(You might wonder why I would want to do that? Wait for the next post)
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Apple Store navigation fail
Why is it that I have to click 65 times to see what is on the last page of the Finance iPhone applications?
(You might wonder why I would want to do that? Wait for the next post)
(You might wonder why I would want to do that? Wait for the next post)
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Do you take your iPhone to the bathroom?
Just wanted to run a quick server with my friends who have an iPhone:
1) Do you use it as an alarm clock?
2) Do you have an alternative alarm clock by your bed?
3) What is the first thing you do with your iPhone after you wake up?
5) Finally, Do you take it with you to the bathroom (at any point of the day)?
1) Do you use it as an alarm clock?
2) Do you have an alternative alarm clock by your bed?
3) What is the first thing you do with your iPhone after you wake up?
5) Finally, Do you take it with you to the bathroom (at any point of the day)?
Monday, 5 October 2009
The massive exhibition gap
The main reason that I came back to writing is bad exhibitions. Why on Earth would I want to write about this?
Well, first because I am a museum nerd. I love them. And bad exhibitions give museums a bad rap. Second, because I think that there is a massive gap between the people who design an exhibition and those who attend one. Do they ever, ever wander into their own exhibitions as if they had never been there before and try to put on their observers’ shoes? I suspect they don’t. It is hard. I’m not playing it down for curators. But this missing link might be the key to improving these experiences, that, if done well, can be so damn cool.
For example, yesterday I went to the Moctezuma exhibition at the British Museum, in London. I have been trying to book tickets online for the past 2 weeks (since it opened, really) and the website kept telling me it was fully booked.
But yesterday, a friend decided to go there anyway, to hang out with her sister, and called me to say that there were tickets available, and that the lady at the door didn’t seem to have heard of "sold out" days.
So first thing: why does their website tell me one thing, and the door lady tells me another? Surely the one thing an exhibition website needs to do well is to sell tickets –it can’t go to the exhibition for you, right? But no. Not in this case.
I got the museum after a long commute on London's Sunday public transport. (You know what I am talking about if you live in London). I was tired and a bit hungry, so I had a small bite before we went in. At the door, I got myself an audio tour for 3 pounds, so I could make the most of it all.
We get inside and the first thing I see is a black wall with stencilled text, font size 14 – with so many people around it that I couldn’t read it. Up the steps to the main entrance, and again, I couldn’t even see what these people were looking at. Finally, I got closer to find... another wall full of text. And a map. Oh, and there was a tiny number with a headset icon around it, so I inferred that is where I could use my audio guide. Pressed one, and play, and… was hit by this really loud voice, in English (the only language available) with the weirdest fake Mexican accent that proceeded to read me the text that was on the wall. What? Yeah, I know! Audio guide? Or should I say, replacement for the visually impaired?
Bad start, but let’s move on. Next room, lots of pieces inside glass cases. Lots of papers and interesting-looking books, but I couldn’t tell what they were about - because the explanation was in this tiny little stencilled text on the bottom right, which one might just be able to read, if the person in front of you doesn’t have the bad habit of swaying, as if they were in playschool reading Winnie the Pooh.
To cut a very long and painful story short, it was hard. Hard to follow the flow, hard to understand the pieces, but most of all, it was hard to understand Montezuma’s world – which is all I went there for in the first place. Now, I know something about Aztecs because I studied their politics at university, but I walked out of that place with the impression I knew less then than before.
The exhibition didn’t have a story, or if it did, it didn’t tell it to me. It felt like a group of people had laid their hands on a bunch of interesting material and threw it together, without ever thinking that people like me, who wandered in not knowing much, would not particularly be interested in sharing a big illustrated book with hundreds of other people. Because that is what it felt like: a very annoying, shared reading experience. I was so concentrated on reading quickly, because the people behind me wanted to read the tiny text as well, that I barely paid attention to the pieces themselves. And the books, that looked so interesting... if only I could flick through the pages, see the cover… Thank you very much, I’d rather rent a DVD.
Anyway. This story is just one example of the classic design problem: the designers believe that the users are just like them, and the users think that they are the ones who are thick.
The gap. We are here. To fill it.
Well, first because I am a museum nerd. I love them. And bad exhibitions give museums a bad rap. Second, because I think that there is a massive gap between the people who design an exhibition and those who attend one. Do they ever, ever wander into their own exhibitions as if they had never been there before and try to put on their observers’ shoes? I suspect they don’t. It is hard. I’m not playing it down for curators. But this missing link might be the key to improving these experiences, that, if done well, can be so damn cool.
For example, yesterday I went to the Moctezuma exhibition at the British Museum, in London. I have been trying to book tickets online for the past 2 weeks (since it opened, really) and the website kept telling me it was fully booked.
But yesterday, a friend decided to go there anyway, to hang out with her sister, and called me to say that there were tickets available, and that the lady at the door didn’t seem to have heard of "sold out" days.
So first thing: why does their website tell me one thing, and the door lady tells me another? Surely the one thing an exhibition website needs to do well is to sell tickets –it can’t go to the exhibition for you, right? But no. Not in this case.
I got the museum after a long commute on London's Sunday public transport. (You know what I am talking about if you live in London). I was tired and a bit hungry, so I had a small bite before we went in. At the door, I got myself an audio tour for 3 pounds, so I could make the most of it all.
We get inside and the first thing I see is a black wall with stencilled text, font size 14 – with so many people around it that I couldn’t read it. Up the steps to the main entrance, and again, I couldn’t even see what these people were looking at. Finally, I got closer to find... another wall full of text. And a map. Oh, and there was a tiny number with a headset icon around it, so I inferred that is where I could use my audio guide. Pressed one, and play, and… was hit by this really loud voice, in English (the only language available) with the weirdest fake Mexican accent that proceeded to read me the text that was on the wall. What? Yeah, I know! Audio guide? Or should I say, replacement for the visually impaired?
Bad start, but let’s move on. Next room, lots of pieces inside glass cases. Lots of papers and interesting-looking books, but I couldn’t tell what they were about - because the explanation was in this tiny little stencilled text on the bottom right, which one might just be able to read, if the person in front of you doesn’t have the bad habit of swaying, as if they were in playschool reading Winnie the Pooh.
To cut a very long and painful story short, it was hard. Hard to follow the flow, hard to understand the pieces, but most of all, it was hard to understand Montezuma’s world – which is all I went there for in the first place. Now, I know something about Aztecs because I studied their politics at university, but I walked out of that place with the impression I knew less then than before.
The exhibition didn’t have a story, or if it did, it didn’t tell it to me. It felt like a group of people had laid their hands on a bunch of interesting material and threw it together, without ever thinking that people like me, who wandered in not knowing much, would not particularly be interested in sharing a big illustrated book with hundreds of other people. Because that is what it felt like: a very annoying, shared reading experience. I was so concentrated on reading quickly, because the people behind me wanted to read the tiny text as well, that I barely paid attention to the pieces themselves. And the books, that looked so interesting... if only I could flick through the pages, see the cover… Thank you very much, I’d rather rent a DVD.
Anyway. This story is just one example of the classic design problem: the designers believe that the users are just like them, and the users think that they are the ones who are thick.
The gap. We are here. To fill it.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
The return, 2009.
Ha.
I know. More than a year. Shameful.
After being delighted with my friends' blogs last month (Aisha and Cynthia, yes, this is your fault), I remembered that I too have blog.
The academic ethnography is over. But the true adventure should begin here: no deadlines, no supervisor, no bloody theoretical freaking framework to fit my thoughts into. This blog will continue to be my exercise of observing the world. Yes, I know, genius. No one on the Internet does that, eh?
(Ian screams from the other site of the room: "There is too much on the Internet". I'm about the add some more).
I know. More than a year. Shameful.
After being delighted with my friends' blogs last month (Aisha and Cynthia, yes, this is your fault), I remembered that I too have blog.
The academic ethnography is over. But the true adventure should begin here: no deadlines, no supervisor, no bloody theoretical freaking framework to fit my thoughts into. This blog will continue to be my exercise of observing the world. Yes, I know, genius. No one on the Internet does that, eh?
(Ian screams from the other site of the room: "There is too much on the Internet". I'm about the add some more).
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Finished! Part 1.
Just delivered the thesis for my supervisor to read it.
It is a curious process, this of delivering the thing. It is like a birth, really. It spent so much time being mine, in my small computer, and now it is out there, in the world, being handled by a complete stranger. ...
Difficult to concentrate these days. Have my mind into other affairs. Desert-like.
Also I have been doing some research about usability in Brazil. But this is a subject for another post. Maybe even to another blog??
I have plans about reformulating this blog. I want to have time to do it.
It is a curious process, this of delivering the thing. It is like a birth, really. It spent so much time being mine, in my small computer, and now it is out there, in the world, being handled by a complete stranger. ...
Difficult to concentrate these days. Have my mind into other affairs. Desert-like.
Also I have been doing some research about usability in Brazil. But this is a subject for another post. Maybe even to another blog??
I have plans about reformulating this blog. I want to have time to do it.
Friday, 8 August 2008
Geeky blogs and academic work - a good match?
In a conversation with Stephan at Tinseltown over a rather nice glass of milkshake, he told me he investigated the use of blogs in academic research -- and the little ant only told me this now.
He even published two papers on the subject (!) available on his webpage.
That made me
1) remind me that I have a blog
2) think why I stopped writing.
Number 1) brought me here today to try to answer number 2). I think -- and Stephan's studies confirmed -- that is because I don't have a reason to write. In fact, I do, but I am writing somethin else (the thesis).
I guess that if I had used this blog to communicate with my supervisor, i.e., if I had made this blog available and that he could read and comment on my posts, it could have been interesting. But how much of my thesis would I really want published on the web? How much of my line of thinking would I want exposed to people I don't know. And, considering I have an external host, how much of their identity would I have given away?
During the first part of this research I didn't have anything concrete to write about, and a lot of anxiety to be ejected from my system. So I think that writing had this main function. At the moment I re-directed the anxiety to somewhere else, the blog lost its function.
I think it would be really useful, though, if I was working with someone else on the project. for two reasons:
1) We are not always in the same room, so it is nice to be able to communicate online. But what are emails for. That leads me to two:
2) Conversations over comments are organized and restricted to specific themes. I find that in emails people feel free to go astray, because it is like a little letter you are writing to someone. You can include lots of "BTWs", like "what are you doing tomorrow", "did you see Heroes yesterday?" or "I hate the weather", which can lead to other infinite, non-related topics (specially the last one, if your partner is English).
Need to refine these thoughts, but this is a very interesting topic.
He even published two papers on the subject (!) available on his webpage.
That made me
1) remind me that I have a blog
2) think why I stopped writing.
Number 1) brought me here today to try to answer number 2). I think -- and Stephan's studies confirmed -- that is because I don't have a reason to write. In fact, I do, but I am writing somethin else (the thesis).
I guess that if I had used this blog to communicate with my supervisor, i.e., if I had made this blog available and that he could read and comment on my posts, it could have been interesting. But how much of my thesis would I really want published on the web? How much of my line of thinking would I want exposed to people I don't know. And, considering I have an external host, how much of their identity would I have given away?
During the first part of this research I didn't have anything concrete to write about, and a lot of anxiety to be ejected from my system. So I think that writing had this main function. At the moment I re-directed the anxiety to somewhere else, the blog lost its function.
I think it would be really useful, though, if I was working with someone else on the project. for two reasons:
1) We are not always in the same room, so it is nice to be able to communicate online. But what are emails for. That leads me to two:
2) Conversations over comments are organized and restricted to specific themes. I find that in emails people feel free to go astray, because it is like a little letter you are writing to someone. You can include lots of "BTWs", like "what are you doing tomorrow", "did you see Heroes yesterday?" or "I hate the weather", which can lead to other infinite, non-related topics (specially the last one, if your partner is English).
Need to refine these thoughts, but this is a very interesting topic.
UPA & BBC
Went to the UPA event yesterday at LBi, to see the what the BBC is up to. Of all presentations we heard, the most interesting was definitely the one by Nicky Smyth, head of Innovation and Research at BBC -- who I met at the VizThink event last month, with her lovely friend Sal.
I was fascinated by the approach they had to research -- despite the fact that her 15 minutes only allowed her to give us a taste of what they are doing. The Participate project seems to encompass a myriad of areas, from augmented reality to encouragement and perception of media. I will look at their delicious logs as soon as I get over this bit of work.
I was fascinated by the approach they had to research -- despite the fact that her 15 minutes only allowed her to give us a taste of what they are doing. The Participate project seems to encompass a myriad of areas, from augmented reality to encouragement and perception of media. I will look at their delicious logs as soon as I get over this bit of work.
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