Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios.

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Claritas has concluded that 66 types of people live in the U.S. suburbs, cities, and riral areas. You can view a presentation on their research here. If you’re really interested you can look up your neighborhood based on zip code to find out what segments are living next door to you.

No time to visit the site? How about a few examples!

So my suspicions are confirmed. The government did create Halo as a pre-draft training tool. ;-)

Darpa, the Pentagon’s wide-eyed research arm, is betting big on “metamaterials” — composites that can seemingly-impossible new properties, thanks to their molecular structure. But even for Darpa, and even for metamaterials, this seems like a long shot: a $15 million program to build shoot-through, one-way-invisible, self-healing shields for soldiers in urban battlefields.

Metamaterials are already showing promise, as the building blocks to real-life invisibility cloaks; that’s because the composites let electromagnetic waves flow around them, instead of reflecting ‘em back. Darpa’s “Asymmetric Materials for the Urban Battlespace” program goes way, way beyond mere invisibility, however.

from wired

I recently stumbled across a handy set of survey tools, tutorials and guides provided free by Creative Research Systems.

Among other things they provide a sample size calculator, a tutorial on statistical significance, a section on the do’s and don’ts of survey design, a page on correlation, and some sample survey questions.

Worth a bookmark especially for folks just getting into survey and questionnaire design.

Interesting writeup by Mike Kuniavsky over at Orange Cone.

Continuing my project of observing how terminology shifts to describe the process of researching and designing the user experience of ubiquitous computing, I noticed a blurb in the latest issue of the IDSA’s “design perspectives” newsletter. In it, they note a new service launched by RAHN, Inc., which RAHN calls “Quantitative Ethnographics (QE).” They claim this “integrates performance metrics into the analysis and illustrates innovation’s positive impact on a prospective client’s customer.”

Apart from the error of assuming a “positive impact” before starting research, it’s interesting to me how RAHN seems to be using the current vogue for the use of “ethnographics” as a term to describe user research, but modifying it by using the language of measurement (presumably because numbers and figures look better in client reports). Measurement–and the “finding of an average” that it implies–is kind of the opposite of the goal of traditional ethnography, which aims to describe culture in its complexity. That doesn’t actually seem to be the point anymore. “Ethnographics” has come to mean “we go onsite and look at people.” It has ceased to have the meaning it once had as an anthropological practice, and has been repurposed by the design community.

We in the design business have bastardized the term ethnography (though I doubt there is much sleep being lost in the academic communities). Still, Quantitative Ethnography is–practically speaking–an oxymoron. I’m comfortable with phrases like ethnographic approach or technique as the furthest stretch of usage. On the other hand, comparing design research to an ethnography is silly. Throw in quantitative and your clients ought to be wondering!

Scientists in Taiwan have bred the first fluorescent pigs–at least the first green through and through. The transgenetic pigs are possible thanks to the genetic material from jellyfish. These pigs are green from skin right to organs. Shine a blue light on them and they glow like, well, like a jellyfish. Who new?

Taiwan is not claiming a world first. Others have bred partially fluorescent pigs before; but the researchers insist the three pigs they have produced are better.

They are the only ones that are green from the inside out. Even their heart and internal organs are green, the researchers say.

Scientists intend to use the green pigs to study human disease. Because the pig’s genetic material encodes a protein that shows up as green, it is easy to see.

So if, for instance, some of its stem cells are injected into another animal, scientists can track how they develop without the need for a biopsy or invasive test.

Philips Research has integrated experience research into its innovation pipeline. “Our people-centric research involves understanding what people actually want from technology to improve their daily lives,” continued Rick Harwig. “For this purpose Philips Research has built two new research laboratories in Europe, next to the existing HomeLab. One for personal healthcare technologies (CareLab) and another for atmosphere creation for retail (ShopLab). Here people are confronted with the latest innovations and we are able to research the functionality and acceptability of the concept, as well as the way people experience it.”

A Chiang Mai University team has developed a motor so small it will power a microscopic robot on an expedition through human blood vessels.

Boffins at the university’s science faculty describe their invention as a “nanomotor”. It will drive a medical robot about the size of a blood cell on a tour of the maze of human veins and capillaries.

A “nanobot” - or nanotechnology robot - developed at Kent State University in Ohio, United States will be powered by a motor made of an extremely fine and pure ceramic created at Chiang Mai University.

In addition to powering the nanobot, the piezoceramic - also known as “smart ceramics” - motor will navigate the machine on its exploration for such things as tiny tumours in internal organs.

It is remote controlled by either low-voltage electric current or microwaves, explains head researcher Assoc Prof Supon Ananta.