Broke my tooth on the twist cap
Barley breath rules!
Can’t afford real liquor
My beer’s flat, I’m not

via Canadian Design Resource

Next big thing: St-Patricks VS AllSaints Day. So You Think Your Saint Can Dance edition…

or Valentine’s and Labor Day… lol

Whatever the mashup holiday, people should always ensure that there’s plenty of bulls to outrun!!

What’s your holiday mashup?

Why do some people prefer Windows XP and Mac OS X over Windows Vista? After all, Vista is pretty and sleek and much more advanced than XP, and, in many areas, Mac OS X. Why is there so much love for Xbox, but none for Windows Mobile?
Why do BlackBerry users love their BlackBerrys, but the public is lukewarm about Palm devices?
Why is the Amazon Kindle, which is an unsophisticated, clunky, poorly designed gadget so popular with owners?
Why do people love plain, ugly Gmail?

Unfortunately, the author’s conclusion is that the failure point is lack of CONTROL… huh?? If that was true, people would be happily programming their VCRs using C#…

This is a very simplistic view of the role of UX on the success of a product. That’s where the magic mix needs to be considered:

User/chooser task completion
Emotional quotient
Branding / user identity

More BIG products flops here.

The iPod Phone would have voice/SMS and WiFi. That’s sweet!  I want one now.  I guess that’s the problem knowing that it’s coming, I can wait. Here I was just about to give in and buy me one of those iPhones with the expensive Rogers data plan.

Of course, iPod Phone isn’t all that different than the iPod Touch.  I purchased one of these when they first came out and a new one this year just because I like it so much (plus the new one has a built in speaker).  It’s absolutely amazing.  It’s the best toy I think I’ve ever owned, well except for perhaps that Speak and Spell I had as a kid.  They’re that cool, but of course, the iPod Touch can’t do all the things the iPhone can.

iPod Touch

• No camera, No Phone, No microphone (although there are rumors of a head set mic combo are in the works)
• Does have WiFi and nearly all the applications that the iPhone has.  Applications that need a microphone of course will not work on the iPod Touch.
• Buy once never pay again.

iPhone

• Has everything it’s great!  You can now even look at Adobe PDFs (with a third party application)!
• WiFi and mobile data.
• 3 Year contract (Rogers in Canada), monthly fees for cell and extra data plan.

iPod Phone

• Just like the iPhone without the mobile data connection to the internet (so you can’t surf the internet or send email unless there’s WiFi around).
• WiFi, voice / SMS
• Contract length unknown, $100 or less target price, monthly fees like a cell phone.

iPhone 3G Pro

• That’s like next year, and probably like in 3 years for up here in Canada.

Of course, somehow I do still have to pay the bills this year, this might be a challenging year for many of us financially.  Fortunately, for me, starting near zero means I don’t have that much to loose!  Well, other than my job of course.  Yeah, I’d better work extra hard this year!

That’s my new year’s resolution and I’m sticking with it for most of the winter.  Come spring I hope for good weather and the opportunity to continue to plan to get off the grid.

2. Better integrated designer tools for Air and Silverlight. This will lead to more Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with a shorter development cycle. Static HTML - circa 1999 - will finally be retired. Sorry, CLF…

3. Twitter. The 140 character gorilla will only grow stronger in 2009. It will become the premier customer experience tracking tool. UX researchers will adopt Twitter as one of their research methodologies.

4. The App Store and Apple’s iPhone SDK will gain popularity with software companies in the mid-market. Watch out for Network Management dashboards, Mobile BI, CRM-to-go, Poprtable Project Management…

5. OS Shakeup. Thanks to failures of Vista and Windows Mobile, the operating system game is now wide open. Nokia will invest a ton in Symbian. Some startup will finally build a Linux OS that people can actually use (Xandros, are you reading this?) IE will go Webkit and more compliant for the delivery of Azure. Oddly, Apple won’t offer much innovation this year…

Tune back in January 2, 2010 to see how wrong I was!

The basis for my prediction comes from an upcoming conference: the second annual World Future Energy Summit. The irony? It’s being held in Abu Dhabi, second largest city in the United Arab Emirates - the epicenter of middle-eastern oil. It’s hosted by General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan - Crown prince of Abu Dhabi and supreme commander of the UAE army!

Despite the odd optics, the attendees and presenters are impressive. I think it’s a sign that there’s now a business case for alternative energy and the deep pockets of big oil will want to participate instead of disrupt.

As an added bonus, Ottawa-based solar techonology startup Menova will be there…

So, if you happen to be in a desert on a horse with no name on January 19-21 - check it out! Say hi to the general for us!

Apple’s Macbook introduced a large multitouch pad - until I tried it I wouldn’t believed its power. No extra button - single touch, press down to click. Right click - two fingers on - press down. Scroll - point into a web frame and scroll two fingers vertical - or horizontal. Perfect.

Just perfect. Coming to a Dell in 2011!

Electroencephalographs were first used on humans by Hans Berger in 1920 in an effort to understand epilepsy.

For basic cognitive research, this technique has a high margin of error - reflecting mostly in changes in stimuli which make causality interpretive at best. EEG results are also very imprecise due to the filtering caused by the scalp and scull. More accurate results can be obtained by drilling holes for intracranial EEGs - but that’s a bit intrusive for marketing purposes!

The fact that a UX company advertises EEGs as a proper method for evaluating a brand’s effectiveness should be cause for close scrutiny!

I think the management of branding in product design will be increasingly important in the coming year. The impact of customer-centrered design is a major factor. Predictions? Branding will no longer be solely owned by a marketing department. The brand will reflect more than technology, and come to represent quantifiable value propositions. Branding will be core to the entire product lifecycle.

In a recent article, the Brand Management Journal foresees an evolution in the role of branding:

1. The focus in branding is shifting from creating compelling promises to fulfilling those promises in a meaningful and authentic way.

2. The ownership of the brand is shifting from marketing to the entire organization. It is even being shared by stakeholders outside the organization.

3. The place of the brand in business processes is shifting from the end to the beginning, especially in the processes that deal with innovation and creation of offerings.

4. The content of the brand is shifting from stressing organizational strengths to framing a vision of the relationship the organization aspires to have with its stakeholders.

Warning potentially addictive website!  This is a sticky web app you’ll want to keep playing with.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Let’s get Santa Clause ’cause;
Santa Clause has a red suit
He’s a communist
And a beard, and long hair
Must be a pacifist
What’s in the pipe that he’s smoking?
Mister Claus sneaks in your home at night.
He must be a dope fiend, to put you up tight…

If you’re bored with robot chat, you can now chat with real live Zombies!  Yes, you heard that right, zombie chat is available here at SensoryMetrics.  Unfortunately, zombies don’t chat 24/7.  In fact, they’re terribly unpredictable.  Last I heard a zombie should be chatting tonight between 10:49 and 11:23pm.

The zombie photographed here by flexgraph was participating in the famous “Zombies ate Paris” walk of October 26 2008.  Rumour is that he left his iPhone at home.

Please keep in mind that the zombies available for chat might not look exactly as depicted.  Zombies may in fact have a hard time using the keyboard.  So spelling mistakes are manditatory.  Please do not mention the word ‘brains’ while chatting.

Your customers can ask a question and a robot chat response will come back.  Limited as you can imagine it might be, but functional interaction nevertheless. It might be just enough to keep your customers’ interest.  If anyone out there has tried this service, we’d love to hear your testimonials.

The completely unrelated animated avatar Joan creeps me out and I would be very hesitant to buy something from her.

Update: Cute zombie chat girl upgrade feature soon to be available.

This Dutch coffee Shop - aptly named CoffeeCompany renamed their wifi access “BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate” to remind their long-term patrons to support the shop. Apparently the riff-raff were settling in for surfing sessions without buying enough coffee.

This can work elsewhere!

I’m renaming my LinkSys “TellYourVisitorsNotToParkOnMyLawn”.

In crowded urban centers, the opportunities are endless… “TurnDOWNiTunesVolume”?

What would you broadcast to your internet-pirating neighbors?

Via the most awesomest and plaidest blog

I call these “userhood statements” - platitudes about design goals that few would disagree with, yet lacking in any specificity for implementation.   

Oranges different than apples.  World peace different than saving the whales.  Paper is different than web.  How?

• The Web is about links. Print is about units of content. A 500-word article, a book, a magazine, a report. Print writing is often a solitary task. The Web is about linking. We’re linking one piece of content to another. We’re linking the consumer of the content with its producer.
• The Web is a functional, task-oriented place. We come to the Web to do, and we already have the context when we get to the website. Print lends itself to length and because print is physically going out to the reader, it tends to have lots of contextual language. The Web is bare, hermetic, pared-down-an ugly but useful place.
• The Web is about the customer trying to find the content, rather than the content trying to find the customer. The Web turns much of advertising and marketing on its head. You must know the words your customers use when they search. Otherwise you are lost.
• The Web is about permanence. Over time, most print content degrades, dissolves, disappears. Try finding that brochure you published in print in 2003. But if you put it up on your website, it’s still there. This is the great blind spot of web teams. Review and remove.
• The Web is a process. Print is an event. You get it all together and then you publish. And then it’s over. Job done. On the Web it’s job begun. The print and IT culture of launch and leave is a ruinous strategy on the Web. Great websites involve continuous improvement of your top tasks.
• The Web is about the customer. It is not about the control of elites. It is about the wisdom of crowds, the collective intelligence. At the center of the Web is the customer, not the organization. It is about the things the customer wants to do, not the things the organization wants to do to the customer.

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