Design and technology

Bad usability

stianjohansen — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:56:57 +0000

Esso demonstrates bad usability, at least the owner tried to fix it

iPad an oversized iPod touch or the computer of the future ?

stianjohansen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:45:42 +0000

engadet.com just now shut down commenting on their site due to
“…environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations…”
all because of the iPad, why all the fuzz ?

I have never seen so much press, twitter and blog activity over one single gadget. The tech guys are really mad due to missing features and the press is having a grand day. The Flash/HTML5 battle turned into a frenzy when Mr Jobs showed a web site with the infamous Flash missing plugin lego. But I think they are all missing the big picture here, what is the iPad really ?

As I see it the iPad is the future of home computing because of one single factor.
The ability of the masses to use it.
@zeldman put it this way in his blog
“The bulk of humanity doesn’t want a computing experience it can tinker with; it wants a computing experience that works.”

Lets face it, the bulk of humanity finds it difficult to use computers, hell I find it difficult to use computers and I have been working with them for 15 years. I think the iPad can be the first computer that really makes it easy. And that fact is what really matters.

As for Flash/HTML5, I think it is now up to Apple and Google what happens with Flash. I predict that the time of plugins are over, at least as we know it today.

I was sitting here contemplating……eating my muffin…..and I had what alcoholics call…..a moment of clarity

stianjohansen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:17:32 +0000

Actually I wasn’t eating a muffin, I was attending a keynote by BJ Fogg called “What Causes Behavior Change ?”, but I had one of my few moments of clarity.

This keynote has influenced my work ever since. In my line of work a behavior change means that a user starts using, or continues using an application on either web, mobile or TV. But this also works on websites, loosing weight, stop smoking or whatever that needs a behavior change.

The Fogg Behavior Model is a simple one

Fogg Behavior Model (FBM) shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.

Read about the FBM here:
Fogg Behavior Model
BJ Fogg website
BJ Fogg on Twitter
10 new gurus you should know, Fortune Magazine

Futuretainment

stianjohansen — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:01:34 +0000

Just wanted to recommend a great book by Mike Walsh called Futuretainment. Mike Walsh is the CEO of innovation research agency Tomorrow and a leading authority and keynote speaker on the digital future. Mike’s new book is Futuretainment, a visual book on how media and marketing is being transformed through consumer innovation. A great book from one of the best keynote speaker I have ever heard

Do I need the iPad ?

stianjohansen — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:32:40 +0000

I really want an iPad, but do I actually need one ?

Of course I need the music, movies, TV shows, games and books part, I travel 2.5hours by train everyday, do the math. As of now only the music and games parts are available in Norway. I have an american iTunes account for movies and TV-shows, but it is not hassle free to have two iTunes stores, buying gift cards to myself and transfer content back and forth. It is ironic that I need to do something illegal to be able to pay for movies and TV shows.

But what about work ? To be honest, my average day consists of 80% meetings, most of the work I do is on my iMac at home or MacBook on the train. I made a list of the programs I use at work

Telenor related programs and documents that requires IE6, a crappy old IBM laptop and a secure network
Mail
Things (ToDo)
OmniOutliner (Notes)
OmniGrafle (Diagramming)
Presentation tool, for images and powerpoints and some degree of editing

As long as the mail app has the same exchange support as the iPhone I’m good. OmniGroup is going to release all five apps for the iPad, Omni blog post. I do not know about Things, but I do not use the existing iPhone app because of the lack of cloud sync. If they do not come up with cloud sync I could switch to OmniFocus. That leaves me with the presentation tool for powerpoints. I could do the KeyNote <-> Powerpoint conversion routine or use a cloud version of Powerpoint when available.

The conclusion is: I REALLY NEED AN iPAD, a dock and some cables to a projector will basically cover my work needs
And to all techno geeks, I do not care that much about multitasking, video conference and all other technical stuff. Ability beats features every day.