Samanunga

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade – a bland grey.(…)

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

full article @ news.bbc.co.uk

The NPR, the National Public Radio (USA), asked their audience about what children do with technology. The responses gave a nice overview of the current momentum of technology in the life of the very young.

“We saw a bit of trend in your stories: cell phones + water = gadget death. A surprising number of variations on that theme involved toilets, pet water bowls and kid drool. Still a whole other category involved stories of repeated 911 dialing, hiding tech toys from stressed parents and inserting all sorts of food into drives and slots of all kinds.

But not all stories involved destruction or police knocking at the door. Below are some of the standouts (…)”

Submitted through Twitter:

• 4 year old learned to type his name on my first blackberry
• Last night my daughter used my cell phone as a flash light in bed after lights out.
• …etc – more in the original article

full article @ npr.org

Colleagues in method research: Frank Long found that using persona’s is more effective than working without them, they help designers to maintain a user centered focus. Adding pictures results in an even stronger focus, because they resort stronger empathy than a description without pictures.

Interesting results!

full article @ frontend.com
Thanks to Arthur Clemens’ post @ visible area.com

Now we’re talking UX-research. Children in “Voorburg” received an internet-only iPhone to test a mobile educational site. The site WRTS is designed to help learning words. The launched a mobile version of the site, which is now tested with the iPhone.

One glitch already frustrates the young users: the iPhone “corrects” the entries by capitalizing the first word – while the wrts ís case sensitive. Typing “free iPhone” results in submitting “Free iPhone”, which results in “WRONG – the correct answer is: free iPhone”!

ARGH!

Read the full article @ tweakers.net

Research conducted at Harvard University shows that the dangers of internet for young children are highly overrated. Protectionists convey the message that as soon as a child gets online, it cannot escape a tsunami of pornesque pictures and proposals. However, the risk of being solicited through social sites does not differ much from the risk factor IRL, according the research.

In fact, the biggest threat for children is their own misbehaviour in online bullying.

original article @ new york times

Have you ever heard of the "cognitive load" of a city? It is not finding your way, not the city night life but just being there!
Architects and usability specialists have much in common, as they both design for users. The first for users of space, the latter for users of interactive products. The similarities are much closer than I thought, after reading this article
"How the city hurts your brain".

Google recently released it’s own browser: Chrome. Using it is of course a trade of privacy versus convenience. However, now there is an unpolished version: Iron. Some German software developers stripped the source code of Chrome from any reference or feedback link to Google. Browse with the benefits of Chrome, and whithout the privacy worries.

article @ downloadsquad.com
iron @ srware.net

Outdoctrination, I am outdoctrinated, you are outdoctrinated? Children behave beyond the descriptive power of science in Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?, an inspiring and revealing talk at the LIFT conference 2007 in Geneva.

Sugata Mitra worked on the “internet in a wall” experiment. Take a monitor, put it in a hole in the wall and provide a mouse. Watch what happens when children start to discover. Repeat all over “demographically-rich” India.

The full presentation takes 21 minutes. If you want to skip the intro and experimental scientific stuff, FFWD to approx 15 minutes in time where he presents his findings. Some high-lights:

• children take about eight minutes to figure out how to browse the internet.
• children teach themselves English to read on the internet
• (in 3 months approx 200 words – all mispronounced but actively used)
• children work consistently in small groups (±4), combining DIY with teaching eachother
• scientifically no external factors seem to correlate with the learning experience and still it happens: how do we go about?

Watch the video at TED.com

The “kid’s stuff session” was interesting, especially the first two presentations:

• Children Attribute Moral Standing to a Personified Agent; and
• Mischief:: Supporting Remote Teaching in Developing Regions

Great work! (more…)

CHi-Nederland presents “the creative conversion factory” on March 29 in “De Zwarte Doos“. You are all invited from 19:00h onwards. The presentation starts at 19:30h in room 1.04.