Category: User Experience

Top 10 – 2008 Posts

A Trip to Hadrian's WallThis is my second, and last Top 10 for a little while, I promise.

I had a few minutes so thought I would put this together:

  1. My Tools: Mindjet MindManager Pro – clearly a very interesting tool for people. Personally, I’m seeing mind-maps all over the place.
  2. Lotus Notes Tabs – My Usability Problem – I’ve since had a template update and it’s a lot better
  3. “Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy” – this one gets a lot of attention, people are clearly starting to become concerned about it as an issue
  4. My Tools: Twitter & Twhirl – twitter had to get in the top 10 somewhere
  5. The Cost and the Value of Virtual Meetings – I’m starting to evolve my thinking on this, we need to think more holistically about the end-user experience of collaboration.
  6. My Tools: BlackBerry 8800 – mobile technology is getting hotter and hotter.
  7. I need a new bag – and still do. Other things have taken priority on the Chastney family finances.
  8. More iTunes bloat – I think that they started to listen in 2008, but it’s still not great.
  9. The Power of the List – a list with a reference to lists.
  10. iTunes Update – Interesting Selection of Font – it looks like I wrote a lot about iTunes, I didn’t really.
  11. I don’t blog enough! Do you? – yes I know that this is number 11, but it has the same number of visits as number 10.

This isn’t my all-time list, just my Top 10 for the 2008 posts.

Antivirus Gamer Edition: Why only for gamers?

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallThe latest version of Symantec Norton Anti-Virus comes in a Gamer Edition.

Yes that’s right an edition designed specifically for gamers?!?!

Is this just clever marketing or are there some technology differences here?

Norton AntiVirus Gamer Edition

So what makes it a Gamer Edition:

Gamer Mode

  • No alerts + no notifications = no interruptions
  • Optional settings to temporarily suspend updates, behavioural scanning and intrusion prevention
  • Enabled automatically when your PC is in full screen mode
  • Activate manually with a quick click on the Norton system tray icon

Lightning Fast*

  • Rapid Pulse Updates every 5 to 15 minutes
  • Installs in less than a minute
  • Adds less than 1 second to boot time

Light as a Feather*

  • Uses less than 6MB memory even without the Gamer Mode performance boost
  • Needs less than 50MB hard disk space on installation
  • Runs only 2 processes at a time
  • Performance graphs display CPU and memory usage and how little Norton is using

Respects your needs

  • Smart Scheduler holds resource intensive actions for when you are not using your PC
  • Resource usage table shows you the what, when and how long for background actions taken by Norton AntiVirus
  • Delivers consistently strong protection – that’s why Norton AntiVirus has won more consecutive Virus Bulletin 100 awards than any other AV software

So what is it that makes Gamers special why wouldn’t everyone want these capabilities? I’ve been of the opinion for some time that, in many ways, antivirus software is a medicine that is worse than the illness it’s trying to cure. And I’m not the only one to think so:

“It can be awful to have your Windows computer infected with malicious software, but it is almost as bad suffering the daily burdens imposed by the security software designed to protect you.

Too often, security programs significantly slow down the computer, causing lags in booting up the machine, launching programs and receiving email. Not only that, they can be incredibly annoying, popping up frequent messages or asking questions in techie lingo.”

Walt Mossberg – Wall Street Journal

The problems that are being resolved here are exactly the complaints that I hear from my corporate customers. People only have antivirus software because they have to, it’s not something they really want so every time they see it it’s a problem. If it gives them a pop-up it’s a problem. If it slows their machine down it’s a problem. If it takes longer for their machine to start it’s a problem.

But again, it’s another human psychology problem. I don’t what interruptions, but the interruptions do actually tell me something.

The video is fun though.

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Being Inquisitive

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallHow inquisitive are you?

Today’s quote to think about: “If you tell the average man there are 278,805,732,168 stars in the universe, he will believe you. But if a sign says Wet Paint he has to make a personnel investigation.”

I used to work in a restaurant and the same thing applied, if you told people the plates were hot, they would always have to touch them just to find out.

But how often are we completely the other way around? How many times do we take something as fact just because the person telling us spoke with authority? I have played a game a few times where I have embellished a truth and told it to a few people as fact. I’ve then sat back and waited to see how long it would take for the embellishment to come back to me. It normally only take a few days.

I’ve been in many problem solving situations where we would have fixed things a lot earlier if we hadn’t taken as fact the things that people told us.

Can a techie have business acumen?

Jimmy and Grandma have a day outI’m a techie I don’t mind admitting it – actually I’m quite proud of it. I can do things with technology that others marvel at.

I was recently in a meeting when someone who didn’t know I was in the room made the statement “well it must be a technical discussion you are wanting to have if you’ve invited Graham along”. There was a little bit of embarrassment when it was pointed out who the person sitting opposite them was. This person doesn’t know me so they were making a judgement on the basis of my role, but the role clearly said to them techie and the inference was not business.

There have been other situations myself and others have been in which highlight the same issue. Someone I speak to quite regularly was saying recently that one of the comments made to them in a recent interview was that they were “too techie”. Again the inference was not business.

The job that I do today requires a good deal of technical ability, but its primary purpose isn’t a technology leadership one, it’s a business understanding one. The premise of my role is that the gulf between business people and techie people is so great that they require an interpreter. In other words techies don’t speak the same language as business people.

Because my background is primarily a techie one I tend to be treated with a warm welcome by the technologists, but treated with a certain amount of suspicion by the business people.

It’s almost like some people think there is a one dimensional sliding scale with highly technical on one side and high business on the other. As a techie am I really incapable of thinking as a business person? Perhaps this goes all the way back to school where people were encouraged into the arts bucket or the sciences bucket.

Are these just age old prejudices with a new dimension? Or, do these definitions reveal some real issues? I’m not sure. What I do know, though, is that the need for edge people, or multi-dimensional people is growing all of the time, the innovators, the people who work beyond the process.

One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about the brain so much was the realisation that it will be the people who have a strong right-side of the brain who will be the most valuable ones in the coming economy.

Right-brained people are strongly creative, something that transcends arts, sciences, technical or even business. I think that is will be this characteristic that will become dominant, not the field in which you choose to exercise your creativity; Einstein was creative, Monet was creative, Tim Berners-Lee is creative, Warren Buffett is creative. Or perhaps you don’t like the word creative because that sounds too arty, then how about word innovative; Malcolm Gladwell is innovative, Ted Hoff is innovative, Stephen Hawkins is innovative, Yann Arthus-Bertrand is innovative.

Anyway enough of my musing it’s time for me to go and be innovative in a cross functional, multi dimensional, business focussed, technically challenging, problem solving, situation.

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PowerPoint: Video White Screen of complete nothingness

A Trip to Hadrian's WallI came across a “feature” of PowerPoint today.

I added a video to a presentation and played it – but all I got was a lovely white screen of nothingness.

So I started Windows Media Player – and it the video was full of lots of lovely sound and motion.

Perhaps it’s a problem with this particular MPEG file, I thought. So converted it the file to WMV. After several minutes of waiting for the transcoding to take place I was amazed to get the same white screen of nothingness.

I tried it one a newer version of PowerPoint (2007), but still the same white screen of nothingness.

After a little searching around the internet using the google I came across the answer. I must admit to being somewhat stunned that I could get caught out by a problem that I thought had been mostly eradicated.

And the answer: the path to the file is too long

Yes, really.

It’s apparently been around forever, perhaps I’m the last to find out?

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Telepresence voice

Grandma in GrizedaleI’ve just witnessed a bunch of people using a high definition video conferencing system for the first time. It was only a single screen system, so not the fully fledged thing, but I noticed an interesting phenomena – telepresence voice.

We all recognise people’s telephone voice, so I was interested to see this move over to a telepresence system too.

One of the reasons that we have a telephone voice is that most phone calls are working at a reduced frequency range so we have to speak a bit clearer. When phone systems were first available people tended to speak loudly because they knew that someone was a long way away – and so you speak up.

The microphones on telepresence system are also high definition and will pick up a full spectrum of sound and yet the people in this call all spoke loudly and deliberately clearly.

The other thing they did was to treat it like a synchronous communication device where only one person can speak at a time. It was almost like they were talking to someone on a satellite phone waiting for the person on the other end to respond before continuing. It was definitely not a fully fledged conversation.

I wonder if it will change over time as they become more comfortable, or perhaps some of them will permanently have a Hyacinth voice.

Citrix Community Verified: Engaging the Community

A Trip to Hadrian's WallThe IT landscape is composed of millions of moving components that we plumb together to create thousands of applications. We then take the thousands of applications and plumb them together to make systems.

But how do you know what works with what, how do you find out what the problems are. You’d think that this was a simple question, but it’s not. There are many reasons that it’s not simple, one of the main ones is the relationship between organisations. It’s very difficult for one organisation to validate the work of another organisation without a lot of work. Lots of the larger vendors run verification programmes but they can be expensive especially for the smaller application vendors.

Citrix has recently taken a different approach – community verification.

The IT community is integrating applications and components all of the time and Citrix is hoping to tap into all of this knowledge, but also to make it available to everyone else.

“The Community Verified site is a platform in which third party products are added and verified by community members. Community members are helping each other by posting and voting on third party products known to work in their environment.  These products do not get any Citrix Ready program benefits.”

There’s no warranty involved here just the knowledge that someone else has gone ahead of you and managed to succeed, a very valuable asset. The voting system also enables you to put some weighting behind your confidence.

In my experience it’s not integration of applications from the large well known vendors that cause the problems, it’s integration of products from smaller companies. These companies have less extensive experience and who would be struggling to undertake a formal verification activity anyway. A community based approach gives a very valuable middle ground.

My Tools: Keyboard Shortcuts Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallI feel a little embarrassed writing this post because I feel sure that everyone who reads this blog must know about these shortcuts – but I’m also constantly surprised by what people don’t know.

So for those of you who didn’t know:

  • Ctrl+X is Cut
  • Ctrl+C is Copy
  • Ctrl+V is Paste

The first thing that I want you to notice is that these three keys are right ext to each other on the keyboard right there almost next to your Ctrl key – XCV.

The second thing I want you to know is that these are universal shortcuts, they work everywhere.

If you are a complete mouse junky then you are probably not working in the most efficient way that you could be. There are some things that are just quicker with a keyboard and cut, copy, paste operations are definitely more efficient with a keyboard.

Select with the mouse of you have to, but even that can be better done with a keyboard.

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Meaningful Conversations Day 2: Breakfast with a friend

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallOn day 2 of my quest to have a meaningful conversation every day, today I had breakfast with a friend.

The conversations were all personal so I’m not going to detail them here.

It feels like a different conversation to business ones but they still require the same set of communication skills. So I’m not sure that I want to consider them as different conversations, just different subjects. I need to think about how Powell’s five levels of communication apply.

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Meaningful Conversations Day 1: Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc..

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallLast night I decided that I needed to have more meaningful conversations to hone my communications skills.

I have, at least, managed it for one day.

Today’s conversation was on Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc. with a colleague who has been asked to write some short opinion type papers for a customer on the subjects and is only just learning themselves.

It was a good conversation because it turned out to be a real communication challenge. How do you communicate this stuff in a couple of pages and give some value. it’s easy to write a lot and still not give any value. How do you even talk about it without using buzz-words and meaningless acronyms?

It made me realise that I need to invest more time in making this stuff simpler so that any communication can be of real value. The conversation felt a bit like I was putting someone under a waterfall and asking them to drink it all in which is never very effective.

One day own, discovered some challenges, now I need to turn them into lessons.

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Word of the day: Maven

Grandma in GrizedaleI like knew words and occasionally write something about them. This one is a new one to me, and quite new in word lifespan terms too.

The definitions seem to wander about a bit as is often the case with relatively knew terms.

Here’s one definition:

Maven

n.   A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert.
[Yiddish meyvn, from Hebrew m?bîn, active participle of h?bîn, to understand, derived stem of bîn, to discern; see byn in Semitic roots.]

Although I think prefer this one:

A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.

It’s the “who seeks to pass knowledge on to others” that I like, especially as it’s a tipping-point idea. A maven/mavin isn’t just an expert, they are one who seeks to connect and to pass on.

I’m sure that many of us can think of many people are like that, I’m sure that we can think of just as many experts who are the opposite. I suppose I’m more likely to be maven than not. I’d rather people made use of the knowledge that I had, it’s normally not that much use to me otherwise.

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Is Flickr losing its Creative Commons roots?

Grandma in GrizedaleI’m a big flickr user, I post all sorts of stuff and I post it all as Creative Commons licensed. I’m even generous and license at quite a low level of Creative Commons control – Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic. in simple terms, what this means is that someone can use my pictures as long as they use them for non-commercial work and they give me credit. I’ve even had people asking to use pictures for commercial work, which I have given without fee.

There was a time when I could search through flickr and be reasonably sure that what I was looking at was also licensed as Creative Commons. It was the place that I would go to to get hold of good quality photos for a project I might be working on, as long as I respected the Creative Commons license I could be confident in using the pictures.

I have no statistics to support this, but my perception is that more and more of the content on flickr is now locked down to “all rights reserved”. Flickr does a really good job of protecting these pictures – you can’t download them and you only see one size.

I fully understand a couple of reasons for locking down content in this way:

  • You wouldn’t want anyone messing about with your personal pictures.
  • You might not want anyone using all of your pictures when it’s your business.

But there are many, many pictures that are locked down which aren’t either of these, they are pictures of scenes, or of items and events which are not of any value to them, nor that much value to anyone else.

What value does locking them down have? It just takes value away. if it’s locked down you can only see a small representation of it; no-one gets to enjoy the real full fidelity picture, no-one gets to download it and use it as a background or in a screen-saver, no-one gets to use the picture in a project to create something new and exciting.

Perhaps I’m just being some kind of liberal creative commons open source hippie but it feels like flickr is loosing its roots, loosing its sole? (did I really just say that, oh dear)

I feel like turning my stuff to “all rights reserved” – why should I share my stuff if no-one else is willing to share their stuff? “I’m not sharing my ball if you won’t share yours”. Perhaps that would be a good feature – my stuff is licensed as Creative Commons to everyone who’s pictures are also Creative Commons, if your stuff is “all rights reserved” then, to you, so is mine.

Why do people have to be so protective of stuff? Do they really think it has a value that people are willing to pay? Do they not realise that sharing is good for them.

Gosh I’m grumpy for a Friday.

Thankfully flickr advanced search enables you to search by license type, but I’m not sure why I should need to.

(Jimmy and Grandad are Creative Commons too)