New Design - Facebook Profiles

Priority for seeing my own pictures before looking at my friends feed....Heights of self indulgence! Not a good design move, even if they want to promote sharing pictures more.

in reference to: New Facebook Profiles Now Available [SCREENSHOTS] (view on Google Sidewiki)

Not so obvious

Summery:
I would instead say that this shows what people search for very often that have the name of the state in it and are unfortunately the information that is not obvious and requires Google to find out.
Description:
If these are among the first results while searching for a sate it means they are searched the most.
And If people are searching for it means they are not given the information which should have been obviously given to them.

Therefore this can either be a list of organizations that do not market themselves well our they are the most popular with name of the state in it.

in reference to:

"The United States of America According to Google Autocomplete"
- The United States of America According to Google Autocomplete (view on Google Sidewiki)

Deceiving NDTV Toyota Greenies design challenge

The winning Dia on the contrary is about burning natural resources. Definitely not design award worthy. Instead It actually symbolizes deception that car manufactures do. Burns natural resources to run but looks green like a leaf :-)

Part1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j4r8tPxafI
Part2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCuZPiDjuMs

in reference to: YouTube - NDTV Toyota Greenies design challenge Part 1 (view on Google Sidewiki)

The future of wheelchair mobility

Enough of building cheap wheelchairs. Its about time to look at building these Bionic exo-skeletal legs by the dozen. The real alternative for walking. This has been around for testing in the past two years. nd therr is another manufactures from Australia as well.
Remember to visit the link and watch a video of how patients are using these cool eLegs.

in reference to: Bionic Legs For Paraplegics? Want To Try It Out Yourself? (view on Google Sidewiki)

Adobe ROME = Flash + PowerPoint on Steroids

The most noticeable conceptual difference between Flash and Rome is that the Scenes are now Slides metaphorically like in PowerPoint. There is a whole new way of interaction in this product. The highlight is context based interaction. That means one does not need to interact on a different panel for example to change gradient colors, one can just directly do it on the object. Does takes a slight learning curve to find things but highly intuitive. I really enjoyed the new experience coz the designers have really not taken any constraints from earlier interfaces while building the interaction. The result is a promising breath of fresh air.

in reference to: Project ROME by Adobe (view on Google Sidewiki)

UCD and AGILE Process

I want to share a important aspect of UCD and AGILE Process ( AGILE has been gaining popularity in software development )

The main reason we can do a good job is if we are 3 weeks ahead of the sprint.

Which means if a specific module has to start coding on May 1st we should have started working on wireframes 3 weeks before (in April 2nd week).

Week 1 - week to undertand requirements and give the first wireframe set

Week 2 – Showcase to product management / general SME / Users ( in some projects there are no users involved ) it may be given to 1 user as a Beta release.

Weeks 3 – Iterate Iterate Irerate till we get it right

Week 4 beginning – Development team has the wireframes

To better understand what I meant you should read this article… as I was able to relate to it

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/bringing-user

UCD and Agile can work together if we have a 3 week head-start before coding (or sprint) begins.

This way while the coding is done for one module (1 sprint is ideally 3 weeks work in my project) we start wireframes for the next module.

The developers have wireframes for reference and UX is not pressured in a Agile Environment.

in reference to: Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design (view on Google Sidewiki)

Motivation by Autonomy

The first thing I would tell you to do is to watch and read everything from Daniel Pink you can get your hands on. If you are like me and you just want the lazy route, atleast watch this video of a talk he gave at TED (embedded below).

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/618

in reference to:

"The first thing I would tell you to do is to watch and read everything from Daniel Pink you can get your hands on. If you are like me and you just want the lazy route, atleast watch this video of a talk he gave at TED (embedded below)."
- Experience Design by Ron George- About designing interfaces and experiences (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google making interaction difficult

Certainly the idea of the UI elements following the finger instead of the finger following the UI is very innovative indeed but using it to find numbers and letters is just darn difficult when one could just trace the number or letter instead (like using a stylus).

in reference to: YouTube - Google I/O 2009 - Text-To-Speech & Eyes-Free Project:Android (view on Google Sidewiki)

About Agile

Good introduction

in reference to:

"Introduction This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009) There are many specific agile development methods. Most promote development iterations, teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project. Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning, and do not directly involve long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames ("timeboxes") that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle including planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This helps minimize overall risk, and lets the project adapt to changes quickly. Stakeholders produce documentation as required. An iteration may not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple iterations may be required to release a product or new features. Team composition in an agile project is usually cross-functional and self-organizing without consideration for any existing corporate hierarchy or the corporate roles of team members. Team members normally take responsibility for tasks that deliver the functionality an iteration requires. They decide individually how to meet an iteration's requirements. Agile methods emphasize face-to-face communication over written documents when the team is all in the same location. When a team works in different locations, they maintain daily contact through videoconferencing, voice, e-mail, etc. Most agile teams work in a single open office (called bullpen), which facilitates such communication. Team size is typically small (5-9 people) to help make team communication and team collaboration easier. Larger development efforts may be delivered by multiple teams working toward a common goal or different parts of an effort. This may also require a coordination of priorities across teams. No matter what development disciplines are required, each agile team will contain a customer representative. This person is appointed by stakeholders to act on their behalf and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer mid-iteration problem-domain questions. At the end of each iteration, stakeholders and the customer representative review progress and re-evaluate priorities with a view to optimizing the return on investment and ensuring alignment with customer needs and company goals. Most agile implementations use a routine and formal daily face-to-face communication among team members. This specifically includes the customer representative and any interested stakeholders as observers. In a brief session, team members report to each other what they did yesterday, what they intend to do today, and what their roadblocks are. This standing face-to-face communication prevents problems being hidden. Agile emphasizes working software as the primary measure of progress. This, combined with the preference for face-to-face communication, produces less written documentation than other methods—though, in an agile project, documentation and other artifacts rank equally with a working product. The agile method encourages stakeholders to prioritize wants with other iteration outcomes based exclusively on business value perceived at the beginning of the iteration. Specific tools and techniques such as continuous integration, automated or xUnit test, pair programming, test driven development, design patterns, domain-driven design, code refactoring and other techniques are often used to improve quality and enhance project agility."
- Agile software development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (view on Google Sidewiki)