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

First thing I am going to look into after my PhD is EBD for User Research. The first time I heard about this approach was when Marc Hassenzahl explained the similarities between usability specialists and GP’s in his keynote at the CHI-NL conference 2007. Rob Tannen convinced me again of the fruitful approach in User Centred Design.

Read his article @ Use8

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

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".

Designing interfaces for the art of music. Sound generation has become independent of form (acoustics being taken care of digitally). What should a musical instrument look like? WIRED presents eight examples. Take a look at the BEAMZ, the Boing Boing or the Gypsi MIDI.

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

Every now and then the debate on “which skills make the best designer” fires up again. At the far ends there are two opinions:

• Practitioners claim to be the best designers because their output is most visible and tangible. What can researchers show after all?
• Researchers claim to be the best designers, because their output gives the most validated design directions, after which “only” implementation of these ideas is required. What challenge is there in such a job?

An interesting article by Anthony Colfelt puts it all in perspective.

I must say I was happily surprised by the emphasis he puts on research skills in designing the User Experience:

Research is interwoven into all user experience roles – the inspiration and validation of ideas and designs greatly enhances the chance of success in meeting your design objectives.

Research skills punctuate the UX professionals’ work agenda.

Read for yourself!

full article @ boxesandarrows.com

Ergonosearch is a vertical search engine about accessibility and usability, indexing only selected quality ressources : articles and expert blogs, research papers, specialized lists and forums, official specifications and guidelines.

Thanks to usability blieb

Searchengine @ ergonosearch site