Tec's soup

New Release: Improved Usability of Layer System

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:48:45 GMT

Some weeks ago I blogged about how we are redesigning pidoco. Yesterday, we finished the second iteration of Usability Tests. Although we did not yet analyze the test results in detail, our impression is that we did the right steps with this iteration and we may now continue with designing some details.

In the meantime, we started with improving the layer system of pidoco. We know of many people who struggled with the layers and needed some time to understand how pages and layers are related to each other. Another issue was the way too long list of layers that you got when prototyping for a while.

The new implementation solves these issues with just a small change: every page may contain elements itself. You can think of a special layer for each page, that is not shown in the Global Layer Repository. All elements of a page are on top of any layer that is visible on the page, but you still may rearrange the global layers among themselves. To represent this special layer (or better to say, the page) we added a new item on top of the global layer repository, which you can choose to edit the elements just as you would choose a layer:

The big advantage of this system is that if you want to you may ignore the layers completely and just work with pages. And once you are at the point that things get too complex on a page you can add layers to structure things. Without all the layers that just appear on one page the global layer list is a lot less cluttered now. An improvement we only realized while implementing this feature is that our word export now makes a lot more sense having a chapter for pages and one for global layers.

We’d be happy to know what you think about this improvement. Please feel free to chat with us and tell us whether this helps you or is just confusing you.

Engineering Porn

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:44:19 GMT

Engineering Porn

[Reposted from hyasuura via fh]

... the phone uses an electromagnet to stand up when receiving a call. Push it down again to hang up on people.

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:43:46 GMT

... the phone uses an electromagnet to stand up when receiving a call. Push it down again to hang up on people.

Oh, the dismissive joy.

via *Nokia Kinetic : Jeremy Innes-Hopkins/Design

[Reposted from towo via fh]

... the phone uses an electromagnet to stand up when receiving a call. Push it down again to hang up on people.

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:41:54 GMT

... the phone uses an electromagnet to stand up when receiving a call. Push it down again to hang up on people.

Oh, the dismissive joy.

via *Nokia Kinetic : Jeremy Innes-Hopkins/Design

[Reposted from towo via fh]

Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:15:37 GMT

Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)

Fuck Sony Entertainment - Sid der Liedermacher

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:58:00 GMT

Fuck Sony Entertainment - Sid der Liedermacher

Funky Code: All Things Technical

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:06:49 GMT

This blog is intended to cover many different things around Usability and Wireframing and some related stuff we do at pidoco. In some situations we were hesitating with publishing things of our daily work at pidoco that are rather technical and might be a little misplaced in here. Therefore, we started the blog funky code a while ago with some of our fellow students from Hasso Plattner Institute where we can publish all our ideas about web development, working at a startup, project management, or what just comes to our mind.

Today I published the second part of a double blog post on JavaScript testing (first part) and how automated tests can be integrated into a continuous integration server (second part). If you think that such topics could be of interest to you, please feel free to bookmark http://fun.kyco.de or add it to your favorite feed reader. If that is not the case, you won’t be bothered with these things in here anymore.

Eat your own dog food: Designing the next version of pidoco with pidoco

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:18:34 GMT

We have been using pidoco ourselves for years. But right now it is getting more interesting since we are working on the next version of pidoco.

In our usual development cycle of three weeks we concentrated on many smaller improvements and little features that help you prototype faster. With the next version we want to implement bigger improvements like adding more structure to the repository and editor, allowing for easier reusing of smaller components within your prototypes, or increasing the flexibility regarding the interactions that you can model with pidoco. This will include the suggestions that we received through our uservoice forum or that were mentioned in our support chat.

Making such big steps will be a nice challenge that we are facing. Currently, we are developing a prototype of the final version that is supposed to include all changes we would like to do. After some initial brainstorming a while ago, Tino started to create the prototype. And he surprised me with some very creative elements, like the little boxes with a ‘V’ inside, which are menus with just one top level entry. They act as simple hover menus, very similar to our current context menu.

Having this initial prototype, we invited some few people to remote usability tests. They were asked by Tino to do some simple tasks, mainly navigating through the given dummy prototype. (Now it’s getting recursive…) Since we used our own tool, we did not have to travel to Frankfurt am Main or Hamburg to meet the people for one hour of test. The complete session was recorded, including all mouse and keyboard interaction and the voice of both Tino and the test participant. That enabled me to review the test sessions, making notes, and collecting all the ideas that arose throughout the tests.

With the notes I spent most of this week in modifying the prototype, applying some simple ideas from the tests, and thinking of solutions for issues we realized during the tests. Following will be an internal review with our team and, possibly in the course of the next two weeks, a further round of remote tests. Until now I’m quite happy how everything worked together. Conducting a test with no setup time, handing over the prototype to different people to work on without any hassle, being able to describe many ideas in the prototype without too much work.

Once we think the concept is kind of finished, the real challenge will start. We do not want to lock our doors for two years and implement the next version in one step. We’d rather like to cut the concept down into manageable pieces that we can implement in a short period of time. Usually, we tried to deploy a new version every third week. This time we might have to break with this rule, but my hope is that we can do most things within 6 weeks (two sprints) or at most 9 weeks, which makes a new version at least every second month. That said, let’s see how it will be in reality. I’ll write some updates every now and then…

Now back to my prototype.

UXcamp Europe: wow!

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:22:31 GMT

Wow!

That is all I can say about the awesome feedback we got after the UXcamp Europe taking place a week ago.

To give you an idea:

@elreiss: “UXcamp Europe in Berlin was a SMASH success. Thanks to the fab organizers for making this happen. And keep it open and dynamic!”
http://twitpic.com/1sh7mw: “Ranjeet Kumar came from India to #uxce10 and says it was a best conference he ever attended (other were paid).”
Hilko Holweg (maczarr.de) “Das Camp zählt zu den besten, die ich bisher besucht habe.” [The Camp is among the best I ever attended.]

During the closing session on Sunday some were suggesting to have the UXcamp take place either twice a year or make it 4 days long. Well, this might be a little too much for us to organize, but maybe there are others out there who want to do a camp themselves. We’d love to support you in that, so please speak up!

One thing we should not forget is that we only set the infrastructure for the weekend, but the participants filled it with live. Therefore, we have to thank for 57 great sessions (Saturday and Sunday). You can find many of the presentations on slideshare, where we even were a featured event! Many people helped us at either serving coffee all the time or taking care of the cloakroom, which we couldn’t have done ourselves. So, a big THANK YOU to all the 400 people who came to Adlershof to share this weekend with us.

About a third, maybe even more people were traveling a long way since they are not living in Germany. Some were even coming from different continents! We are really happy that we were able to welcome you in Berlin. In my opinion it is quite exceptional that so many people traveled that far just for a BarCamp.

When meeting people after the camp a lot are asking me: “You are doing it next year as well, don’t you?” Well, we have not yet talked about that. It is quite time consuming to organize a BarCamp for 400 people. On the other hand, I have the impression that if we won’t do it again, people might get angry with us and stop talking to us. We’ll let you know…

Developing a collaborative modeling application

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:33:30 GMT

In this blog post I will show you a cool application that I have worked on outside Pidoco. Some of you might be familiar with using modeling tools. For example if you are a software developer, chances are you have to design architecture diagrams from time to time. Or if you are at a big company, you might have seen one of these complicated process models that explain how your business works. If that’s the case and you use this kind of software, the processWave.org Editor might make your work a lot faster and more convenient.

The processWave.org Editor is a fully collaborative modeling application that lets you create technical diagrams with several people at the same time. All changes that you or others make to the diagram are automatically synced between all participants in real-time – just as you know it from the Pidoco Prototype Creator. It is written as an extension to Google Wave, a powerful new collaboration platform from Google, that helps you create all sorts of documents and artifacts with multiple people very quickly. If you did not have the chance to give Wave a try yet, let me explain how it works: You start a new Wave, an artifact which is often described as “equal parts conversation and document”. You then invite the other people to that Wave to let them participate. And with a click on a toolbar button you add our editor to the document, and start modeling. A typical use case is shown in this video. The cool thing is that you can use Wave’s powerful conversation capabilities to discuss the model while you create it.

To try out the editor yourself, visit http://www.processwave.org – it is free and open source. We currently support modeling in different languages from the areas of software and process modeling, such as the Unified Modeling Language, Petri nets, Business Process Modeling Notation or Event-driven process chains. The work was done by my bachelor’s project team at Hasso Plattner Institute, the place where I study when I am not developing server components of pidoco’s Prototype Creator. Google actually liked our work so much that they invited us to demo it in a talk at Google’s biggest developer conference, Google I/O in San Francisco.

UXcamp Europe is on the finish line

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:48:14 GMT

It is just two days until our second UXcamp will take off with the warm up party. The badges are already printed and prepared, 11kg of coffee arrived last week, lanyards and t-shirts arrived today. We are just preparing the session grid and after having a look at the session proposals we hopefully have enough rooms for all the sessions. I can’t help it but I have the urgent feeling that we might have forgotten something. But I guess that is a necessary feeling two days before a big event!

Today we also signed the last sponsoring contract. We are very pleased with having so many sponsors supporting the UXcamp. Without them we would not be able to host such an event and make it free to the participants. Oh, and talking about participants: it was a pleasure to read all the countries on the badges where people are coming from. We have several attendees coming from overseas! In addition, we recognized some pidoco users on the participants list. It would be a pleasure to get to know you in person, so please approach us during the camp.

Hm, still thinking that I forgot something… Anyway, see you on Friday at Volksbar or Saturday morning.

Wireframe fidelity – Why does it matter?

Tue, 18 May 2010 18:46:55 GMT

Do you use wireframes in your interface design projects? If so, you may have found yourself debating just how detailed your wireframes should be. In this article I shall explore the concept of wireframe fidelity and how wireframing affects the usability of a user interface in software and/or website design. Deciding which level of fidelity in your wireframes would be most advantageous to you and your project can be pivotal in ensuring success. Experts are still debating the distinctions of wireframe fidelity and whether high or low fidelity is the way to go. In the following paragraphs I will go through the differences in wireframe fidelity and the benefits they carry.

Why use Wireframe Prototypes?

When designing websites or software applications paying attention to a great interface design is key, since the graphical user interface is the part of your software that users see first and use to interact with it. In order to achieve a great interface design, the use of wireframes during the design phase has become a valued method. A wireframe (sometimes referred to as website wireframe, software wireframe or application wireframe) is a visual representation of the projected content and structure of a graphical user interface and is an essential step on the way to a great interface design. It is easily understood by all stakeholders and can serve as communication aid. Much like an architect’s blueprint plans wireframes are an invaluable tool when creating software or websites with a solid foundation. In the same vein, they should be used long before the first bricks (or programming code in this case) are set.

Further Considerations of Using Wireframes.

Wireframes allow a project’s stakeholders to have a vision of what to strive for and are particularly useful in the collaborative process as they ensure that team members can easily understand a software concept and can keep track of a project’s workflow. Popular use cases for wireframes include improving usability through early user tests, involving non-technical key stakeholders early on in the development process, or communicating with developers and designers for planning purposes. The level of detail in a wireframe prototype is referred to as wireframe fidelity and can be in either of two main guises: low fidelity or high fidelity. (Some even distinguish three types, including medium fidelity wireframes.) Knowing which fidelity to employ is of crucial importance as the investment in creating them in terms of time, cost and expertise required varies tremendously.

What are Low Fidelity Wireframes?

Low fidelity wireframes are wireframes that focus on the essentials of a user interface: layout, structure, Information Architecture – and not graphic design! Low fidelity wireframes evolved onto computer screens from rapid paper prototyping wireframes which emerged in the mid 1980s to become a popular Blue Chip company tool by the mid 1990s. Rapid paper prototyping involved the creation of rough sketches (often drawn by hand) of graphical user interfaces as prototypes of software applications to visualize and test usability long before the coding process began.

Example of a low-fidelity wireframe

What is an example of using Low Fidelity Wireframes?

A real life example of successful paper prototyping stems from the mid-90s when e-commerce was beginning to take off and Priceline.com was introducing a service that allowed consumers to submit a bid for a plane ticket along with a credit card. How could they convince users to trust their credit-card details to an as-yet-unknown website? Paper prototyping showed the team that their initial design would have been a failure, allowing them to correct the problems before launching the site. They also discovered that users didn’t need some of the hard-to-implement features they had included. Paper is a readily available resource, but not easy to change or adapt. Hence, nowadays, digital solutions like “digital paper prototyping” with specialized wireframing software are often used in iterative processes as they tend to be more efficient.

What are the benefits of using Low Fidelity Wireframes?

Low fidelity wireframes have many benefits. By eschewing many cosmetic factors they are relatively inexpensive and quick to create or alter. This allows for collaboration as suggestions and refinements can quickly be added to a number of variations very cheaply. Furthermore, low fidelity wireframes are useful in gathering great feedback because their rather rough appearance makes it clear to viewers that they are talking about a draft that is easy to change, rather than an almost finished product, thus inviting honest and unrestrained feedback. In addition, the lower level of detail allows you to focus on fundamental usability issues of your product. When using low fidelity wireframes for usability tests, testers can also give you qualitative feedback that really focuses on usability rather than being distracted by, say, the color of the fonts used. Yet, some critics caution that the level of abstraction may be difficult for inexperienced users. Once usability has been tested and polished, beautiful designs may be added onto a solid foundation that maximizes user experience.

Here you can find an interesting article on sketched wireframes.

What are High Fidelity Wireframes?

High fidelity wireframes (often referred to simply as high-fidelity prototypes) are very close in design to the true representation of the final user interface design. As such, they tend to include slick and polished design features and even go as far as simulating in much detail an application’s workflow or even logic. Despite pixel-perfect good looks a high fidelity wireframe remains but a prototype, however crisp it may look and feel. Due to their high level of detail, high fidelity wireframes tend to be more costly to create and usually take much more time to compose. They may also require more experience, sometimes even technical expertise, and can hinder the feedback process as testers or clients may be distracted by design features rather than focusing on usability. In addition, test users as well as clients may be more hesitant to critique a design done by a professional, which looks like it would require a significant amount of time to change. Fears that such changes may result in higher project costs are not uncommon and may skew feedback, which makes it very important to explain the purpose and method used in creating high fidelity wireframes before soliciting feedback. Advocates of high-fidelity wireframes find that aside from running usability tests, they enable quicker understanding of decision makers.

An examle of a high-fidelity wireframe.

What are the benefits of High Fidelity Wireframes?

On the positive side, high fidelity wireframes share many of the same advantages with low fidelity wireframes in general but have their own benefits in particular. High fidelity wireframes are usually used in addition to low fidelity wireframes, and after the latter have been used to resolve the most impactful and fundamental usability or interface design problems of an application. Being eye-catching and less costly to create than full-fledged applications, high fidelity wireframes can be used to impress clients who have to sign off on a concept quickly. Since they tend to require less programming knowledge than coded prototypes, high fidelity wireframe prototypes can be composed by users with limited programming knowledge. As they are closer in design to the final product, clients can quickly understand the final look and feel of an application without extensive verbal explanations. The high level of detail reduces the amount of abstraction required by non-technical stakeholders, which – depending on personal experience – may be important in some scenarios. In terms of your development team, high fidelity wireframes allow you to collectively bring an interface to life. This helps in keeping a project’s budget manageable which in turn further satisfies clients. Whether or not high fidelity wireframes are necessary or beneficial depends on the particular project at hand and your goal in using them. One should think about the costs and the benefits of creating detailed high fidelity wireframes beforehand. Sometimes, it turns out that it is faster to go from low fidelity wireframes to programmed code directly.

Which type of Wireframe should one use?

As can be seen from the short portrait above, each type of wireframe has its own advantages. It is often not an “either or“ decision which type of wireframe to use. Instead, both types are useful for different purposes and can be used consecutively in a project. It really depends on the goal or use case at hand and the budget of a project. Yet, if you have to choose one type, the low-fidelity wireframe tends to offer a better cost-benefit ratio as it is quick to create and sufficient to resolve the most urgent usability issues in user interface design which may be the most decisive factor affecting the success of your software. Or you could try “real wireframes” – low-fidelity wireframes augmented with some graphic design elements that help a user who is not familiar with the project understand the wireframe more quickly despite its abstractions.

What fidelity do you prefer in your prototypes?

More on when to use low vs. high fidelity:

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/03/wireframing-with-patterns.php

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/what_an_ia_should_know_about_prototypes_for_user_testing

A nice slide show on wireframes:

http://www.slideshare.net/piksels/wireframes-and-interaction-design-documents-presentation

zideshowbob:

Sat, 08 May 2010 08:26:46 GMT

zideshowbob:

Football vs. Handegg (via hidekiryuga)

The Pidoco Team Goes International

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:34:08 GMT

It’s no secret that globalization is upon us; and it’s also no secret that diversity adds to the culture, creativity, and competitiveness of globally operating businesses. We are happy to welcome two new members in our growing team who bring with them international experience and lots of fresh ideas: Carmen from the United States and Abba from Uganda have joined Pidoco’s marketing team and will be working together with the rest of the team to create educational and marketing materials. We wish both of them a great start at Pidoco: Welcome to our team!

Pidoco is committed to diversity. With our new team members we are proud to add yet two more countries to our “portfolio”, which by now includes Vietnam, France, Uganda, the U.S., and – you’ve guessed it: Germany. And we hope that we will continue to diversify our growing team in order to infuse our work atmosphere with new perspectives and unique ideas.

Prototyping and Project Management going hand in hand

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:34:37 GMT

When managing a software project, a lot of the time goes into specifying what the software should do and what it should look like. Once the specification is written it is transformed into many small tasks that have to be assigned to different people working on this project. Designers have to develop some shiny screens, developers have to write the code in behind, maybe the UI has to be localized into several languages, just to name some. However, we all know that there is no project where the specification doesn’t have to be adjusted to new requirements. At this point many project try to adapt some facets of Scrum or other iterative approaches to keep the project manageable.

To date, there are many different tools available that support the project manager in handling all this, one of them is plan.io. We at pidoco use plan.io for quite a while right now and are really happy with it. Since we also use pidoco to create wireframes that represent the major part of our specification, it would be nice to have some kind of integration between the two systems. Having the prototype in the plan.io wiki where you can write some explaining texts around, but at the same time being able to click through the prototype to feel the intended interactions, would be great. In addition, when people comment the prototype using our review feature, most of the times it results in new tasks that we have to do in the next iteration.

From now on this becomes reality. We have developed a small plan.io app that integrates pidoco prototypes with the wiki with one click. In addition, there is a list of all discussions to the prototype, where each of the discussions can be transformed into a new task. On top of that we put all the discussions into the plan.io activity stream, which you can grab the RSS feed and get regular updates of new comments to your prototype. In order to try our plan.io app you need to have both a pidoco and a plan.io account, which you can both test for free.

As already mentioned above, there are plenty of tools out there and you are probably using a different one. However, if you let us know which one, it should be easy to integrate pidoco with your tool as well. While developing the plan.io app we also started developing an API, which we plan to publish soon, for those who would like to write their own integration. More on this is coming soon.

Synchronous, Remote, Real-Time, Internet-based Usability Tests … what for? – Part 3 -

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:44:56 GMT

The previous week, I posted part Two of this article.

Tools Which Facilitate (partially) Synchronous Remote Usability Testing:

Here I will be listing some of the tools which in some way would aid in conducting Synchronous Remote Usability testing. Most of the tools will only fulfill some of the requirements listed previously or only implement partially the methodologies above.

Online Conferencing Systems:
These tools allow screen-sharing and remote control of mouse movements and the keyboard.

Although those tools allow you to observe and control tests sessions they come with a few flaws:

Test-users are required to install the client software on their own system
Firewalls may block the software (5% of test-users experience this problem)
Real-time amendments of the prototype is not possible
The moderator can’t use his machine for other tasks whilst conducting a test (making notes is not possible)
Latency problems
Test-user can not work on a familiar desktop environment

Screen Capture Software:
These programs allow virtual recording of the test-users screen. Test sessions can be recorded and stored but hardware configurations are often insufficient which leads to lagged test results.

Video Conferencing Tools:
Video conferencing tools (Skype, MSN Messenger etc.) allow the moderator and test-user to communicate via live audio&video feeds. The downside is that the client software needs to be installed on both system. Also specific testing of prototypes is not possible and would require additional software which use-up additional bandwidth and system memory.

Presentation Softwares:
MS PowerPoint is a great tool for static presentations, is however limited in it’s collaboration and sharing features.

Video Editing Tools:
You can also create video snippets of your presentations ( MS MovieMaker, Adobe Premiere etc.) but it is a lot of hassle and will surely put you off quickly.

Online Questionaires:
Online questionnaires created with Google Form or Surveymonkey are great applications for getting quantitative feedback on your product. It is however difficult to organize and match the feedback to the right user and test session.

Since this overview on incomplete tools for Synchronous Remote Usability Testing tools could go on forever, I do not wish to withhold the solution for you guys!
A little self-promotion will follow:

pidoco° Usability Suite:
The pidoco° usability suite is an online, web-based collaborative platform which allows to create, share and test prototypes in an instance. It is a tool which combines rapid prototyping of fully interactive prototypes and has powerful collaboration features:

Prototype Creator (creates realistic & fully functional prototypes via drag&drop)
Reviewer (allows asynchronous work-flow and feedback collection)
Remote Usability Tester (Synchronous Remote Usability Testing with screen-sharing, live audio-feed and mouse-tracking)

Conclusion:

It is possible to conduct user tests at an early stage. The aim for every company is to deliver their product on time and with the least hassle possible. Every year thousands of agencies spend a fortune on running all sorts of tests and still deliver products with flaws which need later amendments. The problem is that early-on, qualitative feedback is needed yet often not achieved due to budget limitations.

Technology allows us to connect to connect to people around the globe, so why not use this opportunity to run usability test session online. It will save us the cost of travel, give the test-user the comfort of staying in his home or at his workplace and create a greener world for all of us!

Product Release: Colors and Permalinks for your Prototype

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:28:50 GMT

This weekend we added two new features to the pidoco Prototype Creator: colors and permalinks. From now on you can choose the border and fill color for rectangles and ellipses to highlight certain areas of your prototype. We also added a semi transparent grey filling which you may use to create overlays and modal dialog boxes, similar to what you see on the screenshot.

For the second new feature we slightly modified the invitation dialog and added a new feature to the invite menu entry. In this new dialog you get three links, one points to a png image, one to the sketched html, and the third to the plain html version of your prototype. You can choose the page they will point to and copy paste the link into your wiki or send these links via chat to your colleagues.

UXcamp Europe opens tickets next Wednesday

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:30:38 GMT

The first European UXcamp will open the ticket lists on next Wednesday, 3rd of March. Be prepared to register and grab your ticket since we expect the tickets to be gone rather soon. However, there will be two separate lists, one for all Germans and one for our international guests, so there should be enough tickets for all foreigners. If you need some advice for booking your trip, please don’t hesitate to ask us.

To all of you who plan to give a presentation or workshop, please have a look at our Session Forum and add a note on what you want to talk about. We hope to see some very exciting sessions!

yeahrock: OMG! WTF! Waah! Gee! Apocalypse, the World is coming to an end, we're all doomed! Have you seen that huge ball of fire in the sky? #berlin

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:01:40 GMT

Webanalyse: Die aktuelle Verbreitung von Schriftarten bei Web-Usern

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:15:19 GMT

Die Webmasterpro Webanalyse erfasst diesmal erstmals in einer repräsentativen Statistik die Verbreitung von Schriftarten auf User-Seite im (deutschsprachigen) Netz und stellt neue Alternativen zu Verdana, Arial & Co vor.

http://www.webmasterpro.de/design/news/2009/02/02/verbreitung-von-schriftarten-im-web.html

Synchronous, Remote, Real-Time, Internet-based Usability Tests … what for? – Part 2 -

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:34:59 GMT

So What About Synchronous Remote Usability Testing?

The previous week, I posted part One of this article.

In order to integrate the user into the design process at the earliest possible date, it is customary to develop a low-fi prototype which will allow initial evaluation of the overall design. We are however faced with a problem if we want to combine the qualitative feedback of synchronous usability testing with the advantages of non-biased remote testing. How can both approaches be combined?

Yet again, technology should hold the answer to this question:

Requirements for Synchronous Usability Testing:

test-user and moderator need to be connected via the Internet
a shared screen needs to be in place for both to view the prototype
a live audio connection should be in place for synchronous communication
the data of the test-session needs to be recorded (audio, video recording of all mouse movements)
recorded data needs to be stored for instant retrieval

Optional requirements which may increase the quality of the session:

information and tasks should be visible to the test-user
moderator’s ability to integrate questionnaires which the user can fill in his own time
the moderator can change parts of the prototype whilst conducting the test
comments and annotations can be included on-the-fly
test-user and moderator can be connected via a live video-feed

Usability Test: Methodologies

The overall test should allow the following methodologies:

Thinking Aloud (test-user must think aloud and express what he thinks or misses in the prototype)
Wizard of Oz Prototyping (the prototype can be changed on-the-fly for instant ratifications)
Team Observation: (the rest of the production team follows the usability test, make notes and come up with alternatives)
Formal and Informal Tests
Click-path Analysis
Use of Questionnaires

Next week, part THREE of this article will follow.

New Product Release: Custom Stencils and Dollar Payment

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:26:50 GMT

This weekend, we added some new things to pidoco. First, you can now pay in dollar directly with a fixed price. Since many of our test users live in the USA, we thought this might support you. There are no more exchange rates to consider or some special fees from your bank for paying in Euros. Prices start from $9 per month and user. You may want to have a look at the complete pricing list. The free trial remains with 31 days which you can use to extensively test pidoco.

The second thing we added are custom stencils that you can create. We thought the most likely case is that you want to have elements in your own style. Therefore, all images that you upload or add via URL are automatically added to the stencil palette. From there you can use them just like you use the other stencils: simply drag them onto a page. That not enough, we made all images linkable. You can set a target just as you do for a button or a link. This way, you may create and use your very own buttons in a pidoco prototype. Since some pictures may be rather small, you can give them a name that is visible in the palette to distinguish similar looking images.

This is only the first step in adding custom stencils to your prototype. What would you like to be able to do regarding custom stencils? Let us know, either by leaving a comment in here or by adding your idea to our feedback forum.

JS Bin - Collaborative JavaScript Debugging

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:28:14 GMT

A versioned javascript paste bin that allows you to run the code in the browser.

http://jsbin.com/

Synchronous, Remote, Real-Time, Internet-based Usability Tests … what for? – Part 1 -

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:26:47 GMT

The article will be posted in 3 parts -which should be released a week after another.

Developing a software application is a creative and complex process. It becomes specially challenging when trying to design an interface which suits the end-user. Designers, project managers and programmers all have different views on how to approach their common goal: a successful, stable and user-friendly design.

Now let’s be honest: how many of you have met their targets on time and within budget? How many of you have spent sleepless nights because of unforeseen problems which came up in the very last minute?

I bet there are a few of you and one of them is me!

Most problems come up at a stage where a lot of design and programming work has already been invested. These problems become apparent when the test-users start getting their fingers dirty and as soon as they uncover flaws with your work, a lot of heartache will follow. User-tests are necessary yet are often deployed when it is ‘nearly too late’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a keen supporter of usability tests but I believe that the traditional ways of running such tests are outdated.

The user should be included in the production process as soon as possible. The sooner this happens, the less time and money you will spend on conducting usability tests since you will be able to spot the flaws at an early stage. Makes sense, right?

So why do we keep insisting on setting up expensive test labs and pay thousands of dollars for expensive equipment and spend time and money in finding the right test-users? I want to present you a different approach to user-testing, a way which may very well change your attitude towards the established forms and also a way which can save you from those troubles mentioned earlier.

In order to gain the feedback you need, it always helps to gather qualitative data of users which can test your product in the right environment. Having housewifes, students or seniors sitting in your office and trying out that new e-commerce website for your client isn’t the way forward, or is it? Well, i think it is defenitely more safe and reliable to let them stay at home and do it from their own desk. Why ruin that new test-rig if you can get your test-users to work remotely?

Remote Usability Testing

Remote Usability Tests are conducted in the natural environment of the user (e.g. at home).

The fact that it is conducted remotely and not in a lab environment has a lot of benefits:

test-user can work in his natural and familiar surrounding
limits biased feedback since user is not ‘under pressure’
saves money for travel & set-up costs
creates sustainable usability testing for a greener world

Synchronous Usability Testing

Synchronous Usability Testing is a well established approach for running qualitative Usability Tests.

As the name suggests, synchronous testing is done on a one-to-one basis and in real time. The test-user will be running tasks set by the moderator which then can be closely monitored and recorded. The moderator’s difficult task is to interpret and evaluate the test-user’s problems with the product. This is not an easy task and it takes a lot of experience and well refined ability to use the feedback in the most effective way possible. This is why synchronous Usability testing is often done with low-fi prototypes – therefore early testing is possible.

The advantages of Synchronous Usability Testing are:

allows moderator to guide the user
produces qualitative feedback
questions can be solved on the spot
UX flaws can be spotted at an early stage

Next week, part TWO of this article will follow.

Wireframes Magazine - Pidoco

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:53:06 GMT

Pidoco, is an online prototyping tool tool which supports a wide range of design activities.

http://wireframes.linowski.ca/2010/01/pidoco/

UXcamp Europe 2010 taking place in Berlin next May

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:01:43 GMT

The first UXcamp was a huge success if you read some of the blog articles from last summer (read the review from centigrade or have a look at the German blog feedback). That was encouragement enough to lift the UXcamp to the next level by opening the event to an international audience. This makes it UXcamp Europe 2010.

We still follow the BarCamp principle to bring together the European community for User Experience, Information Architecture, Usability, Interaction Design, Visual Design, and everybody who feels himself dedicated to the user of products and services. In case you fit somehow to that description, please join the UXcamp network and prepare yourself for a trip to Berlin on 29th and 30th of May 2010. The registration for the single days and the UXcamp party is planned to open next month. The concrete date will be published in our network once we decided which day.

Since we want to welcome participants from hopefully every country of Europe, we introduced the concept of Country Ambassadors. If your country is not yet represented by an ambassador, please let us know. The only thing you have to do as an ambassador is to spread the word and connect your local community with our network. We are sure this will be an exciting event to be for everybody!

Usually, a BarCamp is free to the participants to provide everybody with the possibility to join the event and participate by giving a session, discussing with the others, or simply by giving a hand whenever necessary. However, this requires us to cover the expenses with sponsorships. If your company is active in the User Experience field, or if you think your company should get active, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We are thankful for every support we can get!

If you are still in doubt whether you should travel to Germany next May, there is also the International UPA Conference, taking place in Munich from 26.-28. of May, which is right before the UXcamp Europe. Oh, and two weeks before there will be the (German) IAKonferenz in Cologne. And if you’d like to extend your stay in Berlin, right after the UXcamp Europe there will be the Webinale, another gathering for all the Web geeks. So, plenty of events to go to next May.

Fantom Programming Language

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:41:30 GMT

Portability Write code portable to the Java VM, .NET CLR, and JavaScript in the browser. Familiar Syntax Java and C# programmers will feel at home with Fantom's evolutionary syntax. Mixins Interfaces but with implementation. Concurrency Tackle concurrency with built-in immutability, message passing, and REST oriented transactional memory. Object Oriented Everything subclasses from Obj. Value types when you need the performance. Functional Functions and closures are baked in. Static and Dynamic Typing Don't like the extremes - take the middle of the road. Serialization Built-in "JSON like" serialization syntax makes Fantom ideal for declarative programming too. Elegant APIs We're quite obsessive about providing all the key features required for a standard library, but with much less surface area than the APIs found in Java or .NET. REST Model data with a unified namespace of resources identified with URIs.

http://fantom.org/

Product Discovery not Software Development

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:01:12 GMT

lolstartups:

If you’re building a new product, your biggest risk isn’t that you won’t be able to reach a mainstream audience, but that you’ll fail to attract even 50 users that love your product.

When embarking on a new venture, your goal isn’t to implement any specific idea in the best way possible, but to iterate as fast as you can, till someone is passionate about whatever product you’ll eventually converge on. Don’t worry about being scalable or cross-platform. So what if IE6 users can’t use your app - you’ve yet to find anyone that wants to use your useless app anyway. Anything that reduces your speed of iteration is poison to your startup at this point.

Yes, we ridicule companies that fail to scale when they start becoming successful, but keep in mind - they’ve become successful and that makes them extraordinary in so many ways. Maybe they didn’t become successful despite being scrappy, but because they were scrappy. Seriously, once you have users that want to use your product but can’t because your tech sucks, you’ve basically won. After all, what you’ve been doing is product discovery, not software development. The tech really is the easy part, since it only becomes important once you have something that people actually want to use.

This article was inspired by a heated discussion on irc.freenode.net #startups about whether not supporting IE and even Firefox is a viable strategy for an early-stage startup. My thoughts are above. I’d love to hear yours. Discuss over at Hacker News.

@Post: So true.

@Discussion: If it’s possible to exclude complete browsers from support primarily depends from your target group. At Pidoco° we do not offer our tools for InternetExplorer, because they don’t support SVG. Looking back it was the right decision.

The Beauty of Web-Based Paper Prototyping -Part 3-

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:09:30 GMT

The previous week, part TWO of this post was on the benefits which digital, web-based prototyping will make exportation and presentation easier. This FINAL part will show you how iterations can be made easy and that using digital solutions will in fact help against the fight of global warming.

Quick Iteration:

One of the main benefits of using the digital solution is the possibility to make us of quicker, easier and cost-effective iterations. But this will only happen if the prototype can be adjusted to new requirements in an instant. Digital paper prototypes can be re-used and won’t have to be created all over again once a new iteration starts. You simply have to adjust specific elements once and then apply those changes to the rest of the prototype, that’s it.

Sustainability:

The average usability testing project leaves a footprint of approximately 250 kilograms, or 0.25 a tonne of CO2. That may not seem much but that is close to amount of CO2 emission as a 3 hour flight. Usability testing is universally seen as the best way to improve a system’s ease and satisfaction of use. If one usability test itself emits the equivalent of a 3 hour flight, there clearly are considerable gains to be made! In an ordinary usability test, someone travels from his/her location to a laboratory or office where they interact with a test facilitator. Normally this takes about an hour and the process is repeated with 7 to 10 people.

The carbon emission for a usability testing project is based on an average of 10 participants, with each participant traveling 20 kilometers return to get to the test and spending 1 hour with the test facilitator.
More on: http://www.prnewswire.com

Conclusion:

By making use of the newest technologies it is now possible to make the shift from paper-based prototyping to digital or web-based prototyping. User-centered design, sharing of ideas, iterative work-flow, collection of feedback and collaborative work are all aspects which speak in favor of implementing such process. Developers, designers, clients and test-users alike can benefit from working on digital prototypes which engage them from the very first idea. Unnecessary iterations which often confuse and hinder continuous work-flow can be a thing of the past since everyone will be up-to-date. Test-users can work in their natural surrounding whilst the design team can make changes on-the-fly.

Overall, web-based prototyping can only be beneficial for all parties involved. Also, since using excessive sheets of paper can be a thing of the past, it will be a make our planet a little greener.

Product Release: Remote Usability Tests and Specification Document

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:06:48 GMT

To start a great new year we have rolled out a brand new product which nicely integrates with the Pidoco Prototype Creator: the Remote Usability Tester.

Take one of your prototypes and do a Usability Test with zero set up time. You start a test session by simply inviting anybody via an eMail just as you would do for letting them view or discuss your prototype. There is nothing more to do for technically preparing a test session. You meet your test participant online within pidoco and can watch exactly what he or she is doing with your prototype. Via either a typical phone or our integrated Flash phone you can talk to each other to apply proven Usability Methods like “Think Aloud Testing”, but this time online from wherever you are. During the whole test session, everything is recorded automatically for playback. Take your time and replay the session as many times as you need to analyze what your test participant did and said.

Using the Prototype Creator and the Remote Usability Tester at the same time, you can test small modifications to your prototype with a test participant watching you. This gives you the unique possibility to apply Usability Methods like “A/B Tests” or “Wizard of Oz Testing”. Prototyping and Usability Testing can go hand in hand for the very first time!

Read what others say about our Remote Usability Tester.

This not being enough, we also added a long requested export to Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org. With just one click you can add text notes to every element to specify and describe your prototype in great detail. All these notes are rendered into one document together with images of the Use Cases, Pages, and Layers of the prototype. All your discussions will be added to the document as well in order to keep track how design decisions evolved over time. Every single piece that is not visible on the pages is described in more detail, like link targets or menu structures. Special Highlight Images show the building blocks of your prototype. You can download a sample document of our homepage prototype.

Take the exported document as is or use it as a resource to write your very own specification document. We know it is a quite difficult task to create a document that satisfies everybody’s requirements. With this style of document we hope to support all of our users in the best possible way. However, please don’t hesitate to approach us with recommendations and ideas of how we can improve the word export.

Starting today, the word export is included for free to all our users. In case you don’t have an account yet, register for a free test account now.

In case you missed the GTUG in Munich this November this video captured the t...

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:46:00 GMT

In case you missed the GTUG in Munich this November this video captured the talks.

Thinkpad Turtle

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:08:06 GMT

miblog:

Try it out! (If you have a Thinkpad…)

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/576985/

Did I say that pop music sucks?

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:10:08 GMT

Did I say that pop music sucks?

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) - Mashup of Top 25 Billboard Hits

PyGoWave Desktop Client auf PyGoWave Blog

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 13:41:30 GMT

Desktop Client allows you to connect to any PyGoWave Server without using a browser. It requires less resources and can run in your system tray all the time, notifying you when you get new Waves.

http://pygowave.net/blog/?p=117#respond

Qt Labs Blogs » Take it with a grain of salt

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:21:02 GMT

Running QT (Lighthouse) through Google's native client in the browser

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/12/17/take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt

The pidoco˚xmas hour!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:53:11 GMT

Dear All,

we here at pidoco˚ love xmas and this is why we have a very special offer for you:

When you place an order for any of our plans, before Dec. 25th we double your uptime!!

Buy one month, get one free – buy 6 months, get 6 months for free!!

No matter how long you book in advance, we will double your booking period without any additional cost!

Simply click on the Santa on your right or go to: https://pidoco.com/en/xmas2009-en and sign-up for this amazing xmas deal!! Hurry!

The Beauty of Web-Based Paper Prototyping -Part 2-

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:27:27 GMT

The previous week, part One of this post was dealing with some of the core ideas of why classic paper prototyping is no longer sufficient. This week, I will talk about why versioning of prototypes and the ability to acces, export and present the results are a necessity.

The Need for Digital Prototyping:

That big round table to which everyone gathers around can never be big enough! The bigger the table becomes, the more sketches and papers are on the whiteboard, the bigger the chance of losing out on some detail. A reasonable alternative would be making use of digital prototyping and to have that table digitized (including the papers, sketches and the words being said). Why keep working with the whiteboard, stacks of paper which have to be carried around the office? Digitizing the work and all what comes with it would make the chaotic meetings a thing of the past. Using a digital solution is a way which allows collaborative work-flow to be fully recorded, ammended, shared and viewed at at given time.

Team Work Challenge:

One of the requirements for successful team work is to administrate various versions of the same prototype. Versioning of prototypes has two meanings within this context:

(1) the different stages in development process which can be accessed at any time
(2) different versions of the same prototype

Once several people work on the same prototype the need for digital versioning quickly becomes apparent. While one is already working on the CSS, the other is still in the process of developing the menu bar; now can you see what may go wrong? Using a tool which gathers all the different process and work-flows of the various co-designers will help to unite the project into one single application and help the collaborative flow. Real-time collaboration will ensure that misunderstandings and miss-communication are reduced to a minimum. A team which works from different locations and on different elements within the same project are in dear need of such a tool!

Presenting the Results:

Once a prototype is finished, the real work starts. The prototype will be used for extensive usability tests, will be used for presentations and is part of the developers specification. All the various players need access to the prototype which again needs to be in various formats. Since it is pivotal to have a prototype ready for presentation, viewing and export, it should be digitized and ready-accessible on the Web. Well, not accessible to all, just to the one’s involved in the process of course!

Usability tests need to be run and an interactive and/or clickable prototype must be easily accessible to the test users. Furthermore, if qualitative feedback is what is needed, a moderator also would need to access the prototype without a problem. In addition, the developers and the rest of the design team must be able to quickly ‘click through’ and be able to make some minor changes if needed. This is why a prototype needs to be open to all the people involved, needs to be updated in real-time and be exportable to any format and at any time!

Part THREE will talk about the benefits of digital iteration cycles and talk about the positive impact digital prototyping can have on our environment. Hope to see you there!

Rerun_van_Pelt: In der Berliner S-Bahn lässt der Fahrgast die B.Z. liege, in der Münchenrer die Brand Eins

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:31:13 GMT

Multi-edit | Jon Walsh

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:03:16 GMT

http://jon-walsh.com/journal/multi-edit/

Geek And Poke: Service Calling Made Easy - Part 1

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:04:40 GMT

Why SOA is more polite than REST.

http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2009/11/service-calling-made-easy-part-1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GeekAndPoke+%28Geek+And+Poke%29&utm_content=Google+Reader