Current applications of g-speak at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and universities:

• Financial services
• Telepresence
• Network operations centers
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Military and intelligence
• Automotive
• Natural resource exploration
• Data mining and analytics
• Medical imaging
• High-touch retail
• Trade shows and theatrical presentations
• Consumer electronics interfaces

It will be interesting to see the evolution of Oblong’s solution and if they can integrate with other operating environments.

http://oblong.com/

Disassembled Rubik

I am now actively engaged in redesigning a website for a government entity that in its current state is nothing short of a Rubik’s Cube. I am now in process of breaking the cube apart in order to put it back together again. Here is an outline of my plan to improve the website user experience:

Principles Based Audit – “Walk” through the existing website and identify interaction issues by qualifying them against a list of design principles. The design principles are adapted from Cooper’s book “About Face 3″.

Personas – Idenitify who the target audience is and what activities they are engaged in. Identify each persona’s motivations and intent; identify value(s) that can improve user interaction with the website.

Information architecture – Taxonomies & Vocabularies. Discover, break, and redesign how the content is organized by leveraging user goals and stories.

Stories - Interaction narratives that illustrate how a persona uses the application to perform an action.

Principles Influenced Changes – UI sketches, paper prototypes, wireframe clickthroughs.

Brand Words – Leaning towards “Mature”, “Secure”, “Stable”.

How do we want the audience to feel? – “Supported”, “Guided”, “Understood”.

Visual Language – Comps (a.k.a., mockups)

Integrate Visual Design with New Interaction – High-fidelity comps of primary and secondary layouts and component interactions.

Integrate New Interaction with Technology – Support the Developers as they hook it all in.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat – Continuously improve.

iInventory - Created by Thomas Kilmer, this app was designed and used for hurricane Ike. The intended use is for documenting valuables around the home or office.

Oracle Business Approvals for Managers - Requires a licensing of Oracle Business Approvals Connector. Managers can use this app to review status on assigned tasks, access reports and other data objects that support decision-making.

iChart EMR - Designed by Physicians, for Physicians. This Electronic Medical Record system can be used by Doctors to keep track of patients, patient data, order prescriptions. Since it is a mobile app it can be used in Hospital and/or Homecare settings.

Screenshot Gallery

Kanban - Feature development is streamlined by moving features through a kanban ”pull” system. Kanban systems can take many forms. Most kanbans are comprised of two primary components: units (i.e., Goal) and cards (i.e., features and user stories). For more information about using kanban systems for software development, check out Scrum-ban | Lean Software Engineering.

At kaizenconf 2008, Jef Newsom gave a talk titled Driving Toward the Goal: Standard Work in Software Development. Jef’s facilitation style is very much about getting people into action. To illustrate a kanban pull system, Jef used a presidential election. The goal, Vote for a Presidential Candidate. The primary actor (what Jef calls a ‘protagonist’), Valerie the Voter. (read more about Jef’s talk)

For the purpose of illustration, the example from the talk at kaizenconf was very useful to show how “standard work” (a.k.a., user stories) moved through the units. However, for Interaction Designers a much deeper understanding of user goals must be attained.

Activity Models - By utilizing Activity Models as an analysis method for identifying user goals and generating features, Interaction Designers can populate a product backlog. Also, artifacts produced by Interaction Designers during activity modeling can support subsequent units in the kanban system.

Kanban "pull" system with Activity Model populating the backlog.

A synthesis of activity theory framework and user mental models, Activity Models introduce a highly generative design method for analysis and discovery. Activity Models can be created as immediately as analysis and discovery of user activity is needed. However, some groundwork is required. First, Interaction Designers must know the ‘who?’ within a context or domain. Starting with personas and conducting user interviews—using non-directed interview techniques—data is gathered to help create an activity model. (more about activity models in upcoming article)

Activity Modeling - Artifacts and Process (diagram by Sharon J Cichelli)

Reactable: tangible multi-touch interface

“At the seashore, between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are now facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenship in the physical and digital worlds. Our windows to the digital world have been confined to flat rectangular screens and pixels, or ‘painted bits.’ While our visual senses are steeped in the sea of digital information, our bodies remain in the physical world. The vision of Tangible Bits is to provide seamless coupling between these two very different worlds of bits and atoms.” — Hiroshi Ishii

Source: Tangible Bits by Howard Rheingold