Shanghai wheather
User Experience Hong Kong
…see you in HK?
Future of HCI: Ben Shneiderman at HCI Orlando
Professor Ben Shneiderman
University of Maryland, talks about the future of HCI in his keynote “Technology-Mediated Social Participation: The Next 25 Years of HCI Challenges”
The success of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and traditional discussion groups empowers individuals to become active in local and global communities. Shneiderman believes that with modest redesign, these technologies can be harnessed to support national priorities such as healthcare/wellness, disaster response, community safety, energy sustainability, etc.
HCI International 2011
9-14 July 2011, Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek, Orlando, Florida, USA
http://www.hcii2011.org/
more pics:
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/3469628/1/HCI?h=b19870
„Usability – Erste Hilfe“
16. Februar 2011, 10.00 – 18.00 Uhr
MFG Baden-Württemberg
Breitscheidstr. 4 (Bosch-Areal)
70174 Stuttgart
Anmeldung und weitere Informationen: www.doit-online.de/usability
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Stehen Sie vor der Aufgabe, Ihre Webseite oder Benutzeroberfläche für Ihre Software, mobile Applikation oder Produktionssteuerung ändern und verbessern zu müssen? Kennen Sie diese typische Situation: Sie haben eine Software entwickelt, die von Nutzern nicht angenommen wird, die zu viele Call-Center-Anrufe erfordert. In diesem Seminar werden typische Fragestellungen und Fehlerquellen bearbeitet sowie Lösungen vorgestellt und diskutiert, so dass das Ergebnis einen konsistenten und professionellen Eindruck macht.
Referentin
* Prof. Astrid Beck, Hochschule Esslingen, Fakultät Informationstechnik / GUI Design
Programm
* Wie verbessere ich die Usability von Webseiten, Office-Software, Apps, Steuerungs-Software etc.?
* Wie mache ich Verbesserungen für die nächste Version und/oder für den Relaunch?
* Grundaufbau und Navigation
* Texte
* UI Elemente richtig einsetzen
* Auswahl von Controls
* Tabellengestaltung und Formulargestaltung
* Design und Farben
* Prozess
Die Teilnahmegebühr beträgt € 270,- zzgl. MwSt. (inkl. Mittagessen). Die Teilnehmerzahl ist auf 20 Personen begrenzt.
Anmeldung und weitere Informationen: http://www.doit-online.de/usability
Bringen Sie Ihre Anwendung und Ihre Fragestellungen mit.
Für Übungen bringen Sie Ihr Notebook bitte mit.
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Workshop und Ergebnisse German Usability Professionals 13.09.2010 in Duisburg auf der Mensch und Computer Tagung.
Links
http://germanupa.de/fachkonferenz/m-c-2010/programm/gupa-track-2010-interkulturelle-usability
Judges iF communications design award 2010
We are done!
Lots of awards and some gold awards. We awarded entries from Germany, also from Baden-Württemberg and also entries from China. One gold award goes to China!
Simple plain “me too” web sites didn’t win anything. But interesting interactive nicely designed and usable approaches won our hearts and an award….
Lots of stunning touch and gesture devices impressed us and were awarded.
Awards will be hand-over beginning of September at BMW world in Munic.
Links
Die Entscheidungen im iF communication design award 2010 sind gefallen
Die Preisverleihung im September in München
Online Exhibition der Preisträger
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iF communications design award
I am one of 17 jury members to judge more than 1200 entries for the iF communications design award 2010.
Tonight, we had a jury dinner and a first look at all the entries in Hannover.
My job ist together with Makato Imamura from Sony-Ericsson to judge more than 100 entries in the categories digital media interfaces and product interfaces. Entries come from Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, China, just to name a few.
Other categories are print media, packaging, corporate architecture and cross media.
Judges come from all over Europe as well as from Korea and Japan.
Entries are iPhone-apps, web sites, facebook apps, apps for mobile media but also a coffee machine and new touch interfaces, cameras, mobile devices and even a dentist’s chair (with an software interface).
Tomorrow we officially start our Jury task.
MFG Innovationcast
Mensch mit Maschine – Prof. Astrid Beck über Mensch-Computer-Interaktion und Usability
Internetnutzer haben hohe Ansprüche an Webseiten: sie müssen gut bedienbar, interaktiv und visuell ansprechend sein. Denn hochwertige Inhalte im World Wide Web fesseln niemanden, wenn die Usability, also die Benutzungsfreundlichkeit ausbleibt.
I am talking about Usability, new interfaces, websites in China… (in German).
Design for the Disadvantaged D4D
Design for the Disadvantaged D4D was recently launched in Shanghai, a project to help those most in need by taking the collective knowledge and skills of designers.
Who are the Disadvantaged? No, these are not (only) disabled people but all those which don’t belong to the world’s fortunate 10% … Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, electricity or shelter. Other problems are illiteracy, homelessness, lack of education.
Universal design aims for supporting those people in need.
Universal design is a relatively new paradigm that emerged from “barrier-free” or “accessible design” and “assistive technology.” Universal design strives to be a broad-spectrum solution that produces buildings, products and environments that are usable and effective for everyone, not just people with disabilities. Moreover, it recognizes the importance of how things look. For example, while built up handles are a way to make utensils more usable for people with gripping limitations, some companies introduced larger, easy to grip and attractive handles as feature of mass produced utensils. They appeal to a wide range of consumers.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Principles of Universal Design
Source: The Center for Universal Design
Design for the Disadvantaged D4D in Shanghai was conceived by Douglas Wang from AutoDesk, to bring together the design community to create tools, services, and objects of everyday life to help those around us most in need, financially and physically disabled local Chinese. D4D has gone from idea to organization in just under two months, and has brought on lead designers and executives from Frog, Microsoft, AutoDesk, and others.
The design profession has much more to offer our society than just basic aesthetics, functions and usability. Design can solve problems creatively and effectively, raise social awareness, improve the quality of life, and promote social interaction.
Project’s goal: support street vendors
Project’s goal will be to develop tools, services, products for street vendors in Shanghai. Though for example thousands of people enjoy their noudle soups and BBQ skewers from street vendors each night or others get cheap watches or DVDs from peddlers, street vendors are a disadvantaged group. In recent years conflicts between street vendors and the police forces chengguans have frequently went out of control, with officers and vendors both resorting to violence.
The development process
The project’s development process follows the approach of User Centered Design.
Student works opportunities
To my students at Hochschule Esslingen: contact me for oppurtunities (thesis work, internships) to take part in this project.
Links
10 Tips for Building International User Interfaces
1. Use a user centred approach
Contact real users, not only your customer, watch and interview users in their natural working environment. Do task and context analysis. Analyse requirements of users. Identify the people who will use the product, what they will use it for, and under what conditions they will use it.
Test milestones with your users: document review, paper mock-up test, usability test, eyetracking test.
There is an international standard (ISO 13407: Human-centred design process) that defines a general process for including human-centered activities throughout a development life-cycle.
If you can not meet all your users personally, develop personas, who will replace real users with archeatypes of users. A persona has a (fake) name, a picture and a description of typical user characteristics.
see What is User-Centered Design?
2. Overcome ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one’s own race or ethnic group is the most important and that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Since within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity’s unique cultural identity.
from: Wikipedia
Dont assume that what you’ve learned and what you’ve experienced is also true for users of other countries and cultures. There are other beliefs and ideas, which you might not see as right or best but work perfectly for others.
3. Be aware of cultural differences
Beliefs, culture, customs, opinions, politics, gender issues, jokes, family issues – all topics which might be discussed differently in different parts of the world.
Be sensitive, try to avoid these topics in your design as best as possible. Concentrate on your target group.
Keep in mind that Western languages differ from Asian languages: they have different lengths, different character sets and will be read from diefferent directions.
Colours, signs, signals, symbols, icons, gestures can have different meanings – even if they seem to be the same.
4. Act interculturally competent
A person who is interculturally competent captures and understands, in interaction with people from foreign cultures, their specific concepts in perception, thinking, feeling and acting.
Show interest in your users. Be tolerant, open, empathetic, hold back your own opinions, dont act (and design) on your first instinct.
5. Compare with competitors
Competitor analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of competing products and services. It does not mean that you should copy or imitate what the others do but that you know what’s going on on international markets and where your customer stands.
Identify key competitors and analyse weaknesses and strengths.
Avoid making the same mistakes and aim at doing better.
see Competitor Analysis
6. Localize contents and design
Concentrate on user’s expectations. Use language of end users, adapt software to regional differences and users’ preferences. Test with “real” users on-site.
Example: Chinese are attracted by foreign brands but prefer to have Chinese characters on products and product descriptions.
see Product Localization
7. Design colours and icons the right way
Colour and colour schemes might not work for all in the same way. Icons, pictures, metaphers might be misunderstood.
see Color Meanings Around the World
8. Don’t use body parts to represent interaction elements
Think about how you show ok-sign, number one or victory-sign with your fingers… These can have totally different even sometimes offending meanings in other countries.
9. Don’t think that users are so different
Don’t underestimate customers and users.
You dont like to read manuals? Neither do your users.
You don’t like to read long messages or long text on the screen? You don’t like to fill out long forms and enter all your personal data? Neither do your users…
You are annoyed by pop-ups, splash screens, not-welcomed sounds and long loading pages? Well… your users are as well!
10. Relax! Embrace this new challenge and feel competent
Now you know better how to approach your international users… Stay cool, there are always options in everything that you are doing, try to find the best in accordance with your users.
Much success!!
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Workshop questions:
What is User-Centered Design?
What is Ethnocentrism?
Give examples for the meaning of colours in different cultures.
What is intercultural competence?
Give examples for adresses in different countries.
Give different representations for “One Hundred Thousand”.
Give examples for gestures and meanings in different cultures.
What are common prejudices? Give examples.
What is different in other countries? Give personal examples.
What is the difference between a Western and an Asian website?
Give examples for different time and date specifictions.
Give examples for product names which don’t work globally.
What are personas? What do you use them for?
What are special considerations for a Chinese web site?
What are special considerations for a German web site?
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This week I attended a meeting with some of my colleagues of Hochschule Esslingen and experts for University enrollment from other institutions presented by ZEIT ONLINE. Prospective students where offered the oppportunity to discuss tips and tricks in order to find the right University and study programme. I attended as a virtual person, a so called avatar (Marja McMillan, you might recognize her on the picture 😉 …Marja turns her head to the guy in the back).
We had some interesting chat about the pros and cons of Second Life, and funny enough… nobody of the younger people – the adressed audience of this talk – showed up. Not one!
Why was that so? May be this event was not promoted enough, but I already recognized lacking of Second Life interest at my students two years ago. SL is difficult to enter, the application is still quite unstable and interaction in SL is not very user-friendly. But sure enough, it is more fun to talk to some avatars then having a group conference via phone or Skype! You can “see” who the active speaker is. But is this attractive enough?
Second Life is for sure not hyped anymore. I have a clue that at the moment Twitter is the application which seems to be most hot and sexy (have a look at the right-most column on my blog btw)
What do you think? Do you use SL? Or do use any social platforms online? For what reasons? And what are your experiences? Leave a comment if you like…
Links
detailed information about SL in wikipedia Second_Life
Marjas night out… Live -Chat auf ZEIT Online und in Second Life
a virtual world in China HiPiHi
still funny Get a First Life
GUIworld's Weblog by Astrid Beck 