Technology Information

"Undercover User Experience" by Cennydd Bowles and James Box: Charlotte UX Book Club Skype Session and Discussion

Posted: 02 Feb 2011 07:44 PM PST

I just got back from a meeting of the Charlotte UX Book Club. The group meets in the loft office of the Charlotte branch of Atlanta-based Macquarium, and provides a great opportunity for like-minded folks to socialize and toss around informed ideas.

Tonight's meeting featured Cennydd Bowles and James Box, the authors of Undercover User Experience. They joined the group via Skype, on a large screen TV. After a minute or so, it was as if they were right in the room, even though they were in the UK. What a delightful experience!

Cennydd and James both work at Clearleft, a team of designers and creative technologies that provide user-experience consulting. They are bright, insightful, and know their stuff. The book packs in a lot of good information in an easy-to-read, concise, and thought provoking manner. The author's address tools of the trade within the context of how work gets done across disciplines in organizations.

In my opinion, this book would be useful to people working on traditional projects as well as those who focus NUI design & development for emerging technologies.

BTW: Cennyd Bowles will be the closing plenary speaker at the IA Summit 2011 in March.

"Deliverables are a step on the journey, not the end of the line" -Undercover UX Design

Here are a couple of quotes from the Amazon.com editorial reviews:

Product Description

"Once you catch the user experience bug, the world changes. Doors open the wrong way, websites don't work, and companies don't seem to care. And while anyone can learn the UX remedies usability testing, personas, prototyping and so on unless your organization 'gets it', putting them into practice is trickier. Undercover User Experience is a pragmatic guide from the front lines, giving frank advice on making UX work in real companies with real problems. Readers will learn how to fit research, ideation, prototyping and testing into their daily workflow, and how to design good user experiences under the all-too-common constraints of time, budget and culture."

From the Back Cover

"Once you catch the user experience bug, the world changes. Doors open the wrong way, websites don't work, and companies don't seem to care. And while anyone can learn the UX remedies: usability testing, personas, prototyping and so on unless your organization 'gets it', putting them into practice is tricky. Undercover User Experience is a pragmatic guide from the front lines, giving frank advice on making UX work in real companies with real problems. Readers will learn how to fit research, ideation, prototyping and testing into their daily workflow, and how to design good user experiences under the all-too-common constraints of time, budget and culture."

Book Review from Johnny Holland

Lots of news about interactive TV: InteractiveTV Today.

Posted: 31 Jan 2011 02:09 PM PST

Take a look!

INTERACTIVE TV NEWS ROUND-UP (VII): TVO, VERISIMO, TECHSTORM, VISIWARE, FOX, WILL.I.AM, YOUVIEW

(I haven't finished looking at all of the round-ups and updates. There is a lot of convergence going on in the world of ITV.)

A plug for Innovative Interactivity's Top 5 January Posts (Tracy Boyer)

Posted: 31 Jan 2011 03:24 AM PST

Tracy Boyer's Innovative Interactivity (II) cover many topics that most likely would interest readers of this blog. She's conveniently listed the top five II blog posts for January. Take a look!

1. Job opportunities, January 2011
2. NFB and The Goggles launch interactive documentary Pine Point
3. Adam Westbrook publicizes his top media predictions for 2011
4. Multimedia must-see: Climate Wisconsin
5. Selling Yourself: What's your story?

W3C Touch Events Specification! Editors Draft 1/29/11 (quick link)

W3C Touch Events Specification! Editors Draft 1/29/11 (quick link)
"Microsoft is Imagining a NUI Future". You can, too!
State of Information Visualization, 2011 InfoVis in HTML5 "how-to", and more (Thanks to Robert Kosara)

W3C Touch Events Specification! Editors Draft 1/29/11 (quick link)

Posted: 28 Jan 2011 08:44 PM PST

Touch Events Specification, W3C

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webevents/raw-file/tip/touchevents.html

"The Touch Interface specification defines a set of low-level events that represent one or more points of contact with a touch-sensitive surface, and changes of those points with respect to the surface and any DOM elements displayed upon it (e.g. for touch screens) or associated with it (e.g. for drawing tablets without displays). It also addresses pen-tablet devices, such as drawing tablets, with consideration toward stylus capabilities."

Editors: Doug Schepers, W3C, Sangwhan Moon, Opera Software ASA, Matt Brubeck, Mozilla

"Microsoft is Imagining a NUI Future". You can, too!

Posted: 28 Jan 2011 08:10 PM PST

Microsoft is Imagining a NUI Future
Steve Clayton, Next at Microsoft Blog, 1/26/11

"Our research shows that the vast majority of people polled in both developed and emerging markets see great potential for NUI applications beyond entertainment. This is especially true in China and India, where 9 out of 10 respondents indicate they are likely to use NUI technology across a range of lifestyle areas – from work, education and healthcare, to social connections, entertainment and the environment. We believe that taking technology to the next billion can be aided by NUI – making technology more accessible and more intuitive to a wider audience". - Steve Clayton, Microsoft

The people at Microsoft don't own the concept! I'm a member of the NUI Group (May, 2007) and SparkOn. Both are on-line communities where you can find people who live and breath NUI, learn about their work, and even share designs and code. If you are intrigued by NUI - as a designer, developer, or user, please join us.

Note:
I've been an evangelist and cheerleader for the NUI cause for many years. If you search this blog for "post-WIMP", "NUI", "multi-touch", "gesture", "off-the-desktop", "natural user interaction", "natural user interface", or even "DOOH", you'll be provided with an overwhelming number of posts that include videos, photographs, and links to NUI-related resources, including scholarly articles. There is a small-but-growing number of people from many disciplines, quietly working on NUI-related projects.

State of Information Visualization, 2011 InfoVis in HTML5 "how-to", and more (Thanks to Robert Kosara)

Posted: 28 Jan 2011 06:28 PM PST

Take a look at Robert' Kosara's recent post on his eagereyes blog:

The State of Information Visualization, 2011

In this post, Robert reviews of some of the important trends in information visualization in 2010, discusses the potential of HTML5 for creating information visualization experiences on the web, and makes a few predictions about the near future. Robert is pretty sure that the world is ready for "truly interactive, browser-based visualization". He notes that the Protovis Primers he shares on his website are quite popular.

Most of the following resources and links were taken from the eagereyes website:

Information Visualization, HTML5, and JavaScript Resources (more to come)
HTML5 and Visualization on the Web

Robert Kosara, eagereyes, 12/21/10

Canvas Tutorial (HTML element used to draw graphics using scripting)
HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet

Dive Into HTML5 Tutorial (canvas element)

HTML5 Games/Interactive Experiments (Hakim El Hattab)

node.js: (How to run JavaScript on a server.)
JavaScript: The Key to In-Browser Visualization
Robert Kosara, eagereyes, 2/11/10
PROTOVIS
A Protovis Primer, Part 1
A Protovis Primer, Part 2
A Protovis Primer, Part 3
"Protovis is a very powerful visualization toolkit. Part of what makes it special is that it is written in JavaScript and runs in the browser without the need for any plugins. Its clever use of JavaScript's language features makes it very elegant, but it can also be confusing to people who are not familiar with functional programming concepts and the finer points of JavaScript." -Robert Kosara

The Year of InfoVis Theory

Robert Kosara, eagereyes, 3/10/10

Telling Stories with Data: Using visualization to create narratives and engage audiences

VisWeek 2010

Embedding Information Visualization Within Visual Representation (pdf)

Caroline Ziemkiewicz and Robert Kosara

Thanks, Robert, for sharing these very useful resources!