Blog Posts By Denise

In the industry, with all the excitement surrounding smart phones, I think we lose sight on just how many "dumb" phones there are out there. Yesterday, comScore released the results of a survey that is a stark reminder of the mobile landscape as a whole where nary an iPhone, iPad or Android is mentioned.

I came across an article today in the NY Times, titled -- We have met the enemy and he is powerpoint.

In it, they present this image:

Plan for Afghanistan: A failure in data visualization
which was meant to convey the complexity of the military strategy in Afghanistan. Complexity was conveyed, but to what end? The key to effective data visualization is not to "convey complexity" but is instead to wrest clarity, order, or at the very least, some insight.

The General's reaction to this slide? “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

Highlights from the NY Times article:

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” General McMaster read more...

Today, I have a greater appreciation for what Victor Frankenstein felt as he fled from his creation in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Victor Frankenstein had taken the act of creation too far and thus created a monster.

Today, our creation, the MyJoys Customizer, resulted in this:

Frankenstein's Monster: Green Base, Red Hibiscus Saddle, Yellow Toe and heel shoe Noonan, out in Truckee, California. All of us here at Outsight are deeply sorry. read more...

Lots of interesting links today:

Nice, simple presentation about experience design
The UX Driven Startup: Crafting an Experience

Google creates an application to teach developers how to prevent hacking
Google: Please Hack this Buggy Microblogging App

Wondering where Gowalla, Brightkite and Foursquare are leading?
Geomarketing: Ten Foursquare marketing campaigns

Ever wonder what the touch target size should be on a mobile? LukeW summarizes the current "standards"
LukeW on Touch Target Sizes read more...

Peering into the future

Last week at a status meeting, I took a few moment of frivolity to joke about an issue we were having on a widget we had built -- instead of showing "what people are buying right now!", it appeared to be showing "what people are going to buy in roughly ten minutes". Yes, we had achieved the impossible, we could now predict a person's future behavior with 100% accuracy -- how cool is that?! Netflix, Amazon eat your heart out! (Ok, so, yes, the server on which orders are being processed had a date/time that was off by ten minutes.) BUT think about it, a prominent homepage widget quietly predicting future events...

So, this morning, I had another opportunity to peer into the future. This time the portent showed up in my inbox. Jakob Nielsen's alertbox gave his early iPad thoughts. The iPad was released on Saturday the 3rd.

Now, for anyone outside our industry, new device launches -- well, they are like new toys. They get dropped in our laps and we start trying to play with them. Every now and then, we get a toy that is a true "game changer" -- one that has the power to *change the way that we play*, work, live. The iPhone was one such "game changing" toy -- and although Apple is hopeful, the jury is still out on the iPad.

So, when Jakob Nielsen, one of the great usability pundits, releases his "early thoughts" on the usability of the iPad *before* conducting his user testing -- well, it is his prediction of the future.

read more...

I first saw it at 9:06PM ET, Wednesday, January 6, 2010, a facebook status posted by a friend that consisted of a color "BLACK" and nothing more. I figured I missed something in her stream and moved on. Then I started to see more colors -- "WHITE", "BLACK" (again)... Humnh, does this have something to do with race?

"HOT PINK", "ECRU", "LEOPARD PRINT"

OK, well, I am guessing this isn't about race. A quick google search and I have my answer -- this (or some derivative) has been spreading virally through the ranks of my facebook friends:

"Write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY women no men. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men wonder why the women have a color in their status.....LOL!"

So far no known breast cancer related organization or charity has claimed this campaign, so I strongly suspect that this is just another internet chain letter and not an example of viral marketing. But as a person in the industry, I am finding it an interesting phenomena to follow and consider.

What worked about it?

• Well, the thing that makes facebook fun is the interaction -- nothing gains you interaction like enigmatic or provocative status updates. Its fun to put something out there and get a bunch of responses. Its fun to be coy.
• It plays on the "in the know" versus "out of the know". It is fun to feel "in the know" by being one of the first to participate in a trend.
• As we all know -- "sex sells", so anything that borders on the intimate, is immediately interesting. I detect amongst my friends that it is fun to indicate to their networks this sense that "there is more to me than meets the eye". As well as a few honest individuals who reveal a sense of disappointment that there *isn't* more to them than meets the eye. It is reminiscent of the PETA campaigns with models and movie stars who would "rather be naked than wear fur". Its titillating (pun intended).
• I also see a contingent of folks who have been personally affected by this disease who will do just about anything to try to help the cause. [Side note - it is the earnest caring of this group that makes me get truly angry at all of the email, internet and facebook hoax-sters who choose to prey upon them.]
• Lastly, it also plays on the seemingly irresistible cultural draw of anything that sets "girls" against "boys".

read more...

This is a short, interesting post that talks about the power of blogging, even if only in analog. The world's only known analog blog

DiningIn has combined "evite" with their ordering in functionality to solve the problem of organizing group meals. Meal organizers can create an invite, set a per person dollar limit and send the invite allowing people to add their meals to the order themselves. Very interesting solution to a problem that I just now realized I had -- love the ingenuity.
DiningIn