Bolt | Peters went into hibernation a while back to rebuild their Ethnio tool for remote testing.

The have come back today and it’s free! At least the recruitment bit is! Oh, and their marketing is very cool!

I can’t wait to check it out! 

As usability testing and research people you should communicate this business principle to your clients:

‘We are not giving you all the answers here, merely a number of objective and sometimes scientific perspectives that will help you see things from your customers’ points of view.  From these perspectives we can help you can make judgements about how to improve your website and ultimately your business moving forward’ 

Maybe it should be in your terms and conditions on every project!

A reader of my Mind Maps as a business tool post was asking about how a mind map is used as a meeting agenda.

Here it is:

This map can be agreed to up front with timings in minutes listed. The agenda is then used as the notes for the meeting.  I have split them out for clarity. 

You can allocate tasks and capture any new ideas on the map also also.

Note the branding opportunity! 

I have this Objective Digital Facebook group that was lying around taking up precious Cyber Space. So I wrote a list of things I can do to get my business partners  interested in it and selling stuff ‘with’ me because of it. I categorized them  for your reading pleasure

Here goes:

1. Invite more ppl
2. Communicate to ppl regularly
3. Have offers
4. Put interesting stuff up there
5. Include UCD process recommendations
6. Include ideas for how to get me involved in projects
7. Give away techniques, templates and processes
8. Advertise it on facebook and my blog
9. Ask people to contribute personally
10. Survey people’s needs
11. Give them competitive intelligence
12. Ask partners to list their clients
13. List my clients
14. List my partners
15. Offer projects there
16. Have a list of potential clients
17. Ask partners to bid on stuff
18. Include cool photos
19. Create resources list
20. List other groups of interest
21. List RSS feeds
22. List principles of group - like: make their lives easier
23. Give them updates
24. Find out what other people do
25. Blog about ideas to improve it
26. Take them all elsewhere
27. Give away stuff
28. Interview people
29. List it on other people’s blogs - ‘thank you in advance’
30. List it on my website
31. List it on Facebook the eyetracking group
32. Make other people officers
33. List other Facebook groups ones on there
34. List it on other social networks
35. Make your staff officers, who else?
36. Get case studies up from partners
37. Respond to ppl that have communicated
38. Make it open?
39. Add more videos
40. Rewrite copy (done, thanks Mike Tangler)
41. Simplify it all a heap
42. Make it fun
43. Add discussion topics
44. Work out what gets people interested - Please tell me!
45. Add resources
46. Add events
47. Have an event
48. Is it wasting my time?
49. It gives me branding
50. Partners I’m working with
51. Tips and hints
52. Open it up to clients - nah
53. Write a strategy - this list will do
54. Collect KPIs - Headache!
55. Review members
56. Delete members
57. Include sales tips
58. Put a mascot on there - Thanks Jira
    

I know, you probably have one too! Please, tell me more of your fantastic ideas!

So, sign up to my group please!

Now I need to execute!

Mihkel, an Objective Digital  partner from Realeyes.it (love that URL!) in the UK, has created this compelling example that shows you need 35-50 people to draw valid conclusions from eye tracking.  However, he holds that useful information can  be gained from fewer participants.

| View | Upload your own

From my perspective, tools that you use to help in usabilty all give you a different perspective on the technlogy you are working on.  Whether it be eye tracking, personas, tasks, usability, surveys, the list goes on.

It’s all about choosing the right one for your context.

Mind maps are great for business.  Chuck Frey found this blog that outlines the things you can do to make your client mind maps super professional from a design perspective.

I have been doing some of these things for a while now, but got a whole lot of nuggets from Roger’s blog.

Mind Maps are great to use as the agenda for your meetings.  Then, as the meeting progresses, you can take notes on the agenda.

When I’m done I say to the client, are you right for me to send you the mind map? The invariably says, yes.  Takes so much less time than writing a Word document report.

Have you used mind maps for client workshops? How?

Wow!

Join the 1,852,881 people who have watched this YouTube video about head tracking in 3-d with your Wii remote.

I haven’t listened to Last.fm, the online music service, for a while. I just sat down to write a proposal and thought I’d have a listen.
I put in the Gotye (Electronic) channel and was listening away. John Butler came on next and I thought, ‘Weird they are nothing alike?’ Then came Pete Murray and Missy Higgins.
Jeez, there’s something about those that’s similar! What is it? Ah, I like them - and so do other people… Wouldn’t it be interesting to map a whole lot of people’s music tastes and see what it tells us!? I’m sure Last.fm have!

What other things in life can we map like this?   Mmm