I’ve heard the following statements:

“I never remember to bring it along”

“It gets dirty and stinky and I forget to clean it so it stays in the trunk”

“I like having a paper cup to put the trash in as I drive around all day”

“I don’t want to wash it in the bathroom – it’s gross in there”

What if BlueStarPeets had a space to wash out your cup that wasn’t near a toilet? How about a washstand with a foot pedal operated crookneck faucet, soap, air dryer?

What if you could sign up for SMS reminders about your mug, sent by your coffee provider of choice? Would that help you remember to grab it on the way out the door?

What if you were given a discount to use your own mug? How much of a discount would make a difference?

How about a collapsible mug that fits inside your backpack or briefcase?

On a related note, it seems many people are remembering to bring their own canvas shopping bags along with them to the grocery store. I wonder what the trigger is that is changing that behavior?

See Starbuck’s Design Challenge: http://www.thebetacup.com/

The user research showed:

• Students don’t read the textbook page by page, but use it as a reference for when they get stuck. Students have their book open at the same time as they are doing homework.
• Students tend to skim and scan pages of the book and form mental or spatial models of where information resides.
• Students are in a hurry, and need to access information as efficiently as possible.
• Students don’t enjoy reading online – they find it tiring so end up printing chapters to read offline.

The e-Book design included expanded browsing, searching, and wayfinding capabilities with the aim of helping students locate what they need quickly. The design also seeks to set up an information hierarchy so that students understand and remember the organization of the content, which helps comprehension. Reading online is enhanced by white space, shorter line lengths, and increased leading between lines of text.

The User Experience: Aplia Text

This view shows Aplia homework open on the left, with the Aplia Text eBook open on the right.

Students have reacted favorably to the all-in-one place nature of this product design – they now have fewer physical items to juggle. They can easily search and browse information in the book, as well as form their mental models of the content with the flip book navigator.

This iPod-style device lets them quickly browse through a chapter of the book. Their visual memory of the chapter is accomodated by the ability to preview each page, along with content keywords along the bottom of the navigator.

Many of the speakers were graduates of the UC San Diego Cognitive Science program. The site describes the program as “study of how people, animals and computers think, act and learn.” I didn’t know computers could think, but that’s what’s so cool about this, I guess.

I enjoyed the thoughts put forth by Brynn Evans about social search. The idea that search is a social activity that is improved by social networks and inputs is intriguing. Evans uses a variant of the CIT – Critical Incident Technique to understand the context of a user interaction.

Ed Langstroth gave a fun talk about working for both VW and Nissan. His comparisons of working for a German (Bob the Builder) company versus a Japanese (Curious George) company were entertaining and insightful. It was interesting to hear about the loooong development cycles and waterfall methods used to develop automobiles. Explains a lot. Ed and his team may have conducted research and strategy 5 years before a car goes on the market. Due to distinct phases of development (Research, Design, Manufacturing, Marketing) it is difficult to be Agile.

Thus, features like the “Party Mode” button in the 2010 Toyota Forerunner. This feature evolved in response to a request for expanded audio settings to be applied when the rear hatch of the vehicle was open. According to Toyota, “raises the bass and transfers the equalization to the rear of the vehicle.” Guess partying is a requirement for that mode. Why not label it with more info about its function, such as “Audio Boost”?

Rob Aseron from Zygna games talked about a research project he did at Yahoo! regarding how users perceive what is and isn’t clickable. In summary, due to cognitive load, an underlined link is 30% faster to perceive and act upon. However, non-underlined links were still correctly perceived 80% of the time, so there is not a huge difference.

My only complaint about the workshop was the low usability of the meeting environment and presentation visuals. The room was long and narrow, with a giant screen at the end.

So, unless you were sitting in the front row, you could not see the entire screen. To add to the frustration, many of the presenters had designed PPT screens that had low contrast between type and background, too much information, and other sins that would drive Tufte to drink. Physically, because of the shape and set-up of the room, 125 people had to squeeze down a narrow aisle between folding chairs (think airplane aisle) whenever a break was called. I think Nate got enough feedback to convince him that a larger venue will be better next time. And maybe some of his designer friends can review/improve the slides before the presenters show them.

In an effort to truly understand the problem to be solved, we embarked on ethnographic research, with these questions in mind:

• How do students study?
• How do students use their textbook and other materials?
• What are pain points for students?
• What is working well?

We observed students taking time to arrange their study areas – to get in the mode, so to speak. They tended to arrange their laptop at the top of a triangle, with their lecture notes and textbook forming the bottom of the triangle. Additional study tools such as flash cards were nearby, as well as their cell phones. On the computer might be a homework program, Facebook, and IM — and the student rotates between these screens with ease.

Follow the link below for a .pdf  product summary that I wrote about this research.

Aplia Text Product Design

The whole thing didn’t make sense. How could a company as savvy as Google be so clueless? My first thought was…arrogance. Maybe Google is so used to viewing and parsing our personal searches, keywords, and email that they think nothing of offering the privilege to anyone. Why would you risk the goodwill and trust of an audience of millions?

Google’s Buzz page has a video that says “We all want to share things we find interesting.” Well, maybe we all don’t.

The worst part was figuring out how to turn off the feature…I spent 20 minutes trying to find the instructions and decipher them. The “Turn off Buzz” button is in tiny type in the footer of the site.

As a social network user, I am very conscious of what information I publish and what I keep private. Google missed the mark here by not understanding their users, our behaviors, and our attitudes.

Other bloggers are equally dismayed…here are some examples.

Counternotions

Cooper’s Tim McCoy

Google can you tell me, what happened to “Do No Evil”?

BEFORE
The student assignment listing was one of the first things students complained about in user testing. It was a long, long scrolling list with icons that few students seemed to be able to decipher. When a student looked for their assignments in week 10, they had to scroll past weeks 1-9 to get there.
Students also had to click a tab to see Assignments for the semester, so the information was somewhat hidden.

In speaking with students about how they use this type of list, we uncovered the DO DUE DO:

• Students are short on time and want to know what they need to DO
• Students need to know when assignments are DUE
• Students want to know how they are DOing on the assignments

AFTER
The solution brings the current assignments forward to the course dashboard, and minimizes assignments that are not current. We eliminated the icon system – instead, rollovers show detailed information about each assignment. Scores and grades were moved into the gradebook so they could be part of an analytics view of student progress. We also realized an assignments tab was no longer needed, thereby creating even more simplicity in the tab bar.

Students have reacted well to the fact that their assignments are readily accessible, that current/hot assignments are featured, and that they can still easily “View All Assignments” to get a sense of what the semester ahead entails.

We called our app “The Foodie” and it was basically a fantasy product. Imagine you are eating some fantastic coffee cake at your local diner. What if you could shoot a picture of the coffee cake, then easily find the recipe for making this coffee cake at home?

We envisioned a simple 3-step process…

1) Photograph the food.

2) Look up the recipe, using a visual search. Select the recipe that is the closest match.

3) Save the food in your collection, using tags to classify your finds.

Of course, we were taking liberty with reality, but it seems that optical recognition technology would be the killer app for this and other ideas. Imagine looking up calorie counts of food in your photos (1600 cal/oz.) locating the favorite food (Whole Foods Coffee Cake, 2 mi.), or linking these photos with Yelp for restaurant reviews (Farmer Brown coffee cake is to die for!).

This visual recognition app idea has many other possibilities…
Take photos of fashion you covet, and find nearby stores that sell that clothing. Save clothing inspirations in your virtual closet.

Take a photo of a painting in a museum, and immediately access information about the artist and the art.

Snap a picture of a medication, get full usage instructions.

And so on…

The review:
Model Bank
This is a different kind of resource, aimed at the intermediate and high school crowd. Model Bank by textbook publisher Holt, Rinehart and Winston features dozens of clear, well organized models in a variety of genres and purposes including book reports, research papers, autobiography, cause and effect, personal narrative, and persuasive essay. As writing guru Ralph Fletcher says, one of the best ways to help good writers improve their craft is to expose them to good models and what he calls “micro-texts.” What’s great about these, however, is that each contains interactive margin notes, making this site a great resource for interactive whiteboards or individual student reference. You’ll also find a detailed, printable Writer’s Guide for each model, and models can be viewed and printed as pdfs for use offline.

http://www.squidoo.com/multimediamuse

This was another fun project for my design team at Holt, Rinehart & Winston. HRW asked us to design a student database full of cross disciplinary internet links, assignments, and tools. My team conceived the user experience from scratch, including the product design, look and feel, and branding.

The challenge was to find an overarching interface and brand identity for content from various sources and subject areas. The main interface also drills down to content support for a wide variety of textbook products.

You can see how the design carried across disciplines here:

http://go.hrw.com/gopages/ma.html

http://go.hrw.com/gopages/wl-sp.html