The election guide also struck me as encouraging very simple designs, almost to the point of being “dumbed down.” For an election, this is probably appropriate, since your audience runs the entire gamut of skill and intelligence levels. It’s a harsh reminder of how far ahead some of us are, but a necessary one since many forms have that wide audience.

A lot of the principles in form design cross over with market research and survey design, a field I’m currently involved in. Specifically, the guidelines about consistency and conciseness align very closely to survey principles. This makes sense, because both a form and a survey are trying to guide a person through a particular thought process as smoothly as possible.

I thought the discussion on co-operative forms was a good addition because we often think of simplicity from the form creator’s perspective more than the form user’s perspective. This ties in to general information ergonomics, but it’s a critical point because, as the example shows, having the user input their post code is more work for the programmer, but it makes a huge difference to the user.

A hallway in a children’s hospital, meant to cheer children who are there for surgery, and their parents

In my earlier analysis of this context, I identified three main requirements to satisfy the audience. First, it must be appealing to children. Second, it must be a comforting image in a fearful place. Third, it must not be so cheery as to make the daily employees cynical about it. A minimalist design helped me to fill this last requirement. My original concept for this design used a clean sans-serif font. I altered it to use a more ink-like font to make it more youthful. The images of a helping hand and a heart aren’t intimidating, and at the same time they’re simple enough to allow some imagination and keep them from getting stale. The class correctly identified the context of the original concept design, so I had no concerns about pushing the childlike factor.

The walls of a new Milwaukee light transit station, meant to make the large blank wall appealing to quickly passing commuters

This was the most difficult design to settle on because the message I wanted to portray was removed from the images that the class expected to see. The audience of commuters and tourists want to see something uncluttered and clear, reducing some of the stress of urban transit. Neighborhood residents will want something distinctive and attractive to call their own. Supporters of the light transit system will want something fresh and modern to make the system more appealing. Many of the designs presented in class focused on the first group of people, and my attempt to incorporate the other audiences was misinterpreted. So instead of trying to portray “transit,” I opted to focus on the “urban” factor and connect motion with the city. I believe this design accomplishes that.

Tiled benches in a zoo, in a new part where displays of non-fiction about the animals help visitors think about the animals in different ways

This context has a dual audience, which makes it subtler. While zoos are beloved by children, and educational exhibits especially attract school trips, adult patrons of the zoo will want to feel welcome. The goal of the display is to make visitors think about animals in different ways, so it has to allow for a great deal of imagination. When I first created this design, I saw it as a lion’s mane, a tree, or a sunflower. The class seemed to settle more on palm tree, so I moved a few objects around to make it less rigid and counteract that image. The rough letter strokes give it a very informal appearance, which generally encourages imagination. Combined with an incomplete and indefinite form, this design equally encourages both whimsical and bold interpretations.

These ideas are most commonly understood in discussing whitespace. For example, on this blog layout, the “ground” white page is essential to forming text blocks and paragraphs. It is the basis for the “form” of the text, regardless of how minimal. This balance is critical to establishing a layout that is easy to read and evokes the right response from the audience.

A hallway in a children’s hospital, meant to cheer children who are there for surgery, and their parents

Besides the stated audiences of the children and their parents, there’s the hospital staff to consider. They have to work there every day, so while you want it to be a cheerful and pleasing design, you don’t want it to be too saccharine.

The walls of a new Milwaukee light transit station, meant to make the large blank wall appealing to quickly passing commuters.

We have commuters, tourists, business visitors, and residents who all have an interest in this design. It’s part of the neighborhood but it’s also part of a public utility. It needs to blend into the background but also be distinctive to the people who pass through.

Tiled benches in a zoo, in a new part where displays of non-fiction about the animals help visitors think about the animals in different ways

This is one that I expect to have a lot of fun with. The zoo patrons vary a lot, but an educational display like this should attract lots of school trips. So it needs to be whimsical enough to make kids feel welcome, but also have a serious quality to make stop and read.

When I think of tiled designs, I think of those obnoxious computer wallpapers that have been around (and haven’t changed) since Windows 3.0. So when I learned that the first assignment for my new Document Design class would be to create tiles, I was concerned. However, I was pleased when I read further to see that it’s a typography-based assignment. Yes, we’re creating patterns that can be used in obnoxious ways. But it’s also putting us in the mindset of seeing typefaces as pieces of art. I’m already pretty familiar with the basics of Illustrator so I’m not really concerned about the technical aspects of the project, but it will be a good challenge to start to associate personalities with fonts that I’m unfamiliar with. I tend to fall into the trap of “Helvetica says everything and nothing” so I hope to stretch my wings a little here.

Entertainment Weekly reported the following statement from Netflix:

Steve Swasey, vice president of corporate communicates at Netflix, says he’s well familiar with the user backlash. “Most of [the comments] have the same theme, which is ‘what was wrong with before?’ What we’re saying is we’ve tested this extensively, we know the vast, vast majority of people like this. It’s new, it’s easier, it’s cleaner.” When questioned about whether Netflix is planning on keeping the new interface despite the negative response, Swasey said, “Absolutely. We made it and tested it and researched it and tried it out and everywhere we tried it, it had a better reception. Otherwise we wouldn’t have made the change.”

My interpretation of this comment is that Netflix is standing by their usability testing and going forward with the rollout despite the backlash. There is some justification for this position. When Facebook introduced the News Feed, the complaints could be heard from space. Each iteration of Facebook’s layout resulted in a gaggle of groups full of users threatening to leave. But after a few days, the noise died down and people settled back into their routines. Netflix could have looked at these past examples and expected the inevitable push-back to disappear in short order.

But it’s fundamentally naïve to stand by user testing as the sole indicator of a design’s success or failure. As xkcd reminds us, even a 95% confidence interval is wrong 5% of the time, and you don’t need to watch too many episodes of Mythbusters to realize that small-scale testing doesn’t always translate to the real world. Many of the comments on the Netflix blog raise some legitimate usability issues. Swasey’s statement shows a general dismissal of these users because the testing showed it was fine. Even Facebook eventually listened to user concerns over privacy.

Usability testing is a fantastic way to find early interface issues and make sure that your users have a positive interaction with you. But it’s not an excuse to put blinders on. Of course there will always be resistance to change, but don’t assume that all negative feedback is just kvetching. If you have a failure like this, you’re better off with a mea culpa and a designer’s bruised ego than you are with weeks of bad press. Netflix should have said, ”We hear you and we’re working to improve it,” instead of “We know what we’re doing; deal with it.” A successful trial is no reason to commit 100% to a plan. To quote Conan O’Brien, “Don’t be afraid to fail.” At any stage of the game.

I love to see Universities making an effort to develop technology projects centered around students at large and not just closed-off research projects. This week, I’m happy to say that UW-Milwaukee is one of those Universities. I had the privilege of serving on this year’s Educational Technology Fee committee, and want to use this opportunity to talk about some of the cool new things coming to campus next year.

First, a little background: Starting around 1998, UW set aside 2% of tuition to increase student access to things like computer labs and IT services. They call it the “Student Technology Fee,” but UWM feels that they should be different, so they call it the Educational Technology Fee, or “Ed Tech.” Every year, various departments on campus dream up projects that fit this mission. A committee of five students and two faculty members decides which of these projects are the best.

This whole process normally flies way under the radar. We finished the hearings in just a handful of hours, but the total pool this year was over $3 million. The Student Association’s Senate Appropriations Committee dolls out a mere $640K by comparison, but receives a hundred times more scrutiny. Funny how that works.

Anyways, we had a weird situation this year. Normally people ask for more money than we have, so some projects don’t make the cut. But for the first time since anyone could remember, we had a surplus. This meant that every project received funding, and we even gave a little extra to those we thought could be bigger. Here are the highlights:

• The UWM Mobile app is well underway. I have to really commend Michael Hostad and his team for putting together something really slick, and for embracing open-source technology to save over $100,000 on licenses. This isn’t just a brochure for the University; you can see bus schedules, find open laundry machines, search the white pages, and other cool things. In the future, they hope to reach out to student organizations to develop new modules for the app and to possibly start a course in mobile development. Look for the app sometime next year for iOS and Android.

• The laptop checkout program at the library has been wildly successful, and this year it graduated to a continuing project, meaning you can expect it to stick around. So far they’ve hobbled together secondhand laptops and what few machines they could afford over the years, so the current fleet is in a state of general disrepair. Next year they’re getting a whole new set of laptops, and look for new trial programs involving the iPad. The Student Association has expressed its concern over the $10/hour late fee, but the staff is pretty lenient about that anyway, and they are open to segregating late fee revenues for purchasing new equipment.

• UITS will be purchasing a 96-core “supercomputer” for student projects. We already have a high performance computing cluster on campus, but researchers are the only ones who have access to it. Now we will have a system dedicated to student projects that is fully supported by on-campus resources. This removes the technical barriers of a cloud-based solution and creates more access to this important new technology.

• The stand-up kiosks throughout the Union are being replaced. The existing Sun-ray thin clients are really slow and functionally very limited (for example, you can’t open a Word document in an e-mail). We don’t have the network infrastructure for something like Windows Terminal Services, so we’re getting a bunch of iMacs instead. A bit luxurious, but maybe they’ll distract people from noticing how old the Union is.

• Students who get a virus on their computer can now have their systems cleaned for free. (There is a limit, so you still need to pay attention to your own security.) In the past, UITS offered this as a $100/incident service.

• Students will soon be able to print from their own computers (including off-campus), saving countless hundreds of hours spent shuffling flash drives and waiting for open spots in the lab. This will integrate with the existing print card system. UITS wasn’t sure yet if you would be able to retrieve your documents at any print station, or if you’d have to choose one ahead of time. Either way, this is a massive convenience. Look for it next Spring.

• The Elluminate group conferencing platform will be integrated into D2L and available for all students to use. I was pretty skeptical about this at first, since it looks like an overpriced, big version of Skype. But when I saw the videos of how PASS is using it for online tutoring and review sessions, I warmed up to it. PASS is also expanding their offerings substantially, especially online. I still don’t know if any students will use Elluminate on their own, and there are probably cheaper solutions from other vendors, but the request came down from UW System so there wasn’t much point in arguing the details.

Although not funded by new Ed Tech fees, I was also able to confirm that UITS is starting to roll out a new WiFi network with higher capacity and improved security. It will start this summer, focusing on the Union and the Library first. This is a long-overdue project, but one that I’m happy to see progressing.

The committee also changed how they check projects with continuing funding. There is now a three-year review cycle to make sure that they always get some oversight. I’m not sure why this wasn’t done from the beginning. These reviews will take place in the fall.

Even with all these new projects and all the existing ones, we had over $130,000 left over. In the fall, we’ll probably have another session to hear more experimental small projects, and will probably roll the bulk of the surplus into next year’s budget. I’m not sure why this was such a slow year for IT proposals, but it was a good chance for smaller departments to break into the arena and gain some traction for future requests.

This was a really positive experience and I hope that next year’s reviews go just as well. Leave a comment telling me which project you’re most excited about and what you think we should do with the surplus!

While out campaigning, several people asked what they would get if they voted for me. Here are a few points that I would like to work on if elected:

• Parking: This year, the residing party voted to increase segregated fees by $15 per student to make the newly acquired northwest quadrant garage free parking for all students. While I understand that such a taxation model is effective for many issues, this isn’t one of them. I’d like to lobby for a parking revenue model more in-line with other Milwaukee-area colleges and 4-year UW colleges, where commuting students pay a reasonable semester or annual fee for unlimited parking.
• Technology: The Wi-Fi system at UWM is overloaded and out of date. We’ve allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to UITS so they can upgrade the system, but the process is proceeding too slowly and we’re not seeing enough results. I want to fight for the secure, modern wireless infrastructure that one expects from a university of our size.
• Accountability: We constantly hear that without adequate funding, UWM can’t attract talented educators or researchers. But we don’t really have any statistics to support or oppose that argument. The existing course evaluation forms are deeply flawed and barely accessible to the public. We need a stronger way to correlate salary with performance. Does more funding mean better teachers? I want to find out.
• Fiscal Responsibility: Our Athletics Department is deeply in debt, but the program needs to grow to build campus morale. If we want strong Division-I sports on campus, we need to have strong oversight to make sure that Athletics is allocating the students’ money toward this purpose.

These are just a few of the issues that I have an opinion on, but I’d like nothing more than to hear what the students themselves have to say. Argue with me! Let me know what you think! That’s what I’m here to do, and I hope to have to opportunity to represent those opinions in the SA Senate next year. Remember to vote on April 12, and I appreciate your support!

This little program gives you nothing but a black screen with green block text and a blinking cursor, reminiscent of days on the Apple II. (You can customize the colors to something a little less retina-searing if you like.) Everything else on your screen is hidden. You have a real-time spell checker and a word/page count if you like, but that’s about it. No formatting options, footnotes, or file management. There’s no more temptation to play with margins or fonts. You don’t even have to think about hitting Save; it automatically saves every few seconds. In a room without many external distractions (TV, piles of magazines, cat, etc.) I found it very easy to become immersed in my writing and I felt like I was getting a lot more done.

Unfortunately, it’s still pretty easy to break out of your hermitage. Growl notifications (such as new instant messages or Twitter replies) are still visible over the editor window, so it’s not a perfect isolation. The menu bar reappears when you move the mouse to the top of the screen. And even the most Thoreau-like writers need to consult a reference source once in a while, so Alt-Tab remains active to quickly flip you back to the circus of the Internet. I have seen programs which take a more hardcore approach, refusing to let you exit or change windows until a timer has elapsed. But the point is not to actually cage you in; the point is to make you think you’re caged in.

If WriteRoom did a more complete job of hiding pop-up notifications and background sounds, it might be worth paying the $25. I did feel more productive in the minimalist environment, but I never quite achieved the literary zen I was hoping for. I suppose I could turn off my Wi-Fi, but at that point I could run Vim in full-screen mode and have the same effect. I’m now less skeptical about the concept of minimalist editors. Using WriteRoom has inspired me to seek out similar tools. But I can’t say I’ve found the product that does it right.