Apparently this is a standard procedure all paramedics follow at the scene of an accident when they come across your mobile.

ICE - In Case of Emergency
We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves, knows which of these numbers belong to our closest family or friends.

If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn’t know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this ‘ICE’ (In Case of Emergency) Campaign.

The concept of ‘ICE’ is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As mobile phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ‘ICE’ ( In Case Of Emergency).
The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as ‘ICE.’
For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference!

Let’s spread the concept of ICE by storing an ICE number in our Mobile phones today!

Technology helping people…

Do usability professionals really use eye tracking to its full potential?







During my recent training course with other Tobii resellers, Tommy Strandvall, Tobii’s trainer, used a cake analogy to describe how eye tracking data is leveraged in UX projects.

He spoke of three ways to enhances research outcomes.

The cherry on top.

Analysis happens as part of a standard usability test and client/developers usually observe participants’ gaze data live in the viewing room.  The best clips from the best sessions are replayed when usability test results are presented and a few heat maps are quickly pulled from the data and used to illustrate key findings.

In this context the eye tracking is commonly used as a sales value add and some eye candy that the end client can flash around their office.

The Icing.

Analysis is completed after the test and the the eye tracking data is one key focus. Practitioners us some metrics to support their findings, however the standard usability methods are generally the main source of information.

The cake.

Eye tracking is leveraged in the process for all relevant UX work.  Whether it be as a key component of the final report, a way to manage actual usability testing sessions or simply as a key method of analysing and drawing conclusions from the data.  In this case, other methods of UX research and design are used in concert with eye tracking but most findings are based on eye tracking data, relying heavily on objective metrics and additional analysis with statistical tools outside of the eye tracking software.

For the ‘Cake Bakers’ eye tracking is not presented as an option or ‘a nice to have’. It is simply ‘The way we do things round here’, it is embedded in all UX practices of a business.  This includes having a clearly outlined process or user centred design that incorporates eye tracking at all stages in all projects. For example:

• Tracking existing or competitor sites
• Quickly tracking wire frames for iterative feedback
• Tracking different design concepts
• Tracking beta sites

Eyetracking is also used to provide observers with live viewing of where people are looking during usability tests observations.

The data is used to deeply understand and empathise with how test participants experience the product, why they have problems and whether what they are telling you is an accurate representation of what they actually thought.

What this means is that the reports that are produced are considerably more insightful than ones that did not have eye tracking because the experimenter has a more detailed understanding of human experience.

Additionally, the data is used in an objective way to illustrate successes for the designers and issues during the test.  This might be in terms of relevant heat maps, gaze plots and video highlights.

Misunderstanding of eye tracking, and the ‘Cherry’ approach, has meant that eye tracking can be perceived as fairly light and lacking insight, particularly considering the equipment is quite expensive.  But this does not have to be the case!

We need to show the UX industry that eye tracking as a valuable and objective tool that is critical to understanding exactly what people are experiencing. This will allow us to leverage eye tracking and create better experiences for everyone. 

In designing the chat application for MyPsych.com (not live) we researched different online emotional communication tools. With the goal of giving people the ability to communicate enough emotion, synchronously without cluttering up the screen.

Emotional comms

People will always find ways to communicate emotion given the tools available to them. Just think, a deaf and blind person is completely capable of emotional communication, it’s just a bit differently to what an able bodied person is used to. In this context, human creativity is key.

I recently saw a tweet from someone saying that they thought their emails are becoming considerably shorter they have been twittering a lot. I agree, I am learning how to communicate meaning very well with this constrained medium that only has 140 characters available per ‘tweet’. I think that is a pretty easy thing to learn, particularly as I have been Texting for ages and am also using Skype more and can’t be bothered typing so much. However emotional communication is a little more complex.

My son was born with some basic emotional communication tools

• Crying
• Facial expressions (Screwing up his mouth when he’s hungry)
• Physical expressions (Clenching his fists when he is tired)
• The list goes on.

As a child he is building on these basic emotional expressions as he learns that he has a body and can interact with the world. He will also learn how to talk and, more importantly, learn what reaction particular emotional expressions get him in social situations he is involved in or saw on TV or in books (his culture). This emotional stir fry becomes quite complex as he gets older and he experience more interactions with more and more people. Remember, psychologists make lots of money by helping people to break down the ingredients of theirs and others emotional soup(s).

With the evolution of the Internet this process of learning about emotional communication has started over again!
Being emotional online

Complex emotions are easily communicated online. But do you really know all the tricks?

Can you believe emoticons have been around since 1912? Ambrose Bierce proposed a new punctuation device for typewriter called a “snigger point,” a smiling face represented by \__/!, to connote jocularity. This is discussed in this great New York Times article from July 2007?

A 2007 study of 40000 Yahoo Messenger users showed that 82% of users used emoticons in their conversations!

Emotional expression online is just as complex as face-to-face. If we are talking about text based communication we need to think about Prosody - the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language.

To my mind, online emotional expression skill development has two stages:

Habitual - When I started using text communications like chat, I habitually used expressive techniques that felt right. I learned them from writing, reading, watching and interacting offline, for example:

• I change my typing speed as I am more interested or concerned with the other person or people I’m talking to
• I turn off Skype when I get pissed with someone
• I use emotional language relevant to the context of my communication
• Content, plus I consider what I am writing so that it has the impact I want

Learned - During my early web conversations I used things that I knew from Word processing and I noticed in the interface to enhance my emotional communications. As I have become more involved in online comms these have developed. As follows:

• Bold, Italics, Underline, combinations, colour, SIZE, format.
• uʍopǝpısdn
  
• Keyboard controlled - Abbrviatns, CAPS, F#&k, !!, ??
• Emoticons. We should know most of the standard ones I even found a list of complex text base emoticons here.
• Complex keyboard use - S P A C E S - dOn’T you GGGEEETTT it!?
• Emotional insertions like my Twitter friend @silkcharm. Here’s an excerpt:

i’d buy a vibrating paddle *saucy wink*

• Picture based emoticons

I’m sure there are others that I don’t know about, but they are useless unless I have the time to search for them or see someone else using them. It is critical that when designers create new tools that they use techniques of making it blatantly clear what they are offering.

With the emoticons in this blogging software I can’t immediately find the smiley one! There are so many to choose fun. Really irritating!

Skype is pretty overloaded too! They do have a little tip at the bottom of the popup window to suggest what the emoticon might mean.

GetSatisfaction have solved this overload problem with a great instructional design technique that encourages people to use text to describe a smiley, like:

They even make suggestions of what the smiley might mean!

This approach can certainly work but it does take up a lot of space and people are generally not engaged in synchronous communication.

With MyPsych.com we decided that we must keep the interface simple as possible and on one screen. So as not to distract from the therapy session. This meant that we have only 4 emoticons - a square - that everyone is completely clear on what they mean. We also added simple text formatting to allow prosody.

Tobii Technology has hit the jackpot! At the same time launching eye tracking firmly into the market research space! Check out the press release below!

Eye Tracking breaks into shopper research with major Tobii order

Stockholm, Sweden – October 13, 2008 – Tobii Technology, today announced it had signed a deal including fifty Eye Trackers. The customer this time is Red Dot Square Solutions – the market leader in visual intelligence utilized for retail research.

Eye Tracking is a technology that can tell exactly where a person is looking. It has proved to be a valuable instrument in shopping research, bringing new unique insights into consumer perception and behavior in evaluations of package design, placement and store planning.

“Eye tracking data is fundamental for our shopping research studies and a key deliverable of our real-time virtual reality software solution VISSRAE. We have been evaluating Tobii’s eye tracking products for a long time now, and they have proven to meet all our requirements on scalability, effectiveness, robustness and unobtrusiveness.  Tobii has a strong market research product roadmap and we feel confident that we will be able to meet the future with them as a partner,” says Mark Edwards, CEO of Red Dot Square Solutions.”

Red Dot Square Solutions is a UK-based firm that has developed a virtual reality software solution that has become the defining standard in virtual market research and visual communication, using 3D simulations integrated with real-time eye tracking and analysis to help retailers and manufacturers collaborate together to test store layouts and design/merchandise layouts, promotions and effectiveness/product & pack designs on the road to creating world class shopper insights. Their ground breaking solutions and methodologies have made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, ABC evening news and other notable publications. Customers include world leading companies such as Wal-Mart, Target, Tesco, Kraft, General Mills, Unilever and Kimberly-Clark.

Tobii’s Eye Trackers will be installed and used at field locations across the US (a few of them also in UK ). In a Red Dot Square virtual reality store respondents can move around as if they were in a real store. A Tobii eye tracker is measuring the respondents’ visual attention, recording their gaze when they are looking at products, signs and store features in real-time.

 “This order proves the huge interest we have been experiencing for our products in retail and shopping applications over the recent year. Our products meet up with the needs and technical requirements of the market research and consumer goods industries and we see a great potential in this segment the years to come,” says Henrik Eskilsson, CEO at Tobii Technology.

Roger Hudson presented on taxonomy, social networks and pace layering at Oz-IA 2008. He summarised a survey of 90 people that he did to understand their usage of web tools.  He looked at:

• Comments on web pages
• Blogging
• Tagging
• Use of video
• Use of RSS
• Use of social networks

Of particular interest to me were his findings about the web usage of people who were simply web users and those who were web evangelists (i.e. members of the Web Standards Group in Sydney).  The web evangelists almost always had a blog and a page on a social network. They also contributed to a social networks and wrote on other people’s blogs. They leveraged tags to manage their web content too.  This all means that they are online a lot and therefore more likely to be up to date on the best ways of doing things on the web.

In this way, the evangelists may be more likely to be exposed to the most cutting edge technologies or applications of technologies. They are moving around in the cyberspace networks where the new technologies are most likely to be described and then reviewed by peers.

Roger then went on to describe how traditionally business people have had the most influence on what technology people could use and how it could be used. However, these days the end users, whether they be normal users or evangelists, have much more influence over how the technology is designed.
 

This model puts the feedback from web users and evangelists, though online mechanisms, at he end of the line.  Isn’t that too late to get their input?

I have often met web workers, including UI and IA people, who are too busy in their daily jobs to have time or interest in using social networks, RSS, blogs or other new applications.  So why should we leave it to them to come up with cool websites?  

Surely better technology is created (and recreated) when evangelists are involved at the strategy end of the process?  If they are not, then how people who are too busy doing their own job (normal users) possibly know what is available to them and how it should be executed.

If you are a busy web user, then I reckon you ought to be engaging a web evangelist early (and often) so that you can be innovative or at least know that what you will appeal to people in the not to distant future.

SUGGEST YOUR CONTENT IDEAS PLEASE!

The UX space is hotting up! More businesses are doing things the right way and this means everyone is recruiting IAs! UX people are thinking really creatively and collaborating heavily with other disciplines to work out how to best leverage fancy new technologies is a usable way. There are even new tools out that streamline user engagement and design process.

On November 19, 2008 I am chairing an AIMIA event - Optimising the User Experience Online. This is the second time, in as many years, that AIMIA and I’ve gathered together people with four different perspectives on UX. You’ll be able to hear:

• the trials and tribulations from a user-centred Local Government website redevelopment,
• the latest from the Telstra lab,
• all about the redesign of a cool rich news website, and.
• find out what’s up with UX on the iPhone

Hear fresh perspectives from:
- Reem Abdelaty, Program Director, Local Online Communications & Linkages

- Cyrus Allen, Director, Customer Experience, Telstra Corporation Ltd

- Michael Robinson, News Digital Media

- Oliver Weidlich, Usability Specialist & Mobile User Experience Consultant, Ideal Interfaces

Moderated by:
- Me!

If you know or have seen these speakers before please let me know (in the comments here) what you would like to hear this time round. Or if you simply have a UX challenge, tell me about it and I’ll ask the speakers to address it in their presentations.

The Twitter hash tag is #aimiaUX08

Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Venue: Telstra Experience Centre
Address: Level 4, 400 George St, Sydney

Time:
09:30am Registration & Networking
10:00am Forum Begins
11:30am Moderator Discussions
12:00pm Forum Ends

Early Bird Discount (Ends October 29)
AIMIA Members: $65
Non-Members: $115

Standard Registration (From October 30)
AIMIA Members: $75
Non-Members: $135

My iPhone typing speed improved dramatically yesterday!

"The iPhone is not about the press, it’s about the release", says my mate, and Mobile guru, Oli Weidlich.

Do you feel a little stressed when you type an SMS or write a note with your iPhone? It’s because you are trying to ‘press’ the buttons.

The little birdy in my head used to say "I hope I press the right key" and get frustrated when I had to delete and retype a letter or word. Or use that funny magnifying glass thingy that often renders off the screen.

Oli enlightened me that what you can do is slide your finger around the keyboard until the right letter pops up, without risk of selecting the wrong one, and then release it. My life has changed!

if this tip was plainly described in the store where I bought it, I could have immediately reach the amazing typing speeds compared to other phone, as claimed in this research about typing speed on different devices.

Last year I wrote about how daily technology hassles like this add up to stress people out in this presentation at World Usability Day Sydney 07.  Let’s get lots of these tips together to help make our daily lives S M O O T H E R.