allipuram.com: User Experience Consultant from India

Events: “The Many Faces of User Experience: Usability through Holistic Practice.”

August 29, 2007 – 7:35 am

Usability Conference Focuses on Diversity of Roles Involved in User Experience
 
Bloomingdale, Illinois, August 28, 2007 The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) is pleased to announce its 2008 International Conference “The Many Faces of User Experience: Usability through Holistic Practice.” The conference will take place at the beautiful Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland, June 16-20, 2008.

Usability professionals ask the question “What makes something usable?” The UPA’s 2008 International Conference will ask a related question: “Who makes things usable?” With a world full of complex technology, consumers are demanding products and services that are more usable.  Organizations are learning that it takes many different skill sets and roles to create user-friendly products and services that consumers want. 

Designers, psychologists, marketing specialists, technologists, business analysts, information architects, and technical writers are just a few of the roles that bring valuable perspectives to creating good user experiences. Alain Robillard-Bastien, UPA 2008 Conference Co-chair, observes: “There is a core usability discipline, of course, but usability
is multidisciplinary by nature.”  He said “Usability requires creating the proper synergy between all the roles in the design process. This conference will explore all of the roles that can contribute to better usable products.”  The UPA welcomes people from every User Experience (UX) role to join “traditional” usability professionals at the 2008
International Conference. 

Janice James, founder of the Usability Professionals’ Association noted that “Usability professionals have encouraged other fields to become proponents for easier to use products and services.” James said “The 2008 UPA Conference is an opportunity for individuals from all fields to collaborate and share methods and new ideas for accomplishing a common goal.” 
 
The UPA 2008 International Conference will offer interactive presentations and workshops featuring the latest research and methodologies for making things user-friendly. UX professionals from around the world are invited to share their ideas and experiences with fellow practitioners at this year’s UPA conference by submitting proposals for presentations, panels, papers, tutorials, and workshops. Proposals will be accepted beginning September 1, 2007 at www.upa2008.org

New for 2008
The new Managing User Experience track is focused on User Experience (UX) leadership and current trends in UX management. Special challenges such as the need to strategically position UX within organizations and the many skill sets required by mature UX teams make this track especially valuable to managers and consultants.

A special one-day track in e-Government usability will be offered this year only. Building a more responsive and connected government involves the creation of web sites and electronic services for the public and businesses. The e-Government track at UPA 2008 will be of particular interest to professionals working for government agencies or on government contracts.

The Experienced Practitioners Track is another relatively new and popular addition to the conference. Introduced at the 2006 conference, the program is targeted at seasoned professionals, sold out in its first two years, and is expected to be in high demand again in 2008.
 
More Information
Eva Gaumond, UPA 2008 Conference Publicity Chair publicity2008@usabilityprofessionals.org     

UPA 2008 Website:   http://www.upa2008.org 

About the Usability Professionals’ Association:
The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) is an international, non-profit, professional association with more than 2,500 members around the world.  Since 1991, the UPA has served user experience professionals through local chapters, international and local events, publications, and special projects.  UPA members are specialists in designing and evaluating products to be efficient, effective, and enjoyable.  They lead the creation of international product standards and promote the value of usability practices in industry, government, and education. The UPA has over 42 local chapters around the world including chapters in Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East.  The UPA also founded World Usability Day in 2005, which is observed each
year.  In 2006, thousands of people celebrated World Usability Day by focusing on usability and design at hundreds of local events in 40 different countries.

For more information, contact:
The Usability Professionals’ Association
140 N. Bloomingdale Rd.
Bloomingdale, IL 60108-1017

email: office@upassoc.org
web: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org

Posted in UX Events | 1 Comment »

Brand Experience in User Experience Design

August 28, 2007 – 10:53 am

Article By Steve Baty
As user experience professionals, we have the opportunity to work more closely with brand and marketing specialists to clearly articulate the brand perception we want to elicit from our customers. Brand perception is, in part, an expectation on the part of a customer regarding future interactions with a company and its products and services. To achieve our desired brand perception, we must consistently represent and deliver the brand values we have led customers to expect.

Check complete article at http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000111.php

Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

What is Adobe Flex ?

August 28, 2007 – 10:09 am

Adobe Flex is an umbrella term for a group of technologies initially released in March of 2004 by Macromedia to support the development and deployment of rich internet applications based on their proprietary Macromedia Flash platform. Traditional application programmers found it challenging to adapt to the animation metaphor upon which the Flash Platform was originally built. Flex seeks to minimize this problem by providing a workflow and programming model that is familiar to application developers. Flex was initially released as a J2EE application or JSP tag library that compiles Flex Mark-Up Language (MXML) and ActionScript on-the-fly into Flash applications (binary SWF files). Later versions of Flex support the creation of static files that are compiled at authoring time and can be deployed online without the need for a server license. The goal of Flex is to allow Web application developers to quickly and easily build Rich Internet Applications, otherwise known as RIAs.

In a multi-tiered model, Flex applications serve as the Presentation Tier. Flex features development of graphic user interfaces using an XML based language called MXML. Flex comes with various components and features that make capabilities such as web services, remote objects, drag and drop, sortable columns, charting/graphing, built in animation effects, and other interface interactions simple. Since the client only loads once, application workflow is significantly improved versus HTML based applications (eg. PHP, ASP, JSP, CFMX) which require executing templates on the server with every action. Flex’s language and file structure are seeking to decouple application logic from design. The Flex server also acts as a gateway to allow the client to communicate with XML Web Services and Remote Objects (such as Coldfusion CFCs, Java Classes, and anything else that supports the Action Message Format). Commonly mentioned as alternatives to Flex are OpenLaszlo and Ajax technologies.

Check more details about Flex and related information at
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

Posted in Flash & Flex | 2 Comments »

JavaScript Links

August 28, 2007 – 10:06 am

JavaScript Kit
This site has an excellent javascript tutorial section. It covers a vast amount of information on javascript and is easy to understand. Also, there are free javascripts and advanced Web design tutorials.Andy’s Introductory JavaScript Tutorials
Includes a great set of JavaScript tutorials and explanations for those beginning to learn JavaScript. Also has a resource section where you can find other javascript resources.

A Beginner’s Guide to JavaScript
A nice site with javascript tips and examples for you to try out on your site!

Doc JavaScript
Biweekly JavaScript columns and a new JavaScript tip every day of the week, including weekends. Also features various tools and other JavaScript resources.

Free JavaScript Learning Center
Free beginning JavaScript class where you can learn to make your own scripts for menus, clocks, rollovers, scrollers, cookies, and more. No programming experience is necessary, and the site includes links to other tutorials.

NetKontoret
Includes tutorials on javascript, and information on HTML, graphics, Java, CGI, Flash, and more.

Webdeveloper.com
Lots more stuff for you to check out on javascript and web development!

Webreference.com- JavaScript
This site has references and links to just about anything dealing with web design. You can check out their JavaScript Tip of the Day to find some javascripts listed in their tip arhives.

JavaScript City
Includes free javascripts on the site, as well as links to scripts submitted by authors of other sites.JavaScript Corral
Get free scripts from this large collection on a fast loading site. Also, learn how to do pop-up windows using JavaScript.

JavaScripts.com
There are a lot of free scripts to use!

JavaScript Search
Search for JavaScripts, tutorials, FAQ’s, tips, and much more.

Nic’s JavaScript Page
This site has numerous javascript examples that you can cut and paste into your page, as well as javascript information.

The JavaScript Source
A large collection of cut and paste JavaScripts to use on your pages.

Posted in Javascripts | 1 Comment »

What Is Holding User Experience Back Where You Work?

August 28, 2007 – 8:42 am

What Is Holding User Experience Back Where You Work?
by Richard Anderson  http://www.uxmag.com/authors/richard-anderson

A couple of months ago, I referenced variations of a boat metaphor (see Changing the course or pace of a large ship) that I have found is often used by User Experience management personnel to describe what it feels or felt like to build and establish a corporate User Experience function, get it understood and valued, enable it to contribute to a business to the extent that it can, etc. As I stated in that blog entry, one director described the pace of change he has been able to achieve as akin to the pace of an oil tanker rather than a speed boat.

During our recently completed Managing User Experience Groups course, I used a part of that variation of the metaphor to learn about some of what is holding User Experience back or propelling User Experience forward in the rather wide range of companies represented by the students. More specifically, I used two forms of the Speed Boat exercise described in the recently published “Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (see The way we work has enormous power).

For one exercise, I drew a speed boat and several anchors hanging from it on the whiteboard, and asked everyone to write onto post-its whatever has been holding User Experience back where they work and then place those post-its on the several anchors.

Some of the “anchors” holding their User Experience “boats” back:

lack of an executive user experience role
lack of leadership
an unclear business direction
inconsistent impact of User Experience on the business
lack of senior management and other key stakeholder understanding of the importance of user experience to success
lack of understanding of user experience roles
lack of understanding of user experience process
user experience process is considered to be overhead
different processes for different projects
last-minute changes made by executives to user experience strategies
an inability to develop innovative ideas
too many people need to be OK with an idea or a solution
a splintered user experience group
excessive workloads
shortage of user experience personnel/resources
inadequate support
resources applied to addressing features rather than wholistic design
no continued evaluation of products (i.e., there is never a phase 2)
fear of change; fear of users (who don’t like change)
no explicit budget for user experience activities
inappropriate balance between strategic work and implementation work
nature of the physical work environment
inadequate measurement or sharing of user experience success
Are any of those akin to “anchors” holding User Experience back where you work?

To learn what the students believe has been key to propelling User Experience forward where they work (to the extent that it has been propelled or is being propelled forward), I shifted the focus of the Speed Boat exercise from the anchors to — you guessed it — the engine propellers (see nearby photo). Interestingly, in several cases, “propelling forward” encompassed “moving upstream,” to use yet another metaphor which, at least on the surface, is moving in the opposite direction!

Some of what has been key to propelling their User Experience “boats” forward:

adding team members & expertise
an executive champion
situations in which user experience team input saved the company money
executive support (which has enabled bypassing bureaucracy)
exaggerations of the successes of the user experience organization
hard work
a dedicated prototype team that helps “show” what user experience personnel mean
active participation by user experience personnel in meetings (e.g., product reviews)
building relationships
a better understanding & evangelizing of the design process
client satisfaction; repeat business
collaboration with developers
success at customer demos of new concepts
asking questions in meetings where you’re not expected to
good customer feedback from UI reskinning
outside validation of the user experience process
talking about use cases and users to folks who typically only think about features
the overall positioning of the company (which now focuses on user experience)
PM & developer champions, who tell others to “go ask (the User Experience Lead)”
early prototypes
familiarity with the benefits of user experience process
evangelizing bottom-up
increased sales (because of user experience work)
improved metrics for flows after redesigns
combining UI, user research, visual design, & content/copy into a single department
socializing personas to the rest of the company via large posters and information booklets
good client feedback to design
flexibility: a willingness to do “a little” (rather than a full-blown research-design process) so to prove value
What a diverse collection of “propellers”!

In the course, we examine all sorts of “anchors” and “propellers” — including many not appearing in the above lists — to help students figure out how to move user experience further forward where they work. What is holding User Experience back where you work? Why is that the case? What is needed to disengage those anchors and to propel User Experience further forward? Why bother with the speed boats and the anchors and the propellers? There are several reasons, but one of the most interesting, in my view, is how they appear to help tap what participants actually “experience” in their workplace.
Note that at least one student plans to use a speed boat game akin to that described above to help in his process of working with others in his workplace to figure out how to move User Experience further forward. Perhaps you would find it of value to facilitate such a collaborative effort where you work.

Posted in User Experience | 1 Comment »

WebSort™: web-based card sorting Tool

August 24, 2007 – 10:39 am

Card sorting is a user-centered design method for increasing a system’s findability. The process involves sorting a series of cards, each labeled with a piece of content or functionality, into groups that make sense to users or participants.  According to Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, card sorting “can provide insight into users’ mental models, illuminating the way that they often tacitly group, sort and label tasks and content within their own heads.” Card sorting is a great, reliable, inexpensive method for finding patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality. Those patterns are often referred to as the users’ mental model. By understanding the users’ mental model, we can increase findability, which in turn makes the product easier to use.

WebSort™ is a web-based software tool that enables researchers to perform remote card sort studies. Create a study, send a link to participants, and analyze the results- all through a web-based interface.

Check www.websort.net for more details about WebSort.

Other Card Sorting Tools are

EZCalc - This tool does cluster analysis and produces a tree display (dendogram) of data from files produced by WebSort.  Both USort and EZCalc must be installed on a researcher’s or participant’s computer.

WebCat - An on-line tool developed by NIST that users must install on their server.  Participants interact via a drag and drop interface.  In addition to interactive tree display (dendogram), the results provide a link to the raw data, and tables of comments and subject-by-category results.

uzCardSort - An open source tool from Andy Edmonds.  It currently supports creation, editing, and running of projects, and exploratory analysis and a rudimentary clustering algorithm are in place.

CardZort - A Windows-based application that must be installed.  A 30-day free trial is available for trial, prior to purchase

Posted in Usability | 1 Comment »

Important Usability Glossary

August 24, 2007 – 10:05 am

Accessibility

The attributes and characteristics of a system that allow people with limited vision, hearing, dexterity, cognition or physical mobility to interact effectively with the system. Standards and guidelines are available, and standards may be legally enforced in some markets.  Accessibility aids, such as screen readers, may be added to a system to allow people with disabilities to use those systems.

Card Sorting

A method for organizing information that involves sorting a series of cards into groups that make sense to the participants.  Each card represents a single term, function or object.  Card sorting helps to reveal users’ mental models, or patterns that the end users would expect to find.

Contextual Inquiry

A semi-structured field interviewing method based on a set of principles that allow it to be molded to different situations. This technique is generally used at the beginning of the design process and is good for getting rich information, but can be complex and time consuming. The four principles are:

Focus - plan for the inquiry based on a clear understanding of your purpose
Context - go to the customers’ workplace and watch them do their own work
Partnership - talk to customers about their work and engage them in uncovering unarticulated aspects of work
Interpretation - develop a shared understanding with the customer about the aspects of work that matter

Ethnography

The process of gathering information about users and tasks directly from users in their normal work, home or leisure environment.  Traditional ethnography focuses on long-term studies spanning weeks, months, or even years.  Information may be collected through observation, interviews, audio or video recording, observer logs, artifact collection, diaries and photographs. Ethnography is a valuable source of data for creating personas, scenarios and storyboards

Heuristic

A usability guideline for evaluating a user interface, which can be used to identify design problems.  Usability heuristics often need to be adjusted depending on the interface and the technology used. There are lists of heuristics that have been compiled by various people and organizations that are commonly used for this method.

Human Factors

The multidisciplinary study of human biological, physical, psychological, and social characteristics in relation to environments, objects and services. The practice of human factors applies to the design, operation, and evaluation of systems to ensure that that they are safe, efficient, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing to humans.

HCI
A discipline concerned with the design,evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them. (HCI Bibliography,

Information Architecture
The process of organizing information including the structure, design, layout and navigation in a way that is easy for people to find, understand and manage the information.

Interaction Design (ID)
The creation of behavior and communication tools and processes that facilitate communication between humans and objects, services, and physical or virtual environments, and that allow manipulation of those objects, services, and environments.  It is important to study the flow of information and the discourse between the human and the interface including feedback and stimulus-response over a period of time.

Persona
Fictional person created to model and describe the goals, needs, and characteristics of a specific type or group of users.  Does not describe a real, individual user nor an average user.  Often includes made-up personal details to make the fictional person more “real”.

Prototype
An experimental design of the whole or part of a product used for illustration or testing purposes.

Scenario
A story which has the key elements of a realistic situation when the user would interact with the system being designed or evaluated.  The scenario includes consideration of the user’s goals, tasks and interaction.  Scenarios can be created for user groups, workflows or tasks to explore, understand and test the different types of needs and goals.

STORY BOARD
Sequence of illustrations representing a process.  Often used to outline the behavior and flow of interaction with a product or system

Task
The procedures that include goals, steps, skills, start state, inputs, end state, and outputs required to accomplish an activity.  They can be organized into larger tasks such as driving to work and sub-tasks such as opening the car door.

Taxonomy
A scheme for classifying a body of knowledge and defining the relationships among the pieces.  Sometimes referred to as a controlled vocabulary, a taxonomy is often used to classify content to aid in the creation of information architecture

Usability
A measure of the degree to which a product can be used by specified users or groups to achieve specific goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.  Factors affecting this measure include learnability, readability, aesthetics, safety and error frequency.  Another significant factor is keeping cost-effectiveness within acceptable levels for human cost measured in terms of tiredness, discomfort, embarrassment, frustration and personal effort.  Keeping cost-effectiveness within acceptable levels increases user satisfaction, which in turn causes continued and enhanced usage of the system. 

User Experience

Every aspect of the user’s interaction with a product, service, or company that make up the user’s perceptions of the whole.  User experience design as a discipline is concerned with all the elements that together make up that interface, including layout, visual design, text, brand, sound, and interaction. UE works to coordinate these elements to allow for the best possible interaction by users.

User-Centered Design (UCD)

An approach or philosophy that emphasizes early and continuous involvement of users in the design and evaluation process.

Wireframe

Rough outline of navigation and content elements that make up a user interface.  Typically visual design and precise layout are not addressed.

Usability Engineering (Human Factors Engineer)

The disciplined application of usability practices to assess the needs and abilities of users, in conjunction with the business requirements, practices, and processes of an organization.  These are combined to develop an effective user experience, and to integrate that experience into a product or service. Usability engineering also encompasses the business and interpersonal skills to work effectively with the business and development organizations to integrate usability practices and goals within the overall development, marketing, support, training, and quality assurance processes of the product group.

Posted in Usability | No Comments »

The Interaction Design Group (IxDG)

August 24, 2007 – 9:53 am

The Interaction Design Group (IxDG)

IxDG is an association that serves the needs of the international community of practitioners, teachers, and students of interaction design. Its mission is to evangelize and advance the profession and bring interaction designers together. At www.ixdg.org you’ll find news, jobs, tools, and resources for interaction designers. IxDG also hosts the IxD Discussion, a mailing list that provides an international forum for the discussion of interaction.

http://www.ixdg.org

Posted in Usability | No Comments »

designing for television

August 24, 2007 – 6:07 am

designing for television

Designing graphics for television is what I do during daylight hours here in London. But television provides very specific challenges (and, of course, opportunities) for setting type. Designers are increasingly working across multiple media, and those coming from a print background especially may have a culture shock and need to learn some new rules and techniques. Hopefully, the following will help!
History explains all

Firstly, lets look at the technology, its history, and its inherent problems - feel free to skip this part if your eyes start glazing over by all means, but it relates directly to the advice given later, and gives the context of why the advice works.

Television is actually a pretty old technology, and many of the issues I deal with daily are as a result of that fact. The basic standards are PAL, NTSC and SECAM. SECAM was developed by the French in a political decision to protect its manufacturing base. Interestingly, many eastern block countries adopted SECAM for political motives - NTSC is an American system, and PAL was an improved derivative of it. What better way to delay cultural imperialism than using an incompatible television system? For our purposes, if you are designing for SECAM, treat it as PAL.

Why the different standards? Well, its all originally to do with electricity supplies - in most cases, you’ll find NTSC used in countries with a 60Hz power supply, and PAL in those with a 50Hz power supply. It made things easier for the electrical engineers in a time when analogue was king - the power supply frequency was basically used as a clock, allowing the engineers to time when the next frame of video should be displayed.

As a result, we have different frame rates across the globe. PAL displays a higher resolution image (with superior colour) at 25fps (frames per second) and its lesser parent NTSC works at 30fps (well, 29.97 actually, since colour was introduced). What does differing frame rates across the world got to do with typography? This is all important, trust me.

So, why does a 60Hz screen create a 30fps image and not 60fps? Well, television screens are, for the most part, interlaced screens. That means that an image is made up of two passes, called fields. So for example, if an image is made up of, say, 20 lines, then it might be that firstly all the odd line numbers are show, then all the even numbers. This has two positive effects - field-based video and animations can take advantage of the slight time delay to make fast movement appear smoother to the eye, and secondly, a higher resolution image can be displayed on a low resolution screen, fooling the eye still further.

The downside is that certain types of image will flicker. Think about it - if you had a pattern made up of alternate white and black lines (like oh so many trendy websites in the 90s), then on a television, it would display as a frame of white, followed by a frame of black. This is why edges of high contrast can flicker (buzz or vibrate, as we like to call it in the industry) on screen.

Next up, safe guides. I am typing this on my boyfriend’s iBook - its perfect LCD is sharp as nails from edge to edge, and I can see every single bit of the image. Televisions don’t work in the same way, unfortunately. Firstly, there is the issue of overscanning. Televisions, to completely fill the screen no matter what, deliberately display images that go just beyond the edge of the visible screen. This is called overscanning (duh!) and needs to be taken into consideration for anyone working with television output. The area of the screen that is generally regarded to be safe for an image is called Action Safe - any critical action within a television signal that must be seen by the viewer is kept within this action safe area.

Next up, televisions, being clunky old CRTs, are not consistently sharp like LCD and other newer display technologies - at the edges, CRTs lose focus and definition. This is very important for typography as type that otherwise is perfectly readable on screen can blur into an unreadable nonsense. Therefore, within the action safe area, there is another, smaller area called Title Safe, where it is generally regarded to be safe from loss of focus.

We’ve talked about different resolutions, we’ve discussed interlacing and fields, and how different countries use different standards with different frame rates, along with overscanning and safe zones, but no word of type…
On with the type

1: Love it or hate it, all type on television should be anti-aliased, with no exceptions. If it is not, the contrast between the type and the backdrop will cause flickering due to interlacing.

2: Avoid fonts with thin horizontal lines - again, they will flicker like crazy on a television screen due to interlacing, even when anti-aliased and softened. Try and choose fonts that have at very least two pixels depth on any horizonal lines.

3: (Assuming a nominal resolution of 72dpi) Dont use a font smaller than 18pt ever ever, and try and keep to above 21pt as much as possible. Besides the issues mentioned in points 1 and 2, remember the context in which television images are displayed. You are probably less than a metre (3 feet) from your computer monitor, but you?re likely to be quite a bit further away when watching Friends or Newsnight. The only possible exception to this is porn, of course.

4: Pick fonts with a large x-height - that will allow you to experiment with smaller sizes (below 28pt) but remain readable.

5: Don?t use finely seriffed fonts - the serifs will break down on screen unless they’re set very large indeed. Slab or wedge serifs are often good alternatives for television though - experiment, but always check on a broadcast monitor or television before committing.

6: If you are designing for a 16:9 ratio widescreen television, remember that the end design will be anamorphic (squished) and will lose some effective vertical resolution. Try not to choose overly thin, narrow typefaces as they may disintegrate at smaller sizes. Not the arena to be playing with movie poster fonts! While we are on the subject, if your widescreen design is shown on a 4:3 ratio normal television letterboxed (reduced in size so there is a black bar on the top and bottom, rather than having the sides cut off), bear in mind that type will be smaller and potentially less readable. You may want to compensate for this.

7: For static screens or overlays, Gaussian blur the end screen by “0.3″ in Photoshop (or whatever you use): this will help with flickering by reducing the contrast between the background and the type.

8: Be careful of red type, especially if its highly saturated and for use on NTSC systems. It has a tendency to bleed. View your designs on a television or a broadcast monitor to be sure if you use red extensively in your designs.

9: This is where people may disagree with me: Be wary of very chunky (Impact springs to mind) fonts at smaller sizes, they can appear to fill in a little, much like print on newspaper, especially when you soften the type a little to cut back on flickering.

10: When animating type, experiment with frame blending and motion blur, which can give a smoother result. Be careful though, as it can hinder readability while in motion, especially below 36pt.

11: Where possible, recomposite animated type for the system you are using. For example, if you design for NTSC and need to reversion it for PAL (this happens a lot), the standards conversion process has to interpolate frames from about 30fps to 25, or indeed vice versa - this can cause a ghosting / after image effect from frame to frame. On typography, as it its inevitably high contrast, this can be very noticable. Secondly, because the resolutions used are different, a converted design will need to interpolate missing pixels - a small loss in quality. Its more work, for sure, but the results will be smoother and higher quality if you create two versions at the right frame rates and resolutions to begin with.

12: View your work! How it looks on your computer screen in your design or composition application will not match how it looks on television. Check it, ideally from a distance.

Source: Typographer

Posted in Typography | 2 Comments »

The Best of Web 2.0 Websites list

August 23, 2007 – 2:52 pm

The phrase Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. It became popular following the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. According to Tim O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Here are some of the best Web 2.0 websites.

www.omnidrive.com
Storing content online couldn’t be easier than it is with this drag-and-drop tool. Edit, share and publish documents with Omnidrive, even if you or your users don’t have the software to open said documents.

www.esnips.com
Easily keep track of your content and the cool things you find online. Create communities by sharing your stuff, or keep it private: it’s up to you.

www.totoexpress.com
Sharing and collaborating with an unlimited number of people on large or sensitive documents is made easier with TotoExpress. View stats on users’ actions. Specifically designed for those involved in the media, this service has no trouble handling multimedia files.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com
Keep track of you’re your events and find new events to attend in your area and around the country. Join groups and find out what people who share your interests are attending.

www.eventful.com
Request that events take place in your town or search Eventful’s wide assortment of listed events. Search by locale, venue or topic; check out calendars and keep track of your event schedule.

www.confabb.com
Keep track of the best conferences to attend on one site. Search by category, speaker and add conferences to the directory

www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
FeedBurner helps online publishers - anyone producing content on the web - to manage, promote and monetize their distributed media.

www.attensa.com
Use Attensa in conjunction with Outlook in order to keep yourself and your team up-to-date.

www.blogbridge.com
Organize your blog and news feeds into one desktop application.

www.cocktailbuilder.com
Bar full of booze and no idea what to do with it? Tell the Cocktail Builder what liquor and mixers you have lying around and it will tell you what cocktails you can make!

www.onesentence.org
Tell a true story in one sentence and read the one-sentence-stories of others’.
Send mail to your friends and let them see all of your edits, typos and revisions in real time.

www.fuzzmail.org
Send mail to your friends and let them see all of your edits, typos and revisions in real time.

www.arcaplay.com
This site houses a slew of online games, presented in Flash, that you can play onsite, or embed in a personal website, social networking page or blog. The site will show you how many times you’ve played a certain game, how many times the game has been played overall and how many people have marked the game as a favorite.

www.games2web.com
This one’s for the MySpace crowd. A library of games, movies and other embeddables that can be integrated into the majority of social networking sites, not just the popular ones.

http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google
How often do you use Google Images? How good are you at picking a common theme? Guess-The-Google shows you twenty pictures that Google Images returned for a specific keyword. You have to guess wha t that keyword was. The catch? You only have twenty seconds in which to guess the correct answer.

http://www.peertrainer.com
Connect with other people who are interested in fitness and training. Join team activities and find support from users who share the same goals as you.

http://www.medstory.com
A search engine for all things health-related, Medstory lets you search for your health query, presenting you with ways to refine your search by disorder, drugs, studies and more.

www.healia.com/healia
Search for your health query, and utilize Healia’s filter to make your results more specific.

www.wetpaint.com
Wetpaint’s wikis come fully equipped with smart navigation, tag clouds, awesome editing interfaces and neat customization features that allow users to make their wikis as beautiful as possible.

www.wetpaint.com
Wetpaint’s wikis come fully equipped with smart navigation, tag clouds, awesome editing interfaces and neat customization features that allow users to make their wikis as beautiful as possible.

www.stikipad.com
A cheap hosted wiki service, Stikipad comes with neat features such as the ability to track changes and easily update content.

www.43things.com
List the things you’d like to do, achieve or see. Keep track of your “things” and get ideas from others.

www.statsaholic.com
Keep track of sites’ popularity, as reported by Alexa. Compare sites’ stats and download widgets for your blog.

www.listdump.com
A list-junkie’s dream! Browse lists on thousands of different topics. Add your own lists, contribute to and vote on other users’ lists.

http://maps.google.com
The web’s most popular and concise collection of maps and satellite images. Get directions, view amazingly detailed images of landmarks or zoom in on your favorite locations!

www.wayfaring.com
Create and share maps with friends or the Wayfaring community at large.

www.frappr.com
Create maps for people of certain interests, or browse and join the maps of other users, adding yourself and your location.

www.icontact.com
Produce email newsletters, surveys, RSS feeds and more. Send information to subscribers quickly and easily.

www.conduit.com
Create a free, unobtrusive toolbar for your customers to add to their browsers. Incorporate live chat, a search box and your company’s logo.

www.plugim.com
A social news site, this is the place to find what people are currently talking about in the world of internet marketing.

www.ning.com
Incorporate many applications in a customized website that you can keep private or share with a community

www.boxxet.com
Find the net’s best content, brought together into “Boxxets.”

www.coverpop.com
View awesome montages of similar items, such as pictures from Flickr, magazines and books or YouTube videos. Click through from the montage to view the source of any particular image.

www.twitter.com
Find out what other people are doing in real time. Become part of a world-wide community that keeps in touch by answering the question, “what are you doing?”

www.plusmo.com/homepage/home.shtml
Never fall out of the loop, just because you’re out and about. Get slideshows, feeds and more content sent to your mobile phone.

www.juicecaster.com
Sharing your life while you’re on the go is easy with JuiceCaster. Publish your phone’s pictures to your page on JuiceCaster and then incorporate that content to your social networking or blog pages.

www.pandora.com
Discover new music via “your personal DJs” at Pandora. Keep letting Pandora’s player know what you like to hear, and it will keep providing you with tunes you enjoy!

www.last.fm
Let Last.fm take note of what you like to listen to and let is present you with music it thinks you’ll also enjoy. Take a look at what other people are listening to and what’s hot in the community.

www.discrevolt.com
Discrevolt allows artists to print up artist-specific download cards which they can sell to fans. Fans then use the special code on the back of their cards to download the artist’s music from Discrevolt.

www.goowy.com/index.aspx
Includes email, contact manager and games, this service gives you an email address that you can access from your online desktop. Easily customizable, you can incorporate a lot of cool applications into this one platform.

www.desktoptwo.com
A desktop online, Desktoptwo includes many of the things you’ll find on your computer, such as a hard drive, email, IM, office programs and changeable wallpaper.

www.eyeos.org
A web operating system, this service lets you either download its software or use it through the eyeOS server. Includes a calculator, calendar, word processor and mail.

www.google.com/a
Combine Google’s great features such as Gmail, Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Calendar into your company’s virtual office. The service comes complete with a “custom domain” on which your documents, mail and conversations are stored.

www.zoho.com
Includes Writer, Spreadsheet, Show, Wiki, Virtual Office, Project management, planner and chat feature. A complete office experience in one, users can take advantage of all or some of Zoho’s features.

www.backpackit.com
Backpack comes from the team at 37signals and is loaded with useful organizational tools. Keep your pages private or share them, schedule text message and email alerts and enjoy regular online-office services such as a calendar and to-do lists/

www.care2.com
Incorporating petitions, donations, groups and tips, Care2 is an online hub of people who care about their world and want to make it better.

www.donorschoose.org/homepage/main.html
Don’t be concerned about where your donation money goes to anymore. Browse what teachers have said their classrooms need, and choose where your dollar goes

www.begreennow.com
Keep track of how “green” you are. Record your environmentally friendly actions and see how your contributions adds to a world-wide conservation effort.

http://picasa.google.com
Google’s photo sharing service comes with excellent software for editing your pictures. Easy, fast uploads make Picasa fun and simple to use.

www.picnik.com
An online photo editor with tons of cool features, you can use Picnik to edit and enhance images on your computer.

www.odeo.com
Odeo shares millions of podcasts and MP3s with its audience. Users can gerenate their own podcasts or simply enjoy those of others’.

www.podshow.com
Bringing together TV shows, videos, music and a passionate community, you can find just about anything multi-media at PodShow.

www.podomatic.com
Keep track of your podcasts’ stats and see how much attention your content is getting from PodOmatic’s community.

www.linkedin.com
A must for many professionals, LinkedIn allows people to recommend you, find you via your location and expertise, and prompts users to advertise their experience and education for potential clients and employers.

www.spoke.com
Spoke is a large “freemium” service that boasts thirty-five million people and almost a million companies. Use the service to find potential clients and employees.

www.xing.com
See your contacts’ contact lists and develop an extensive professional network. Add your educational information, external online resources and establish trust based on your Xing connections.

http://answers.yahoo.com
Help Yahoo! users answer questions on every topic imaginable. Ask questions and have the community help you out with answers.

www.minti.com
Connect with parents worldwide. Ask and answer questions about all things child-care related.

www.say-so.org
Enjoy the combination feedback, questions, advice and blogging. Join discussions and get involved in the large Say-So community.

www.zillow.com
Find out what the houses you’re interested in should cost and browse listings nationwide.

www.housingmaps.com
Use this Craigslists – Google Maps mashup to find properties for rent or for sale in your area. The interface is deceivingly simple; dive in and discover how content-rich HousingMaps really is.

www.iiproperty.com
Manage your properties with software that lets you track rents, bills, advertisements and invoicing.

www.threadless.com
A thriving online community that revolves around designing tee-shirts, Threadless engages its users both in the designing (it’s a constant competition) and in the community itself.

www.etsy.com
Etsy’s products, which are exclusively handmade, include art, jewelry, handbags, glassware, furniture and much more. All items are sold via the website.

www.wipbox.com
WipBox lets users find the correct categories for their listings on Craigslsit, the average selling prices for items online and quickly find out how sites like Amazon list and review similar products.

www.rollyo.com
Tell Rollyo which sites you’d like to draw searches from for a particular topic in order to get search results that you can really trust.

http://swicki.eurekster.com
Create a customized search engine for your site. The engine learns from those who use it and consistently betters its results.

www.pipl.com
Find web results about people. Sort results by Quick Facts, New Articles, Profiles and Web Pages.

www.facebook.com
Once the online hang-out of college kids, Facebook is the biggest thing to hit the social networking sphere since Friendster and MySpace. The service aims to include a “real time” feel to its site, showing users’ actions to their friends on a time-stamped “News Feed.”

www.mingle2.com
Mingle2 is a completely free online dating website built with one goal in mind: making online dating easy, fun, and accessible to everyone. It’s not a popularity contest or a place where you collect a massive list of strangers on a friends list, it’s simply a medium for singles to meet one another.

www.imbee.com
This social networking site is restricted to use by people under the age of eighteen. Parental consent is required in order to access the site, and Imbee does its best to verify that parents are who they say they are by requiring credit card information, even though the service is free.

www.reddit.com
Find quirky, smart and fun content on Reddit’s social news site. Discuss news stories with others and enjoy one of the web’s more engaging communities.

www.newsvine.com
Enjoy the combination of user-generated and submitted news with news that comes “off the wire.”

www.stumbleupon.com
Tell StumbleUpon what you’re interested in and let it take your on a tour of the web, showing you only what it thinks you’ll like. Let it know if you like the sites it takes you to by giving them “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”

www.netvibes.com
A customizable page to start your day, you can add YouTube videos, personal notes, feeds, an email wizard and more. You even get to pick your page’s title.

www.pageflakes.com
Tell PageFlakes what you want to see when you log in, and get specialized feeds, games and news.

www.google.com/ig
Choose from Google’s array of widgets to add to your personalized Google homepage.

www.forecast.com
Farecast predicts U.S. domestic price changes, lets users book airline tickets online and provides refunds if they get their predictions wrong! There’s absolutely nothing bad you can say about that!

www.kayak.com
Search for flights, hotels, cars, cruises and travel deals, and check in on the latest “buzz” in the travel industry.

www.realtravel.com
Read users’ advice about their travel experiences and use RealTravel’s Free Trip Planner to map out your ideal vacation. You can also create blogs to share your trips with others

www.dailymotion.com/us
View others’ videos and discover how easy it is to present videos on your own website

www.metacafe.com
Explore Metacafe’s videos or share your content with others. Earn money by contributing highly rated, highly viewed content.

www.colorblender.com
Match colors and create cool palettes easily. Get the Photoshop Color Table for your palette and view palettes made by others

www.swivel.com
Show your data on neat graphs and take a look at others’ graphs and charts. It’s more than just data entry; it’s art!

www.thebroth.com
A virtual library of online art that constantly changes with the input of users. Browse the collection, begin a new masterpiece or add to the existing artwork!

www.cakephp.org
Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP whose primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

www.prototypejs.org
Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui
The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources.

www.yourminis.com
Find widgets for your blog or website that include your favorite services like Twitter and Digg.

www.springwidgets.com
Download widgets for your desktop or your website. Choose from a vast array of widgets, such as an iPhone countdown, Lunar Phase Calendar and SpringWidget’s own RSS Reader.

www.flock.com
A browser especially developed for social networking addicts, you can easily stay up-to-date with your online networks absolutely hassle-free.

Posted in Web 2.0 | No Comments »

The best of Web 2.0 !

August 23, 2007 – 2:22 pm

The phrase Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. It became popular following the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the web as a platform. According to Tim O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Here are some of the best Web 2.0 websites.

Flickr (www.flickr.com)
Flickr is one of, if not the best, site for sharing your photos online. With a nice, clean layout and easy-to-use tools, you can upload massive amounts of pictures and label them to your liking. Using tags, you can search for photos of specific content and label your photos with tags so they’re easy to find. But that’s not all. Great uploading tools allow batch uploading quickly, so you don’t have to worry about sorting through photos you hate. Flickr uses AJAX-technology extensively, so no page reloading occurs. This means you can add more tags to a photo or add a comment swiftly and without refreshing. Flickr also allows a contacts list to keep track of your buddies and friends. Flickr is free but has some limitations, such as the amount you can upload if you’re not a “pro” member. Membership is inexpensive at $24.95 a year, though, and is well worth it.

Vimeo (www.vimeo.com)
If Flickr is for photos, then Vimeo is its video counterpart. The site keeps a traditional, clean layout and is very simple. You can upload video to share with people and friends via a contacts list. One of the better features of Vimeo is that it makes most videos easily accessible. All videos are converted to Quicktime, making them easy to view and download, but if the old format is what you normally like to view, Vimeo keeps it around so you can use it. You can easily click one-button to post a video to social bookmarking site del.icio.us (see below), which is great for getting your content out there for all to see. Comments on videos are kept very clean and neat and the best part is that it’s free!

Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us)
Del.icio.us is the “original” social bookmarking site that had lots of success in its clever domain name. Bought by Yahoo! in 2005, little has changed that has made this site such a success. It allows you to keep track of all your favorite items on the web: Music, websites, favorite movies, and more. The layout is clean but a bit confusing at first, and takes a little while to get used to. The front page features great stories from all categories of the web, so  Del.icio.us caters to pretty much everyone. Tags are a huge focus of the site; every post/bookmark features tags to make it more accessible. You can share your bookmarks with family and friends, which is a great way to show them what you’re interested in. Del.icio.us is  free and fun for people looking to show off what they like.

Digg (www.digg.com)
Co-created by ex-TechTV star Kevin Rose, Digg is a news- and story-based site where users get to decide what gets shown. Stories are “dug,” which allows the most “dug” stories to be showcased on the homepage. The site mostly focuses on technology and the like, but also features odd and goofy rumors and interesting sites. You can get the latest dug stories with RSS and create an account to post your own stories to be dugged. Stories can also be tagged for easier searching; the site is launching some cool new features like DiggSpy, a tool that allows you to see what people are digging and writing before they even post anything. Lots of interaction goes on with commenting, so be sure to be talkative when engaging in Digg.

Bloglines (www.bloglines.com)
Bloglines isn’t just for blogs you know. You can use it to add pretty much any RSS feed-in. Owned by AskJeeves, this site allows you to keep track of all your favorite blogs via RSS. You can then log in from any computer to check your news and blog entries on your favorite sites. Their goal is to keep you happy and give you lots of options. You can publish your own blog if you’d like to start writing more, and you can share your favorite blogs with friends so they know what you read, and vice versa. It’s a very good way to keep up to date with your blogs if you’re on the road or don’t like having a newsreader on your computer.

www.technorati.com
Monitor your links and reputation through the world’s leading provider of blog information. Find new blogs to read and attempt to get into Technorati’s top blog list!

www.findory.com
Get your own homepage that shows you what you’re interested in from the blogs and news sources you choose to subscribe to.

http://ma.gnolia.com
Keep track of your favorite online content and quickly see what others have said about a site while you’re still browsing it.

www.furl.net
Store your favorite corners of the internet and let others discover the cool stuff you’ve found. Comment on the content you find and read what other users are saying about your bookmarks.

www.clipmarks.com
Save the web content that makes you sit up and take notice, not just the webpage you found that content on. Share that content with others in the hope that it will make them think, “wow!” as well!

www.lulu.com
Avoid the hassles of publishers and agents – publish your own manuscripts with Lulu. Browse the content that others have published via the site and vie to be featured on Lulu’s front page!

www.biblio.com
Search for out-of-print books from independent booksellers and buy them through Biblio’s user-friendly site.

www.librarything.com
Connect with people who read similar books to you, and get suggestions as to what you should read next.

www.squidoo.com
Create a Squidoo “lens” to market yourself, your products or just something that you’re passionate about. View and rate other people’s lenses and hope your content is rated well by others!

www.instantbull.com
Compare and track the stock market, access stock message boards and browse stock market blogs. Instant Bull has all the current information you’d ever need about what’s hot on Wall Street.

www.shopify.com
Pick from templates or design your own online store. Track orders and keep your store highly organized.

www.yelp.com
Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great -and not so great- in your area.

www.judysbook.com
Judy’s Book is an online community where smart shoppers find and share the best deals, sales and coupons - both from online and local retailers.

http://local.yahoo.com
Yahoo! Local has business reviews, top rated services, and events. Use interactive maps, driving directions reviews and ratings to find the right service near you.

http://www.craigslist.org
Everything and anything you could want to buy, sell, find or read in one place. Look for dates, apartments, jobs and much more.

www.oodle.com
A comprehensive classified site that lets users refine their searches in many awesome ways, such as by what college they attend.

www.vflyer.com/main/Guest.jsp
vFlyer lets users create one ad and have it posted on many classified sites, such as Google Base, Oodle and eBay.

http://docs.google.com
Create and collaborate on files of every kind. See who edited which documents and when.

http://www.writeboard.com
Online text editing made collaborative, Writeboard lets you and your team edit documents while still being able to access earlier versions of the same text. Subscribe to RSS feeds of documents’ changes and share documents with as many people as you like.

www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfo
A completely free “online alternative to Microsoft Office”, ThinkFree lets you create, collaborate on and store documents and files.

www.meebo.com
Use your favorite instant messaging service, no matter where you are or whether the computer you’re using has the right software.

www.campfirenow.com
From the folks at 37 Signals, Campfire lets businesses engage in “web-based group chat” where they can create chat rooms to tele-conference with each other or with clients.

www.mailemotion.tv
Send multimedia mail, using your webcam. All you need is a webcam and an internet connection and you’re good to go.

www.wufoo.com
Create forms for every survey you’d care to perform. From the daily “what to have for lunch” question to more in-depth questionnaires, Wufoo has a solution for most queries.

www.projectstat.us
Let customers know what’s going on with their projects by uploading their project’s information and letting them log in and view the project’s progress.

www.editgrid.com/home
Collaborate and save spreadsheets online. Share your spreadsheets or make them private. View public templates and browse by top EditGrid users.

Posted in Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »

Typography ! Resources

August 23, 2007 – 12:06 pm

What is Typography

Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing. Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic artists, art directors, and clerical workers. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users.

Typography Resources

There are plenty of educational sites, blogs and news sites out there. Some of the opinions and writings featured on them are written by people far more serious and intellectually rigourous than us. And some of them are crap. Here’s what we recommend, in no particular order:

There are plenty of educational sites, blogs and news sites out there. Some of the opinions and writings featured on them are written by people far more serious and intellectually rigourous than us. And some of them are crap. Here’s what we recommend, in no particular order:

Typophile
is a collaborative typographic project, best known for its lively forums. Lurk, then dive in.

Typographica
is a type blog with news and commentary, edited by Stephen Coles
and Joshua Lurie-Terrell. Its been a bit quiet recently, but so have we. Certain to revive soon.

MS Typo News
brings you type news compiled by Microsoft’s Typography division.

Fontzone
is a pay-to-read typography site - it does have a free web feed.

FontFeed
comes from FontShop, and features news, tips and tutorials, usually gently steered towards FontShop products. Not the busiest of blogs - at the time they were averaging 3 posts a month - but good nether the less. Contributors include Stephen Coles and Yves Peters.

Notes on type design -
a great introduction to typeface design. The guides work through the actual processes of type design, rather than acting as a tutorial in font founding software itself.

Type Basics
from Underware is a stylish series of annotated sketches that gives particularly good advice on type design. Available in English, German and Spanish.

Chank
Howto is a quick and dirty introduction to creating traced fonts such as handwriting fonts. If the two sites above were too indepth or serious for you, this might be better. It is a little out of date, but software principles can be transferred with a little thought and observation. Appropriate if you’re dipping your toes for fun.

Software for founding type
Ready to start designing your own type? Here are a few options:

FontLab
pretty much runs the professional type design show these days, with FontLab Studio and a revived Fontographer. FontLab is a little difficult to get to grips with, but offers advanced OpenType editing that the cheaper and easier to get to grips with Fontographer lacks.

If you’re just getting started and do not need more advanced typographical features, try FontLab’s cheaper little brother, TypeTool. All for Mac & Windows.

FontForge
is a scary program, mostly down to its olde worlde interface - on a Mac it runs under X11  - and its deeply technical nature. Not for the faint of heart, but if you’re making your own fonts, you’re pretty ruffty-tuffty anyhow, right? Would it help to know it’s completely free? For Macs, Windows and Linux.

DTL FontMaster
is a series of utilities that costs over 2000€. It makes fonts using telepathy, and cures MRSA. Well at that price it better. There is a free version for Windows and Mac OS Classic.

Neat at no cost

Linotype FontExplorer X
is a great little font manager that even does auto-activation of typefaces. Read the manual first though, or your fonts may play hide and seek. For Mac.

Inkscape
is an opensource vector illustration package. It can come in useful for autotracing graphics etc, or if you can’t quite afford a commerical package. For Mac (under X11), Windows and Linux.

Combine PDF
is a handy little utility that allows you to stitch multiple PDF files together, reorder pages and other neat stuff. For Mac.

Scribus
is a suprisingly advanced DTP package with advanced PDF export controls. A little ropey on the Mac, but worth a go on Windows and Linux. Opensource, so don’t expect its interface to be like Indesign.

Gimpshop
is a version of the opensource GIMP editor that has been reworked to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop in its menu structure.

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Usability Products: iRise Studio

August 20, 2007 – 4:11 pm

iRise Studio is an application definition authoring tool used by business analysts, usability professionals and project managers to quickly visualize and define business software. Unlike traditional requirements tools, iRise Studio can be used to create fully interactive, high definition replicas of the target application that stakeholders actually delight in using. iRise simulations are easy to assemble for non-programmers and are so realistic users will swear they are interacting with the final production application. The “drag and drop” interface is easy to master and the final product becomes a visual blueprint for what to build. No confusion, no lost cycles and no rework. iRise Studio can be used to simulate highly interactive rich Internet behavior. Web-based business systems are quickly taking advantage of newer techniques and technologies to improve the user’s experience by providing features and functionality expected in traditional desktop applications. iRise Studio sets the standard in helping non-technical definition teams to define compelling simulations of applications including many of the behaviors found in rich internet applications today.

iRise delivers the world’s leading application definition platform that is used to get requirements right - the first time.  Major corporations around the globe use iRise application simulation on mission-critical business systems to cut rework costs, accelerate time to market and reduce the risks associated with global development.

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Welcome to Raj Allipuram Blog on Usability, User Experience, UCD, HCI & UX Jobs

August 19, 2007 – 2:56 pm

This blog is maintained by Rajasekhar Reddy Allipuram, working for CAPGEMINI as User Experience Consultant, Onestop information on Usability, User Exeperience, Interaction Design, HCI, User Centric Design, User Testing, Human Factors, Accessability, Glossary, Books on Usability and related information. Please keep checking this blog for regular updates.

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