Power to the people: Stephen Fry and the new Blackberry Storm

Comments from Stephen Fry on the new Blackberry Storm appear to have received a lot of attention recently, as discussed on the BBC technology blog. The question of one person's influence over the success or failure of a new gadget is believed by some to be a real threat and in this case, Stephen Fry's negative review on the usability of the new Storm. It is quite possible that this one very well known man could influence others and convince some people not to buy.

Stephen Fry's own response to such a notion was interesting in that he plays down his expertise and knowledge on such topics as that of "an enthusiastic, passionate amateur". This attitude is not dissimilar to those participating in usability testing who I find often blame themselves for the difficulties they encounter, citing inexperience or stupidity. This could not be further from the case.

There seems to be an expectation that reviews of new gadgets should be conducted by experts who have an extensive knowledge and understanding of the latest technology. I disagree. I believe that those people who are likely to use the Blackberry every day and represent the common user, like Stephen Fry, should be the ones to road test and review it. This is likely to provide the most honest and accurate account on how the technology will fare when released. After all, if one person has a problem with the text input, the chances are so will someone else.

If more people were to base their decision to buy from the comments of enthusiasts such as Stephen Fry, then perhaps this will result in companies refining future generations of the device and improving on them. A poor performance in Blackberry Storm sales might be bad for the company but reinforces the importance of user-testing during the design phase and not just post-launch, something I'm sure RIM are very aware of.

Are User Centred Design (UCD) and Agile processes a ‘half baked’ methodology?

Including UCD into an Agile methodology can be faced with it’s own challenges. The process is fast-paced and can be in danger of becoming internally focused on the team's ideas and creativity. This could results in the neglect of the customers business goals. This means that the UCD team will have to be willing to be flexible with the exploratory methods and be willing to adapt to meet immediate needs or changes that are likely to occur. Many changes are likely to occur in parallel to the development where constant evaluation, modelling, testing, and feeding back proof of concepts to the design/development team will be required e.g. any new functionality that is introduced will have to be outlined and designed against the persona and user tested (low fidelity paper prototyping).
Outside the development process, the usability team can conduct research and get ahead of the remodelling to accumulate user input and workflows for the next stage in the development, which again can be fed back to the design team as soon as possible to keep pace with the development process.

For many organisations, moving from the traditional Waterfall project process to Agile may pose certain challenges to traditional UCD methods such as:
- the difficultly in doing formal usability testing on complete scenarios early because they may not be formulated in their entirety.
- the need to change some of your tool sets and UCD methods for delivering designs to be quicker such as creating lower-fidelity wireframes.
- educating clients who are accustomed to the waterfall process, will find it difficult to accept and signoff what might be perceived to be a ‘half baked’ design.
All these are mitigated by good processes and frequent communication. Again the key is to present information as soon as possible so changes get scheduled into future ‘sprints’.

It is also important to identify ahead of time milestone points where user testing of the prototype product could happen in addition to the technology being used to support it.
If planned correctly it is possible to make sure that the UCD methodologies are part of the Agile development process and support client requirements.

WCAG 2.0 Training course

The new WCAG guidelines will be released soon and it is essential that people are aware of the key differences from the old ones in order to remain accessible to those with disabilities.

User Vision have designed a special ½ day training course to help people understand the new guidelines and how they differ from WCAG 1.0. The course will give delegates a solid overview of WCAG 2.0 and how they can be implemented to best effect.

The course is run by resident accessibility expert Mark Palmer. Mark is a fantastic trainer who will ensure that you not only fully understand the topic but also thoroughly enjoy the training. The course is being held in London on the 4th of December. Early booking is strongly advised for this very popular course.

New Public Sector Training Course

Organisations in the pubic sector have to ensure their users have a positive online experience just as much as any corporate organisation does. User Vision have designed a specifically tailored training course to help those in the public sector improve their online offering, the course will run on the 25th of November in Edinburgh and 27th of November in central London.

By the end of the course delegates will feel confident in implementing a usability strategy into their own operations and will have the skills and knowledge to identify key user experience issues and how to rectify them.

The course will be run by public sector usability specialist Rob van Tol as well as User Vision’s Managing Director Chris Rourke. The two experienced and knowledgeable trainers will ensure your understanding of the topic and make you feel at ease throughout the day.

Sign up for the Edinburgh course
Sign up for the London course

The human phone booths of Colombia

I have recently been in Colombia, South America where I spoke about usability for successful e-government at Andicom, Latin America's largest a telecoms and technology conference organised by the country's IT research organisation CINTEL. In the free time I had in Bogotá I couldn't help but notice the many people on the street offering "llamadas 200 pesos / minuto" or calls on mobile phones for about £0.07 per minute. It was clearly a thriving business in busy Bogotá, and many of these walking phone booths had 3 or more mobile phones in use at one time. As shown in the photo below, they usually had the phones attached to themselves through small chains to help ensure their phone did not get carried away with the caller.





The practice was a good example of a competitive market in practice as one man shown was charging just 150 pesos per minute, undercutting his rivals by 25% and gaining a lot of business as a result. He is also ready for a volatile market - he has a series of signs bound together so that he can quickly change the price should he see that other phone time sellers change their rates.

One of the interesting facts that I picked up while there was regarding the mobile phone penetration rate among Colombians which was estimated to be about 75 to 80% based on the number of phones sold compared to the population. Clearly practices such as the sharing of mobiles will call some of the data into question, and also remove some of the expectations that we might have about a very personal relationship with our phones for storing data, viewing favourite web pages, sending text messages etc. It also will be beneficial to have relatively simple handsets mobile phone usability should not be a factor for simply making a phone call.

The practice shows a great deal of initiative in the bustling economy of Colombia, a country I would highly recommend for a visit - wonderfully friendly people, and interesting history.