reMIX South, User Experience
August 6th, 2011 by
Matt Haff
Speaker: August de los Reyes from Artefact Design
Video: Original talk
Zombies, Werewolves & Vampires
Recent cultural phenomenon
20th Century
- Zombies – neither living nor dead, living and dead, hybrid model, ambiguity, play between living & dead
- Vampire – kill the vampire, end the ambiguity, decide between life and death, striving towards stability, no change – back to normal
- fight change
21st Century
- true blood, twilight, teen wolf, vampire diaries, ugly americans
- we must learn to live with the ambiguity of constant change – we can find comfort and happiness in doing so.
- embrace change
The A-Team
They improvise solutions, weapons, make things happen with whatever is available. People combine elements to make new experiences.
20th Century
- vertical structures
- traditional vertical root structures
- spider
- television
- brittanica
- newswire
- app has a distinct beginning and end.
- Windows tree menu
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21st Century
- horizontal structures
- rhizome root structure wide & shallow -
- starfish
- YouTube
- Wikipedia
- Twitter
- shift the app experience – multiple non hierarchical entry and exit points. Like Facebook, twitter, and WoW (they continue going we just enter/exit)
- iOS, WIndows Phone, no structure for apps, etc.
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Harry Potter
- About learning
- early example of 21st century learning model
- books and movies convey the story
- wikis, blogs, forums, web sites complete the model
- no memorization required.
20th Century
- The endpoint of the 20th century learning model is efficiency. This value is translated into software design: time to task, number of clicks to goal, series of steps to be mastered.
- kuleshov effect – the meaning comes from the structure.
21st Century
- design views learning as the effect of an environment – an environment that marries structure and complete freedom within the constrains of that structure.
- george lois – Xerox tv ad, so easy a 5 yr old girl can do it. Federal Trade commission thought it was a hoax, false advertising! So Xerox reshot the video with a trained chimp making the copies.
- While it seems cerebral, it is in fact quite practical.Interaction is less about the physical and material. We are not pressing actual buttons or flipping real switches. We are just rubbing glass and waving our hands in the air.
Conclusion
- We must look at the future as a set of possibilities, not as something that forces us to comply to a system.
- The systems we design should provide the building blocks not spoon feed the user.
- We should develop environments that embraces learning.
What do you think?
reMIX South, User Experience
August 6th, 2011 by
Matt Haff
Speaker: Albert Shunn
- Experience (desirable) – business (viable) – technical (feasible)
- who is influencing who? Do people have phones because they talk to people, or do they talk to people because they have phones.
- The only way to truly understand user and object, is seeing them in their environment.
- you are what you do, you are what you use, you are what you wear
- the user-object relation
- the user obtains the object
- the user raises the expectations
- the item evolves
- Should we design experiences for what people already do, or what people want to do?
- design for the identity of users
- shifting context – look, feel, experience
- info graphic vs. icon graphic
- metro is our design language. We call it Metro because it’s modern and clean.
- Apps are the only thing that matters?
- The biggest struggle for apps is being continuously used.
- The average application is used once.
- 1% of downloaded apps are used regularly on the long run
- Think about your toolbox, most tools never move, only some are used regularly.
- personalize
- it’s not just pictures, it’s pictures of people you care about, you, etc.
- relevant
- i’m always somewhere, sometime, doing something, with someone
- connected
- keep me connected to my people, my places, my things, my tools, my feed and my groups, whenever and wherever I am.
- connecting different people will create new experiences
- connecting to different experiences/screens and expanding on the usability
- It’s our job to make sense of all this and move the model forward.
What do you think?
Apps
July 20th, 2011 by
Matt Haff
I’ve always liked using Gmail as my email because I can access it anywhere and still have the ability to sort my mail using labels. One thing that I have always dreaded about using Gmail though is that I needed to have a browser window devoted to it. I didn’t want to import it into Mac Mail or Outlook because any labeling I do wouldn’t carry over to Gmail. Enter a new app called Sparrow Mail, this genius yet light app is perfect for me. It doesn’t take up much space on the desktop, it has all the same features as any other email client, and better yet…it talks directly to Gmail!
As a web developer, I’m always using multiple programs and browsers, anytime I can have one less window or a smaller app open I am all for it. What if you don’t use Gmail? No worries, Sparrow Mail supports any IMAP email. Take Sparrow for a test drive, you can get the lite version for free and the full version for $9.99.
Enjoy!
What do you think?
