My friend Nick Finck is amongst those who are sharing the slides of their past conference presentations at KomunitasWeb. At the bottom of each presentation, there is also a link to other presentations by the same person.

Labels: educational, inspiring

I just returned from a four-day holiday taking my goddaughters - 12 and nearly 10 - to Los Angeles for the primary purpose of watching the University of Washington Women's Basketball team play in the Pac-10 women's tournament. Given the Dawgs lackluster season, we did not expect to attend a game on Saturday, so we promised the girls a trip to Universal Studios.

The girls were a joy to spend time with; standing on line? Not so much. Until we got to The Simpson's ride.

Yes, the Simpsons have a ride. And the ride was awesome. But I want to talk about the way the ride designers handle the necessity of having hundreds of people stand on line for 20, 30, 40 minutes. All we UX designers can learn something from this.

From the minute you enter the queue maze, you have sight of a large, bright, flat panel television. On this television is playing a quintessential Simpson's carton; an irreverent, low-comedy that pokes fun at the entire theme park experience!

You are no longer at Universal Studios, you are in Krustyland in Springfield. Yes, Krusty the Clown is your host. You are standing with the Simpson family all through the wait. Krusty is trying to sell you stuff. In one section, you are next to the Lost & Found (run by the aunties) and the concession stand (run, of course, by the Indian grocer).

In another, Krusty is guiding the Simpsons past the nuclear plant ride (!) and Maggie slips away and crawls through the door. In silhouette, you see her become 25 feet tall!

In what seems like no time (25 minutes for us) you are seated in your vehicle with the Simpsons in the front seat. And you know that nothing goes right when the Simpsons are around!

I won't give you a play by play of the ride, except to say that 25-foot-tall Maggie saves the day when Sideshow Bob disguises himself and tries to capture the Simpsons and eke his revenge on Krusty for firing him. Along the way, she mistakes your vehicle for a pacifier, sticks it in her mouth, and then spits it out in disgust; that may not be spit hitting your arm, but you could have fooled the girls!

I have never had so much fun waiting online! Disney is good at keeping a line moving, but the queuing experience at a Disney park is not hilarious.

What do visitors to our sites see while they wait? Ads? A twirling hourglass? What if they saw a carton, instead? Or a 10 second visual joke? Think about it.

Labels: inspiring

Fellow STC member Karen Greenwald is launching her first blog, discussing the issue of how to keep up, keep relevant, and keep employed. Check it out at http://kgreenwald.blogspot.com/

Labels: inspiring

I think I am in love with a technology. Now, if I could just figure out how to use it for online support or documentation. Start by checking out this augmented reality demo at GE, called the Smart Grid.

Augmented reality is a means of super-imposing computer generated data onto a video image in real time. A user must print a "platform" image and then display it on-screen by holding it up to their Web cam. The software then superimposes the CGI image onto the platform and, as the user moves the platform around, moves the image as well. Wikipedia article

I stumbled on a discussion on IxDA's mailing list and that sent me off exploring. The first site was a testing site put up by interaction designers at Mini (the really cute little cars). It's in German, but just click Hier Making Of-Video anzeigen to start the video.

I then went to the Smart Grid, a site (in English) mentioned by another poster in the discussion. You can print a platform and play with the technology at this GE site.

Lastly (I do have to get some work done this morning), I went to the site of the company that makes Magic Symbol, an augmented reality software. They have more examples.

Labels: inspiring, interface, tools

Did you know that comic books have unique grammar and punctuation standards? Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering

Labels: inspiring

Usability Matters.org wants UX professionals to vote on entries in its annual competitions for Boycott Bad Design and International Cartoon Content.UsabilityMatters.Org UMO Home

Labels: inspiring

Russ at UserGlue today posted "Do We Really Need Associations, Anyway? Do They Need Us?

He's been pondering just how useful all of these professional associations (UPA, STC, IxDA, etc)and has come down on the side of "yes," with a caveat.

If associations do not provide what people want, people will create what they want without the association. His example is Stephen Bray's holiday weekend campaign to create UX Book Clubs via LinkedIn and other social networking sites.

To quote Russ:

Most of us work in the User Experience space (if you’re reading this blog, at least I think you are)– you/we should all be connecting these boxes and we should all be wanting to solve these problems. We should be taking advantage of this “whatever-point-oh” web/world that we’re in and FIND NEW WAYS to be excited and energized and CREATE SOMETHING BETTER.

Because if we don’t, someone else will.

Is there something STC or UUX should be doing that we are not? Create it. UUX has multiple communication tools, now, designed to help us talk to each other in whatever way works best for you.

You can comment on this blog. You can follow the UUX Twitter, you can start a thread on our mailing list.

UUX is run entirely by volunteers. You elected a leadership and we want our primary task to be enabling you to get what you need out of this organization.
There are 2033 members in UUX as of December 1. Talk to each other; make things happen.

Labels: collaboration, inspiring, UUX business

Catriona Cornett can help make your day with her site inspireUX. A daily quote is designed to help any UX professional remember what it is we are supposed to be doing.

Gallery | inspireUX - words to inspire user experience designers

You can also follow her on Twitter, http://tinyurl.com/6oukbo where she tweets when she posts her latest quote.

Labels: inspiring