User Interface Design – Collaging: Getting Answers to the Questions You Don’t Know to Ask interview with Kyle Soucy
When conducting user research, we all know asking the right questions is just as important as how you ask them, but how do you even know what questions to ask? What if the discussion topic is extremely personal and private? How do you get a complete stranger to open up to you? There is a better way to conduct an in-depth interview and it doesn’t involve using a clipboard. Just imagine what you could discover if the participant’s answers weren’t limited to a predetermined set of questions.
User Interface Design - Collaging: Getting Answers to the Questions You Don’t Know to AskPlay Now | Play in Popup | Download
Collaging is a needs-elicitation technique where users randomly select images to represent how they feel about a specific topic. Users then explain the reason they chose each image to the moderator. The collage becomes an instrument for participants to express the needs that they might not otherwise have been able to articulate. This information allows us to better understand the user’s world and how to design for it.
Kyle Soucy is the founding principal of Usable Interface ((www.usableinterface.com), an independent consulting company specializing in product usability and user-centered design. Her clients have ranged in industries from pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer to publishing powerhouses like McGraw-Hill. She has created intuitive interfaces for a variety of different products, everything from web sites to touch screen devices.
According to the Search Marketing company Covario, the goal of this change is simple. For queries conducted by searchers where information changes constantly—which Google estimates is about 35% of the queries—there is a new rendering of the organic results page starting with “news for QUERY.”
The speculation is that this is a strategic response to Facebook and Twitter—i.e., provision of real time information through directed queries on relevant topics (as opposed to open stream of incoming information, albeit timely, from competing social media platforms). Also, at a technical level, Google is rolling out some new technology to Googlebot that helps the system better index AJAX/Java Script commenting systems like Facebook, along with Google+. Walk aways for Web professionals include:
* Social signals is s strong factor
* Early end of the buying cycle
* Reputation management
In this five minute interview with Pete Dudchenko, Senior Director Covario provides a couple of recommendations for our customers to help them understand what impact this will have on SEO results, and what they need to do to address this change.
First, social media will be more intertwined into SEO. Remember 18 months ago, Google rolled out the “Latest”
function; a secondary page that users could activate on the left hand navigation to see social media data. We wrote
about that update and said at the time “that if more than 10% of queries ultimately go to this secondary page, then
optimizing for “recency” as well as “relevancy” will become the key to SEO. And how will that be done—integration of social media programs with SEO.” This is an upgrade to this function that a) moves the “latest” to the main SERP and b) does so only for a subset of queries where recency is relevant. So social media programs—i.e., updates to Facebook and Twitter comments by advertisers, updated reviews, and any time of blog based content generation will require infusion with high value SEO keywords and link backs to other content pages in order to align with the high value queries and command the newly available premium shelf space.
Second, the high value generic keywords will make up the majority of the frequent updates (“Best camera,” “cheap
laptop,” “best tablet”) category of affected queries. If advertisers are going to build their processes—we recommend this. Identify the top 25 queries driving traffic to their site. Conduct queries and see if the “News for” box is appearing. If so, monitor competitor and advertiser presence on a series of queries over a week or two and see what happens. If there is degradation in corresponding web traffic during this time period, then these become the priority for the social media programs content generation.
Last, reputation management will also be impacted. Industry announcements, including company wins and losses will find their way to the top of the rankings and may begin to overtake historically high ranking pages for branded search terms. This is both positive and negative depending on how good the news is on a given topic. Reacting quickly to negative publicity, while promoting positive news, through the systems by which “News for” reacts will become a key aspect of public relations. Additional information can be found on the Covario website
Closing the Gap between Design and Web Development – Bring Your Design to Life Interview with Chris Converse, Author, Web Designer and Principle at Chris Converse Design
Closing the Gap between Design and Web Development - Interview with Chris ConversePlay Now | Play in Popup | Download
“A sizable gap between exists between the Print Design and Web Development side of the house” says Chris Converse, principle at Chris Converse Design. In this six minute interview Chris shares his perspective on:
• Steps to close the gap
• How to improve workflow between design and Web development
• Ideas and principles for incorporating HTML and CSS for print designers
• A step by step best practice to render and optimize your design in multiple browsers
• About his book “Bring Your Web Design to Life: Creating Rich Media Websites with Adobe Creative Suite” available at PeachPit Press will be sure to please any experienced developer that works with traditional print and newbie Web designers
Chris in his own words:
In working with design companies and advertising agencies around the world, we at Codify Design Studio noticed a common gap in the web design workflow—a gap between designers and developers, and the creation of the HTML and CSS necessary to bring that design to life within a browser. This gap in the workflow results in aspects of the designer’s vision being unrealized in the final design represented in a web browser.
In my seminars, I ask designers to raise their hands if they would be willing to send only artwork files to their commercial printers, and let the prepress men do the layout work instead of them. No designer raises his or her hand. Just as print designers are responsible for bringing their designs to the press, web designers should be responsible to bring their designs to the browser.
“We combine graphic design with the technologies necessary to achieve communication goals across various media.”
We designed and developed the Project Rome site to reflect aspects of the software’s interface, while also adhering to requests to integrate social media and online forum discussions into the design. The homepage also features an xml-driven interactive carousel highlighting various features of this new product.
About Chris Converse
Chris is graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in graphic design. He began his career in print, designing and preparing digital files for commercial offset printing. Chris has spent the last 15 years studying and applying design and interface principles to technology. His work spans various distribution media (CD-ROMs, web sites, and interactive DVDs) and applies many authoring media and techniques (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, image optimization, motion graphics, Flash, Director, Shockwave, sound engineering, digital video compression, PHP, and ASP). Chris has a passion for and a commitment to conceiving, creating, and delivering the best possible user experience, regardless of the medium.
Organizations who harness the power of post-click optimization can achieve a significant increase of conversions, resulting in a huge competitive advantage. In this five minute interview with Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, Lance shares his perspective on Post Click Optimization and how:
* Getting granular after web visitors land on your site by utilizing usability and persuasion marketing techniques and best practices can increase conversion rates as high of 30-50%
* Can provide you with a strong competitive edge
* Jobs in the Web profession with emphasis on Search are in high demand
Battling Bureaucracy – Overcoming Challenges and Techniques for Launching a Web Project – Interview with Paul Boag, Headscape
Battling Bureaucracy – Overcoming Challenges and Techniques Interview with Paul Boag, HeadscapePlay Now | Play in Popup | Download
Whether you work as part of an in-house Web team for a large or small organization or solo as a freelance Web professional you will appreciate this five minute interview with Paul Boag, founder of UK Web design agency Headscape, author of the Website Owners Manual and host of award-winning Web design podcast Boagworld.
Paul shares his perspective and techniques for hitting and battling organizational bureaucracy when launching a Web project for large and small organizations:
From Traditional Print to Web – Challenges, Lessons Learned and Advice: Interview Nora Abousteit, co-founder of BurdaStyle.com
BurdaStyle.com, is a DIY fashion community and a place for people to sew, with over 500,000 members where you can share PDF sewing patterns to print at home, techniques and projects.
In this four minute video Nora Abousteit, co-founder of BurdaStyle.com shares her experiences and advice with taking a traditional print publication online. Previously, Nora worked at a German publishing house in the staff of the owner – writing speeches, organizing workshops, and events. She is part of the founding team of the DLD conference.
She has been invited to share her experience at Picnic, FOO Camp, Parsons School of Design, Stream, the WEF Media Strategy Meeting, and the Menorca TechTalk.
Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, WWD, and Fast Company.
Previously, Nora worked at a German publishing house in the staff of the owner – writing speeches, organizing workshops, and events. She is part of the founding team of the DLD conference.
She has been invited to share her experience at Picnic, FOO Camp, Parsons School of Design, Stream, the WEF Media Strategy Meeting, and the Menorca TechTalk.
Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, WWD, and Fast Company.
Nora holds a degree in Middle East Studies, Political Science, and Philosophy from the American University in Cairo.
Mobile Application Development – Tips, Jobs and Skills Interview with Ted Patrcick, Developer Evangelist Barnes and Noble
According to Barnes&Noble. the eReader ecosystem is exploding with opportunity thanks to the growing popularity of eBooks and the emergence of new types of digital content. 2010 has been deemed the year of the eReader by many, with Forrester Research, Inc. estimating explosive growth in eReader and eBook sales in the November 2010 report “eBook Buying Is About To Spiral Upward”.
In this five minute interview, I sat down with Ted Patrick, Developer Evangelist @ Barnes & Noble (formerly of Adobe fame) to learn more about the world’s largest bookseller with 40 million customers and 45,000 bookselling experts at more than 1300 retail outlets in 50 states and tips for developing Mobile Application Development resources for the Nook for practicing and aspiring Web developers and those that teach.
200,000 Appcelerator Titanium Mobile Developers Get Fast Track to Publish Apps for NOOK Color™
Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) September 12, 2011
Appcelerator®, the leading mobile cloud platform for rapidly developing native mobile, desktop, and tablet applications using open web technologies, today announced a partnership with Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Developer program to accelerate the deployment of Appcelerator Titanium™ apps on the award-winning NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet™. The partnership will give Titanium’s 200,000 mobile developers a fast track to publish apps in the NOOK Store™, available to millions of NOOK Color customers. NOOK App developers have had tremendous success selling to NOOK Color’s millions of customers, with many generating substantial revenues.
“Millions of apps have been purchased by NOOK Color customers since we launched NOOK Apps, and our customers are interested in even more,” said Claudia Romanini, Director of Developer Relations, Barnes & Noble. “Appcelerator’s proven mobile development platform and highly successful open mobile developer community are a great fit for the expansion of our NOOK Developer program. We’ll work together to bring NOOK Color customers even more rich and innovative, high-quality NOOK Apps, while developers – through our storefront – will have another strong revenue channel to monetize their apps to our large and rapidly growing audience.”
NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet™ features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ color touchscreen ideal for reading a wide variety of content including books, enhanced books, immersive children’s picture books, interactive magazines, newspapers and more. Built on Android, NOOK Color also offers the most-requested tablet features, including built-in email, an enhanced Web experience and high-quality NOOK Apps. Third-party developers have praised Barnes & Noble’s curated app model, revenue-earning potential, and the ease in which customers can find, try, buy and download apps.
Appcelerator developers will now be able to quickly deploy and offer their apps through Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Store reaching millions of digital customers. Titanium developers will enjoy expedited submission of their apps for the NOOK Developer program. Titanium developers’ submissions will be automatically qualified and fast-tracked for review. Appcelerator has also updated its reference applications, documentation, and platform to easily integrate the NOOK Color SDK into Titanium Studio, Appcelerator’s enterprise-grade IDE used by over 1.5 million web developers.
Noted Scott Ellison, Vice President of Mobile & Consumer Platform, IDC Research, “The NOOK proves that there is a large market for quality, reasonably priced Android tablets that have a premium user experience tailor-made to a well-defined audience. With a focus on world-class user experience capabilities, Appcelerator Titanium will provide a solid complement to the types of applications that fit NOOK’s lifestyle focus.”
“Barnes & Noble has created a highly acclaimed offering and impressive customer base for its Android-based NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet,” said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator. “As the world’s largest cross-platform developer community, we are delighted to partner with the NOOK Developer team to help connect Appcelerator’s global developer community with Barnes & Noble’s digital storefront, driving even more downloads and traction for NOOK Color.”
Barnes & Noble will participate at Appcelerator’s CODESTRONG 2011 developers conference in San Francisco later this month. The NOOK Developer team is presenting a breakout session on developing apps for NOOK Color on September 19. The meeting will offer Titanium developers a deep dive into leveraging Titanium Studio to develop applications for NOOK Color and cover the entire development process from app creation to the app submission process. The CODESTRONG conference will bring together Titanium mobile developers from around the world for 25+ keynotes and sessions at the InterContinental Hotel San Francisco on September 18-20. For more information about attending, visit http://www.codestrong.com.
About NOOK™ from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand of eReading products makes it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Bookstore™ of more than two million digital titles, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices. The award-winning NOOK Color™ Reader’s Tablet™, the best-value on the tablet market ($249), features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen to read all of the content you love, shop popular apps, connect via email, browse the Web and more. The NOOK Simple Touch Reader™ ($139), is the easiest-to-use 6-inch touch reader, with the longest battery life of any eReader. In Barnes & Noble stores, NOOK owners can access free Wi-Fi connectivity, enjoy the Read In Store™ feature to read NOOK Books™ for free, and the More In Store™ program, which offers free, exclusive content and special promotions. Barnes & Noble was the first company to offer digital lending for a wide selection of books through its LendMe® technology, available through NOOK eReading products. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at http://www.BN.com, as well as at Best Buy, Walmart, Staples, Books-A-Million, OfficeMax, Fred Meyer, and P.C. Richard & Son stores.
In addition to NOOK devices, Barnes & Noble makes it easy for customers to enjoy any book, anytime, anywhere with its free line of NOOK software, available at http://www.bn.com/freenookapps. Customers can use Barnes & Noble’s free eReading software to access and read books from their personal Barnes & Noble digital library on devices including iPad™, iPhone®, iPod touch®, Android™ smartphones and tablets BlackBerry®, PC and Mac®. Lifetime Library™ helps ensure that Barnes & Noble customers will always be able to access their digital libraries on NOOK products and software-enabled devices and BN.com. Barnes & Noble also offers NOOK Study™ (http://www.nookstudy.com), an innovative study platform and software solution for higher education, NOOK Kids™ (http://www.nookkids.com), a collection of digital picture and chapter books for children, and NOOK Books en español™ (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooksenespanol), the first-ever Spanish language digital bookstore in the United States.
For more information on NOOK devices and eReading software, updates, new NOOK Book releases, Free Friday™ NOOK Books and more, follow us on http://www.twitter.com/ebooksbn and http://www.facebook.com/nookbn.
ABOUT BARNES & NOBLE, INC.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 704 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 635 college bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through BN.com, one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than two million titles in its NOOK Bookstore™ (http://www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK™ eReading product offering, customers can buy and read digital books and content on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK devices, partner company products, and the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.
General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com.
About Appcelerator
Appcelerator is the leading enterprise-grade, cross-platform development solution on the market today, with over 1.5 million developers using its software to power over 25,000 cloud-connected mobile, desktop, and web applications used by tens of millions of users every day. The company’s flagship offering, Appcelerator Titanium, is the only mobile cloud platform to enable fully native, cross-platform development, from a single codebase, at web development speed for these three platforms. Appcelerator’s customers can leverage their existing skills and open, industry standard technologies to decrease time-to-market and development costs, increase customer adoption and revenues, and enjoy greater flexibility and control. For more information, please visit http://www.appcelerator.com.
Appcelerator is a registered trademark of Appcelerator Inc. Appcelerator Titanium is a trademark of Appcelerator Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.
2011 Mobile Innovators Announced at Adobe Max 2011, LA
MobileInnovators.org announced that (7) leading Mobile Innovation organizations have been chosen as the 2011 “Mobile Innovators of the Year” for their support for the Web professional community. The award winners — a combination of software, hardware and technology companies were recognized by panel of industry professionals during the annual Adobe Max 2011 conference that took place October 2-4, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA.
Adobe MAX brings together top designers, developers and business minds in the industry to celebrate, explore and shape the future of digital experiences and stay at the forefront of the multi screen revolution. “Developing Web applications provides countless opportunities for Web professionals to monetize their work, a key mission for the association of Web professionals and we are pleased to recognize these Mobile Innovator Rock Stars” said, Bill Cullifer, Executive Director Webprofessionals.org and the MobileInnovators.org education initiative.
The 2011 “Mobile Innovators” at the Adobe MAX event were chosen by a committee comprised of representatives from publishing, Web design professional training, mobile application development, academia and not for profit professional association Webprofessionals.org.
Mobile Innovation, Cell phone and wireless laptop internet use have each grown more prevalent over the last year. According to Pew Research Center, nearly half of all adults (47%) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39% who did so as of April 2009) while 40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). This means that 59% of adults now access the internet wirelessly using a laptop or portable device.
WebProfessionals.org is a non-profit professional association dedicated to the support of individuals and organizations who create, manage or market web sites. WOW provides education as well as certification, technical, employment and member advantage services to thousands of aspiring and practicing web professionals and those that teach Web professional topics worldwide. http://webprofessionals.org .
About MobileInnovators.org
MobileInnovators.org is an online resource for Mobile Innovators and Mobile Application Developers providing daily news, podcast, interviews and hundreds of training videos for aspiring and practicing Mobile Applications Developers and those that teach. http://mobileinnovators.org
About Adobe MAX
Adobe MAX is a unique opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, and business leaders as we shape the future of digital media together.
Discover how to realize the full potential of your content and applications. Find new opportunities presented by rich experiences across screens. Explore new methods for monetizing content. Learn about innovative technologies that enable designers and developers to work together more effectively
Adobe MAX 2011 Focuses on Tools for for Web Designers and Web Developers – Interviews, Video’s and Event Media Coverage
To get a perspective for what the first day of the Adobe MAX 2011 event will mean for Web professionals, I sat down with Mark DuBois, Professor Illinois Central College and WOW’s Director of Education.
In this two minute interview, Mark shares his thoughts on the value proposition of the event and what it will mean for Web professionals.
I am also enclosing some of Mark’s notes and a video’s of the events keynote.
Video of the Opening Day
Initial review of yesterday’s keynote.
Today development experience.
Absolutely pivotal and important. Content must be interactive. Developers bring content to life.
Odapod, Fluid ? HTML and development
HTML5 app stores and on web. Both Flash and HTML are cross platform technologies. Too expensive to create separate solutions for
different endpoints.
HTML innovation surging.
Adobe betting on HTML5 ? important platform. Continuing to invest in Flash. Released Flash Player 11 and AIR 3.0
These show investment in Flash. Drive expressiveness. Bring what learned into HTML.
Partners ? Google, MS, Apple. jQuery, W3C ? code contributions to webkit and jQuery. Also creating tools like Edge.
Progress on HTML5 and Flash.
Mobile apps ? Ben Forta
Skills there to build native apps ? DW CS 5.5 with PhoneGap demo ? HTML, CSS, JS (including jQuery)
Building native .apk using PhoneGap.
Adobe acquiring PhoneGap
Andre Charland ? PhoneGap
Travelocity app demo
Orbium game using canvas element
Untapped ? social network for beer drinkers
PhoneGap build ? compile in cloud ? http://build.phonegap.com
Included in creative cloud description.
Flash based apps ? touch apps ? built in Flash ? great examples of what you can do.
Gaming ? in browser app ? Machinarium
Day app deployed on app store ? number one app. Being deployed on Droid ? no code changes at all
Business apps ? Johnson Controls
Social example ? USA Network ? 70% of tablet viewers are surfing web as watching show ? share experiences as watch show
Built in Flash and AIR ? build on one platform and push out to multiple. All about cost and time. Reach more devices.
AIR 3 ? captive runtime ? download runtime and install apps. Smaller app with shared runtime. iPhone ? embedded in app itself. Droid also
want ability to choose. Now a checkbox in build process.
Native extensions ? want to take advantage of what hardware manufacturers provide. Wrap AS class around native code.
Sony P tablet ? two screens ? use each screen differently.
Flash Builder 4.6 prerelease available
Targeting Windows Metro in future.
WWW ? deliver best tools for web development
Edge for animations.
Flash Player 11 ? next generation of web ? Paul Gubbay ? VP of engineering, web and design
So many technologies and frameworks ? where to get started.
Great browsers, great frameworks, great tools ? need all three
Tools ? Edge prototype last year. Web Standards. Got it out early and define feature set. Preview 1 on Aug. 1 ? 50,000 downloads.
150,000 downloads ? preview 3 of Adobe Edge available today. Mark Anders ? Adobe Fellow
Rain Interactive ? released game ? Run Kitty Run, the adventures of Timmy.
Frameworks ? jQuery and jQuery Mobile ? had team contributing to jQuery Mobile. Also working in DW
Theming model ? robust CSS. Visual tool ? Theme roller for jQuery Mobile.
Fireworks ? update pack for FW ? get control to icons used in jQuery mobile.
CSS Regions and CSS Exclusions discussed. Hidden costs pie chart demo.
IE 10 supports CSS regions
When can I use? Ian Ellison?Taylor at Google
CSS regions appealed to everyone. Obvious need. Pushed through in Chromium browser. Can use today.
Flash ? Pixel Bender in browser using CSS ? CSS shaders
CSS shaders studio ? just submitted to W3C
2D 3D graphics and animation ? Emmy Huang ? group product manager Adobe Gaming
Leverage GPU across devices.
Starling ? leverage low level API calls. Flash Professional (Reuben)
Create Sprite Sheets directly form within Flash
Adobe MAX Keynote Day 1 – Interview and Event Summary with Janine Warner, Author and Web Designer at DigitalFamily.com
Adobe promised to unleash some creativity at the annual event for Web designers, developers and business pro’s and they delivered. To get a perspective for what the first day’s event meant for Web professionals, I sat down with Janine Warner, Author and Web designer at DigitalFamily.com. Janine, is an excellent communicator and provides key insights on the value proposition and job opportunities for Web professionals.
The day one keynote explored some of the latest technology trends and how they are impacting Adobe tools and solutions.
Highlights of the keynote:
- The major announcement was the unveiling of Adobe® Creative Cloud, a new initiative from the company that redefines the content creation process. Over time, Adobe Creative Cloud will become a focal point for the worldwide creative community, where creative professionals can access desktop and tablet applications and essential creative services, as well as share their best work.
- As part of this exciting announcement, MAX attendees will receive a complimentary year of an Adobe Creative Cloud membership.* The membership is expected to start in the first half of 2012 and coincide with the availability of Adobe Creative Cloud. MAX attendees will be contacted early next week with more details. *Certain limitations may apply.
- The introduction of Adobe Touch Apps, a new family of intuitive touch screen applications designed for Android™ tablets and Apple iPad that enable anyone to explore ideas and present their creativity anytime, anywhere. Inspired by the Creative Suite, these stunning new apps bring professional-level creativity to millions of tablet users. Learn more about the first six exciting new apps today:
User Interface Design - Collaging: Getting Answers to the Questions You Don’t Know to Ask Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
