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February 07 2012
Urbanflow: an operating system for cities
In a time when the urban population has outpaced the one living in rural environments, our cities although a marvelous achievement (think about the logistics and food provision systems that power up a city), they tend to be inefficient, slow and disconnected from the majority of their citizens.
Urbanflow proposition, a joint effort of Nordkapp and Urbanflow (founded by Adam Greenfield) aims to take advantage of urban screens as means to provide not just locally-oriented information (maps, points of interest, etc.) but also to provide a wide range of more generic information about the city (air quality, traffic, etc), converting what used to be a static snapshot of information into an interactive window towards the ins and outs the city.
I found here in Düsseldorf a very interesting example of a realtime sculpture – The Energy Pyramid which displays in realtime the amount of energy, gaz and warm water being consumed by the city.
January 25 2012
Robots @ School
A few years back while I got a glimpse or better written I was remembered how the younger versions of us see the world we deal with. At the time I had to conduct a series of usability tests with kinds from 4 to 12 preceding the launch of the SAPO KIDS, the younger version of the portuguese portal SAPO. At the time I remember being genially surprise with how kids perceived the interface, how they segmented themselves in terms of ages and how we had to rethink the whole interface to become more playful. From those learnings I ended up putting a presentation on Playful Interfaces… this was back in 2008.
Today I came across the Robots @ School, a study conducted by Latitude in collaboration with LEGO Learning Institute & Project Synthesis. Together they interview 348 kids across globe (Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, UK and US), their objective to understand kid’s social, creative and learning aspirations using robots as a proxy instead of engaging directly with them as adults.
The findings are remarkably interesting and I strongly advise to anyone interesting in reopening that long forgotten door to read the entirety of the report they produced here.
I was particular keen on been remembered that for kids:
- Smart = Social
- being Smart is a key for social success
- technology empowers them
- technology encourages and allows them to take risks, make mistakes without the not always so positive feedback from adults.
- intermingling creating and learning is the rule of business, two sides of one same coin
- when learning becomes fun play becomes knowledge
for each of the insights above the report does a pretty good job of explaining what and how each of them is sustained, so I’ll skip repeating it here, what I will mention is how this study once again shows me that the direction that we technologists take in our doings must be more human, it must assist, generate and foster a richer type of relation, a relation as close to “human” as possible, where sensing and personalization must become a crucial part of our future developments.
January 24 2012
July 05 2011
wi-GO
wi-GO is a project aimed to building a barrier-free society, it’s a robot system based on Microsoft sensor technology Kinect, enabling anyone (from disabled person, to elderly and pregnant women) to carry objects without difficulty, comfortably and safely. The automatic cart follows it’s owner, promoting mobility and reducing these personal temporary or permanent inabilities.
February 21 2011
Customer Journey Canvas in Portuguese
Developed by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider the Customer Journey Canvas is a nice tool described and used in their book on Service Design Thinking.
The idea behind the canvas is to supports the audit of existing services, covering not just the period of time associated when customers face the service, but also the time before (pre-service) and after (post-service) of the customer journey. Since I found it useful I’ve took sometime to translate it to portuguese, so if you’re interested you can find it download it here, or from the service design thinking website.
Put your service to the test and ENJOY! 
January 24 2011
Things of yesterday…
After seeing this, can’t help but to wonder how things will be in 10 years (heck even just in 5). But at the same time it’s a crude example of how much knowledge we lose in between generations at this pace…
November 11 2010
World Usability Day 2010
The day is almost over but I’ve hardly close to finish my post about this year’s topic – Communication, so instead I’d like to just share a very simple video introducing HCI to those who might not be so familiar with:
Why buttons go bad
If this got you curious and you still haven’t clicked away, follow along with to Dave Kelley on a tour on how much is actually in stake about human computer or human centered design:
January 13 2010
How much of your page goes unnoticed?
You’ll find a lot of literature and best practices when searching for answers on what goes beneath the fold of your website, so Google came to the rescue and just released the Google Browser Size, a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google, which you can customize to see how does this measurements fit you own website, pretty much as I did for the above screenshot.
Thankfully I’m working on the redesign of my own website for a couple of days otherwise much of what goes in here would go unnoticed
November 12 2009
World Usability Day Charter
Today it’s the World Usability Day, this year’s theme is ‘Designing for a Sustainable World’, a theme that’s particular personal to me, not only refering to the usability factor, but also to this year’s topic! As founder of SHiFT – Social and Human Ideas for Tecnology, I personally recommend that all that agree with me that a lot need to be done to improve the way we experience and design technology to please read and sign the World Usability Day Charter:
Human error is a misnomer. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy-to-use as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, government, communication, entertainment, work, and other areas, we must agree to develop technologies in a way that serves people first.
Technology should enhance our lives, not add to our stress or cause danger through poor design or poor quality. It is our duty to ensure that this technology is effective, efficient, satisfying and reliable, and that it is usable by all people. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, because technology can enhance their lives, letting them fully participate in work, social and civic experiences. Human error is a misnomer. Technology should be developed knowing that human beings have certain limitations. Human error will occur if technology is not both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand. We need to reduce human error that results from bad design. We believe a united, coordinated effort is needed to develop reliable, easy-to- use technology to serve people in all aspects of their lives, including education, health, government, privacy, communications, work and entertainment. We must put people at the center of design, beginning with their needs and wants, and resulting in technology that benefits all of us. Therefore, we, the undersigned, agree to work together to design technology that helps human beings truly realize their potential, so that we can create a better world for ourselves and future generations.
We agree to observe World Usability Day each year, to provide a single worldwide day of events around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen and governmental groups for our common objective: to ensure that technology helps people live to their full potential and helps create a better world for all citizens everywhere.
Article 1: Education
Wired and wireless schools are appearing everywhere. Students around the world benefit from low-cost, easy-to-use, reliable computing, Internet access, and telecommunication. Educational technology must be not only affordable and available, but must be usable by teachers, students and parents.
Article 2: Health
Healthcare must be available to everyone around the world. Medical technology can improve health, but it must be easy-to-use: error in this arena is costly. Because we are what we eat, we need healthier food supplies that will improve the well being of people everywhere. Technology that produces better food for all must be built on research that keeps the whole person in mind.
Article 3: Government
Governments around the globe seek to use new technology to better serve their citizens and increase participation in the civic experience. Citizens can pay taxes and take care of business online in many countries in the world; this same capability should be available to all, eliminating the digital divide that separates rich from poor or isolates social groups. Voting systems must ensure trust and confidence in elections. Technology that supports civic engagement must give all citizens equal access and opportunity, and must be easy to use and easy to understand by all citizens, including those with disabilities of any kind.
Article 4: Communication
People need to connect with each other. We have more means than ever to communicate: phones, Internet, messaging and the printed medium. Technology that facilitates communication between people must be intuitive to use. It should have instructions that are easy to understand, and knobs, dials and buttons that do not require constant tuning.
Article 5: Privacy and Security
As the use of technology grows, so do concerns about new forms of e-commerce, e-government and e-communication. We must build in appropriate safeguards to ensure that our interaction is secure, that children and others are protected, and that our systems are trustworthy.
Article 6: Entertainment
Entertainment is not just for our spare time. People use entertainment for many reasons throughout their daily lives. The world of entertainment has embraced technology to give us photos, movies, music and games in new ways and on new devices. But, even amusement benefits from usability! Incomprehensible remote controls, confusing instructions and blinking VCR clocks speak to the need for improvement in our media. Usable entertainment systems will make the experience less tiring and frustrating.
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