Why is there so little published about Rich Internet Application (RIA) usability?
Is it because:

• RIAs are so easy to do the right way?

I recently heard of a couple of Aussie and NZ developers going three times over budget because there were so many ways the interface could be built! It is actually harder to do well because there is so much interface flexibility.

• Nobody is building RIAs?

They are around - Silverlight, Flex, Flash, AJAX [If you call that a RIA?]

• No-one researches RIA usability?

Probably not, but the vendors (Adobe and Microsoft) all talk about ‘Customer Experience’?

In my recent preparatory research, for my Web on the Piste presentation, most of what I could find was old stuff on the Adobe Site from Macromedia days.  For example:

• The Essence of RIAs - (2003) Macromedia Whitepaper with great models of a well designed product and the Experience Ideal for RIAs
• Business Case for RIAs - (2007) Forrester on RIA best practice
• Usability testing on Pet Market (2003) run by Macromedia and Jared Spool and UIE. This article and another here (2002) give some good tips on design and testing.

My favorite one was on Flash Workflows (2007) - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/ria_workflow_print.html

Have you seen any RIA usability articles - tell me about them please!?

I often think I’m the only person in the world that finds it hard to make the difficult decisions in business.

I went to a presentation by Fred Hilmer, ex CEO of Fairfax Newspapers, last week.  He was an incredibly inspirational speaker.

What did it for me was the way that he spoke so emotionally about his ‘experiences’ during his 7 year tenure at the ailing newspaper.  Instead of the gruff CEO faces that you often see touting business tips and tricks he put good management decision making down to emotional awareness. His tips:

1) Rational decision making is very difficult as a CEO

You are constantly mis lead by time constraints, poor information, spin and EMOTION is hard to ignore.

2) There is a bias in a public company toward positive decision making

Negative decisions don’t make sense emotionally and if you can cope with that you will succeed.

3) Management text book rhetoric is very hard to apply

You have to balance all this things you know and what you have experienced to make the right decisions.

I’m reading his book now and will give you an update when I’m done.

Blogging is an amazing tool for learning, introspection and knowledge creation.
Here are some things that I have discovered about the act of blogging.

Breaking the block
In my busy world I sometimes find it hard to concentrate.
I have healed my ‘Bloggers Block’. When I hear or read something of interest (a conference presentation, a book, a blog) I automatically think - can I tell other people about that? Can I blog it?  I write blog posts to help other people, but also because I get a lot out of it.

Considering my audience
If I listen to or read something without a clear objective who is to know what will happen to the knowledge?  I posted once about liveblogging lectures.  If students who are blogging during lectures don’t have the audience in mind when they write, they are likely to produce useless drivel.

Engaging myself
To create interesting blog posts I need to be engaged.  It’s like a meditative state in front of my computer, nothing else matters, only the post I am writing.

Learning
If I blog something I am taking it from someone else’s perspective into my own.  My mental aerobic efforts lay down new pathways and I create multiple triggers - pictures, words and sounds.

Understanding
If I don’t understand what I am writing no-one else will.  So I do some research to make sure I fully get it. Wikipedia is often enough.

Memorising
If I am engaged when writing or reading something I will remember it.

Making it real
The act of putting knowledge out there makes it real to me. It gives the knowledge pounding in my head a meaning.  Not to mention that other people will hold me to what I say. At least I think they will.

Creating knowledge
By attending to what I’m doing I WILL come up with new perspectives.  If given a chance my mind takes a critical perspective on what I am reading, and what I end up writing is something that is better than when I started.

Reviewing
When I go back to read the stuff I have written I see what my state of mind was like then and notice how far my thinking progressed.  Then I can update it, and everyone benefits!

Thanks for Attending!

I’ll be presenting on Mind Mapping at Oz-IA on September 22 and 23 September. I’ll put the following preso up when I’ve done it!

Reduce your reporting time by 40%!

User research documentation and IA presentations can be so tedious sometimes.
I used to repeat myself, get lost in an overly long and repetitive executive
summary or become entrapped in formatting hell, constantly cutting and pasting
long screeds of text within a standard template.

Mind mapping is becoming increasingly popular in delivering IA work as it
organises all the concepts on one page, providing hierarchical grouping and
regrouping with the drag of a mouse. New programs have an export feature that
means you will never have to format a word or powerpoint document more than
once.

In this tutorial you will learn about the joys of mind mapping. Find out what
it is, how to do it and, most importantly, how it can improve the efficiency
and creativity of projects you undertake.

 See all the ‘important’ stuff on your facebook from within Netvibes!

http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?module=Facebook

Interesting Free online academic journal. Journal of Computer  Mediated Communication

http://jcmc.indiana.edu

Get your favourite books on email or RSS in short 5 minute (reading time) installments with Dailylit!

I’ve just downloaded my first installment of ‘Famous stories that a child should know’ to Netvibes.  I’ll have them all read by the time our new baby arrives!!

I’d love to see the talking book version! 

Thanks 43 folders blog

ISPs are competing in a global market and must always be a step ahead of their competitors.

A recent article in PC World highlights the need for ISPs to consider the usability of their transactional applications. In fact, their whole business needs to take a good look at customer experience. 

Ask yourself - what are the cross sell and up sell opportunities and are customers aware of the other services you provide? How do the various channels interact and what kinds of issues create calls to your call centre [read: frustrate your customers]?

I am sick of usability consultants telling us to ignore design over functionality.  Gerry McGovern on his Giraffe forum makes a ludicrous statement that the best websites are useful and ugly!

i believe that both design and function are key.  You need a balance of both, depending on your strategy.

If a site works the way we expect and is also enjoyable to use then we may well tell our friends and return for more.  If however, it is just useful and boring we’ll just use it and keep our mouths shut.  The moment something comes along that is aesthetically pleasing, we’ll be there in a minute.

The usability industry needs to recognise that just making something work is not going to cut it anymore, everyone simply catches up.  We need to strive for something that is a step above the rest. It needs to be functional, useful, ‘branded’ and a joy to use. That’s Real Usability.