Arzumanyants' Blog

Friends of the Livermore Library - Analysis

2009-10-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

Friends of the Livermore Library Website Redesign

To redesign the website we looked at different successfully designed websites, and tried to analyze what features could potentially inspire the new Friends of Library website. The main challenge is that original website has a lot of content which needs to be well organized, easy to find, attractive and user friendly. The main goal is to simplify the content of the website, make it more user friendly and attractive.

There are few websites which we found inspirational:

http://bakingforgood.com/ (colors)

http://www.jhische.com/design.html (great images)

http://www.virgin.com/ (well-organized content)

AND MUCH MORE:

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/02/11/100-best-web-galleries-around-for-your-inspiration/

http://www.designfridge.co.uk/

http://cssscoop.com/

http://www.divinecss.com/

http://www.groupon.com

San Francisco Public Library - User Interactions

2009-09-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Public Library is indeed one of the greatest places in the city. It's located in San Francisco's Civic Center, on Larkin Street at Grove. There are 6 floors, plenty of windows and day light.
There are always many people doing different things: using library desktops, reading, working, browsing through magazines and taking pictures.
It's quiet, beautiful and spacious. Green lamps on the tables, rooms for business meetings. Contemporary style mixed with traditional. New computers and old books, glass and wood, daylight and the light from green lamps. This place attracts people of all ages and occupations. I've seen couples, students, people using computers, reading, wandering (just like me), feeling good...
It's a great place to clear up your mind and fill it with something better...

more photos here

MM3311 Developing User Persona

2009-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

The main target audience for the project is really broad. Anybody interested in creative arts, innovations, creative thinking and self-development. Though it's open to people of any age, it would most likely be interesting for the adults 18 +. Students, artists, writers, people of any creative profession would be the main target audience.

So let's have a look at some PERSONAS.

Raphaella.

23 y.o. born in Lebanon, moved to London in age of 5. She's a student in one of the art colleges in London, her major is Branding and Public Relationships. Besides art, and design, she is interested in history, philosophy, and human rights. She lives with her parents and an younger brother. Rafaela learned how to play piano, but almost forgot how to play. She likes being physically active, but doesn't have too much time to go to gym. She is jogging twice a week and tries to walk. Shopping is another favorite activity. She likes to observe consumers and keep up with fashion trends. She read quite a few books about creativity, and realized there were so much more to learn. She'd be interested in checking the website because it would have a lot of current trends, speakers and references to other books.

to be continued...

MM3311 FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL

2009-08-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

The final project I'm interested in creating is a website dedicated to creativity. I always been interested on how artists/scientists/inventors/writers conceive the great ideas. What motivates them to create? What does it take to develop a plot, composition or even conceptualizing an idea?

My infatuation with this idea is what brought me to investigate further. The brain is the most complex organ in the human body, and perhaps the most remarkable. I believe that by researching and harnessing the capabilities, I will be able to optimize and be more efficient. I hope that the website would become helpful for anybody who's searching the ways to develop personally or professionally.

The content of the website consists of different articles by various writers who dedicated their research and development of the creative strategies. The website has a collection of the techniques, articles, exercises, and videos by different speakers.

TARGET AUDIENCE

The main target audience are people interested in creative arts, innovations, creative thinking and self -development. It's open to people of any age, mostly adults 18 +. Students, artists, writers, people of any creative profession would be the main target audience.

TECHNOLOGY NEEDED

Photoshop
Illustrator
Dreamweaver
Flash
WordPress

RELATED WEBSITES

http://www.mycoted.com/Main_Page

http://www.creativethinking.net/WP01_Home.htm

http://www.danpink.com

http://www.ted.com/

MM3311. Heuristic Evaluation

2009-07-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

Heuristic Evaluation

The Heuristic Evaluation for the websites www.omg.yahoo.com
and www.accesshollywood.com.
Both websites are dedicated to celebrity news, gossips, photographs. I found OMG.Yahoo.com being very well-designed and organized website, which follows many heuristic principles. At the same time www.accesshollywood.com seems to be poorly designed and quite confusing.

Visibility of system status

Is status feedback provided continuously (eg progress indicators or messages)?

www.omg.yahoo.com continuously provides the status feedback. The home page is structured the way that the main links are the photos with the headline. On rollover the user can see the button which indicates if the link is an article ("read"), the photos ("photos") or the videos. The user has a choice to read the full article ("read more") or go back to the beginning ("thanks, I'm done"), to watch the video or to see the photos. If the user has already seen the photos there is a check mark which indicates that.
There is a greeting message in the upper right corner which greets the user or offer to sign in.

www.accesshollywood.com also provides the opportunity to "read more" for each article too, but does not indicate if the user has already visited the link. The site does not allow to create a profile or at least it's very hard to notice due to the unstructured information.

Match between system and real world

Both websites use phrases, terminology and concepts familiar to the user. The information on OMG.yahoo.com is presented in a simple, natural and logical order, though www.accesshollywood.com is definitely lacking of simplicity and the logic is very hard to follow.

User control and freedom

www.omg.yahoo.com allows users to easily go back to the home page. The logo functions as a link to the home page and the main navigation is always located at the same place. Also the user can look through the related articles, photos or videos which are located on the right side of the current page, have large thumbnails and easy to notice. The user is able to read and leave the comments. The user can print the photo, share the info on Facebook, hide/show comments, or report abuse.

www.accesshollywood.com lacks of all these functions, there is no log in. The logo which is located at the top left corner DOES NOT provide the link to the home page! The user does not have any control over the advertisement which starts automatically almost on every page.

Consistency and standards

The use of terminology, controls, graphics and menus consistent throughout both of the websites. Though there is a consistent look and feel to the www.accesshollywood.com interface, the site looks very busy and overloaded with the information. Every time the user is looking through the photos in the photo gallery, the whole page is reloading. Besides extra loading time, it looks very unattractive, because they can see the background gradient image appearing and disappearing.

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Both websites do not allow for a range of user expertise. They seem to have the same level of difficulty for all users.

Aesthetic and minimalist design

OMG.Yahoo.com has very simple, intuitive and pleasing design. It contains great amount of information but it's very well organized, and presented in a very simple way. The website free from irrelevant, unnecessary and distracting information. The icons are clear, buttons labeled, large and is the use of graphic controls is obvious.

www.accesshollywood.com is quite opposite. It's full of information, irrelevant images, advertising and constantly moving animation, what is extremely distracting. It's very difficult to focus on anything specific. It makes the user very overwhelmed.

Help users recover from errors

I did not find any error messages. Both sites have avoided errors and error messages.

Help and documentation

There are links to the documentation and help on the bottom of the page for both websites.

CBT Final Project

2009-06-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Final Project here

Creative Vending Machines

2009-06-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of ways CBT is used in everyday life. ATM, BART ticket stands, kiosks and vending machines to name a few. We got used to see them and know that most of the time the instructions on the screen are very easy to follow, illustrated and have an option to choose different language. Usually the descriptions are very short, presented step by step, and there are options to go back to the main menu.
Here are some creative uses of vending machines from Japan (found on-line).

1) Flower bouquet vending machine

2) Coffee Vending Machine

3) Hello Kitty Popcorn

4) Snickers Vending Machine!

5) Coca-Cola Vending Machine

6) Smart Vending Machine. It does not give you a car right away but the brochures with the information about the dealerships.

7)Umbrella Vending Machine!

8) Book Vending Machine

Resources:

http://www.photomann.com/japan/machines/

http://ow.ly/d3RX

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/08/the-worlds-weir/

Trip to SF Academy of Science

2009-05-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

The trip to Academy of Science was great. My second attempt to go on free Wednesday was not too successful. The line was huge and I decided to come back the next day. It turned out to be great, since there were still a lot of people I could only imagine how crowded it was the day before.
Academy of Science amazes immediately. It's located a very beautiful location full of light. The building is extremely contemporary, transparent and organic. The walls are made of glass therefore there is obviously lots of light and air. The place I went to right away was aquarium. I'm absolutely fascinated by the underwater world; I was excited to be able to see the sea creatures. The Aquarium was wonderful: dark space with blue lights, aquariums and different screens which play the movies about different sea creatures. The music and the voice telling you the facts about the animals were a nice addition to already fantastic views. The walls were huge fish tanks. Inside they were built like a cave so it really felt like you are underwater. The collection is great, from 80 years old huge see bass and alligator fish to jellyfish and piranias... There were also a show room where you can touch animals. The workers explain you how to do it and answer any questions. So the aquarium offers different levels of interactivity. You can watch, touch, hear, interact and read about the sea world. It's learning
After spending almost 2 hours in the aquarium and absolutely loving it I moved to other sections of the AS. Through the exhibitions I notice the tendency of "show not tell". The signs were fairly large and clear, with multiple images, screens with the videos and short description. I think one of the reasons of the success of AS is that they create an experience. People come there to have great time, be entertained and maybe educated. The creators obviously do realize everyone consumes too much information everyday, and made it easier for people to understand the importance of knowing the earth, knowing that it is beautiful, amazing and very fragile. They make you fall in love with it, and then teach you in a playful way about the basic rules of how anyone can contribute to keeping this planet cleaner and safer.

Here are some photos

eLearning. Adobe Captivate

2009-04-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

What is Adobe Captivate?
According to the official site Adobe® Captivate® 4 software helps corporate trainers, educators, and business users design engaging, interactive multimedia and Adobe Flash® Player compatible presentations online that quickly communicate knowledge visually and effectively — without skills in HTML or the Adobe Flash authoring application.

Incorporating the best presentation elements of Microsoft PowerPoint slide shows; web, video, audio, and Flash Player compatible content; and an easy drag-and-drop interface, Adobe Captivate 4 is a new, better way to create timesaving multimedia training, slide shows, and skill acquisition presentations.

Taking eLearning to the next level

Adobe Captivate software has emerged as the market-leading rapid authoring tool for creating professional eLearning content with advanced interactivity, software and scenario simulations, and robust quizzes — all without programming knowledge or multimedia skills. The software has garnered raves from customers and industry publications alike, and its awards include a CODiE Award for Best Corporate Learning Solution, a Business Software Satisfaction Award, and a Technology & Learning Award of Excellence.

What could be done?

* SWF commenting

* Round-trip PowerPoint workflow

* Professional project templates

* Customizable widgets such as games & quizzes

* Text-to-speech functionality

* SCORM/AICC/Pens/508 Support

* Visual Scripting, Branching & Scoring

~Import Adobe Captivate 4 projects directly into Flash CS3 or CS4 Professional for additional enhancement, ActionScript coding, or integration into a larger Flash project.

~Take advantage of ActionScript 3.0 publishing to bring Adobe Flex content into your Adobe Captivate projects, and to embed Adobe Captivate movies in your Flex content.

~Edit AVI files of your Adobe Captivate content in Adobe Premiere Pro software.

~Create PDF Portfolios that bring together files of varying formats in a single PDF document, complete with navigation and a customized look and feel, for easy viewing via free Adobe Reader software.

~Send Adobe Captivate audio files to Adobe Soundbooth CS4 software for additional editing and enhancement, and then bring them back into Adobe Captivate.

With all these exciting information the question is why should the developers know how to use Adobe Captivate? Here is some interesting article about the future of education.

Workforce learning in 2019: Finding patterns in a Clouded Crystall Ball

elearning,Collaboration,NetBooks,Performance Support,GenX,GenY,Immersive Learning,rapid elearning

John Medina in his keynote address at the eLearning Guild November 2008 conference talked about how the fundamentals of how a person learns do not change decade on decade – in fact, it is an evolutionary process. Believing in John (and I am not suggesting that we should not) leads us to a scenario where the workplace learning environment will not be significantly different than what we see today. However, our knowledge of this learning process is very far from complete. As our understanding of our learning processes improves, expect to see changes taking place to take advantage of the same.

Crystal ball gazing is hazardous in the best of times, and in the current uncertain times, the ball does seem particularly cloudy. But, let us indulge ourselves and try and look for patterns in the clouds.

Changing demographics

In 2019, the US workplace will be 10 years “younger”! Meaning folks who are too young to enter the workforce in 2009, would have entered by 2019, and the current old folks would have retired. While this change is very similar to any previous decade, the next 10 years bears special significance.

Currently, the digital natives of the GenY generation (less than 24 years of age) constitute around 14% of the US civilian workforce. In 2019 this percentage would have jumped to 35-40%. Importantly, more than 50% of the middle management positions would be held by digital natives, compared to none today, the remaining being filled by the digital citizens of the GenX generation. 30-50% of the managers in 2019 would be having of them having online profiles, and actively participate in social networking. So learning decision makers along with learning consumers will not only understand the technology in learning, but will actually “get” it.

So expect to see continued increase in eLearning in the learning blend (the blend will remain), with increasing focus on embedded learning and performance support systems. I will also stick my neck out and suggest that the current economic downturn will drive a trend of measuring learning effectiveness through business metrics (sales, churn, defect rates, opex etc.) and not simply through LMS scorecards. And this trend will endure. I would expect to see (actually like to see) integration of LMS with ERP systems in larger enterprises, or a totally new brand of talent tracking architecture.

Education

The situation in the education world would however be different. Studies conducted by EDUCAUSE Center For Applied Research (ECAR) on undergraduate students in US found that the number of students wanting extensive use of IT in their courses remaining fairly constant at around 22% when comparing with data collected in 2004, 2006, 2007. So the GenY digital natives seem to continue to have a preference for the human-touch in colleges. Remembering John’s comment at the beginning, I expect that this trend not to change significantly over the next 10 years.

At the same time the studies did indicate that seniors have higher preference for IT. These students are now more comfortable in their colleges, and are able to take advantage of the benefits of eLearning namely self-paced, collaboration with others etc. In the coming years expect this trend to accelerate whereby seniors, post-graduate students will embrace eLearning in a big way and expect the colleges to facilitate this process through improved CMS(Course management systems) and collaboration platforms.

So expect the growth on online universities and universities offering online courses to continue. The challenge here is content creation. Universities may opt out of packaged content, as content will be king and the key differentiator between offerings in 2019 as delivery of these courses become commoditized. While current level of online content creation at most universities remain less than satisfactory, as GenX and GenY increase their presence in the faculty, expect to see a positive impact on content volume.

Authoring Tools

GenY have grown up with rich-media and have a significant difference in attitude from the Gen X. While sharing with an audience, GenX will pay special attention to try and create a seminal document which will be appreciated by ALL in the audience. As I study my daughter’s generation (age 11) I am simply amazed by their willingness to share anything and everything they creates with scant regard for acceptance by the WHOLE audience – they are trying to make connections with people who like their work and simply ignore others who do not. This not only results in a higher inclination to share (of course it does, as has been well documented), but it leads to a greater NEED to create.

People will want to create and communicate and do this quickly and without “due process”. Authoring tools will need to support mashups, but I suspect that tools themselves need to be created as a mash-up of tools. Each constituent tool in the final mash-up relate to a specific media (text, audio, video etc.) and addressed a specific skill level. Not really far-fetched as a technology – look at Microsoft Office or some elements of the Adobe Creative suites. The challenge (technical and business) would be to allow users to do the mash-up instead of the vendors. Will this happen – I do not know. But, tools will drive democratizing of content creation, will drive rapid creation, will have an online presence, and will be available as service.

Mobility and Learning

netBook sales penetration.png Netbooks had a market share of 19% of the laptop market (around 10%of all PCs) in the December 2008, starting at less than 1% in July 2008. This is indeed phenomenal growth, partly driven by the economy, and partly because they provide a solution which is right-sized to the demand – wireless internet access, web browsing and ability to run web applications running on the cloud, and a 7-12” screen. 97% of these run Windows XP though Linux and Google’s Android will make an impact in the coming years. The pricing starts at $299 – and this is ONLY the first year for NetBooks! Expect the price to fall below $100 soon as demand picks up.

NetBooks will have a tremendous impact on how learning is delivered – more specifically how mLearning evolves. The larger screen tackles the problem of the form-factor that sometimes paralyzes mLearning decision making. Content can now be effectively created for the desktop and with little or no change be effectively delivered across a mobile platform.

On the other hand, we have iPhone at around $250. There are a whole range of offerings from NOKIA, HTC which will compete in this space and providing fresh opportunities to mLearning content creation and deployment.

So mLearning will thrive happen in 2019, but it will be simply called eLearning.

Immersive Learning

This is also known as serious games in popular literature. I expect the term “serious games” to be extinct by 2019, and possibly the only prophesy I am willing to put my money on. Calling a learning style as serious games sucks out all the fun from learning and raises images of solemn monks in a far-away monastery reciting mantras, chants, hymns.

Learning through immersive simulation is getting a lot of airwaves, but not much action on the ground. There is good logic to support that GenX and Boomers are challenged in their ability to navigate a virtual 3D immersive world. But, as I mentioned earlier, the audience is changing whereby the GenY generation has been bought up on a healthy diet of immersive casual/core gaming.

There are some challenges that need to be overcome on the creation side. Immersive games today can be quite expensive to create and difficult to maintain in-house. However, I expect to see continued development of templatized approach in creation where it would be possible to create immersive games without first conquering the steep 3D curve. Virtual world are already investing in technology which will allow a wider audience to participate in their world, though I feel adoption of virtual worlds in learning will continue to be flattish.

Collaboration and what -do-we-call-that Learning

Is it not surprising that we are struggling to provide a name to the most natural form of learning that all humans participate in? We have called it informal learning (do not trivialize learning, we are told!), then some non-formal learning (can we define something by what it is not !). Companies has already trademarked Natural learning, Organic learning so we cannot use them. Then, there is a theory on social learning. So, what do we call it ? Let us call it social learning for sake of convenience.

A big push will come from an increasing out-of-office workforce. While the number of people working from home-offices has been on the rise for some time, this economy will give it a definitive push. Companies like IBM claim to already have around 40% of their workforce not working from an office desk. Once companies figure out a way to make this model work, it makes economic sense to continue.

What will this decentralized workplace learning look like? It has flavors of mobile. But, the people are not really mobile, but simply remote to one another. The social learning across cubicles, at the watering holes will no longer be possible. A different kind of social learning model needs to evolve to keep these remote folks remain connected. Effective Multi-channel video conferencing will become necessary, but it will need to be complemented by improved asynchronous collaboration to increase – wikis, blogs etc. These Web 2.0 methods will not remain underground as they are today in lots of organizations, but will become mainstream.

As mentioned earlier, the GenY loves to share/create. I expect that the problem of content freshness that plagues most blogs and websites will reduce, though not disappear. And an active contributor base is a great way to improve the accuracy and relevance of the content.

The old fears around accuracy, control on information will continue for some more time, but eventually fall by the wayside. Someone mentioned to me at one of my sessions at the eLearning Guild Conference that emails are considered mainstream, but does anyone bother to ensure the accuracy of each email conversation.

Wikis and blogs will also go the same way in gaining acceptance – the digital natives will make it happen. While text will continue to dominate, rich media will continue its upward trend. Expect to see a lot more of rich-media commenting, that too in situ!

In a distributed environment, discovery of learning resources both human and electronic will become very important. Search engines currently search HTML. PDF and more recently SWFs, will extend to cover all media (images, video, audio). Current developments do point at possible direction of technology in these areas, but expect to see a holistic search engines in the future.

PROBABLY THE BEST ACTION SCRIPT TUTORIALS

2009-03-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

That's said. This is one of the best Action Script 3.0 Tutorials I've ever seen, or maybe the best one. The website is full of extremely useful examples and FREE source code. I feel like I found a hidden treasure.
Enjoy everyone!

Useful Source Code Editors

2009-03-21T01:01:00.000-07:00

The designers/developers should use anything to make the process faster and the life a little bit easier. One of the speed-increasing tools is source-code editors with advanced editing features. These features can effectively debug and help testing. Powerful modern editors provide developers with syntax highlighting, diff, macros, plugins, code-snippets, preview-option and an integrated FTP-management tool. Some editors go even further and offer a complete integrated development environment with numerous features and functions.

Check this list from SMASHING Magazine.

50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008

2009-03-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't like cute icons? OK, maybe "cute" is a wrong word, but it's what comes to mind when you look at this set of icons created by inspiring designers. The icons are vital, they help a user to understand immediately without reading.

KIDAUBIS CHINESE WIND ICONS

Feed Me Animals

AND MORE...

30 Days of Mootools Tutorials

2009-03-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been involved in learning and using a lot of AS3, but I've always kept in mind the alternatives. These Mootools tutorials promise to teach you how to use the tools in 30 days. Let's hope for the best and for having 30 days to spend on improving Mooskills ;-).

Gaia. An open-source Flash Framework

2009-03-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

Trying to develop an ideal structure for Flash websites I found this (apparently famous) framework which suppose to reduce the development time. It's been described as:

Gaia is an open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2 designed to dramatically reduce development time.

~Revolutionary scaffolding engine builds fully functional Flash sites in less than 10 minutes!
~Simple API for Navigation, Transitions, Preloading, Asset Management makes development a snap!
~Deep Linking achieved through seamless integration with SWFAddress
~SEO Scaffolding makes Search Engine Optimization as easy as pressing a button
~Easy enough for novices
~Powerful enough for experts

There are a lot of great examples in the gallery, this is one of them:

http://www.gaiaflashframework.com/index.php

Use of 3D on the web

2009-03-12T19:32:00.000-07:00

More and more websites are trying to use 3D, but a lot of time the attempt to recreate 3 dimensional space does not look "real", it takes too much time to load, does not look good, well and unfortunately does not have purpose... in short it's OFTEN useless. The website I saw today proved me wrong. Finally it made perfect sense why 3d was used, it didn't take much time to load and the purpose was clear - to showcase the interior design products and allow the user to "play" with the object, placing them in "virtual rooms". A note - the website is in French (which I don't speak), but I could understand everything I needed and I spent at least 10 min going through the different sections.

http://www.plus-belle-ma-maison.com/

3D in Flash has a great potential, but still requre a lot of time on improvement and development. There is an interesting plugging, such as http://blog.papervision3d.org/
and an open source http://www.flashsandy.org/blog/

50+ WordPress Plugins for Multimedia

2009-03-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

More on WordPress. There are hundreds of plugins available for adding multimedia to your blog and here are more than 50 of favorites. (Thanks Justin)

Flash Fluid Layouts and Stage Resize in AS3

2009-03-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

This tutorial will teach you the very basic concepts for creating fluid layouts in Flash AS3. This sort of layout expands and repositions its contents automatically according to the window size.

Another useful links related to "fluidness"
http://www.flashessential.com/archives/139

Customizing Wordpress

2009-03-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Creating a WordPress Theme, The Homepage Following on from the recent article on "PSD to HTML", this tutorial will look at taking a HTML/CSS template and turning it into a functioning WordPress theme. There is so much you can do when creating your own theme we couldn't nearly cover it all. So, we're going to look at how themes are structured, creation of the core files and splitting up that index.html file.

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/wordpress/how-to-create-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch/

Sketches

2009-03-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

I've created the sketches of the main layout in class, brought them home, put them on the wall to keep reminding myself about how much has to be done ASAP.

Building Personas

2009-03-03T16:01:00.000-08:00

What is a persona? And why should we know about it?

A persona is a fictional person who represents a major user group for your site.

How do we get information for a persona?

By analyzing what you learned about your users from user research, including:

* Contextual Interviews
* Individual Interviews
* Surveys (Online)
* Focus Groups
* Usability Testing

Using this information, you identify major user groups of your Web site. You then select the characteristics that are most representative of that group and turn them into a persona.

What does a persona look like?

A persona typically includes a fictional name and characteristics that are consistent with one of the main user groups you have identified.
d by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS).

http://www.usability.gov/analyze/personas.html#getinfo

Trying to build personas with sufficient actionable detail is similar to the problem novelists and screenwriters face when trying to understand motivations, making sure plots are clear. Good editors constantly pose questions to the writer to force them to reach that clarity. My toolkit is built on the efforts of others from a wide variety of fields, from HCI to branding to filmmaking. To help develop more “three-dimensional” personas, the toolkit contains more than a dozen pages of questions about:

* Biographic, geographic, demographic, psychographic background information
* The business’ relationship to the persona
* The persona’s relationship to product and business
* The persona’s specific goals, needs and attitudes
* The persona’s specific knowledge and proficiencies
* The context of usage
* Interaction, information, sensory, emotional aspects of the user experience
* Accessibility issues
* Relationships among personas

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/making_personas_more_powerful_details_to_drive_strategic_and_tactical_design

After reviewing this information I decided to become a novelist myself and create some personas.

-Jim Furgisson;
-Age 36, San Francisco, California;
-Informational Architect;
-Jim's mother was born in Portugal and port was always used in his family. It was his mother's favorite drink;
-Jim is generally interested in port and would love to go to Portugal some day. Winning the competition on the website would provide him a possibility to make his dream come true without spending much money;
-Jim is using different websites on regular basis for personal and professional purposes;
-Jim would most likely find the website entertaining and amusing because he'd feel personal connection to the people who also like port and like the culture he's familiar with;
-Jim could probably write a short story and submit it hoping to win a prize;
-The next time he's ready to purchase port he'd chose "Concha" just to try it;
-He'd e-mail the link to his mother becuase port always reminds him about the woman who loved him the most;

Lidia Movares

-Age 32, Sausalito, California;
-Writer for the "World Wine Reviews" magazine;
-Lidia is a journalist who writes the wine reviews to the local magazine;
-She is interested in wine, and she prefers the desert wines;
-After the tour in Europe she became fascinated with the wine culture; Portugal with its green fields, calm rivers and ancient castles attracted her the most. She started to appreciate the culture of wine making and thousands years history;
-Lidia's job is to write about wines and keep on top of what's going on in the world of wine making;
-She is using computer quite regularly and it's not a problem for her to write a short story, though she's usually really busy and tries not to spend her spare time on-line;
-she'd appreciate different opinions of the users and would continue checking reviews of her writing;
-she'd probably buy "Concha" to write a review about it;

The Progress on "Concha. Port Moments"

2009-03-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've been working on developing the structure for the website "Concha.Port Moments".
It's a promotional website with the main goal to extend the understanding of a brand. The website itself would be targeting the users who are interested in port. The goal of the website is to show the rich history of Portugal, the beauty of culture of port. The way I'm planning to make the website "sticky" and interesting is with the design, with interaction with the user by providing them with an opportunity to critique each others writings (short stories about "port moments"), photography and in future - the videos. One of the main attractiveness of the websites is the user's participation, so it's what I'm trying to achieve. One of the inspirations is http://www.hlfragrance.com/ The users are able to record karaoke and post comments.

The STRONG POINTS:

1)THE IDEA. I started to work on this campaign 2 years ago when I created the packaging design for a bottle of port. I created the logo, and the brand name... Then I started to work on print ad and it's when "Port Moments" came to life... The next step was a motion graphics piece... Now I'm close to the point where I can combine all of it into the most comprehensive piece which would combine all the elements.

2) DESIGN. The website would incorporate the visuals of Portugal, the bottle itself and photos uploaded by the users.

3) STICKINESS. The website is suppose to be interactive project which would be supported and updated by the users.

WAYS TO MAKE IT BETTER

1)Make it work
2)Finish Design
3)Make it possible for users to upload their artworks.

Exploratorium

2009-02-24T13:06:00.000-08:00

Exploratorium located in the Marina District at the Palace of Fine Arts. It is one of San Francisco's most popular museums, no wonder it draws over 500,000 people each year.
The understanding of science and technology is much more enjoyable in the museum where you can touch things and interact with them. There are multiple exhibitions which attracted kids of all ages, such as science of music, color theory, optical illusions, climate change, motion... A lot of them use the principles which could be applied to web design and design overall. I learned that any motion attracts attention even if it is the simplest movement.

Exploratorium was a great experience. There are so many ways to interact with different objects and notice what you see every day but don't pay much attention to.
I saw so many families with kids who had great time with the expositions and each other.

I spent most of the time with my camera, and could spend the whole day taking pictures. I created the slideshow and tried to upload on my school server, but I was not able to upload the page, so I have to fix it...

If you haven't ever been in Exploratorium you should wait no longer!

POPULAR PRELOADERS

2009-02-16T18:41:00.000-08:00

PRETTY LOADED is an archive of really well done preloaders. It's very important to keep the user on the website. With a bit of doubt there is nothing loading the user would simply leave the site without a chance to see that wonderful content which took so long to load. So it's a vital to let them know that something is being loaded.

Eco-web-imagination

2009-02-16T15:34:00.000-08:00

Another amazing work. This eco-friendly website delivers the info in a visual and easy to understand way. It combines the voice over with the animation which "proves" that "little efficiency goes a long way". The user is being shown the slice of earth with the clouds of CO2. The user can reduce the amount of CO2 by sliding the smart grid. The sound of the car emission changes to the sound of forest. At the same time the grid corresponds with the number of cars and acres of trees.

What's great about it? Besides the great design it makes a straight point. As much as I try I cannot imagine reading this information and being affected at all. The dry facts presented in such a simple way seem to be effective, give some interactive experience to the user and make it amazingly clear how our planet could be affected.

By the way, this Flash website also could be navigated in a browser window. One more "+"!

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/landing_page

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/co2_emissions

Art of Flash

2009-02-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I'm wondering what would Leonardo Da Vinci do if he lived NOW? What tools would he use or would he? My imagination gives up.

There are ways to create some art using the code... Though it never surprised me that math is behind everything (balance, harmony, proportions, photoshop ;-))...
Here are some links to amazing Flash website where the code is the main art tool:

http://levitated.net/

http://play.natzke.com

ActionScript 3.0

2009-02-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

The website for Learning ActionScript 3.0 (O’Reilly). Ideally, you suppose to have acquiring a copy of the book, and you are looking for further information about material referenced there. It has great examples of what you can do with AS.

Dynamic Drive's CSS Visual Library

2009-02-08T22:41:00.000-08:00

I found this amazing visual library of CSS examples with code which helps to illustrate the layout. It's Dynamic Drive's CSS library where one could find original, practical CSS codes and examples such as CSS menus and layouts.

There are also multiple sources of tools, for example Gradient Image Maker which generates the image of gradient so you don't even need to open Photoshop to do it ;-).

Web Developer's Ultimate Collection

2009-02-08T22:32:00.000-08:00

This German website has an enormous amount of web development related links. It's a great place to look for inspiration, ideas and tutorials.
http://www.alvit.de/handbook/

Night/Day Style Switcher jQuery Tutorial

2009-02-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

This tutorial by British web developer James Padolsey shows how to create day/night switcher styles.

MM3301 - Harajuku Lovers

2009-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

One more example of the website created in Flash, but allows to see the address in a browser window. http://www.hlfragrance.com/#/home I think this website is a great example of entertaining websites where the target audience is thought of. The user can use their web cam to create the karaoke video.

Sequel Pro Great Tool FOR DATABASES

2009-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

SEQUEL PRO is an easy and FREE tool. If you like me don't like working in terminal window, this tool is for you ;-)

MM3301 - Adobe Exchange

2009-01-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Adobe Exchange there are hundreds of easy-to-install extensions, time-saving functions, code and more. The best thing is a lot of them are FREE. Just search, install on your computer and enjoy exploring.

The Best Entertaining Websites

2009-01-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

Last week all the students in my class (Interaction Design for Entertainment) submitted several links with the websites they consider entertaining or amusing in some way or another. There were so many amazing sites that I decided to keep some on my blog. So thank you all;-)!

NICE!

It's great to be a around creative people interested in almost everything. Thanks to all for submissions.

http://www.joost.com
http://www.monsterlabthegame.com/en/
http://nettuts.com/
http://www.johnnyhollowmusic.com/flashindex2.html

http://www.007.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.740/chapterId/30
http://bestwebgallery.com/
http://www.thetaleofdespereauxmovie.com/site/
http://www.iminlikewithyou.com/#/home
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end

dfGallery 2.0 - Free Flash Gallery

2009-01-25T23:50:00.000-08:00

The dfGallery 2.0 has integration support with Flickr & Picasa. It can get all Flickr albums under a user with the API key or any Picasa albums via the URL of the album.

dfGallery 2 can display multiple albums that can be switched via the interface. Images can be manually browsed or as a slideshow.

You have the full control over the gallery with an Ajaxed admin panel that supports multiple uploads & built on CodeIgniter.

It seems like a great way to build the Flash Gallery. The best part of it is that it's free, dynamic and highly customizable! I just found it, but haven't tried yet...

MM2213 Intermediate Web Design

2009-01-21T04:03:00.000-08:00

Google Adsense Hacks: Tips to Improve your eCPM with Google Adsense

Google Adsense Hack #1: Write Good Content

This would seem like a no-brainer but a lot of people forget that the ads are contextual. If you don’t write long enough posts, or posts with sufficient keyword density you will not get ads that make sense for your content. So good SEO is also good for eCPM’s.

Google Adsense Hack #2: Write Good Clean Content

Sure you write to an urban hip hop audience and the F-bomb is just part of the gait of your speech, but those words on the negative keyword list are driving your eCPM’s down and getting you more PSA’s than ads. There are a whole host of words I’m not going to list which you should avoid. Most are four letters, but some of them are just words that are negative, so try and avoid implying something is less than stellar unless you can do it in long phrases that the robots can’t understand.

Google Adsense Hack #3: Put Ads Where They Will Be Seen

Putting one of your 3 Google Adsense blocks in the footer, where it isn’t likely to get seen, isn’t going to make you any money. Put your ads in or near your content. Don’t try and put them next to the scroll bar hoping for mis-clicks, just put them where they can be seen. And make them a color scheme that compliments your site, but makes them stand out. Not stick out like a sore thumb, just make sure they aren’t invisible.

Google Adsense Hack #4: Help Google Find Context

Most people don’t know that they can tell Google what part of their content is important, and relevant.

Using the tags

google_ad_section_start

google_ad_section_end

You can tell Google which part of your page is the content. This helps a lot if you, like me have related content on the page. I wouldn’t want Google to look at my category list to pick what to run ads for, because you are reading about SEO and SEM for this post, so those posts, on Camping are probably not what the ads should target.

Google Adsense Hack #5: Black Lists

See an ad which you know will never convert with your audience? Black list it. I even black list high paying ads if I don’t agree with what they are selling. Like the Daily Horoscopes SMS messaged to your Cell phone for only $1 a day… I’m sorry no one should pay $30 a month for a computer generated horoscope.

Google Adsense Hack #6: Use Link Units Sparingly

Link Units don’t pay as much per click. As a result you have to consider when they are a good investment of space. On a page which is less content dense a link unit may perform really well. I also find that they do really well on pages which are driven by search traffic which doesn’t really relate to what is on the page. I have a page about how I’m an Omniscient Deity of Video. It is the top hit for “Omniscient Deity”. People who arrive on this page are rarely looking for me, or things related to video. Poof a great choice for a link unit.

Link units also do well on pages which are about things that don’t monetize well. Or pages that are only getting PSA’s.

Google Adsense Hack #7: Guard the Golden Egg

So another ad company which doesn’t do CPC ads offers you 75 cent CPM’s to add their ad to your page. I’m getting $29 eCPM’s on my pages meaning an adblock is worth $9.50 or so eCPM. I could take that 75 cents and if the ad was placed some where no one would see it, I Might make an extra 50 cent CPM, because it wouldn’t hurt my CPC ads that much. But if I put it somewhere that made sense for the advertiser likely it wouldn’t make sense for me.

I am careful to way risk/reward when using other advertisers. Having a back up so that you don’t get PSA’s is a good idea. Because 75 cent CPM’s vs 0 cents PSA’s is a good deal. But be careful not to cannibalize the Goose, in hopes of getting something that will actually lower your over all performance.

Google Adsense Hack #8: Experiment

It takes a couple of tries to get your ad layout and colors right. So change them up from time to time to see what works.

Google Adsense Hack #9: Change Them Up

Just because you did what I said in #8, doesn’t mean you are done. If you have loyal readership you need to move the ads every so often, so that they aren’t always in the same place, or your readers will learn to ignore the ads. They get so used to the lay out of your page they stop looking at the places that aren’t the content.

It’s too Cliche to do 10

I’m only doing 9 Hacks/Tips for Google Adsense because everyone does top 10’s. This should help you out, and while it is not comprehensive it is a really good start and I didn’t see any articles that laid things out this simply, and this completely.

MM3301 - Afterthought

2009-01-20T13:25:00.000-08:00

What makes the website memorable besides the content?

I believe there are multiple way to make the website more memorable. The design of the website should be great. That alone would make the user to come back to the website to admire it. Maybe ones or twice... So it's very important to keep feeding the website with some new information: news, updates, new links.

Another way to generate more interest to the site is to create some interactivity on the pages: simple puzzles, games, unexpected elements would make the user intrigued and spend more time interacting with the website than they probably planned to.

Making the user create their own content, such as posts on the blog pages, comments, etc. As we talked in class, it's called "massaging ego".

The internet, specifically networks change the way people communicate. It "erases" the geographical borders. It allows people from all over the world to keep in contact.

MM3301 - Interaction Design For Entertainment

2009-01-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

My first assignment for the class was to come up with the list of the websites which I visit for entertainment. I was thinking how often do I actually go on-line without any reason to improve my professional skills or get inspired. I realized that most of the time I visit the website which help me to be on top of what's going on in the world of advertising, web design, cinematography, life... The strange thing is that I do it to become better professional, but at the same time I ENJOY it. It became a second nature of mine (or maybe the first?) and it what entertain me... I could hardly think of the website I visit with the purpose to be amused, and even if I do, I think of the design of the site, how it was made and what works...
Here are the links to my very favorite websites/blogs, which are being the sources of inspiration for quite a while.
http://thefwa.com
http://motionographer.com
http://www.veryfunnyads.com
http://flickr.com
http://adage.com
http://www.behance.net
http://www.adgabber.com
http://adsoftheworld.com
http://lynda.com