Uxpod - User Experience Podcast

Dave talks about giving ourselves permission to draw, about how the printing press led us to communicate in a particular way, and about how that can limit our communication in a digital environment, about how PowerPoint can be both inhibiting and comforting, and about how where we are with video today is where we were with PageMaker 20 years ago.Dave says 'You don't have to be an expert to start - you just have to start'.There are several references in this episode:Dave's blog is Communication Nation (http://communicationnation.blogspot.com/).His company is Xplane (http://www.xplane.com/).Edward Tufte's inspirational book is 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information' (http://tinyurl.com/27dw8s). Betty Edwards' book 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' can teach you to draw - even if you don't think you can (http://tinyurl.com/36jbxj).The culture map is Dave's representation of the culture at his company Xplane (http://tinyurl.com/3a27bp).Dave's 'ListMania' booklist is on Amazon.com (http://tinyurl.c

What is the current status of Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Gian Sampson-Wild tells us the story.She also explains how Flickr and Google have used Ajax without sacrificing accessibility.For more on the Maguire vs SOCOG case, see Joe Clark's reader's guide (www.contenu.nu/socog.html).A listener subsequently pointed out a USA case - National Federation of the Blind v Target, as described on the Disability Rights Advocates website (http://tinyurl.com/djrfd) - thanks elDavo.Gian's blog is The Kismet Heuristic (www.tkh.com.au).You can also read her peer review of the Samurai Errata. (samuraireview.wordpress.com)You might also want to check out the WCAG Samurai Group website (wcagsamurai.org).Gian mentions the work of Cameron Adams and Jeremy Keith. Cameron wrote 'AJAX: Usable Interactivity with Remote Scripting' (www.sitepoint.com/article/remote-scripting-ajax) in 2005. Jeremy Keith's book is 'Bulletproof Ajax' (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321472667/informdesign); you can read an inte

Luis Arnal speaks about usability in Latin America, about poverty as the mother of creativity (imagine usability testing at stop lights), and about the importance of observational research.Luis is founder and president of In/situm (www.insitum.com).You can read his article 'No pregunte, observe' online (PDF, in Spanish) (http://tinyurl.com/35bcch) .Luis' 2003 article which I quote from during the interview is also online (PDF, in English)  (http://tinyurl.com/2gmgr9). Luis mentions Spencer Tunick's latest and largest nude shoot (18,000 people at the Zocalo plaza in Mexico city). Here is a short link to photos of the event on Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/2bvaoeThanks to Stuart Celarier of Portland Jugglers (www.portlandjugglers.com) for permission to use the image of the Toltec juggler as an illustration for this episode. Stuart is a software engineer who blogs at www.ferncrk.com/blog and points out that the ball over the juggler's head was not present in the original.Duration: 17:30File size: 8MB

Peter Benda describes University of Melbourne's work on 'QuitCoach' - an online service to help people stop smoking. Peter works at Melbourne University's Department of Information Systems - www.dis.unimelb.edu.auHe talks about some of the unique aspects of this research - such as participatory design as therapy, and the 'confessional' needs of the quitting smoker.The current version of QuitCoach is at www.thequitcoach.org.auThe National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia is at www.nhmrc.gov.au The New Zealand STOMP (Stop smoking with mobile phones) trial is at www.ctru.auckland.ac.nz/research/stomp/index.htmlFlorian 'Floyd' Muller's paper is 'A table tennis game for three players' - http://tinyurl.com/3ylovs... and the Northcote Social Club (Melbourne) is at http://northcotesocialclub.com/pages/giglist.phpDuration: 24:25File size: 11.1MB

What makes good customer service?Joel talks about fixing everything two ways, not outsourcing technical support, taking the blame, and about the puppet.Check out Joel's blog (http://www.joelonsoftware.com) I mention the Irish Guitar Podcast (http://www.irishguitarpod.com)Daniel Szuc and I wrote The Usability Kit (http://www.theusabilitykit.com).Duration: 23:10File size: 10.6MB

Steve Krug talks about clarity, about deleting Solitaire from his Mac, and about his admiration for Douglas Adams and Jakob Nielsen.He also considers how we can do things well with Ajax, and the importance of user testing.Steve's excellent book is "Don't Make Me Think" (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321344758/informdesign).Steve also mentioned Jakob Nielsen's article on teengers' use of websites (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050131.html)People ask me about the cartoons on UXpod. Most are done by Gina Ellis, but this one is by Naomi Tong.This episode is just over 23 minutes in length. File size is 10.5MB.

William Gaver is Professor of Design at Goldsmiths College, at the University of London. He developed the 'cultural probe' user research technique. (We covered this in a previous podcast episode with John Murphy - uxpod.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=108708)He also developed the 'drift table' and other items based around the concept of 'ludic' design.In this interview, he talks about ludic design, and about systems that can help us while we 'find our own ways of leading meaningful lives'.Sound quality, unfortunately, is not very good.The book Bill mentions is Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807046817/informdesign).Bill also mentioned Andy Crabtree (web.mac.com/andy.crabtree/iWeb/Site/Home.html).See the Interaction Research pages at Goldsmiths College (www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/interaction/exhibitions.html)The company that provided the aerial footage is getmapping (www.getmapping.com).Duration: 21:46File size: 9.97MB

Genevieve Bell is Director of Intel's User Experience Group.In this interview, she talks about what it means to build technology with the home in mind, about cultural influences in the use of technology, about the connection between religion and technology, and about sheds. Genevieve says that part of what people want is for technology to be invisible."Computational power is important but what people see is the experience."

Security and usability are frequently in conflict. Workarounds are common, and there may be unrealistic expectations of what users would or should do.I mention that ChinesePod made Time Magazine's Top Ten Podcasts of 2006. (www.time.com/time/topten/2006/podcasts/10.html)The Usability Kit (Gaffney/Szuc) is available for purchase online. (www.theusabilitykit.com)This episode is 7 minutes 10 seconds in duration. File size is 4.1MB.

I asked Apala about designing for low-income, low-literacy audiences.Apala also talks about cultural differences between India and China, and between India and 'the West', about the dangers of being overly-polite, about why foreign insurance companies may not do well in India, and about the use of rasas for measuring emotion.You can read more about Apala on the Human Factors International website (www.humanfactors.com/about/Apala.asp).See Wikipedia's entry on Rasas (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasa_%28art%29).(I referred to Paul Sherman's presentations at User Friendly 2006 in China - Paul's put them online, and there are pointers on his blog - www.usabilityblog.com/blog/archives/2006/11/my_user_friendl.php).This episode is 20 minutes 43 seconds in duration. File size is 11.8MB.

I asked Alan Cooper (over a rather echoing connection) why he is outraged by bad software, and how he developed the concept of 'personas'.I was interested to hear the 'father of Visual Basic' say 'What I need is a computer that doesn't make me feel bad and a cellphone that doesn't make me feel stupid'.Alan's company is Cooper Consulting (www.cooper.com)The two books of his that I mentioned are:The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672326140/informdesign)About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design(www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764526413/informdesign)This episode is 19 minutes 44 seconds in duration. File size is 11.3MB.

Erin Smith is a Senior Voice User Interface Designer and Usability Specialist with Syntellect (www.syntellect.com).Incidentally, people in the field use the word "vooey" - this is a pronunciation of VUI (Voice User Interface).Erin mentioned two books:"Voice User Interface Design" by Michael Cohen(www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321185765/informdesign)."The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice" by Blade Kotelly (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321154924/informdesign).Paul English's "get human" website is www.gethuman.com.And here's a link to the episode in which I interviewed Donna Maurer on card sorting: http://uxpod.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=126130Optimal Usability is the New Zealand-based usability firm mentioned (www.optimalusability.co.nz).This episode is 16 minutes 36 seconds in duration. File size is 9.5MB.

Karen Loasby is the information architecture team leader for the BBC.I spoke to her about metadata, taxonomy and related topics.How do you manage metadata issues when you're dealing with millions of pages, and thousands of authors?Karen referred to two sites during our discussion. The BBC Feed Factory is http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedfactory/ and Etsy is http://www.etsy.comYou might also want to check out Karen's article "Changing Approaches to Metadata at bbc.co.uk: From Chaos to Control and Then Letting Go Again" (http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-06/loasby.html) and her presentation on "The Growing Pains of a Controlled Vocabulary" for the 2005 IA Summit http://iasummit.org/2005/finalpapers/66_Presentation.ppt (this is in PowerPoint and is around 260kB).This episode is 18 minutes 20 seconds in duration. File size is 8.6MB.

This podcast contains four short interviews from User Friendly 2006, the UPA China conference in Hangzhou.UPA is the Usability Professionals' Association.I spoke to Jason Huang, Giles Colborne, Daniel Szuc and Paul Sherman.UPA China 's website is www.upachina.org, and you can find links to the conference there.Giles' company is cxpartners (www.cxpartners.co.uk)Daniel's company is Apogee (www.apogeehk.com)Paul maintains the Usability Blog (www.usabilityblog.com/blog/)Flickr tag for photos from the conference is UF2006 (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=UF2006).

Users of Hong Kong's public transport system will be familiar with the Octopus card, which I consider to be exemplary in terms of the user experience it offers.In this brief episode, I talk about some of the things that make it so easy to use.For information on the training mentioned at the end of the podcast, refer to the Information & Design website (http://www.infodesign.com.au/training/default.asp).

I spoke to Jared Braiterman, from jaredRESEARCH (www.jaredresearch.com). Jared has done ethnographic research many organisations.I asked him what's meant by ethongraphic research, and how it's applied.The Mobile China work Jared refers to is avaialble on his site (www.jaredresearch.com/mobilechina).The book on user research that he mentions is Mike Kuniavsky's Observing the User Experience (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558609237/informdesign) - a book which I coincidentally described on my infodesign.com.au website as "the only 'must-read' book in the field published in 2003". (References to books on this webiste are links to Amazon.com - we earn a small commission on any purchases you make on following such links).

Elizabeth Rosenweig is principal of Bubble Mountain Consulting (www.bubblemtn.com).I spoke to her in her capacity as Director of World Usability Day (www.worldusabilityday.org).Why do we need a World Usability Day, and will it make the world a better place? How can you get involved? Find out from Elizabeth!

I asked John Berenyi of Bergent Research (www.bergent.com.au) why usability people are sometimes disparaging of market researchers. John has some interesting thoughts about about good - and bad - market research. The book John mentions is Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders". (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671531492/informdesign). John is correct in his statement that Vance Packard died (in 1996). There's a reference to Paco Underhill in the podcast. His book "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684849143/informdesign) is an interesting read.(References to books on this webiste are links to Amazon.com - we earn a small commission on any purchases you make on following such links).

This short podcast considers the fact that we tend to get dazzled by the 'bling' of new technologies.

I spoke to Donna Maurer on the topic of card sorting. I think she has a very nice and practical approach to card sorting.Donna referred to the OzIA conference (http://www.oz-ia.org/2006/) which takes place on September 30 and October 1 2006 in sunny Sydney.You should also check out Donna's blog (http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/) if you're interested in Information Architecture.You can also keep up with news on Donna's forthcoming book on card-sorting (http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/).