Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Stories of People Trying to Use Numbers to Describe Things that Should Not Be Quantified
In “Numbers” a recent episode of “This American Life” by WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, the host Ira Glass, covers five stories of people attempting to quantify things that shouldn’t be quantified. The show reminded me of the struggles that I’ve faced over the years in trying to quantify many of the components, emotional attributes and ROI derived from my work in the User Experience space. I’m sure many of you will relate.

Prologue. When she began working as a temp secretary in San Francisco, learning the computers, wasting time, Andrea put together a graph with Microsoft Excel. Its title: My Love Life: A Ten Year Span. Act One. Corporate Culture. D. Travers Scott and his boyfriend spent six months gathering data on their own relationship, and put together a report on it in the form of a corporate annual report. Their goal: to describe the most emotional parts of life using the least emotional possible format. Act Two. Paint by Numbers. Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar hired a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings. Then, using the data, they painted what people want. Act Three. When Days are Numbered. Jerry Davidson has been keeping a list of everything he’s done since 1955, when he was ten years old. Act Four. The Salesman. Will Powers — his real name — decided to try to use all the tools of modern brand marketing to sell himself to his own wife.

Normally I wouldn’t recommend listening to an hour of streaming media, but this show is definitely worth it! Check it out here…

Consultants Warned to Watch The IRS
The IRS has declared open season on consultants � and you might not even know it. Last month, the Washington, DC-based NetCompliance, Inc. uncovered �Market Segment Specialization Program [MSSP]: Business Consultants,� on the IRS Web site. The document, which debuted with no fanfare in April, is an audit guide for IRS examiners who are investigating business consultants. More..

Wireless LANs (WLANs) to be Deployed in Elder Care Facilities
3Com Corporation announced today that it is in the process of deploying 802.11b (wireless ethernet) WLANs in ten elder care facilities run by Rice Management, Inc. The facilities, based in Wisconsin and Michigan, will use the WLANs to increase the efficiency and accuracy of patient care. More here…

Related Links from 80211 Planet:
Proxim Unveils WLAN for Pocket PC
Intersil Unveils Fast WLAN Chipset
Psion Starts WLAN Company
New Handheld Supports WLANs
3Com Intros WLAN Access Point

GUIguide, The World’s First Design Knowledge Portal
“What have some of the world’s largest telecommunications, insurance, utilities, retail and health care organizations done to expedite the development of more usable graphical user interface (GUI) software applications and web pages? They are using GUIguideTM - the worlds’ first and only Interface Design Knowledge Portal - from Classic System Solutions.” I’m fairly skeptical about any one-size-fits-all solution. I’m also surprised I hadn’t heard of this product before. Hmmmmm!? Go look…

IA, Experience Design and the Community at Large
Some interesting discussions going on these days around blog land. On July 19th Lou Rosenfeld posted some thoughts on his blog Bloug about majors and minors in IA. A follow-up discussion ensued on Elegant Hack, followed by another follow-up on Bloug July 25th complete with Venn diagrams by Jess McMullin. The conversations have been quite interesting and they certainly parallel those going on in many other SIGs within the larger Experience Design community of practice. Some are attempting to narrow down and focus their areas of practice in order to gain professional status and recognition, while others are attempting to justify various practice areas with ridiculous boundaries or none at all.

I believe that we (the Experience Design Community of Practice) must first define a high level human-centered process before we can define our various areas of practice and continue to build credibility for all involved. I’m envisioning a process map that would allow information architects, interaction designers, usability engineers, visual designers, researchers, strategists, technologists and others to draw a circle around the set of tasks that define their area of practice. There will never be consensus and there will always be overlap. Rather than battling within the various practices it makes sense to put our heads together to hammer out the bigger picture. Thoughts…?

Other interesting comments and discussions on the subject at IDblog and Interaction by Design

According to new data on media convergence from Nielsen Media Research and Nielsen NetRatings, the viewing habits of TV watchers and the surfing habits of Web users appear to converge. For example, the data–from June 2001 and culled from a panel of 500 members–showed that Web users are extremely capable of holding onto both their computer mice and remote controls at the same time: close to 70 percent of all panel members, in June, had at least once surfed the Web while they were tuned to their TVs. In perhaps the data’s most telling finding: heavy Internet users watched 19 percent more TV than people who did not use the Web even though they had access. More here…

Wireless Device Replaces All the Cards You Have in Your Wallet
Chameleon Network has created a wallet-sized device called Pocket Vault that substitutes for all the id, credit and subway cards we all carry in our wallets. Once you have input all of your cards you simply select an icon and out pops the card ready to use. It goes blank after 15 minutes and remains so until it is reprogramed by the unit. Security? It can only be enabled by owner’s fingerprint. Learn more here…

Medical Applications of Nanotechnology Will Change the Shape of Medicine
Patients in the future may drink fluids containing nanorobots programmed to attack and reconstruct the molecular structure of cancer cells and viruses to make them harmless. For our parents and grandparents there was plenty of time between science fiction and reality. For us, there is barely time to consider the implications of the many new technologies emerging almost daily. And there is no sign that the exponential change will not continue. In many ways I think we as a people may be in denial, sort of the frogs in the gradually warming water. It’s important to consider the many issues that confront us today rather than wait for them to become reality. More…