at your local wine shop, especially for that price, is not realistic but it’s an aspirational fairy tale.

    Wednesday, April 06, 2011

    Welcome the enterprise app store

    Reinvigorated by Cisco's acquisition of newScale, the enterprise app store is back on the discussion block. Ranging in definition from complete marketplace through adjunct re-markets for mobile apps targeting the enterprise, the enterprise app store seems to be taking hold, at least on the terms of the vendors seeking to exploit the lack of pure focus in mainstream app stores.



    This is a watch and learn - as the different approaches are vetted and validated through adoption and developer opportunity. It's going to be hard to pin down the procurement method that works best for extraneous apps and services, especially in Fortune 500+ companies that have rigorous architectural review and acceptance processes.



    Clearly it's going this way, but which way exactly feels like an opportunity for further definition and exploration.



    (this article is fraught with pop-ups etc so proceed with caution if you're following the link)

    Amplify’d from www.wirelessweek.com

    • Cisco newScale. Cisco will use the acquisition of newScale last week to primarily target enterprises with the ability to build a service catalog and self-service portal for private cloud services. It will be interesting to see the investments Cisco makes and if they’ll be able to successfully add the ability to provision public cloud services through the same portal.


    • HP Open Cloud Marketplace. HP announced their cloud strategy at HP Summit on March 15th. A key component of the strategy is an open application marketplace. According to Leo Apotheker, HP “envisions this to be an open cloud marketplace that will offer secure, scalable and trusted enterprise applications and services catalogs.” Built on HP Cloud Service Automation, HP promises to make available both private and public cloud computing resources and applications through the self-service portal.


    • VMware Project Horizon. Announced at VMWorld 2010, Project Horizon “will broker user access to applications, virtual desktops and data resources, while preserving the required level of security and control needed by the business.” If VMware successfully integrate Tricipher’s identity management software so that users can have single sign-on access to SaaS, mobile apps and native windows applications they’ll really move the ball forward.


    • Orange Business Services Private Application Store. Orange Business Services markets their offering as catalog of services with project governance for the transition to and building and running of applications on any client device. Orange refers to it as a “Federated Web 2.0 Portal” that enables users to access applications from private clouds, managed private clouds hosted with Orange, or sanctioned public cloud services.

    Verizon is not among the vendors listed above but they do offer a self-service customer portal as part of their Computing as a Service (CaaS) offering. Far more interesting is Verizon’s partnership with SAP to deliver SAP from the cloud and integrate SAP applications with Verizon’s Managed Mobility platform. The value of cloud is in delivering applications on demand to any device and the Verizon SAP partnership is a first step in accomplishing that. I have no doubt that Verizon will add an enterprise storefront capability and when they do, they’ll integrate cloud and managed mobility for many more enterprise applications. It demonstrates that the telcos may be best positioned to offer enterprises a cloud storefront that integrates cloud computing and mobility.

    Read more at www.wirelessweek.com
     

    Morgan Spurlock's brandy brand thing

    Brave manoeuvre here.


    Friday, April 01, 2011

    Learn 5 key principles of #UX

    Interactive experience design expert David Hogue focuses on five key principles of interaction design:

    - Consistency
    - Visibility
    - Learn-ability
    - Predictability
    - Feedback

    Part 1 - Five Essential Principles of Interaction Des...

    Part 1 - Five Essential Principles of Interaction DesignUnderstand what interaction design is and how the five essential principals of interaction design could help you make better interaction design decisions. This quick introduction will help you get started thinking about how to design your interfaces in the most effective way with the behavior of the user in mind.Runtime : 00:28:45
    Average Rating :  
    Added : Tuesday, March 1, 2011


    Part 2 - Interaction Design & Navigation

    Part 2 - Interaction Design & NavigationNow that you understand the five principals of Interaction Design, it’s time to learn how to apply those concepts to craft effective navigational systems for digital interfaces. At the end, follow along a quick tutorial in Adobe Flash Catalyst to see some ways dropdown navigation bar elements can be presented.Runtime : 00:29:06
    Average Rating :  
    Added : Tuesday, March 1, 2011


    Part 3 - Interaction Design & Text

    Part 3 - Interaction Design & TextSee how the five essential principals of interaction design apply to the presentation and the delivery of text, and understand how people tend to view and consume text on a digital device. Then follow a quick exercise in Adobe Flash Catalyst to take a look at an example of creating a liquid layout.Runtime : 00:27:15
    Average Rating :  
    Added : Tuesday, March 1, 2011


    Part 4 - Interaction Design & Images and Media

    Part 4 - Interaction Design & Images and MediaIn this episode, David explores how interaction design is applied to the delivery of images and media through the use of patterns, timing, size and more. Then he switches over to Adobe Flash Catalyst to show an example where some of this is applied to a light box project.Runtime : 00:28:34
    Average Rating :  
    Added : Tuesday, March 1, 2011


    Part 5 - Interaction Design & Forms and Dialogs

    Part 5 - Interaction Design & Forms and DialogsIn this final lesson, David wraps things up by teaching you how to effectively design interactions for forms and dialogs including ways to smoothly guide users through a good user experience using the same essential principals discussed in this series. Runtime : 00:25:36
    Average Rating :  
    Added : Tuesday, March 1, 2011

    Watch them all now at tv.adobe.com

    UX in a box

    For some time now a cross-section of business, research and technology teams have been working on a way to get great UX into a box with one primary goal - that it can be effectively un-boxed and put to work. A variety of different approaches were taken and in the end we settled on one workable option, but first let's explore the outputs of the lengthy and expensive consulting and brainstorm process:

    1. Put the actual designers in a box and ship them.  This proved inhumane and not a good use of designer's time while they waited in the box.
    2. Put a lot of different designs in a box.  This was tried by Corel and others in the clip-art heyday.  No further comment on this.
    3. Put a DIY design kit in the box.  The problem with this approach, while it could be construed to provide actual value, was that the outcome was still unpredictable.
    4. Capture color, process, ideas, requirements and user needs and put those in the box and pray.  This has been tried in variations by a lot of folks already and unfortunately produces inconsistent results.

    In the end, we decided to put design-thinking DNA in the box and to make sure that there was enough to go around.  Through direct injection and osmosis, firms can leverage this DNA across multiple projects forever.  In addition to providing a steady stream of maintenance and support revenues, this also accomplishes the much-needed requirement for teams to fundamentally rethink how they enable self-serve and customer service touchpoints through great design. 

    Finally, this guarantees that the initial investment will pay out for years to come as organizations constantly improve on the UX based on changing user requirements and evolving form factors and interaction models.

    Unfortunately, we are currently stuck on pricing - we know it is somewhere between free and priceless and the business and marketing teams are polarized on this issue now. 

    As soon as we resolve this, we will have more information. If you would like to participate in a pre-release program, grab a pencil, a napkin, a few user profiles and a design buddy and head down to the pub for an April Fools Friday cocktail and some of that tomorrow's soup you love so much.

    As part of our ongoing research to see if there are better approaches, the plan is to capture and document the next 30 days of UX discussion around the web and mine, visualize, share, thread and thematically digest the current UX conversation.  Please participate by continuing to talk about UX and if you like join the conversation directly by using the hashtag #30DaysofUX (#UX is a perfectly fine alternative of course). We are not trying to co-opt the conversation and we know it goes beyond 30 days, but this is an opportunity to capture, mine and better understand it - who is driving it, what the current themes are and where the conversation is going.  Our thesis is that it's going outside the box.  More to come...

    Posted via email from bitpakkit

    UX in a box

    For some time now a cross-section of business, research and technology teams have been working on a way to get great UX into a box with one primary goal - that it can be effectively un-boxed and put to work.

    A variety of different approaches were taken and in the end we settled on one workable option, but first let's explore the outputs of the lengthy and expensive consulting and brainstorm process:
    1. Put the actual designers in a box and ship them.  This proved inhumane and not a good use of designer's time while they waited in the box.
    2. Put a lot of different designs in a box.  This was tried by Corel and others in the clip-art heyday.  No further comment on this.
    3. Put a DIY design kit in the box.  The problem with this approach, while it could be construed to provide actual value, was that the outcome was still unpredictable.
    4. Capture color, process, ideas, requirements and user needs and put those in the box and pray.  This has been tried in variations by a lot of folks already and unfortunately produces inconsistent results.
    In the end, we decided to put design-thinking DNA in the box and to make sure that there was enough to go around.  Through direct injection and osmosis, firms can leverage this DNA across multiple projects forever.  In addition to providing a steady stream of maintenance and support revenues, this also accomplishes the much-needed requirement for teams to fundamentally rethink how they enable self-serve and customer service touchpoints through great design.  Finally, this guarantees that the initial investment will pay out for years to come as organizations constantly improve on the UX based on changing user requirements and evolving form factors and interaction models.

    Unfortunately, we are currently stuck on pricing - we know it is somewhere between free and priceless and the business and marketing teams are polarized on this issue now.  As soon as we resolve this, we will have more information.

    If you would like to participate in a pre-release program, grab a pencil, a napkin, a few user profiles and a design buddy and head down to the pub for an April Fools Friday cocktail and some of that tomorrow's soup you love so much.

    As part of our ongoing research to see if there are better approaches, the plan is to capture and document the next 30 days of UX discussion around the web and mine, visualize, share, thread and thematically digest the current UX conversation.  Please participate by continuing to talk about UX and if you like join the conversation directly by using the hashtag #30DaysofUX (#UX is a perfectly fine alternative of course). We are not trying to co-opt the conversation and we know it goes beyond 30 days, but this is an opportunity to capture, mine and better understand it - who is driving it, what the current themes are and where the conversation is going.  Our thesis is that it's going outside the box.  More to come...