down 2k!
Losing Money
Well I'm down 2k on the Yahoo Research Labs Buzz Game, dang it! Come on iPod Shuffle!! BTW, did ya read on Engadget that Samsung plans to ownz u all as far as mp3 players come 2007? Ummm I dunno if thats possible. Sure they all make killer little boxes but I think forget the power of the accessorising brand from hell. To me the Apple success is in its established base which they got there by making a superior simply pure, accessorizing like all hell product. The accessorising part is what attracts me to Apple in the first place, sure people tell me all the time, dude what is the difference between that and this, and the answer is, your this has no accessories. Have you ever tuned into the accessories on the apple front? Theres like 30 different things, sure, more crap to buy but it also tells me wow, theres alot I can do here. I think Samsung has a long way to go to dismount the Apple brand when it comes to music. Heck even doing mp3s on the net of people talking in interviews is now called podcasting, before it attaching mp3s to yer website, now, suddenly its somehow podrelated. How is Samsung gonna defeat that? Smoke, they are blowin and smokin something over there.
Oh I love this.. HA!
Yo What's Up With That ICON?
Sometimes I get asked why this icon is my current IM icon and I dunno why really. Its actually a sample of a possible artbox you can get. I like it, its wildly vibrantily delicious. Well drawn that is, its also kinda lusty in a arty deco pinup meets 12 color kinda way. Makes me think simple, clean, expressive, pronounced, wow, hello, you talkin me speaky, hear me, this is me, hello there, not calm, not tame, ask and you get an earful, alive, playful, provoking, not that simple, like amazing without the who dunit wow factor, ny, japan, belguim, freaky on a tuesday, clean, now, present, not yesterday, happening now, capture me if you can. There ya go.
Nokia's Big Clue
Ok heres an idea i had oh awhile ago and now, once again, it arrives. I hate it sometimes, I should just roll with it, i mean its not like i've got all the answers really, but just tickles me to death when I see this stuff arrive and think to myself, doh! I mean this is just the start of something much bigger, I've seen it anime, and I know its coming. Heh, thats vague enough eh?
Ok so Nokia gets an idea, and goes for it. Cool. I dig, but I think it could be much bigger than just phones. Add the coke machine or the digitial signage factor in there.
Hey You There?!
The product folks are having fun today. I keep getting approched by the gang next door working on a product project for what I think is housewares, but i dunno. First up Regina comes up to me and asks.. here can you break this? A spatuchla? You want me to break this spatuchla? "Yes".. Ok I can try... couldn't do it. She leaves. Next up Justine comes to me "can you seperate this object?" Ummmm what is it. "Cant say..." Ummm ok I cant, the surface is too smooth. I ask her, can I use my feet? "Do you need to?" Yes I reply. I need foot power. Sure enough pinning the object on the floor allowed me to open it up. She says "thanks" and wisks it away. Makes me wonder what they are doing really. Its one of the cool things about this job really. I mean while I'm here working on medical video madness, one team is working on some product related, another team is on something interactive, and two other rambling folks are talkin up biz dev behind me.
There's Something on Your Face!
Kim who sits across from me is all giddy today because of two things, Quisp and her Vette.
And thats all fine and good. But then she looks at me and says "theres something on your face, lemme get my mirror.." I've never picked up and used a womans compact whatever mirror before, sure enough the black mark was actually chocolate biscotti which somehow made it to my cheek, but what was more shocking was the detail i got to see of my face, my god, how can girls do this everyday, stare at themselves and freakin out about every little pore in their skin!!
Lets Talk about Search!
Say do you ever read EMERGIC.org? Its one of my favorite blogs to read. I must tune in daily. Today theres a nice piece on "search" >> check it out.
Speakin of Bloglines...
There are many many many new blogs i'm blogrollin these days, check out the list and enjoy! Two finds today actually, Blueseeker ( all about bluetooth ) and Guerrilla Innovation, which is simply bad ass, i love blogs like that, so very cool. Sure in some sense all blogs just blog about each other but hey new stuff arrives in various ways.
Capturing Life
daNotes is a program I'm sure i've talked about before but in case you've missed it, its a program that I had created by my friend Bob to capture data, time, and events for research. Its more than just a note taking application. I can capture time, events, script points, and customize what i want captured to best fit my needs. A focus group is different than a usability test, and daNotes is flexible enough to do both and more. Its also part of the Retrospective Ethnography Retail Rig, where we track a users progression thru a retail enviroment and then analyze events, stop times, way finding paths thru the store and more. Overall very cool and very needed since typically researchers use things like excel, which is good for the basic stuff, but not robust or flexible enough to do more for the researcher I think. Now my brother may differ with me on that, he loves his excel, for me daNotes was created to take what excel could do and make it do much more. Taking notes implies you can take notes, and in research, yer always best served taking notes. Sure i mean you need notes, but what if yer a one man operation? Doesn't happen? Sure it does, all the time. Just you and the subject. Now yer saying, no way to take notes. But we do, its just hard to take notes and maintain that conversation you need to be having with the subject. So I'm always looking for accelerators to help me do things.
So here's the scenario, I'm conducting a usability test, i'm the moderator and the note taker. Being a note taker is distracting really, i cant have a conversation and capture the notes fast enough to keep up and or not make it so distracting to the user that we lose "flow" of thoughts cause i need to scribble.
So pen and paper is one accelerator here, and it doesnt usually work well, its always the fall back upon method. Another is video, capture the whole session, this is a nuff said already, capture it, i agree. Still not tracking events very well. Audio capture, yes along with video its there. Still notation of the events along with the video capture, how can I do that better. What do I need to have to conduct a seamless conversational experience and at the same time record events without writing them down.
Hmmmmm, each pedal gets a callout, or function or event that has occured. Using something like this on the floor connected to my laptop, means i could snap timecodes, and capture 2 critical events, provided we're talkin just about one tap on the floor pad. I suppose you could do 1 tap hold tap off, and that basically says timecode IN "conversation happening" OUT. But you usually dont know for sure what the iIN's are until they've happened. So I'd want the software to always take my IN point and push it back say 20seconds, to give me a conversational buffer almost. Then I could have things like three taps is a question, four taps is a design idea etc. People may see this and go gezze why cant you use a pen man? Cause, well ok, cause its two parts, i've done enough testing to know that a pen and writing in front of the user when you are the facilitor is bad, you end up with crappy rushed notes and you didnt spend enough time having the conversation. And secondily, my brother is right, i'm often finding solutions and then looking for problems to solve. Ok sure, but still the conversation is key, nothing else matters, yer not there to take notes just to take notes, yer there to capture usable data and you cant get usable data unless you are free to have that conversation. So again, what accelerators are available out there to help ease your burden. Foot Switches: