Pat’s Point of View

The other day I saw what is probably going to be an increasingly common sight. On the way to lunch, I passed an internet cafe that had icons decorating its glass shopfront. The icons were of consistent design, squares with rounded corners, very Apple-esque but they weren’t icons I recognised from existing products or services. That is, I guess the shop owners made them up to look ‘high tech’.

Anyway, as I walked past, a little boy–probably about 4 or 5 years old–was walking along the shopfront pressing the icons with his hand. As he pressed each one, and got no response, he got more frustrated. He’s obviously used a touch screen device such as an iPad, and so just assumed that these icons on the shop windows could also be ‘touched to activate’. When a simple touch failed to work, he progressed to running along the row of icons, touching all of them in quick succession. Still nothing happened.

Will all future generations be so disappointed by our non-interactive built environment?

…choose to literally cut and paste (well, ‘stick’ at least) your document together.

Lately I’ve been wrangling a research report into shape and I’m finding it so much easier to just print stuff out, cut it up, organise and rearrange it, then stick it together with sticky tape. Then I’ll go back and edit the document electronically.

Alternative titles for this blog could have been “You know you’re getting old when you…” or “You know you’ve been playing craft and colouring-in with your kids when you…”. (Actually that last one is very apt since I have been loving colouring in with my daughters lately!)

I’m about a week or so shy of having not posted to this blog for 6 months! A lot has been going on. I’ve been through a lot personally, while working on some pretty big projects at work. There’s been good and there’s been bad, but things are definitely looking much better now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a few things soon, when I have a spare few moments.

You often hear people refer to the tendency for Apple to hide functionality from the user. Most recently the iPhone and it’s gestural interface has been the source of complaints from users who discover stuff they didn’t know they could do (eg swipe to delete an email from your inbox).

Well I’ve found another one whilst driving to a business meeting the other day. When you stop at a set of lights and think it would be handy to look up your business associate’s number to give them a call to let them know you’ll be late. But as soon ad you grab your iPhone to perform that task, the traffic lights will change to green and you won’t be able to find the information you need (unless you keeping using your phone while driving but I don’t recommend that).

It also works when trying to use the maps app to check your destination, or anything else you might really need to do while stopped at traffic lights.

Go on, give it a go :)

(image credit: http://nittygriddy.com/2010/04/17/traffic-light-changer-iphone-app/)

Lately I’ve been having fun (that’s a lie, it wasn’t fun at all) trying to get VOIP to work as our home phone. If you just read that sentence and are asking yourself “what’s a VOIP?”, then the rest of this post probably won’t be very useful to you. But so that you don’t leave here totally and utterly bewildered, VOIP stands for “voice over IP” and is a method of replacing a normal telephone line with calls made over the internet.

(more…)

Yesterday I was on my way to a training session in the city and I stopped off for a latte in a busy coffee shop. This particular coffee shop is at the end of a very busy building (the Queen Victoria Building) and on a street corner. It thus has entrances on both sides, creating an opportunity for impatient pedestrians to cut through. Doing so leads them past the take-away counter, where I was standing, waiting for my favourite hot beverage with another customer. It’s a narrow route, quite obviously part of the establishment and not a public thoroughfare.

A person then walked through, rather sheepishly, but intentionally; in one door and out the other, weaving between the few customers and staff in their path. Both the othe guy waiting and myself noticed this. The other guy saw the owner/manager of the coffee shop looking on and asked “does that happen often?”.
“All the time” replied the manager in a thick Italian-Australian accent.
“People try to walk through, saying ‘is it ok?’. I say, ‘sure mate, at least you ask’. Most of them don’t [even ask]”
“Is that right?” said the other customer, rather surprised.
The other staff nodded in agreement as the the manager said “It’s just rude…rude”.
“I say to them ‘it’s not a street, it’s money!’” he exclaimed whilst pointing both hands at the passageway.

We chuckled in agreement. His use of English might have been comical, but the manager summed up his frustration perfectly clearly with that last line.

I subscribe to many RSS feeds, mostly as a means of aggregating blog posts so I can read them more easily. There are over 100 feeds in my Google Reader account. Nothing unusual about that.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hardly read any of them on a regular basis, I just don’t have time. Again this is nothing unusual.

The ones I do find myself reading quite regularly are grouped fairly precariously under the the label “Strategy”. Here are my top 5 (in alphabetical order):

• acidlabs (Stephen Collins)

  Stephen (or @trib as you might know him) is passionate, if nothing else. He writes on the topics of social media, government 2.0 and collaboration. His posts are enthusiastic, intelligent and well written. I might not share his opinions on some issues, but I do look forward to what he has to say. Stephen also sets a great example for anyone wishing to build a reputation and establish themselves as a thought leader in a certain field.

• Anecdote (Shawn Callahan & Mark Schenk)

  Shawn and Mark don’t blog as often as others in this list, but when they do it’s always a well considered and informative piece. The topics are quite diverse but mostly centre around stories (ie story telling for business) and collaboration. I’ve learnt a lot from reading their posts, and attending their “story listening” workshop, that has helped me during user research and stakeholder consultation.

• Column Two (James Robertson)

  James is my former employer, and I learnt a lot from him during my time at Step Two, and have continued to do so since then. James has his finger on many pulses, and is able to sift out the most useful bits of the tide of information that comes his way. Topics include intranets, content management, knowledge management and a whole bunch of things around these.

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)

  Seth has a real talent for boiling things down to their essence and then stating, simply, the core lessons you should take away. I’ve found his words on business, marketing and customer service incredibly useful and often amusing. His style is frank and to the point, which makes his writing honest and sometimes confronting. But you know it’s real, informed and motivated by his desire for things to make sense and for us all to do things in ways which make sense. Probably my favourite of all.

• Trends in the Living Networks (Ross Dawson)

  Does this guy get around or what? I find that almost everywhere I look (or read to be more precise) Ross pops up, and says something really smart. I honestly don’t know how he has his finger in so many pies, and still has time to write great blog posts, and be a father to his brood of kids! I’ll admit, sometimes it goes over my head, but the breadth and depth of his knowledge is impressive. Equally impressive is his willingness to pass on this knowledge, adopting the very “now” practice of releasing his work to the public domain (for example Implementing Enterprise 2.0)

So there’s nothing (necessarily) about UX, user research, web design or anything on that practical level. I find these blogs worth reading because they’re insightful, multifaceted and inspiring. They keep me thinking about the big picture, not staring down at my toes worrying about low level, day-to-day details.

Yesterday (well it was yesterday when I started this post but it’s now two days ago) I ran my design research workshop at UX Australia. Very happy with the day, I had a great group of twelve people who were enthusiastic and at varying levels of knowledge regarding UX and design research, which made for many interesting discussions and many enlightened people.

Which is all good. As I said announced on the day, I’m happy if people leave at the end having learnt something (even if that something is “I already knew this stuff, but didn’t know it!”) or at least having some confirmation that what they knew was pretty much spot on.

And I’m happy to report that I too learnt a few things, for instance:

• Tableau is a statistical analysis software package, available at low(er) cost and easier to use than SPSS
• Many Eyes – data visualisation thanks to IBM
• Joint Interpretive Forum (JIF) – collaborative post video analysis method (anyone got a link to more info on this?)

As always, I was keen to get feedback from my participants. And here’s what they said they liked:

“Excellent for beginner level people in the field, like me. Took a lot of trepidation away”
“Good mix of theory and real examples”
“Keeping to [tea and lunch break] timings was appreciated”
“Having more in the handouts than was shown on-screen is good”
“Interactive structure”
“Ethnographic video”
“I liked how it gave a good overview of methodologies”
“[Patrick was] friendly and competent”
“Thorough notes and books on tables to browse”
“Activities were quite useful to match with different ideas”
“Storytelling, card sorting, diagrams”
“[Patrick was a] good communicator” (which made my wife laugh)
“[Patrick was] clear and warm, obviously very skilled”
“Links to reference materials”
“Very comprehensive”
“Videos worked really well”
“Recommendations/tips for implementation”
“Storytelling activity”
“[Patrick was] very experienced, lots of real-world examples”
“Detailed, well-written handouts”
“The process was very straightforward”
“Activities seemed a little rushed but were really helpful!”
“[Patrick was] very knowledgeable! Great willingness to share with us”
“Materials were great, chock full of examples and references we can re-use”
“Ethnographic interviews”
“[Methods for] displaying information/data”
“Anecdote Circle”
“Very competent”
“Able to associate techniques to other areas of research”
“Comprehensive”
“Content was good”
“Nice guy – friendly”
“I liked the videos”
“Structure of topics and the reflection using mind maps”
“Comprehensive”
“the videos were great”
“The storytelling activity”
“Activities; discussion with others was good, really helped get my head around things”
“[Patrick was] knowledgeable, approachable, open to going off-topic, clear and articulate”
“Clarity, comprehensiveness, referencing, practicality”
“Explanation of methods and how they work”

Storytelling (or “anecdote circle”) activity being referred to was a form of group research in which you allow participants to share their experiences about a particular topic through telling stories. It’s a great and relatively simple method of research that can elicit quite a lot rich detail, and using forms of narrative analysis you can then extract causal relationships, chronological relationships, tasks, trusted sources etc. Find out more at www.anecdote.com.au.

The video being referred to is “Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer” produced by Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel. It’s a great introduction to ethnography and the power and the challenges that come with the territory. It’s available online at: www.vimeo.com/1269848

And in the spirit of openess, honesty and transparency yadda yadda here’s what they said were the areas for improvement:

• “Activities to be longer”
• “Beginning was a bit quick…”
• “Long video was a bit long”
• “Less Powerpoint”
• “Needed more examples … and more interactive exercises”
• “Tried to fit too much in”
• “Time was not enough in the activities”
• “Slides were not readable sometimes”
• “For each technique, a worked example or short hands-on activity”
• “How some things relate to the practicality of interface design”
• “More small activities”
• “More video, eg examples in the field”

They’re all good points, and I’ll do some tweaking of the workshop to ensure I have more time for the good stuff and less of the other stuff. I’m looking forward to the next time!

Photo credit: Doc Baty

A club sandwich is one my favourite meals. When I go to a cafe or bistro and they have a club sandwich or BLT on the menu I will almost certainly order it; it’s my “usual”. For my wife it’s spaghetti bolognese. All over the world we have partaken in our usual fare and compared the results with all others that have come before. I don’t think this is uncommon, I think most people have at least one usual.

Nor is it surprising that we do the same thing with technology. Most people have their usual methods or key metrics for assessing how well, or how easy, products work. When you open up a new piece of software or a website you’ve not visited before, there are those little tests you perform to get a feel for it, give it a test drive, to get its measure quite quickly.

My wife’s “virtual” spaghetti bolognese for a new PC is opening Microsoft Word and seeing how long it takes to load.

James Robertson, says searching for “leave form” is one of his usuals for an intranet. Almost all intranets have a form or set of instructions for applying to leave, so how well the intranet search guides the user to this content is akin to taking its pulse.

When doing an expert review of a website, I usually start by disabling CSS and Javascript and taking a squiz at the raw underbelly of the site. Not conclusive nor exhaustive but just a habit I’ve gotten into.

These quick methods of assessment are not a replacement for formal QA testing or usability testing, but rather a short-cut that gets right to the heart of the matter and gives you a feel for the qualities of the technology in question.

What are some of your technology “usuals”?

[Photo credit: Puck777 on flickr]

[If I were to write for The Punch, this is what I'd write about.]

As a father of one daughter, and potentially another on the way, I’m concerned about the sexualisation of our youth. Music, movies, TV and celebrities are influencing our youth much more than ever before, with sexually explicit (or at least suggestive) messages.

Take for example the work of recent pop music sensation Lady Gaga. Here’s a line from her top 40 hit “LoveGame”:

I’m educated in sex, yes
and now I want it bad, want it bad

The chorus of that same song goes:

Don’t think too much, just bust that stick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick

I’m sorry, but what a tramp! Sure you could excuse this as using sex to sell records or to distract you from her lack of talent, but when you take into account that this kind of material is being beemed straight into our kids field of view, it’s a lot more serious.

Here’s another example from Gaga’s “Poker Face”:

And baby when it’s love, if it’s not rough it isn’t fun

What message do you think this sends girls and young women?

And there’s more, other masterpieces from this tart include “I Like It Rough”, “Shake Ur Kitty” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich”. Seriously. I don’t mean to pick on this one individual, she’s nothing unique or original, she’s following in the footsteps of The Pussycat Dolls, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears etc. But this latest example is pushing the boundaries of suggestive and wandering into dangerous territory, in my opinion.

I’m no prude, if you’re into this sort of thing then I’m happy for you, but children shouldn’t be exposed to it. Whether she likes it or not Lady Gaga is a role model for young girls and they will hear these lyrics and see the slutty clothes she wears and think that this is the way they should be talking and behaving. And it’s going to get them into trouble.

Some would argue that everyone has to make up their own mind and choose to follow the lead of “celebrities”. Fair enough, but when you’re young it’s often only once it’s too late that you are able to make up your mind and choose to do the sensible thing. It makes me sick that even one young girl might get into a world of hurt because some no-talent pop star and her idiot record company think they’ll sell a ton of records by lathering on the dirty lyrics. These people are so desperate to be famous they will compromise everything, and jeopardise anyone, to get get it.

Compare this then to another current popular artist, Lilly Allen. Her lyrics are also quite explicit, but the tone is very different. Laden with sarcasm, Allen takes a swipe at modern pop culture with her own form of social commentary. Take this line from her hit single “The Fear”:

I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cuz everyone knows thats how you get famous
…
Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and passing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
and that’s what makes my life so f***ing fantastic
…
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
and it’s not my fault its how I’m program to function

I quite like this song, because by my interpretation this is a much more positive message. It’s not ok to do whatever it takes to be famous, it’s not ok to just spend money and float through life with no purpose. The dry British sarcasm is subtle, but I think (ok, I hope) the audience can pick up on this.

Her latest single “Not Fair” is much more saucy, dealing with inequality within relationships:

There’s just one thing
that’s getting in the way
When we go up to bed
you’re just no good
Its such a shame
I look into your eyes
I want to get to know you
And then you make this noise
and its apparent it’s all over

It’s not fair
And I think you’re really mean
I think you’re really mean
I think you’re really mean
Oh you’re supposed to care
But you never make me scream
You never make me scream

Sure, it might be a bit of fun, but Miss Allen is standing up for the rights of women. The setting for the song is similar to that of Lady Gaga’s songs, young women engaging in sexual activity, but the attitudes of the two are light-years apart.

There’s no point trying to hide from the fact that young adults are going to do what young adults do, and that’s not what I’m suggesting. What I’m suggesting is that A) children shouldn’t be exposed to the same content as adults and young adults, and B) the messages we allow those in the media to send out need to be positive. For girls this means encouraging them to respect themselves and others, and to aspire to more than just buying clothes, flashing their undies and telling the boys they “want it bad”.

Let’s let kids be kids and stop those that would attempt to turn them into adults before they’re ready. I found this initiative recently, whilst reading about an unrelated topic. It’s a blog called Shaping Youth, a “forum about media and marketing’s influence on kids”, that aims to tackle the kinds of issues I raise here. I took some comfort in the knowledge that there are people out there trying to do something about the Lady Gaga’s of this world.