I came across this video while reading a question on the UXExchange. If you’ve never done usability testing for your product, I highly recommend watching it. This is a model example of “think out loud” usability testing of the Wizzgo website.

The goal in usability testing, if you’re not familiar with it, is to have a person perform some scenario while you watch. In the example above, they’re clearly asking the participant to try and find pricing on their site. You want them to “think out loud,” so you can gain insight as to what they’re thinking, and what they’re expecting. When doing many of these tests, you can start to draw correlations in the expectations of your audience. You can then cater your product’s functionality to meet them.

It’s always important to record these sessions. You want to be able to review them for things you missed. You also what to be able to review yourself, and see how your presence, or your assistance influenced the participant. They are likely using Morae, or some other similar software to record the test. I, myself, have done something similar on the cheap using Camtasia Studio, an Axis network camera, and VNC.

Saw this one engadget this morning. You can read the original news article here. Most “geeks” are seeing this game as an epic fail, but I think it’s kind of inventive.

All jokes aside, it’s kind of an interesting user experience their creating. Where before you had an inanimate doll, you know have a full blown computer powered brain. With the accelerometers, it could detect if you’re holding your baby wrong, if you’re trying to sooth your baby, etc. I like the use of the speaker in the remote too. Now, you’re giving audible feedback. It would be cool if they could get putting in a bottle in it’s mouth to trigger one of the remotes buttons, so you know when it’s being fed.

For little girls/boys who like to play mother/father, I think the remote interface has some great potential. I think where it might fail, is in the game portion itself. If the game is task oriented, I don’t think it would be as enjoyable as if it was just open ended, and continued to interact with the doll as the child plays in the same room as the Wii. It will be interesting to see the experience this product creates.

Here’s a new study that’s being worked on, the idea of using muscle gestures to interface with computers. This is clearly a case of research driving plausibility. But, I like the fact that they’re using use case scenarios to display functionality. Just think, in a few years, this could all be sewn right into a shirt or jacket, that interfaces with your phone, car, whatever. Pretty exciting stuff.

Still, this does add a layer of discontinuity. There are arbitrary correlations between touching your pinkie, and skipping a song track. Or, making a fist to open a car door. I see a lot of parallels being formed here, that relate to Donal Norman’s issues with telephone systems.

If you’ve had the G1 since its initial release, chances are you’ve heard of, or downloaded the game Zombies Run. The game has to be played in real time and space, so many people expecting a plane flight game were disappointed. But, of you want to make your morning jog interesting, the game can be a log of fun. The one thing that the game lacks, is realism.

Zombies Run AR (augmented reality) would make the game a little more interesting. Imagine a blend of the current Zombies Run, and Layar. So, by holding up your phone and looking through the camera view, you would actually see the invisible brain eating swarms chasing you.

Zombies Run AR could also incorporate the crazy virtual reality goggles, and solidify your geeky-ness.

One of the magical moments that I think is lost with online dating, is the chance encounter. You don’t get to have that special feeling of meeting someone when your out with friends, grocery shopping, having lunch on your work break, whatever. The Blind Date application would facilitate a way of reintroducing that experience.

How it might work: a person would leave the application running on their phone. The application would track where they are, and then notify them that they are some proximity away from a compatible individual. If they decide to try a chance meeting, it would allow them to hone in on them. When they get close enough, it could provide them with a picture so they know who they’re looking for. Inversely, the person who is trying to be met, could also be notified, and accept or reject the encounter.

The goal would be to allow single people to chance upon a compatible partner, rather than actively seek them. It might also provide a level of excitement and anticipation knowing that at any moment throughout their daily routine, they could become part of a blind date.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m way behind on my goal of 52 apps in 52 weeks. I’m going to try and catch up this week, and post a bunch of ideas.

A few weeks ago, I was up in the New York Finger Lakes Wine Region touring wineries. I was the designated driver, so I only tasted a few wines. Still, I found myself loosing track of the wines I liked as we hopped from one to the other.

The winery buddy would help you with your wine tour. It could:

• Scan barcodes of wines you like, and archive them.
• Check wines for recent awards in competitions
• Compare winery prices and inventory against those at your local liqueur store.
• Help you plan a route through wine country, so you can visit as many as possible.
• Track how many tastings you’ve had to keep you sober.
• Allow for some synergy with your recipe assistant application, and suggest wines that would best go with your favorite meals.
• Track your purchases, and hold you to some predetermined credit limit, so you don’t overspend in your judgment weakened state.

The goal would be to create a tour with a unified experience, to what is largely a highly competitive and privately owned winery area. It would assist people in tasting and purchasing wines, who may know little about how to go about it, and give them an enjoyable tour and confidence that they’ll like what they’re buying.

One of the things my grandma struggled with in her old years, was when – what – how to – and how much medication to take. There are many solutions out there that help the elderly with this burden, but none (outside of a person) that can offer a dialog and step-by-step assistance. As more and more accustom cell phone users enter old age, a phone based solution for medication assistance may become viable.

The medication assistant would be a fully autonomous application that would help elderly with their medication. It could:

• Scan the barcode of each pill jar, and automatically build a pill schedule and alerts based one the pills instructions.
• Provide images with accurate sizes and colors of each pill they need to take.
• Alert them of what they need to take, and how.
• Report that they took their medication to family and doctors.
• Provide answers to frequently asked questions, and a way of communicating with someone if they need more assistance.

The goal would be to create an application that’s simple to use, provides necessary alerts without crying wolf, requires minimal interaction to configure and use, and gives a person peace of mind and confidence that they are doing everything correctly.

One of the few magazine subscriptions that I have is for Vegetarian Times. It was one of the first things I did when becoming more vegetarian in my diet. Without it, I don’t think I would have made it, not knowing all the yummy recipes available that don’t require meat. One of the issues I have with the magazine, is an easy way to extract – store – catalog – and use recipes from each issue.

The Recipe Assistant would be every food magazine lovers companion. It would allow a person to easily extract and use the different recipes from each issue. It could:

• Scan the barcode of the issue and populate the application with all of that issues recipes.
• Help you build a grocery list of all the ingredients you need.
• Cross reference other recipes that use similar ingredients, so you know what else to make with that 2 cups of left over almond milk.
• Sync with your magazines advertisers and give you coupons for items in your grocery list.
• Walk you through each step of your recipe, and provide a timer, ready to go, for that 30 minute bake time.
• Help you build a breakfast – lunch – dinner calendar of all the food you plan to prepare for the week.
• Flag your favorite recipes, and offer suggestions.

I know other recipe applications have come out. But, I haven’t seen one with this kind of synergy. The goal would be to interface as much as possible with how a person uses a food magazine, and facilitate the processes of making each meal from it.

Here’s another application idea.

Most car accidents are only minor fender benders, that don’t involve people getting seriously injured. But, they can be extremely stressful situations, and also very confusing as to what information you need to get from others involved. Wouldn’t it be great if your phone could help you through that process?

I propose an accident assistant application. It would step you through simple questions, and give you advice as to what steps you should take, and what information you should collect. For instance:

• It could tell you to take pictures of the damage, accident area, other driver, etc. and catalog each photo.
• It could call the police for you, not that 911 is all that difficult, but a single “call police” button my simplify things and be comforting to a flustered individual.
• It could record your description of the accident, while it’s still fresh in your mind.
• It could photograph the other person’s insurance and drivers information.
• It could even bundle all the information together and submit the report to your insurance provider for you.

The goal of the application would be to make the user feel they’ve covered all their bases, collected all necessary information, notified everyone they needed to, and can confidently go about their day without any lingering “I should have done…,” or “why didn’t I do…” question/concerns in their head.

A while back I finished Steve Mulder’s book, The User Is Always Right, a practical guide to creating and using personas for the web. After finishing it, it kind of sat around for a few weeks, but has recently become part of my right hand. The chapters on qualitative and quantitative data gathering have been incredibly helpful.

Recently, my friend Justin and I were considering the development of a web application for the Boy Scouts of America. This was a great opportunity to put the topic of data gathering to work. In the end, we set up a meeting with a local council member. Was it ever an eye opener.

For starters, we learned that much of what we perceived to be useful from the outside, looking in, wasn’t. The things that we thought up that were useful, were already done by other companies (poorly, I might add, but still existed). And last, our meager reasonable price point ended up being way outside the normal Boy Scout budget. In the end, for the cost of a cup of coffee, we learned enough to scrap the project. Which, I might add, is a lot cheaper than building out something and having it fail.

“Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any.”
~ Norman R. F. Maier

Anyway, excellent book. I highly recommend it for learning about approaches for designing ANY kind of product; whether it’s for the web, desktop, service, whatever.