“The internet is like this new human experience. At first everybody is going to like it, but there will be a fundamental change in the human condition. One day we’re all going to wake up and realise that we’re all just servants. It’s captured us.”

- Josh Harris, Protagonist of We Live In Public (Ondi Timoner’s Sundance winning doco)

Josh Harris, most remarkable for his online video and streaming businesses / experiments did some ground breaking and odd things in the late nineties, just before the bubble burst.

Here is a list of just a few of them featured in the film:

• Founding Jupiter research (brought by Forrester Research in 2008 well after Josh floated, sold and then moved on to begin his next project)
• Founding Pseudo.com an internet tv station (1993)
• Creating an alter ego called Luvvy, the clown who would happily come out at networking events
• Filming and streaming  footage of 100 ordinary Americans and artists who were living in a wild and sanity challenging bunker in 1999. (totally nothing like Big Brother)
• Filming and streaming his own relationship from home
• Becoming an apple farmer

Josh is extreme, visionary, in many ways successful and decidedly strange. His success came from a ballsy approach so there is no surprise that his high flying take on things meant he would suffer badly in the dot-com crash. Josh always spent his personal profits on the next big idea and he loved to live it up wildly. Audiences will probably think he’s a jerk, but they will certainly find him interesting. I’m glad people like him exist, because extreme thinking and doing is just so damn interesting. For me, this film is a net-nuts must because it explores an era at its most insane and because it is totally wild and annoyingly fun. Thank you Trimoner!

You’ve seen the bird…  you’ve seen the peace sign… okay… the all good gesture… but have you been down with the #hashtag?

Woot! The triple j Unearthed iPhone app is now out! As the User Experience Architect, I couldn’t be more excited to find out just what people think of it.

Triple J Unearthed iPhone App

The Unearthed iPhone app features:

• Shake functionality so you can discover the cream of the crop (tracks played on triple j).
• Search for any Australian band on Unearthed and they will be found.
• Playlist creation, editing and sharing
• In app music downloads (save you bandwith on the go)
• Featured playlists (triple j, presenters, super users)
• Continiously stream random Unearthed tracks

Find out more about the app in Triple J’s Unearthed email to members.

Get the Unearthed iPhone App (itunes link)

So, it is a pretty feature rich app. I really hope people will enjoy it. Here is what some have had to say so far:

• “The Unearthed iPhone application from the ABC’s Triple J gives you access to 53,000 tracks from unsigned artists, and neither the app or the music will cost you a cent.” – Angus Kidman, Life Hacker
• “I’d say this just jumped straight into the “must download” category for every iPhone and iPod Touch user.” – Nick Broughall, Gizmodo
• “Been playing around with the triple j Unearthed app. A thing of beauty.” – @abcmarkscott
• “Everyone with an iPod or iPhone needs to download the triple j Unearthed app asap! Best app ever.” @dom_transformer

More comments on twitter

Facebook triple j group comments

Oh, and while it may not have beat the Kamasutra, Lego Photo or Facebook for the Top Free apps just yet – it is number two only to shazam within the Music category. Cool.

Get the Unearthed iPhone App (itunes link)

There are some amazing things about the iPhone 3GS’ “white on black” accessibility features. A great move by Apple and eagerly awaited by many.

Firstly, it works really well in the browser and applications like the BOM radar where you can zoom into pages – but less well with apps that haven’t catered for zooming or often the actual infrastructure of the iPhone itself – such as the keyboard, input fields and user feedback. Each of these are detailed with examples below in this first take review.

iPhone Safari, white on black mode

“White on Black” actually simply inverts the whole phone. Which means all screens be it white on black or black on white and it does so indiscriminately across the page attributes.

Inverting works well when you can zoom into web pages as items generally need to be larger for most users of this feature. I think even the horizontal scroll that is created by enlarging text, (while less than ideal) is much easier to manipulate on a gesture interface than the desktop experience which forces users to engage with the horizontal scroll bar. However, the user is unable to zoom into the browser itself, which means the buttons along the bottom of Safari and the input fields at the top can’t be enlarged for better viewing. The browser and similar interface elements throughout the application become black on brown, which is less than ideal from a high contrast perspective. (As most of the infrastructure is a mid blue on grey by default)

In the screen capture below you can see the safari browser with the keyboard active. Again, these infrastructural elements are still not enlargeable. The cancel button to exit out of the keyboard, and the url text erase buttons (that little cross in the input field) are also not only very poor contrast, but they are closely positioned as well meaning that the wrong button can be easily pressed with frustrating results.

iPhone Safari - active keyboard

Vocal Search

Google Vocal Search comes with the iPhone by default and it is a great resource for an alternative for search input. While this means that users will need to switch between the Google and Safari applications to perform searches, it provides a learn-able alternative to using the keyboard. (Unfortunately, I’ve only found evidence of external keyboards courtesy of DIY kits, hacks and jailbreaking)

iPhone Google Voice Search

Google’s Vocal Search interface also suffers from poor contrast and does not allow the user to zoom. When inverted the progress messages such as “Speak now”, “Working” or “Didn’t get that” become a black on white dialogue box sitting on top of a pale grey background, making it impossible for many people to see.

While this app would be learn-able and is supported by a “speak now” sound, it is hard to tell what has happened once any input has occurred. Generally speaking, vocal search really relies on feedback as it doesn’t always work. In this case, the feedback is unfortunately unusable.

More examples

Below are a few screen shots which highlight the inverted default iPhone interfaces which don’t stack up as well as they should for visually impaired users in “white on black” mode. Each of these examples are of standard interface elements.

Accessibility settings page

This is the accessibility settings page. You can not zoom in on this page. The navigation elements (back buttons) are poor contrast. The on switch provides good contrast and visibility, but the off toggle does not. These same features are found thoughout the iPhone application.

iPhone Accessibility Settings

Notifications

The default Apple standard notification is white on dark blue, so when inverted it becomes black on orange. It is also has very little contrast against the background especially because of the semi-transparent design – meaning some users in this mode may not see the message at all.

Ebay Notification

When the background is black by default

In white on black mode, (shown below) screens which are have a black background become white. This is particularly not useful with applications such as the calculator (second image) which would be best seen in standard mode. It is impractial to expect users to switch modes depending on the application, particularly given the settings pages are not ideal. Although, the calculator comes with nice big numbers and high contrast when in standard.

iPhone Homescreen in White on Black Mode

iPhone Calculator in White on Black mode

How to access the settings

Accessibility settings can only be found on the 3GS by going into Settings> General > Accessibility.

What about the voice over functionality?

The iPhone 3GS also provides a voice over function which reads out interface elements when tapping the screen. Because a single tap reads out the element – the interaction inputs are very different from the factory default. Check out the apple video to learn the input mechanisms:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/accessibility.html#video

More accessibility resources:

Media Access Australia

Media Access Australia’s iPhone Features Outline

W3C’s Web Accessible Initiative

Accessability Programming Guide for iPhone OS

Blind wikia’s iPhone accessibility pages provides information and resources for users and developers.

#iphoneaccess on twitter

Special thank you to Scott Hollier, Media Access who helped me write this post. We’ll be working together on hints and tips to make the most of the iphone with the accessibility features are enabled. If your interested, let me know and I’ll be sure to shoot you an email once we’ve pulled it together.

OZIA has come and gone for another year. It’s a great conference, not only for excellent selection of interesting speakers, but it was so damn comfortable and friendly. I love love love the round table set up. I know you can’t fit as many people into the room, but I just find that you get so damn tired after two days bundled up into rows balancing a note pad on your knee.

About my presentation
Huge Data, Little Screen is about mobile search. More specifically, assisting users to find content on your site through the browser, using what ever hand set you may have. It doesn’t talk about SEO or much on the more broad challenges of mobile phone development – there is plenty of that information out there. Instead this presentation focuses on the interaction models for search on mobile.

About OZIA

• OZIA09 Program
• Ruth Ellison did a great write up of all the speakers on her blog.
• See photos: Flickr OZIA09.
• What people said about it: #OZIA09 on twitter

Ok, so I’m going to speak at Oz-IA in October… and I’m definitely one of those slightly nervous types. The conference is being held at Star City Casino.

Lunch date advice:
“Oh well if you screw it up you can always drink and gamble afterwards… just don’t drink and gamble before”..

Although, maybe just one shot of tequila?

More advice:
Many have said that it is all in the preparation, just knowing your stuff really well and rehearsing.

Me: “I guess the problem for me is that I really don’t like repetition and revision. It’s a bit boring.”

@tinyavatar : “Well… what don’t you like more – repetition, or…”

Me: “looking like an idiot?”

Refreshing.

UX Australia’s Keynote – Alex Wright, Information Architect nytimes.com

A fly by history of information management. Beginning with how tribal cultures created categorical systems for understanding the world around them, through to the use of symbols, the first written word and the evolution of hypertext, a connected web and just who inspired Google’s pagerank.

“Tim would have launched the web in 1984, if he didn’t crash his hard drive… just goes to show you should back up your work. It took him 5 years to re-write it.”

Interesting tid-bits:

• Folk Taxonomy is not the same as a folksonomy.
  The former is the anthropological study of the classification / naming conventions by cultures for understanding the relationships between things such as animals and plants.  The latter is when people collaboratively tag stuff on computers.
• Jewelery was used as an information system by using symbols to indicate social standing and the wearers relationship to others in the community. The use of this system came about when people began living in larger groups than 5 – 15 or so. This occurred during the time Alex describes as the Ice Age Information Explosion, around 30-40,000 years ago.
• The first forms of handwriting we know of emerged around 5000 BC on Bullae, by the Sumerians. (Now the south of Iraq)
• Charles Cutter wrote an essay in 1883 imagining the library of 1983 called “The Buffalo Public Library in 1983” in which he predicted the library would have desks equiped with keyboards and little bits of wire connecting them to a catalog that would call up and display books for the user to read.
• Paul Otlet was the creator of the universal decimal system. He had imagined a sort of paper internet, where not only would a catalog asist people to find a book, but it revealed the content of the book and its relationship to other books as well as the history of the document’s use, who has read, refereneced etc. His work took place in 1934, much of it was lost to to World War 2. A video on his 1934 vision of an internet is below… truely amazing.

• Check out the memex, a large microfilm desk which is considered one of the conceptual precursors to the web from Vannevar Bush’s essay As We May Think (1945)

Vannevar Bush's Memex

• Eugene Garfield inventor of the Science Citation Index, which is a system for acknowledging the weight of links between various documents in the footnotes. It is considered that his work heavily influenced the founders of google and their page rank system.
• Doug Englebart, inventor of the mouse also author of an eassy called Augmenting Human Intelect. In 1968 he delivered a presentation often refered to as “The Mother of All Demos.” This demo was the first to demonstrate the mouse, copy and paste, creation of files, folders, links, video conferencing and email etc.

Some of Alex’s references:

Glut, Alex Wright
- Mastering Information Throughout the Ages
- http://www.alexwright.org/glut/

Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, George Lakoff
- What categories reveal about the mind.

Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger
- The Power of the New Digital Disorder
- http://www.everythingismiscellaneous.com/

Facetag
- Working prototype of a semantic collaborative tagging tool
- http://www.facetag.org/

Some references I found:
Alex speaking at Google Masterclass
- The Web That Wasn’t: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72nfrhXroo8&NR=1

Wikipedia’s Timeline of Hypertext Technology
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_hypertext_technology

So, as I become hopelessly addicted to podcasts, I have a desperate urge for the fix of sharing them with others. So, as promised to a few friends, here is a list of what I’ve been captured by recently, with more lists to come as I go.

Oh, and please send your suggestions – I’m always on the look out.

On The Media
Website | iTunes
For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of “making media,” especially news media, because it’s through that lens that we literally see the world and the world sees us. | Published: Monday’s EST time, WNYC, USA

The Moth
Website | iTunes
Open mic unscripted story telling. Usually 15 – 20 minutes,  amazingly well told personal stories. | Published: Tuesday’s EST time, Non-for-profit, New York

Future Tense
Website | iTunes
Exploring the social, cultural, political and economic fault lines arising from rapid change. | Aired: Thursday 8.30am repeated Friday 12.30am | Published: Thursday’s, Radio National, ABC

Media Talk USA
Website | iTunes
Jeff Jarvis and a regular panel of media commentators analyse the latest developments in the US media and tech worlds. | Published: Monthly, The Guardian

This American Life
Website | iTunes
This American Life exploring a different theme, every week by telling the stories of everyday people. | Published: Monday’s EST, Chicago Public Radio

Or how coloured texta’s changed my life…

User testing: Guerilla Methodologies
Over the years, I have become a strong advocate of “guerrilla” user testing. While your testing methodology needs to meet your objectives, the benefits of guerilla testing are obvious. Most importantly you can do more testing more often. This allows the UX designer to present iterations to users and gather feedback through out the process.

Ultimately I like to aim for 5-6 users based on Jakob Neilson’s research into the optimum number of user to test for. This is also a really nice number – because from a management perspective you can test this many users in one day. I like to aim for a 20-30 minute test once an hour. This gives me time to consolidate my notes, check my emails before the next participant arrives. But don’t be fooled even this kind of testing takes time to prepare, recruit users, agree with stakeholders on testing objectives, reporting and respective design iterations.

Why leaving my notes until tomorrow just didn’t work
Despite being a very good note taker, I was finding that by the end of the day, there was a lot of information to digest. Plus the overwhelming sense that I wanted to get as much of the information down while it was all fresh, before sleeping on it. However, we all know that user testing is a long and tiring day. So it became clear to me that there needed to be a better way to streamline this. It seemed clear to me that this would be to do some of the work as I went along.

Introducing the analysis wall
So I created an analysis wall which I would go to and work through after each session while the content was fresh in my mind. The analysis wall, pictured, should be out of the view of your user group. I hid mine behind a white board, but if you have a corridor, or separate meeting room available that would work well. As you can see I’ve simply printed out the interface onto separate A3 sheets with plenty of room to write.

User Testing Analysis Wall

Also importantly, coloured textas….
The first time I created my analysis wall, it became clear that my blue biro for all users was not particularly helpful. It became a mush. It also became really difficult to connect the user to the finding. However, when using coloured textas I was able to highlight that all of the dark green findings are from a 35 year old woman, with plenty of internet experience, but no mobile web experience and no iphone experience. This is a really important aspect of the finding.

Using coloured textas for documenting user findings on the analysis wall

Outcomes/ benefits
The first time I conducted the analysis this way – I was blown away by how much time it actually saved me in pulling together my report. Using the analysis wall had meant all I had left to do is pull the findings together, offer recommendations and report in. The time saving was considerable.

Secondly, I was blown away by how I was able to engage and illustrate the “big things” to the project team immediately by inviting them to come and check out the analysis wall that afternoon. While this doesn’t replace the need for documentation to share with stakeholders, it gives an immediate and powerful overview of the user feedback. In the past I had found that stakeholders tended to observe only one session, leaving them focused on the findings of that one session only.

Most importantly, what you end up with from the analysis wall is a visual illustration of each user’s feedback among the group, and you can easily see where the views of each user align and where they diverge.

Links:
Jakob Neilson: Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
Andy Budd: Guerrilla Usability Testing
http://www.slideshare.net/andybudd/guerilla-usability-testing

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