2006
DecemberBest of the year podcast
Tsegue Miriam-Guebrow, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Vetiver, Arthur Russell, John Zorn, Staple Singers, Brightblack Morning Light, Neko Case, Samara Lubelski, Zero 7, Arctic Monkeys, Lupe Fiasco, Nicolai Dunger, Wilderness, Bob Marley, Sufjan Stevens, and Joanna Newsom made it to the top. Beware, 30 meg podcast. Concert: Califone at Empty Bottle.
December What a drag
Geneca needed a tool for dynamically planning resources and assignments through their existing data of engagements/rollofs. Finally got the 'dragging' part of Scriptaculous figured out, hurrah, to demo this somewhat nutty behavior. I think it does make quite a bit of sense for the user, in these special situations of course. Reminds me of my interview at Yahoo when they asked how to implement drag-and-drop. 'class='draggable'' would that have worked as the answer?
December Back to School
Helped out Rachel Powers at Visde with a site for her kids school. Seems like quite a nice place. Nothing too challenging but I think something is kicking in with the whole XHTML coding and google. Take a look at this somewhat vague Google search for 'baker school' - not only are they in the top 10, but it found and highlighted the map and location. If you get more specific like 'Baker Evanston' it goes to #1, perhaps they have some special link mojo, or google really likes the structure of these sorts of sites.
October Intranet time again
Time to make the intranet for Aspen. I always think intranets are where most busineses should start. They can make a difference in their own employees work lives, show demonstratable returns on investment, and learn a bit about what their external customers may like. However, in this instance there seems to be a gulf between what the company wants the system to do and what the users want to do. I did most extensive work just interviewing and designing something that would save some pain for the users. This ticked off management a bit.
For that reason we put in a bit too many bells and whistles to keep the kids on their toes. It still turned out fairly well, the task system saved the users about a dozen worthless clicks from the old system, and saved a meaningless 're-dating' for missed calls. It still bothers me the concepts of time and task are very messy metaphors, if you pay attention to them, they can be troublesome. Need to find better paradigms that actually suit people's habits.
Then came the hard the system to build a flexible print personalization system. Aspen has marketed this well, but the actual rule engine took quite a few late nights with Ted Loomis to figure how it was even possible for a user to create flexible if-then statements. I think the solution was quite brilliant, still havent heard if it works. If you get a coupon for 30,000 mile checkup from your car dealer, we have done our job. This was fun though a semi-expert encoding giving mesages to a non-trained user. Both interfaces sync to create personalized mail. Fun.
July Faking, it part xxx
Prototyping for a small user test a hearing bench test program. The interaction seemed quite stilted, and fussy, but the clients seemed to like it. Someday I'll get back to what 'real' users want, but for now it's only executives that seem to want to see this stuff before they sign the check to develop. Who can blame them I suppose I would want to see a plan before buying the farm.
May Car wars
Became the Sr. Information Architect for Geneca and started a project for Aspen Marketing. They needed a client facing portal for auto dealers to enroll and customize mailing pieces to their customers. I thought the wizard or stepped approach seemed simplest to present. The middle of the enrollment put it into this odd AJAX customization piece (since discarded) but simplifing the flow so that car dealers (or surrogates) could use it was tough. Not to mention this is the front end of an enormous back end, shouldn't we build that part first? Uh, supposedly not, gotta sell it to management so they can rally the troops!
August Busted!
The ICase project is moving toward the end. Now comes some of the dull parts, Sunil has me doing some of the QA templates in the idea that if anyone knew how the thing should work it would be me. I must say QA is quite unlike usability testing, dramatically so. Its super dull, but gives me the option to bust developers when they mess up some of the nicer bits of the process. Still, it will be tough to leave, although the drive to Joliet will not be missed.
More fun with crime. Got to ride in the cop car and check out the 'night mode' for the interface. Nifty, also got to show them how to do a print stylesheet and other niceties in fitting with the Web 2.0 world that is starting up. The Toughbooks they are using are worthless for typing or mousing, but the touchscreen is way cool. I need a touchscreen laptop... but a mac.
March Rapid Prototyping Movement
Working through both the organization in general but running the prototyping of the app with the JAD (Joint Application Design) group. Sunil Thomas, Hyder Khan and I showing some stuff, getting the feedback of the captains, the sergeants, the beat cops (had about 20 in tow) and then making the changes in real time is so effective. This is the way it should be. Fortunately, the stylesheets have all been written, now its just cut and paste and type. Sweet!