User Research and Design, Usability engineering, usability testing, User Centered Design, HCI, User Interface, UI, Human Computer Interaction, Usability in India
John Underkoffler starts of by talking about how, around twenty five years ago, the Macintosh fundamentally changed the way people thought about computation, computers and how they used them, and that it was such a radical change that the early Macintosh development team had to write an entirely new OS from ground up for it. Referring to the advancement in fundamental supporting technologies, he talks about how one can buy more graphic power in less than a 100 dollars, and that same power would cost a million bucks from SGI a decade ago.
He goes on to demo a few projects of his and the ‘g-speak spatial operating environment’, as he call it and ends by saying that in five years time from now, when you buy a computer, this will very much be part of what you will get with it.
About John Underkoffler
John Underkoffler owns Oblong Industries, a company he founded to move the g-speak spatial operating system into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more.
Before founding Oblong, Underkoffler spent 15 years at MIT’s Media Laboratory, working in holography, animation and visualization techniques, and building the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room Systems.
Rob Tanen begins to talk about how user researchers have historically lacked appropriate technology for studying how people use technology and the emergence of a variety of tools that can be applied to data gathering, analysis and sharing. He talks about the need for awareness and guidance in the selection and use of such research technologies.
Tanen goes on to talk about the basic characteristics of effective user research tools: documentation, measurement, efficiency and enhancement, data on current usage of various technologies for data gathering, analysis and presentation, demonstrations and tips on the latest technological tools for conducting user research, including high-speed digital video and pen computing and concept designs of future user research tools.
About Rob Tanen
Rob Tanen is Director of Research at Bresslergroup, a product design and development firm. Rob has over 15 years experience applying product/interface usability in the medical, industrial, commercial and consumer fields.
Rob is creator and editor of DesigningforHumans, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) blog focusing on events, methods and technology related to user research. Rob has a BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College, and MA and PhD degrees in Human Factors/Experimental Psychology from the University of Cincinnati.
David Kelley, chairman of IDEO, says product design has become more about the user experience than about hardware. He shows a video of this new, broader approach, including footage from the Prada store in New York.
About David Kelly
David Kelly is the founder of IDEO. He helped design the first mouse, the Treo and the Leap chair. Kelley has also been teaching design at Stanford for more than 25 years and now leads the university’s design school there.
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Rohan talks about Adam, a tablet PC in the making by his Hyderabad-based company, Notion Ink, which was founded by six IITans and an MBA graduate with an average age of just 24. Adam generated considerable buzz after they decided to demonstrate their prototype at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the world’s largest consumer tech trade show in January this year.
And with good reason too. The Adam tablet boasts of twice the battery life and performance of the iPad, thanks to the integration of two breakthrough power saving components - nVidia’s Tegra 2 chip and a PixelQi screen. It has the ability to play full high definition videos and of course, Flash, on the web browser. As Shravan puts it, the Adam offers the performance of a computer with the power consumption of a cellphone. The Adam tablet also features a 10.1 inch PixelQI dual mode screen allows users to read it easily in bright sunlight like an e-reader.
Adobe and Condé Nast (publisher of various magazines including Vogue, GQ and Wired) unveiled a new digital magazine experience based on WIRED magazine at the TED conference in Long Beach, California. Built on Adobe AIR and developed with Condé Nast, the tablet prototype illustrated the possibilities for magazine publishers to reach readers in new ways. The concept enables immersive content experience in digital form and allows new interactive features to stimulate reader engagement, including
content designed specifically for the touch screen experience
easy navigation methods, including an innovative zoomed-out ‘browse mode’
the ability to browse image slideshows
embedded 360 degree object viewers
support for video and audio content
the ability to rotate content using device accelerometer functionality
In this video, Dave Gray provides an introduction with 5 basic principles for making better napkin sketches.
About Dave Gray
Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, a leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave’s researches and writes on visual business and speaks and coaches educators, corporate clients and the public. He is also a founding member of VizThink, an international community of Visual Thinkers.
He is author of the book (on consultative selling) called Selling to the VP and is currently working on a book for O’Reilly media Sunni Brown called The Visual Thinking Playbook, which is due out in January of 2010.
10GUI is Calyton Mill’s concept for an input device that uses all fingers that expands the bandwidth of interaction that is otherwise restricted by the mouse. The video talks about how the mouse restricts interaction and how multi-touch monitors are stressful because the user has to stretch out to use it- (something I fully agree with and believe will lead to its failure). It goes on to illustrate a GUI that is better optimized for usage with the proposed input device.
In the Google TechTalks video from 2006, Jen Fitzpatrick talks about the art and science behind Google’s design process and share examples of how design, usability and engineering come together at Google to create great products.
About Jen Fitzpatrick
Jen Patricks is an Engineering Director at Google, who at least was then managing Google’s user experience team. A founding member of Google’s UI team, Jen has also led the UI design, testing and implementation of numerous features and changes to the Google.com site.
She joined Google in June 1999 as a software engineer and has also served as Engineering Director for Google Adwords and Google’s Internal Systems engineering group.
Jen is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science.
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Jon Kolko talks on Design Synthesis, offering two sense making methods to translate research into meaningful insights.
The methods he talks about are Insight Combination, a method of building on established design patterns in order to create initial design ideas and Reframing, a method of shifting semantic perspective in order to see things in a new way.
Jon Kolko talks about Design Synthesis because he feels interaction design research activities produce an enormous quantity of raw data, and while this must be systematically and rigorously analyzed in order to extract meaning and insight, these methods of analysis are poorly documented and rarely taught. And because of the pragmatic time constraints associated with shipping products, there is often no time dedicated in a project to a practice of formal synthesis. As a result, raw design research data is inappropriately positioned as insight, and the value of research activities is marginalized– in fact, stakeholders may lose faith in the entire research practice, as they don’t see direct return on the investment of research activities.
About Jon Kolko
Jon Kolko is a Senior Design Analyst at frog design in Austin, Texas. His professional work deals with the manipulation of complicated business and technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. The work spans the boundaries of Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and Usability Engineering; the common underlying theme of these problems and projects is the creation of a solution that is useful, usable, and desirable.
Kolko is the author of the text Thoughts on Interaction Design; he is also the 2008-2011 Editor-in-Chief of Interactions Magazine, published by the ACM.
You can watch the video in WMV format if you don’t have Sliverlight.
Dan Roam, author of the book, ‘The back of the napkin’ talks about how to use pictures to clarify and solve problems and how to sell ideas to who ever it may be. The selling ideas bit is extremely important for everyone, and we all know how important this is while working in user experience. There’s always something you are trying to sell at whatever level you are to your product manager, project/ program manager, client, business head, the list goes on and on. This presentation shows how to use the pictures you can create to persuade other people to take action.
About Dan Roam
Dan Roam is the founder of Digital Roam Inc, a management consulting company that helps business executives solve complex problems through visual thinking. His business book “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures” was published March 2008 by Penguin Portfolio.
Dan received two degrees at the University of California, Santa Cruz: one in fine art and the second in biology. This combination of creative art and hard science began Dan’s cross-disciplinary approach to problem solving that is the backbone of his work and seminars. Dan has applied his business-oriented visual thinking skills while living and working in Switzerland, Russia, Thailand, France, Holland, and the US.
