–Task Flo.ws–

For lunch today, I decided to enjoy my recently-mastered Indian dish once more and finally give a closer look to the latest Interactions magazine instead of going out. Reading Interactions is one of those things that I wish I had more time to do: I want to dissect and take in almost every article, every time. I like to treat each issue like required reading for university.

Looking for an article to pick, I came across “User Research-Driven Mobile User Interface Innovation: A Success Story from Seoul” by Jay Chaeyong Yi. Clearly, the word “mobile” caught my attention immediately.

The article describes a study done in South Korea regarding the use of SMS and Instant Messaging in mobile phones between various groups of users. These include teens and young adults; those who are “born to talk” and “not to talk”. The author highlights the differences between text messages (SMS) and mobile instant mesagges (MIM) in terms of their nature and context of use.

It is clear that SMS usage is not as “continuous” as MIM, meaning that the user can send an SMS, put the phone away, do something else and go back to it if there is a reply. On the other hand. Instant messages require users to be signed in to a service, having to enter a username and a password (or create an account, if the user hasn’t got one) and of course, the user must be signed in at all times in order to engage in conversations. This is not a problem on a computer –but on a mobile phone?

SK Telecom wanted to solve this problem for one of their mobile instant messaging products, the NateON, and asked the PXD UI Consulting Group to conduct user research to discover target audiences, their preferences and dislikes in regards to real-time chatting. The result was the creation of mMessenger, which ultimately managed to combine the benefits of SMS and MIM into one. You can read all about the research behind the study and the specifications of the resulting product in the article. I highly suggest you read it, specially if you are interested in qualitative research methods.

(Quick parenthesis — It’s was particularly interesting to see how the mMessenger treated either SMS or MIM message conversation as “threads” –the same way the iPhone does with its SMS application. Clearly, this is interesting because it existed *before* the iPhone. But, of course, most of us didn’t know about it in the West. Sounds familiar?)

It’s true: I feel passionate about mobile devices and everything from their user interfaces to their industrial design. I’ve mentioned how this article caught my eye because it had the word “mobile” in the title, but what I found most interesting once I was finished reading it was the research methods used in this study. Jay Chaeyong Yi and his team used a number of qualitative research methods such as personas, contextual inquiry and affinity diagrams to help inform the design of the mMessenger. I find this particularly interesting since affinity diagramming was the principal research tool I used for my Master’s Thesis Project in HCI at Indiana University. My education and experience with it allowed me to see how useful it was, but I had never read about it in an article unless I had purposely looked for examples of applied affinity diagrams.

I’m glad to see qualitative methods making a great impact in the real world with real products. Some us know about the never-ending debate of qualitative Vs. quantitative methods in research and the arguments on which one is “better” and “for what” purpose. Clearly, the answer is that one is not better than the other. Nevertheless, for those who feel the need to be cautious about utilizing qualitative research methods in research, Jay Chaeyong Yi’s article is a great example of just how powerful they can be in user interface, interaction and experience design.

Sure, this game may be prone to potential injuries, but it was nonetheless great fun to experience it.

Produced by Ergonomidesign and developed for the Microsoft Surface, Sonicspree is a music quiz game in which players are presented with many upside-down album covers of various artists (rotating around the edges of the Surface). As a new song starts playing, players have to swipe the covers towards the middle of the table to reveal the cover-art of each album. Once the right cover is spotted (the one according to the song playing at that time) players must drag the album cover back to the “container” in front of them to collect that cover. Once someone manages to do that, a new song starts playing and the game continues.

I had the chance to play with this (as well as having my first encounter with the Microsoft Surface) at Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia (US)

Take a look at the actual gameplay to get a better idea:

(those random comments in Spanish you hear… yes, that’s me).

As you can see, the game itself can be loads of fun –especially when a really popular song comes up (e.g. Min 2:17).

This game ended up consuming a considerable chunk of my time that night. I played with it during one of the evening gatherings/parties taking place after the regular scheduled programme at IxD10.

As a audiophile myself, I can see myself playing this game for hours with friends (I reckon I would win in *most* music categories… except maybe Country or Hip-Hop). Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ll ever be in the market for a Microsoft Surface, so I’d be interested in seeing if the same game could be exported to a different platform.

The iPad?… maybe if there is a way to hold it in place. Maybe a way for multiple iPhone or iPad mini iPod Touch devices to be connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi as everyone sits around in a circle could render a similar experience.

You can read more about the Sonicspree game (and music store) at Ergonomidesign’s web site.

(To clarify, “Latest” is purposely within quotes. I’m sure is not quite the “latest”)

By now, many have seen the much anticipated “Apple Tablet”, in photos, videos, or have read about it in your favourite blog/news source. Maybe you are burned out with the topic from skimming your Twitter feed alone.

But the device everyone had been talking about for weeks/months has been shown, and despite the various rumours about the names it could have been given (and the names some people were “so sure” would never be considered) it’s called the iPad.

(even the “female hygiene product” jokes seem overdone already… and it’s been only 2 days since the announcement.)

It’s a thin, gorgeous-looking mobile device that looks and behave much like a current day iPod Touch, or an iPhone. Yet despite having 3G capabilities, Apple has built the iPad without the chance of making/receiving phone calls. The similarities with the previously mentioned devices saves you some paragraphs to read in this post.

Nice, isn’t it?

Well, I’m mostly disappointed for a number of reasons –purely personal and based on timing. Others not. But let’s begin with what I reckon are *WINNING* points about this device:

• Most iPhone/iPod Touch applications already work on the iPad (Massive!). If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, you already have quite a bit of “software” ready to be installed in your new… “Pad”.
• For the previous reason, a lot of people “already know how to use it” (hardly any learning curve).
• iBooks. These eBooks on the iPad make the Amazon Kindle and just about every other e-ink based reader look 10-years old (monochromatic is so 3 days ago…). Plus, the eBook reading interaction? unprecedented.
• Same goes for photos. Pinching albums slightly to “peek” at them = cool.
• Split screen view for some applications. It needed to be there…
• The price. Starting at $500 for the cheapest version many of us people will have a hard time saying “no” to awkwardly trying to type with this thing in your lap –whilst crouching on a sofa.
• Quick access to everything. No waiting for the “computer” to boot. “Slide to unlock” and you’re there.

Brilliant, right?

Well, I’ll try not to repeat many of the things people are not happy about with the iPad. I’ll let Adolf explain in a way only he could:

My take on the bad missing things is primarily based on the fact that I happen to be in the market for that “gadget in the middle” between my glorious iPhone and my home computer. Call it a “netbook” –more like a “reliable-yet-powerful/portable computing device”. I was hoping the Apple “tablet” would be that. It’s not.

So, on the negative side:

• No OS X? That is one of the advantages (in a way, like previously mentioned) but being based on the iPhone OS makes this “tablet computer” rather limited, which reminds me…
• No multi-tasking? deal breaker for many.
• Only up to 64 GB. For a device that was made to perform well “especially at interacting with music, photos and video” this device falls short in capacity to actually store such files. Still seems like a device engineered “for the cloud” (which is great –except I can’t have cute little animated photo-slideshows whilst playing Randy Newman music using Safari… unless you could play songs from the iPod and view a website at the same time– oh right: no multi-tasking).
• No camera? I was actually hoping for a front-facing iSight-style camera. I’m sure Skype users where tearing up as the announcement went on and there was no mention of a camera –anywhere.
• (I won’t even go on about the Camera Connection Kit.)
• No phone calls? well, I guess the iPad Nano doesn’t make phone calls either.
• No Flash? There are encountered opinions on this: from those who claim that Flash is the Internet to those who hide behind the HTML5 excuse to disregard Adobe’s flagship product. This is, I believe, one of the “hairy” issues. Whether Flash eventually disappears or not, there are loads of things on the Internet today that are indeed based on Flash. So, anyone promising to bring “The Web to the palm of your hand” like promised with the iPhone when it first came out and not supporting one of *the* most widely used technologies in the web today is hard to comprehend. I could go on, but this seems to me as Apple telling the world:

“We have devices people really want and really like. You (third-party software makers) design around us!, We don’t design around you…”

• Whether there are good intentions behind this behaviour or not (or whether it is ultimately beneficial for the user), the Flash restriction seems stubborn and childish, which reminds me: ultimately, we won’t be able to really experience the whole web (at least as it exist today).
• …and the NAME? (sigh)…

There are more negative points enthusiast are going on about, but I’ll let appropriately-named site like this inform you better.

As a regular, average consumer, it would be a lie for me to say I’m not somewhat disappointed. I foresee this device sitting somewhere in my living room, where it will stand casually next to my Colors Magazine collection on my coffee table as a really nice-looking photo-frame (I say this because it’s almost a given I will get one).

What can I say? I do love the iPhone…

But the disappointment comes not only from not being all it could have been, but not being all I wanted it to be –right now.

That being said, I think I might just wait for the second iteration of the iPad. Having (placidly) purchased all 3 versions of the iPhone, I know this one will be revamped, updated and improved. I had no problem (against all logic) with updating to the latest iPhone every time a new one came out because, well… “It’s Everything”… and “there’s an app for that”.

And watch: I will probably still update to the new iPhone again (within reason –of course).

But as awesome as this new Apple device may be, it clearly falls on the category of “not-truly-essential” in my life right now. This is why there are compelling reasons not to get it just yet. In other words, it’s worth the wait for the new *NEW* iPad. Even solving for the lack of a few things will be a gain –even if prices stay the same. This is why I question the term “latest” in this gadget. I’m know Apple knows this is not the best they could have come up with. The also know how to successfully sell the same device to people a couple of times over. Keeps them profitable, I guess. That’s Apple’s biz for you.

Final answer? NO(t yet) Apple. even though I will get one eventually, I promise…

Now it’s probably time for that MacBook Pro 13-incher I’ve been putting off…

TaskFlo.ws has been idle for quite some time –for (mostly) valid reasons.

I’ve been busy these last couple of months getting a new graduate degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University; “Photo-Backpacking” in Portugal, and visiting my dear homeland of Bogotá, Colombia (the last two events greatly in celebration of the first one).

[Visual recollections from such trip will be announced/posted soon on DiegoPulido.com]

Needless to say, I’ve required a vacation from the vacation and I’ve been recuperating sleep (mostly.)

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But I’m back at knowing what “free” time feels like. So, with that being said, I have hopes for TaskFlo.ws to take shape (again) as my mental repository for all things technology, user experience and interaction design; a blog-like “editorial” that I hope people find useful.

And how timely: Apple’s new iPad has just come out –and yes, much like many people and their personal blogs, I’m posting my humble opinions on it.

Time to grease the cognitive wheel bearings. Again.

Just in case there are people who still doubt that Google’s Chrome OS may just be all we need in an ultra-portable computer, here is yet one more example showing that more and more things that previously required a proper desktop application running on a conventional operating system, can now be done through the web browser.

My professor and thesis adviser Dr. Davide Bolchini sent me the link to this video today, and I have to say I was rather impressed. Not entirely by the transition of the slides or the choice of Bruce Springsteen as background music (as it was on the original video –The video above was “enhanced” with music by music mastermind William Orbit). I was really impressed with the fact that it was apparently done in less than 10 minutes using something called Stupeflix Editor: an online video tool.

Davide inserted some of the images that were published with the paper we co-authored for the July-August issue of ACM’s Interaction Magazine called “Paper-in-Screen“. Sure, it’s not exactly iMovie ‘09, but think about it: the ability to make quick slide shows or videos (music and all) this quickly? Brilliant!

Just about the same way I was impressed with Meebo, Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword and various other online “white board” web sites when they came out, this is yet another compelling example of where we are going currently are with personal computing.

I played with the interface whilst trying to change the Springsteen song and it was really easy to understand. Uploading William Orbit’s “Radioharp” was lightning fast. Just about everywhere I clicked generated an expected response –overall a highly interactive UI, even on apparent “white space”. Think about how someone may try to move something using a finger on an iPhone and… it moves! Same feeling.

Generating Mp4 videos (both large and medium) crashed almost immediately after I started to “compile” them (although this may have been because I was using Safari at that moment –it’s been crashing on me heaps lately.) Generating an FLV video, on the other hand, was a breeze.

If anything this could be a tool anyone could use to get an idea across quickly and simply. I could see Stupeflix being really useful in prototyping, experience design, or simply short online, embeddable presentations.

Give it a go and see what you think. Not only it’s got great potential –it’s indeed great, as is.

I’m proud to announce that the current topic of my Master’s thesis at IUPUI’s HCI programme, has been published as an article in the current issue of Interactions magazine.

The article was co-authored between my thesis adviser, Dr. Davide Bolchini and myself, under the supervision of Dr. Anthony Faiola, executive associate dean of the school of informatics at IUPUI.

The topic? It’s about mobile user experience. More specifically, it’s about how to anticipate it with the help of simple paper prototyping –a familiar concept to most practitioners in the fields of interaction design and usability.

“Paper-in-Screen” in itself is a prototyping technique that allows practitioners to anticipate the mobile user experience without the need to create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes (which are generally time/resource-consuming).

The origins of this prototyping technique were within one of my independent studies from the past Autumn semester at IUPUI. Dr. Bolchini gave me the freedom to work on any design-related project of my liking. With “mobile interaction design” being one of my most salient interests, I decided to design an application for the Apple iPhone. That application is called Vertsumption.

In the process of prototyping the application, we discovered (practically by accident) the ability to anticipate certain aspects of the mobile user experience that otherwise, would have required a couple of lines of code and some time with Adobe Fireworks.

I will go into more detail about the technique itself and the results from testing it with practitioners when I’m finished with my thesis project (the topic is the same as the article). I still need to do some more affinity diagramming with the obtained results for it all to come full circle.

If you are a subscriber of Interactions magazine, you shall see the July-August issue soon in your post box. The article is also available in PDF format at ACM’s Portal web site.

I’m really glad to see this article in a publication like Interactions. I consider it the “norm” for people in my professional field. It is an honour in itself to be featured in the same magazine where Don Norman has a regular column.

If you are a practitioner in UX/IxD, I hope you find it useful, but regardless of your field of expertise, I hope you find it interesting.

Here’s an article I came across thanks to my (sometimes neglected) daily email Google Alerts on “Interaction Design”. It’s an article on Design Thinking by CEO and president of IDEO, Tim Brown. It appeared on the June 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. I was lucky enough to come across a link to the article in PDF (Thanks, ideo.com)

Harvard Business Review? Yes. That may be because design thinking seems to be just as valuable and applicable to business, marketing and product-development as it is to user experience an interaction design.

Tim Brown provides a couple of simple examples to illustrate what design thinking is:

[design thinking] – a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos.

This speaks directly to the need to go beyond the salient issues of a design problem or product requirements. It’s about more directly observing people’s lives, their wishes, their needs, their likes and dislikes about whatever is being designed.

That sounds rather compelling. And it should be. After all, user experience and interaction design never stops at the end-cycle of that mobile phone, that controller or that alarm clock.

This next example seems more concrete, in relation to a “real-world” example:

Put simply, it is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

It brings “constraints” to the mix –something that every designer has to take into account, regardless of the project.

Other points I found particularly interesting were:

• It reminds us yet again, that design is something that used to be introduced at the end of the production cycle of products, to make thinks appealing and more desirable. Advertising, mostly…
• Design innovation doesn’t come from the “lone, genious inventor”. It’s a team effort. The article recalls how Thomas Edison surrounded himself with number of gifted tinkerers, improvisers and experimenters.
• On “experimentation”, it highlights the importance Edison gave to continuous rounds of trial and error. There is something great to be learned out of every “iterative stab” in design. This approach towards innovation seems as relevant as it was today as it was for the inventor of the electric light bulb.
• Mentions of the main components of a design thinker’s “personality profile”: Empathy, Intergrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism and collaboration.
• Great examples of design thinking in action with Kaiser Permanente’s reengineering of nursing-staff shift changes, Shimano’s introduction to their famous “coasting” bicycles, Aravind’s eye-care outreach in rural populations in India and Bank of America’s “Keep The Change” savings programme.

Overall, this article provides great examples of real people and real companies who have successfully worked around the constraints involved in various exceptional projects. It proves how no matter the what the goals in mind are, they are all achieved through hard work, powered by human-centered processes and iterations composed of prototyping and continuous testing. It shows the extent of the impact design thinking can have, which (again) goes well past the GUI of a computer screen or the package of the latest portable digital camera.

Visit this link to read “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown, in full.

By looking at this trailer, you might understand why I’d be so interested in Gary Hustwit’s documentary:

From the Objectified’s web site:

Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Clearly, this pertains almost any kind of designer: visual, industrial, web…

The sole thought of going deeper inside the mind of those who think about “what is going to happen” (quoting the trailer) and the reasoning behind the associations we make with the products we engage with are some of the key selling factors for me. They speak directly to my Psychology background.

I’m looking forward most particularly to the pieces featuring IDEO’s Bill Moggridge (responsible for making the term Interaction Design meaningful) and Apple’s Jonathan Ive (… –no explanation needed).

This movie should be coming out in DVD or online, after it’s select-cities tour around the world.

If you have had some sort of difficulty in the past trying to define what Interaction Design is (specially if you call yourself an Interaction Designer), this video shall help get you closer to that answer.

IxDA’s co-founder David Malouf leads the over 70-minutes long conversation, alongside fellow Interaction Designers Ted Booth and Jennifer Bove.

This video doesn’t only address where Interaction Design currently is, but mostly importantly, it attempts to provide a clear(er) idea of what is. I found this very helpful for various reasons. I think Jennifer Bove says it best during the video when she asks “Have you ever tried to explain to your mum what you do?”. My easy way out is to say “I design web sites”, but if you are reading this, you are likely to know that it’s not as easy to define your profession compared to Doctors and Lawyers.

The discussion touches on various topics that I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who had questions on. What is our clay? What is our tool? (Illustrator? OmniGraffle? Flash?); where do we land in the scheme of the product (or services) development? (Is interaction design more marketing? science? creative force? business analysis?) What exactly are we borrowing form Human-Computer Interaction? Ergonomics? Industrial Design?

The discussion even brings in Agile Development into the mix –exploring how exactly interaction designers are placed within this new and widely implemented development process.

This video leaves you with many things to think about.

Welcome.

Nothing but a small contribution to the general discussion. This is what intended nature of TaskFlo.ws.

Design of any kind. Notes about interesting content based on 0’s and 1’s. Thoughts on the fascinating world of technology as experienced through yours truly’s senses –Whether you are passionate or not…

Bienvenue.

And voilà –the first post.

I finish this welcome message with a rather appropriate song –made even more appropriate, as these Norwegian pair does it all through instruments + computers.

More on the very nature of this site, here.