Usability week ending December 19th

Thursday, 16th December, 12:17 PM
Web developers must add #mobile web development to their skill set or risk losing clients. Here's the landscape: http://j.mp/fsZMkT

Thursday, 16th December, 10:43 AM
Why the studios will lose the “war” with Netflix: http://j.mp/hWrvsD #netflix #streaming #ux #vod #ott

Wednesday, 15th December, 8:22 AM
Making user and customer experience a business competency (videos and transcript): http://j.mp/fmTWJW #ux #cx

Tuesday, 14th December, 8:20 AM
RIM BlackBerry -- when product development teams kill #usability, how to recognize it, and what to do about it: http://j.mp/e7GS4x

Monday, 13th December, 12:59 PM
Average U.S. consumer now spends as much time online as watching TV, according to Forrester research: http://j.mp/i73E87

Monday, 13th December, 9:51 AM
Making an iPhone app? Use great iPhone apps every day--designing with conventions in mind will eventually come naturally: http://j.mp/fDPzgd

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending December 12th

Saturday, 11th December, 10:29 PM
Grand Central Terminal - 360 view: http://occip.it/pygyc72zj

Saturday, 11th December, 6:34 PM
Macy's at 34th and Herald Sq - 360 view: http://occip.it/pyh0h9rij

Friday, 10th December, 1:33 PM
"Mobile data traffic in 2011 will be roughly the same as total Internet traffic circa 2002." -- @pkedrosky #trendspotting

Wednesday, 8th December, 8:41 PM
User experience design in the age of computational objects and ubiquitous computing: http://j.mp/hUBKQ5

Tuesday, 7th December, 12:08 PM
A reminder to design fluid width sites—iPad hits 8 percent of global mobile PC (laptop + tablet) shipments: http://j.mp/i8lnqx #ux #ia

Tuesday, 7th December, 9:44 AM
The first problem is to design the API. The second is to help people learn to use it: http://j.mp/e8RlP6 #api #ia

Monday, 6th December, 10:49 PM
#Persuasion triggers in web #design: reciprocation, commitment, social proof, authority, scarcity, framing, salience: http://j.mp/fpJdwg #ia

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending December 5th

Friday, 3rd December, 4:09 PM
The Design of Everyday Things--theory of how people behave when working with everyday objects, and guidelines to follow: http://j.mp/gXJPxv

Thursday, 2nd December, 2:11 PM
Is simplicity a bad design goal?: http://j.mp/fyGPqb #ux #design #ui

Wednesday, 1st December, 1:50 PM
Trust, crowd empowerment, transparency and co-management of life activity, are the new master concepts for success: http://j.mp/eS0iNC #ux

Monday, 29th November, 5:52 PM
How A/B testing a splash page and sign up button earned Obama an extra $60M in fund raising: http://j.mp/gF525L #webdesign #ux

Monday, 29th November, 10:11 AM
5 of the best new user experiences of 2010--most interesting, useful, and innovative, expanding #ux expectations: http://j.mp/eWHqgn

via twitter.com/terretta

Inside story: The birth of Xbox

“One of the most controversial choices at the time was whether the Xbox should have a modem in it or not. It sounds bizarre now but most people at the time were connecting to the internet via a dial-up modem.

“So the decision to add a modem in there was fought and fought and actually went all the way up to Robbie Bach. There was a big difference of opinion because at the time there were a lot of dial-up multiplayer services, and we knew if we supported that we could get a lot of people playing.

“The idea of having an Ethernet connection in your home was pretty new at that time, and not many people had it.

“And I remember that this was one of the clear demands that Robbie made, he said we were building the machine for the future, that we were going to bet on people signing up to broadband.

“Once he made that decision. No-one went back.”

via develop-online.net

An in-depth look at how Microsoft got into the console race, tracing the two years from product conception to launch.

Social business and service design

It is not surprising that almost every business analyst, from whatever field they come from, management, business consulting, marketing, finance…etc predicts that customer experience and customer value in use will be the next big strategic thing, including major players like Forrester research – The State Of Customer Experience, 2010 – and big five consultancies like Cap Gemini. See also for example Emanuele Quintarelli’s summaries of the Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2010 and the “Social CRM Strategies Summit” (Day 1 & Day 2). More fundamental models in business and academia are underlining this new paradigm: Service dominant logic, and lean consumption as an application of lean management .

And that’s exactly the reason why service design (as a generalization of the formerly emerged discipline of User experience design – see Peter Morville, Smashing Magazine & Kimmy Paluch) and design thinking are starting to raise such a high interest: It’s these disciplines that have the tools, methods and people (the designers and design thinkers) necessary to discover & create customer value and experience, the new ingredients for success and competitiveness in business.

via servicedesign.lu

Usability week ending November 28th

Thursday, 25th November, 10:53 PM
Happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday, 24th November, 1:53 PM
Browserling is interactive cross-browser #testing inside your Chrome #browser. Try it at browserling.com: http://j.mp/hTDfXx

Tuesday, 23rd November, 12:22 AM
Building a "customer experience", not just a "user experience", leads to a more complete and effective product: http://j.mp/goN2B9 #ux

Monday, 22nd November, 2:06 PM
Dropbox "just works" for online backup and sharing files. Get yours free here: http://db.tt/jj4Ip9C

Monday, 22nd November, 2:03 PM
I love Dropbox because it's the easiest way to share documents among a distributed team who use both Windows and Mac. http://db.tt/v5FdNuZ

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending November 21st

Thursday, 18th November, 5:21 PM
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web: http://j.mp/aWwEE7 #html5 #google #tutorial

Thursday, 18th November, 11:00 AM
@sugarsock kudos on launch

Wednesday, 17th November, 6:26 PM
The hardest part of software isn’t the process of creating it, it’s changing culture and influencing organizations: http://j.mp/aQyesF

Monday, 15th November, 11:26 AM
#Usability finally showing up in web design tips lists: http://j.mp/aQ9dCF #webdesign

via twitter.com/terretta

This is how to do consumer-friendly DRM

These books are DRM protected, but people are buying them.  As a consumer with money to spend, you have several devices, but instead of fragmenting your ebook collection, you're free to use the device you prefer.  So far so good.

Aside from the devices, people want to be able to loan or share ebooks they way they can hardbacks.  Amazon is addressing that use case too:

Later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. 

Kindle is approaching frictionlessness.  If your product's DRM doesn't take away hundreds of years of comfortable use cases, but in fact adds something to the value proposition ("fit all my books in my pocket"), consumers are more than happy to adopt it.

Hollywood, paying attention?

Microsoft gets the Cloud but not the Commons

Microsoft's new "The Future of Technology" ad is getting rave reviews:

The software giant just posted an impressive new Windows 7 and Windows Live advert that makes the viewer change their perspective. The commercial follows the trend of several Windows 7 adverts released recently that focus on Microsoft’s Cloud services with Windows Live. I won’t spoil it for you as it has to be seen and experienced. The video can be watched below and the full transcript is available too.
The reviews generally don't mention this ad is using a technique popularized by a YouTube video created for the "AARP U@50" contest, in which it placed second.  

Microsoft's ad is pushing the Cloud, but it is acting like it doesn't get the Commons.  It wouldn't have hurt Microsoft to credit the content creators, at least in their YouTube credits.

Here is "Lost Generation", with 14 million views to date:

Both pieces use an aspirational narrator (the thumbnail for Microsoft's ad features a woman one can imagine recording Lost Generation), scrolling text, a punchline for the reversal, and share the same mood and tone.

The "Lost Generation" creator credits inspiration to a political video created by an Argentinean agency, Savaglio/TBWA, entitled "Truth":

Also predating the Windows 7 ad is "The Future of Publishing" created by Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films :

They too credit Truth.