Blog: Observations on Design + Usability

JetPens Blog - Mike Rohde

July 30th, 2012

Our very own Mike Rohde (on our site and on twitter) was interviewed on the JetPens blog. Take a minute and visit, it’s a great piece, and a great video as well.

We’ve been thrilled at how well Mike’s skills have meshed with, and improved, GRD practices. Whether it’s Mike’s sketches for wireframes or sketching notes and themes from client meetings, Mike’s sketches really enhance our work with our clients. The looks on our clients’ faces when we share meeting notes back with them that include Mike’s sketchnotes are fantastic. It’s as though the notes captured what they wanted to say but didn’t.

We’re looking forward to Mike’s Sketchnotes Handbook coming soon.

Posted in Sketchnotes | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

Agile UX

July 25th, 2012

Over the last several months, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in multiple Agile projects where I was the UX lead. In the coming weeks I’ll be writing about the state of Agile and UX related to my corner of the world. I’ll be sure not to talk in broad generalizations as if there is one possible way to do things, but I will point out the pro’s and cons as I see them today compared to a couple years ago, as well as tips on how to integrate well into an agile environment.

Posted in Uncategorized | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

Skyward, Inc. and Gomoll Research collaborate on School Management System

October 11th, 2011

We recently collaborated with Skyward, Inc. on a project:

Skyward, Inc., an industry leading K-12 school administration software provider, has announced that it will unveil a redesigned web user interface (UI) for its industry-leading School Management System. The new UI will provide users with greater ease of use, flexibility and efficiency and enable them to leverage their existing Skyward investment to the fullest.

Tom Gomoll commented in the article:

Our approach is to focus on the people first and then how we can enable them to use the technology in ways that are most valuable to their day-to-day lives. With that in mind, we designed the new Skyward web UI to meet the unique needs of both large and small districts, and to ensure a user friendly experience for both existing users and new customers.

The full article is available here.

26fd

Posted in User Experience, Usability, Visual Design, Interaction Design, Gomoll | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

Sketchnotes of An Event Apart (Minneapolis)

August 15th, 2011

Our very own Mike Rohde and Kris Hunt went to An Event Apart in Minneapolis this past week. I was unable to attend but managed to catch a Red Sox game with Mike and Kris at beautiful Target Field.

Despite not attending, I can catch up on the happenings of the event by looking at Mike’s sketchnotes. Mike has done a number of these and I’m always amazed at how well he communicates visually.

We’ve started to add this skill set to our client engagements and the feedback has been great from clients as they talk through their goals and challenges at the onset of a project, then see Mike’s sketchnotes capturing those thoughts.

Posted in Sketchnotes | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

MinneWebCon 2011

April 11th, 2011

Just a brief note and link. I’m speaking later today at MinneWebCon 2011, a great local one day conference held at the University of Minnesota.

My presentation is on UX Techniques and Tools of the Trade. My focus is to cover the myriad number of tools that are available to UX practitioners today and talk about when to use them, and the pros and cons of some types of tools.

The presentation is available here. I would definitely say that the presentation without the audio loses quite a bit, but there are some pages that provide a good overview of information. In any case, enjoy, and if you attended the presentation today, I hope you found it entertaining and you walked away learning something. You can reach me @kevinfarner on Twitter.

Posted in User Experience | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

iPad: My Listening Apps

March 19th, 2011

I wrote an article about How We Use The iPad.

As I mentioned in the article, I have taken advantage of the folders concept to store my apps. Today I’ll talk about some of my favorite apps in my LISTENING folder.

My LISTENING folder contains the following apps:
* Major League Baseball’s At Bat 2011
* ESPN Radio
* NPR
* Pandora
* iPod and Remote from Apple

Note: I have an AppleTV, which makes the Airplay feature one of my favorite Apple features. I am able to broadcast songs and more via my MacBook Pro, iPhone, or iPad to my TV.

MLB At Bat 2011

Every time I think about cutting the cord on cable TV, sports gets in the way. But, I can see a day where this will not be the impediment it is today. MLB At Bat is a fantastic app that offers scores, standings, and pitch by pitch narratives of every game.

What’s more, for additional fees, audio and video of every game are available. The video can be purchased for the entire season or month-to-month. (For the record, I have MLB in my listening folder because listening to baseball is one of my favorite background audio choices.)

Gameday Screen

The Gameday screen offers a scoreboard across the top. At the right are icons for switching to other views such as standings, news, or scoreboard, as well as moving to audio and video. At the bottom of the screen, you can expand boxes to see information about the game.

Audio Option

Video Option

One call-out on the audio and video screens is the Airplay option that Apple introduced in a limited view a while ago, and now is becoming more ubiquitous. This of course means that I can now watch or listen to any game (there are some video blackouts based on location) on my hi-def TV. Alternatively, I can use the Apple Digital AV Adapter to mirror on my HDTV.

ESPN Radio

As a sports fan, this is a must-have app. This was a frustrating app for quite a while, as, unlike many other apps, the app did not take advantage of multitasking, so you could not play the audio in the background. Now, with background playing, it’s like a whole new app. The myFavorites section allows you to put radio programs and podcasts into that tab.

NPR

I love this app. It’s original and innovative but in a way that is not difficult to figure out.

Home Screen

The three rows are scrollable individually to view the programs available. You can listen or view the transcript. You can also add a program to a playlist for later. At the bottom of the screen, you can listen to hourly news, find programs, or find radio stations.

Playlist

With the playlist, you can listen to a series of programs you have selected from the home screen.

Pandora

So many people know and use Pandora, I haven’t even captured a screen shot. The app is dead simple, just like the iPhone app and website. You can create radio stations based on artists or songs, like or dislike songs, read about artists, and more.

iPod and Remote

As noted above, I have an AppleTV so using the Remote and Airplay to broadcast on my HDTV, where my best speakers are, is fantastic.

2842

Posted in iPad | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

Article in A List Apart

January 25th, 2011

Mike Rohde, one of our designers, wrote a terrific article that is up in A List Apart. The article, Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool, covers how to incorporate sketching into your practice.

Posted in User Experience, Visual Design | Kevin Farner | No Comments »

How we use the iPad

January 9th, 2011

This week we are starting a series on iPad apps that we find both incredibly useful and well designed.

I’ll get it started today, not with the apps, but with my folders. Now that the iPad ios has merged back with the iPhone ios, the device has inherited the multi-tasking and folder features that the iPhone has had since the summer. I played around with the folders a bit, trying to be aware of when something didn’t make sense, or when I only had a single app in a folder.

Folders on the iPad

Listening - Any audio based app such as iPod, MLB, Pandora, NPR, or ESPN Radio.

Reading - Reeder, Instapaper, iBooks, Kindle, Stanza.

Writing - Several apps here, though over time I will pare down as I see which I am using versus others that will stagnate. As of now I have Simplenote, Notebooks, Edito, Express, Wordpress, Markdown, SoundNote, Pages, TextExpander, Pingle and Pastebot.

Learning - The Elements, Solar System, Observatory, Virtuoso, Inkling.

Cooking - Hope to add more here, right now I just have Pocket Cocktails and Epicurious.

Playing 1 and 2 - Two folders worth of games.

Design - Sketchy, Omnigraffle, iBrainstorm, SketchBook, UI Sketcher, like the writing folder, there is some duplication of apps here, at some point I will cut some apps out.

Productivity - A bit of a catch-all but centered around work. Dropbox, Zosh, AirDispaly, LogMeIn, Meeting MNGR, Keynote, Contacts, Fuze Meeting.

Shopping - App Store, Amazon, Apple Store, iTunes.

Tools - Like productivity, another catch-all including UConvertPro, Notes, Find iPhone, some of my account apps like banking, 1Password, First Aid, and Night Stand.

Travel - Tripit, FlightTrack Pro, Maps, Boingo, OpenTable, and WeatherBug.

Viewing - YouTube, Videos, Photos, Netflix, TED, IMDB, ScoreCenterXL.

Home screen, no folders - OmniFocus, Remote

TaskBar - Settings, Calendar, Mail, Twitter (to be replaced by Osfoora HD), Friendly, Safari.

As we develop this series, I’ll pick a handful apps from each folder and how/why I use the app, as well as what makes it good design. I hope you’ll enjoy

Oh, the background is a picture of The Cloisters in New York, one of my favorite places from a family vacation in the spring of 2010.



				Posted in iPad |   Kevin Farner | No Comments »



		
			
				Into the Wild
				September 15th, 2010 

				
					What happens when five highly ambitious and educated scientists, who (like the rest of the civilized world) have come to live life through a lens of technological haze, embark on a 5-day camping trip without cell phones, e-mail, and an atmosphere of multitasking and keystrokes? Matt Ritchel, a journalist for the New York Times, sought the answer to this question in his recent article entitled “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain.” His subjects were a group of lively neuroscientists. They boast professorship at several prestigious universities in the Midwest—Kansas, Utah, Washington (St. Louis), and Illinois.  Academic in its core, this excursion into the wilderness of Utah was not only a chance to experience the exhilarating danger of river rafting, the exquisite beauty of canyon rock, and the male bonding of campfire star gazing over bottles of beer, but also a chance to study what happens to the brain and attention span when electronic devices are rendered useless.
Of course, for high-powered scientists with hundreds of e-mails flooding inboxes by the hour, this isolation was easier said than done. One of the men, a Mr. Cramer, toted an “emergency satellite cell phone” with “emergency text message” capabilities along on the journey. The use of the word “emergency” seems a bit ridiculous in this case. The phone was not carried for safety. It wasn’t meant to call for help in the event of a rockslide, animal attack, forest fire, or random violent act of nature. Mr. Cramer was awaiting a very important e-mail—one that would tell him if he had received a 25 million dollar research grant. He had instructed his staff to send an “emergency” text message to the “emergency” phone in the case that the grant was received. I find that this says something about the priorities of the world today…
Following this example of technology addiction, Matt Ritchel continued his article with a discussion of technology redefining a sense of urgency. I thought immediately of the fast pace of text message conversations, Facebook instant messages, and plan-making. In my world, more than a two-minute lapse of conversation is an eternity. After ten minutes without a text, one person inevitably gives up and leaves the interaction (most likely holding a grudge.) Immersion in technology has completely changed our ability to focus. We can’t just sit still anymore. Even when sitting in front of the TV, I watch my little brother update his Facebook status hourly and search for new shoes on the family iPad. Just sitting has become a waste of time.
The men portrayed in this article had a chance to escape the fidgeting restlessness of the urban world and just “be.” According to Mr. Strayer, the scientist who organized the trip, being in a completely natural setting allows the brain to rest.  Urban existence involves constant information intake and analysis. Think about all you take in during a one-block walk down a city street: flashing colored signals, the lingering smell of exhaust, a sidewalk sale to consider, the bare shoulders of strangers brushing your own, a string of “excuse me”s and blindly moving feet as eyes stare captivated at smart phones. It’s a jungle out there, and it’s a wonder the brain can even keep up.
Unsurprisingly, the ability of the brain to interpret new gadgets and information flow has become a huge area of research. In fact, the study of focus has become so popular that researchers have now mastered multitasking in their study of multitasking. Another scientist on the trip, Mr. Yantis, demonstrates this notion as he states; “We can study the brain and mind together in a rigorous scientific way.”
However, despite the use of multitasking to study multitasking, behavioral studies show that “performance suffers when people multitask.” One interesting example of this is the theory (provided by Mr. Yantis) that “the expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up working memory.” This leaves less space for reasoning and storing ideas. Essentially, as we try to enhance our ability to take in information by staying connected, we actually inhibit it. The addiction to technology in tiny moments of boredom has become an obsession—likely leading to poor decision making (like texting while driving for instance.)
Uninterrupted by e-mail or cell phone service, the men on this woodsy adventure were able to let their brains function organically for five days. The ideas flowed. Hiking, rafting, and reflecting, the group discussed neuroeconomics, neuroimaging, and research as time ticked by slowly and the scenery remained breathtaking.  By the end of the trip, morning coffee was skipped and watches were freed from wrists. These were small yet significant steps toward cleaning up technology-infused brains.
To prevent the sort of reverse-evolution that seems to be going on in our brains, (focus being reduced rather than enhanced by streaming arbitrary media), perhaps we all just need to go on vacation in the deep, deep woods.


1bab
				

				Posted in College Intern |   Andi Gomoll | No Comments »
			

		
			
				Where you At? Oh Wait… I Already Know.
				August 30th, 2010 

				
					It’s official. Facebook is now inescapable, even in the “real world.” The company has released a new feature called “Places.” Using your iPhone or smart phone you can now “check in” at your favorite local theaters, restaurants, and bars—letting all of your friends (yes, even your freshly-facebook-indoctrinated Grandmother) know exactly where you are at all times. You can see any friends who are “checked in” nearby, and tag any friends who are with you. The idea, as the creator Michael Sharon states, is not to be “a service to broadcast your location at all times, but rather one to share where you are, who you are with, when you want to.” Sure, it boosts advertising and extends a network that has completely changed social interaction… but I find “Places” to be borderline creepy. It’s already nearly impossible to go anywhere or do anything without seeking some sort of Facebook recognition for it. Every major (and minor) event ends with a Facebook album of “tagged” faces showing where you’ve been. It’s kind of unnerving when you show up to your family reunion and the aunts and uncles remark that you “look like you’ve been having a lot of fun this summer in all of those pictures from concerts and days at the beach!”
Privacy has definitely changed. “Places” only offers the opportunity for less of it. If I want to get a group of friends together, I think I’ll stick with the mass text message. I don’t plan on staging any “spontaneous” run-ins with friends I stalk on my news feed. I am not looking forward to the day when “Hey, my Facebook page told me you’d be here and I just thought I’d drop by (wink)” becomes the new pickup line.
				

				Posted in College Intern |   Andi Gomoll | No Comments »
			

		
		
			« Previous Entries