User Interface | uber.la

Mar 26 2010

An Educational Revolution: How Handheld Computing is Changing Everything Into A NEW GAME

Category: ho-dad parenting,how do i?,iPad-iWay!,lifestreaming,social media,speed the web,tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 6:48 am

My favorite new Tech Update service, FastCompany.com, has a great article on A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution.

Here's a snippet:

As smartphones and handheld computers move into classrooms worldwide, we may be witnessing the start of an educational revolution. How technology could unleash childhood creativity — and transform the role of the teacher.

I know that I have seen amazing changes in my kids educational enthusiasm due to some engagements with technology and gaming we introduced over a year and a half ago. The fun part was I got to be a major participant and enthusiastic force in redirecting what might otherwise be tv time into game time. Yes, it's screen time, but we cannot kill the screen less we cut out kids off from the popular culture that is of critical importance in bonding, tribing and thriving at school.

But how much happier I am when my son asks enthusiastically to go to the library to get some books on "magic and crystals" for a game he and his schoolmates have been inventing over the course of the last 4 recess periods. "It's got a lot of people, Dad," he said. "And we are trying to figure out other crystal compounds that could be of use in our magic. That's what we do."

Que huge grin on my face. "Sure, let's go to the library. I'm sure they've got a lot of books that would work for your research."

FACT: Life is not a game.

Corollary: Many aspects of life are game-like. And more and more the "gaming skills" of:

exploration/curiosity
persistence
just-in-time learning
teamwork
complex system control and navigation
manipulation of 3d virtual environments
storing and recalling hundreds of directions and commands
long-range strategy building
accurate science and mathmatics
agression
non-agression (or patience)
the concept of allies
defensive vs. offensive strategy
collaborative team building
collaborative environment/world development

I can tell you the skills in that list are still ones I work on daily. As an adult in the social media and online marketing space, it is all about collaboration, allies and team building. And the team building at our level often happens with people that we may never meet in real life. But the parameters are very game like.

establish trust (friend of foe)
build a working agreement (money and roles and responsibilities)
define the objective
proceed with quest
make adjustments along the way (new team mates, people changing roles on the team, people leaving the team)
successful completion of objective
future planning for new campaigns

So the iPads are coming. And I make no secret about my predictions that the Apple iPad will change everything we know about computing.

Let me take you through my family's progression back into gaming.

In November of 2008 I bought Rockband II for our PS-2. While my son (9) didn't immediately join in, my daughter (7) jumped at the drums and honed in on a song and practiced and got really good at playing drums. While my son didn't want to pick up the instruments right away, he was content to watch and take on the "manager" role of the band that my daughter and I played in.

A few months later in January 2009, I started playing SPORE. If you haven't seen it, you might want to give it a gander.

Now I guess you have to get over the "evolution" question, but I believe even hard core anti-evolutionists can imagine that some of life evolves. I mean you can watch yeast and sea monkeys change before your very eyes. So I won't get into the intelligent design vs darwin discussion here. But what I will share is that conversations around our house started being about the advantages of being a herbivore or and carnivore. And a wonderful surprise when we discovered how to make our evolving cell into an omnivore.

Without much direction from me, the kids dove into SPORE. They both played their own games their own way. And since the game only works on a Intel-powered box (we're a family of Macs) and it was only installed on my machine we were often negotiating for who could use my machine. And one classic statement my wife heard at bed time, soon after the SPORE questing had begun, was "When you make it to land you can totally lose the flagella."

Que more large grins by both parents. I don't think either 1st or 3rd grades have been working at the flagella level.

So the final evolution, thus far was when my son saved up his money for an iPod touch. And the change this device brought into our family was even more comprehensive.

Here are a few of the over arching changes we've noticed thus far:

my son saves money for games on his iPod Touch (He is motivated by a few other things, but he is constantly asking for ways he can make money to get an upgrade or new program for his iPod Touch.)
my son is enrolled in guitar lessons and is thriving at it
my daughter is loving her piano lessons
after the addition of Beatles RockBand the kids and I have been walking around singing Beatles songs (I can't tell you what a thrill it is to hear either child break into song, and if it's McCartney and Lennon rather than Pa Pa Pa Pa Poker Face Lady GaGa then I am doubly pleased.

So the games have lead to more games, music and imaginative play that includes film making, computer game making, comic book making, and ever more exciting conversations about new games and new ideas for games that they might build rather than simply play.

And if the TV is off 100% of the time during the weekdays, well, that too makes me a bit happier. Not that I don't like iCarly, I do. But I'm not a big fan of Sponge Bob or Chowder. Ren and Stimpy are more my speed.

So will the iPad change everything? Well, as a way to demonstrate what's coming in a way that you can imagine it, dial back just a few years to the launch of the initial iPhone. Here was another device that the Mac-loyalists had been begging for and finally we had our PHONE. Big deal right?

And the captains of Nokia and Samsung and RIM were happy to tell us that their devices were coming soon. And the iPhone would be interesting but not that important over all. Replay my response to today's nay-sayers. "EXCUSE ME?"

As I was telling a fiend today it's not so much what Steve Jobs and Apple showed about the iPad that is exciting. Yes, I like the redesigned apps and the larger format games. But the exciting thing is what is going to happen after April 3rd. While I am working with an iPhone and iPad developer today, we do not know what is going to happen when we actually start PLAYING with them.

It's what happens after the iPad is released that is going to be amazing. And if things go as planned, several projects I am working on, will help a group of smart people, designers, programmers, technologists, redefine some of the ideas we have about computers and mobile devices and most importantly: the manipulation and entry of data with the touch-swipe-tap-pinch gestures that we will be trying to harness in the coming weeks and months.

Onward into the fog. The amazing and shiny future may be obscured at the moment by media hype, counter-hype and Apple-hunters, but the future will be written by the users and dreamers, not the media. And I hope to capture just a bit of the dream and maybe have a tiny part of defining a unique use or user-interface opportunity with the iPad. And a last promise: the future of education will be changed forever by the Apple iPad. Starting April 3, 2010, we begin the next chapter.

If you are interested in discussing iPad opportunities with my dev team, please don't hesitate to contact me. We'll be happy to show you what we've got so far.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/edu-ipad

The latest:

The entire Uber.la Apple iPad coverage can be seen via the iPad-iWay tag.

From FastCompany.com: A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution.

Tags: apple ipad, apple-hunters, authorized ipad developer, best touchscreen, collaboration skills, educational gaming, educational revolution, envisioning the ipad, future of education, gaming and education, gaming skills, ipad dev team, ipad developer, ipad development, ipad development resources, ipad education, ipad for education, ipad opportunities, ipad potentials, iphone development, life IS game-like, life is not a game, multi-touch, multi-touch user interface, next-generation ipad, playing education, playing spore, spore the game, the next ipad, touch-swipe-tap-pinch, touch-swipe-tap-pinch gestures, touchscreen potentials, touchscreen user-interface, user interface, we begin the next chapter

View Comments

Jun 11 2009

Upgrade WordPress to 2.8! A Quick Summary Review (8.5 of 10)

Category: speed the web,tech opinion,tech reviews — jmacofearth @ 9:30 am

[Crossposted from FluentSearch.com]

The new dashboard controls are great. You can create your own hierarchy and use 1 – 4 colums for your own workflow building. MAJOR WIN!

the new wordpress 2.8 dashboard page

and the plug-in management page has some nice new options:

wordpress 2.8 plugin management page

I'm not a big fan of the varying row coloring. When sorted by ACTIVE or INACTIVE or UPGRADES AVAILABLE the rows are all the same color. But without explanation it looks like the alternating row highlighting might be messed up. But it's not… WP is merely identifying the status of the plugins via color. Nice touch, perhaps a little add to the row itself that would define the color (an icon maybe) as a status indicator. MINOR TWEAK STILL NEEDED.

And last, for this quickie, I am going to look at the Widget management system. This area has undergone some major interface overhauls, some GOOD some BAD some downright UGLY.

First the overall Widget management screen.

wordpress 2.8 widget management screen

Dragging additonal widgets from the left (white portion) of the screen to the right section (in this case, sidebar 1) does just what you think it would. Adds a widget to the sidebar.

But here is the first disconnect with the new design. There is a major functional element that is completely missing from this screen. Hint, I have already added a new text box widget to the sidebar at this point. I have added my content and closed the collapsable widget window. (Oh and can we decide if they are WIDGETS, APPLICATIONS or PLUGINS and just go with that, cause we call them all three and I'm confused sometimes.)

So in previous versions of WP (this is WordPress 2.7.1 what would be prominently displayed as a NEXT STEP on the Widgets page looks like this:

wordpress 2.7.1 widget management

I like a few of the design/user interface changes in WordPress 2.8. But the REMOVAL of the SAVE CHANGES button is a HUGE MISS. (I will log this problem on the WordPress.org site shortly. If you agree please weigh in on the opensource site.)

I guess for us WordPress workers, the warning notice at the top of the 2.7.1 page was a bit redundant. But WordPress funtionality should be for the nOOb as well as the experienced user. And in this case, as an experienced user, I DID NOT SAVE MY CHANGES and I LOST THEM. And here's the problem.

wordpress 2.8 widget save issue

In the example above you can see two widget editing windows open. In the top one I have added some code to the CloudClip.net site that displays the BETA logo. In the second widget window, you will notice that I have the LINKS widget open. And here is where the disconnect begins.

The modal window functionality (meaning the things that you can do within the window only while it is showing) are REMOVE, CLOSE and SAVE. Okay. I can even live with the fourth "automatically add paragraphs" checkbox in the Text widget window, though I think there's a better place for it.

So stay with me on this.

If I have just added the Text Widget and I hit SAVE at the end of my edit, no problem. I can close the window or move on to a different screen and my changes have been saved. (Both SAVED within the modal window and SAVED in the OVERALL WIDGET MANAGMENT SENSE, like the SAVE button in the 2.7.1 example above.

However… If you merely move a widget around within the Sidebar 1 window, WHERE or HOW do you SAVE your changes?

wordpress 2.8 sidebar widget managment

The answer is, you don't. And if you move a widget position within this window and go off about your business elsewhere you will find that your rearrangement was NOT SAVED. Just like the warning on the 2.7.1 screen. "Save your changes…" But there's no button to do it with.

The work around I have come up with is this. After you have made some positioning edits and BEFORE you move on to any other screen, open any of the widget edit windows and use the SAVE button there.

The easiest fix would be to add the warning and the SAVE button back to the bottom of this sidebar management window.

Oh, this problem arises when you ADD A WIDGET to the sidebar as well. Where normally you could drag the widget onto the sidebar and SAVE, now in 2.8 you drag the widget into position. And if you don't open an edit widget window and SAVE again, you will lose the changes. I spent 15 minutes reorganizing and adding to a sidebar only to find that the changes were not magically auto-saved.

So there are a couple things I like about the new 2.8 widget management system. But there are a few User Interface issues that I think should be addressed immediately. Because as I am teaching people that WordPress is the WAY, they are going to get really lost with this SAVE CHANGES issue. Heck, I bet I loose another 20 edits before I start making my work around part of my normal workflow.

MAJOR USER INTERFACE FAIL. Please fix immediately.

UPDATE 11PM 6-11-09 Due to some reader feedback and a few more hours working with WordPress 2.8 I have an update:

On the Widget Mangement page you can use the "Screen Options" tab to "Enable accessibility mode."

While this does not fix the missing SAVE button problem, it does add back the ADD and EDIT links on the specific tabs of the modules you want to edit.

And it does one more nice thing. When you open a module to edit, instead of popping open a window, the "accessibility mode" opens the editing process in a single window. And what this does is force you to SAVE before moving on. And as it should, SAVING closes the window and brings you back to the widget dashboard. [That's a big reason to enable accessibility, do it now, I'll wait.]

accessibility enabled widget editing

Downgraded to Medium Interface Fail once Accessibility Features Have been enabled. Please Fix. And while waiting make the Accessibility setting the default.

Uploading Media. And one more nice addition. Now when uploading media, WordPress 2.8 remembers which uploading process you like to use. I HATE the FLASH Uploader in WP, Facebook and NING. And now I don't have to click "simple upload browser" to get to the HTML driven tool. Here is the screen that comes up consistently now that I have auto-set that preference by switching once to the Browser Uploader.

For the WordPress's ability to set my uploader preference without requiring a "KILL FLASH UPLOADER" plugin. Nice touch. MAJOR WIN.

+++

That's it. Some HUGE wins. And I am only one day into the usage. A few tweaks and one fail. Not bad. I wish I had been able to participate in the beta over the last few days and gotten this request in BEFORE yesterday's release, but I was swamped in meetings all day.

Congratulations WordPress World and WordPress workers! It is a beautiful upgrade. [Now I'm off to upgrade my other 30+ WordPress sites. ;^P ]

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/review-wordpress-28

NOTE: Since writing this piece I have used WordPress 2.8 in the new Safari (v4) on the Mac. WOW. It works BETTER than Firefox, as in noticeably faster. Check it!

Tags: building websites with wordpress, designing in wordpress, fluentsearch, fluentsearch.com, how-to upgrade wordpress, real world wordpress, the new wordpress, tweaking wordpress, upgrading wordpress, user experience, user interface, wordpress, wordpress 2.8 review, wordpress architecture, wordpress for small business, wordpress realities, wordpress upgrade, working with wordpress

View Comments

May 24 2009

The F-Bomb and F-Book: The F-Book Manifesto! [Facebook = F-Book]

Category: community building,executive learnings,just for fun,social media,teaming & leadership,tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 9:37 am

One of the most polarizing and incendiary things one can say or write is fu**! The F-Bomb got me my only ethics reprimand. I was in my cube talking on the phone, and I must have emoted a bit too loudly. A couple of days later, a co-cuber sent me an email warning me and asking me to watch my language. She wrote, "some of your coworkers find your use of that word offensive." Of course, the coworker, who I had been talking to on the phone said, "Fu*k That!"

Compare that to F-Book. One of the most confused and misguided things one can say or write about social media is F-Book is the future of Social Media. That's how it's gonna be referred to in the future. Not Facebook but F-Book. Because similar to the F-Bomb it strikes fear in the hearts of many. Here are some of the fears I am aware of. My own F-Book Manifesto!

F-Book is for business
F-Book is Social Media
F-Book apps
F-Book gaming
F-Book has a clue
F-Book sucks
F-Book keeps making really stupid changes
F-Book is better or worse than Twitter
F-Book is great
F-Book status updates are how I keep current with my "friends"
Does F-Book matter?
F-Book has a financial model in mind
F-Book ADS are pathetic
F-Book ADS are funny
F-Book says "We are happy with our current financial plans."
F-Book is delusional
F-Book has a Senior Platform Designer and his name is Dave Morin
F-Book's Dave Morin is #16 in Fast Company's Most Creative People List
F-Book's Dave Morin, according to FC list, "crisscrosses the globe to conferences and OpenID meetups – as an ambassador for the notion that F-Book can play well with others."
F-Book doesn't need to play well with anyone
F-Book's Dave Morin is not focused on "the redesign of F-Book's home page," again according to the FC listing
F-Book management better get somebody other than Dave Morin, then, to look into how F-Book is getting WORSE not better in User Interface
F-Book unfortunately is probably the most powerful force in the universe after Google
F-Book makes Twitter's hype look puny
F-Book adds 200 servers a week to keep up with the new members and new traffic (I made that number up, but it does add a phenomenal number of servers each week)

I think that's enough for now. And now as my gift to Dave Morin and the F-Book design team, below are several unsolicited critiques of F-Book. No strings guys, but DO SOMETHING better than you are now. Cause you keep F-ing it up.

@jmacofearth
permalink: http://bit.ly/F-BookManifesto

Tags: bad bad bad, cloud fail, couple of days, coworkers, dave morin, dell, designer fail, don't use facebook, f-bomb, f-book, facebook, facebook ads, facebook app platform, facebook apps, facebook causes, facebook design, facebook fail, facebook financial model, facebook for business, facebook friends, facebook games, facebook groups, facebook home page, facebook not for business, Facebook Status Updates, facebook users, fail whale, google, hype, senior designer, Senior Platform Designer, status updates, stupid changes, twitter, UI critique, user interface, ux critique

View Comments

May 05 2009

A Facebook UI Exploration – Simplify Simplify Simplify

Category: community building,facebook fails,lifestreaming,social media,tech opinion — jmacofearth @ 10:01 am

[Update: The slideshare team just promoted this presentation to the front page of the DESIGN section. wOOt! ]

In an effort to call my own BS, I am presenting an unsolicited UI exploration of the Top Navigation system on Facebook. We all know they are working on the design, with mixed results. And we ALL need them to do a better job of simplifying all the options we have, because Facebook is getting confusing to use, and that is not a good thing.

Yesterday, I was attempting to update my "status." This is the heart and soul of Facebook interaction and I could not figure out how to get the site to let me paste a URL as part of my status update. Every time I had a URL as part of my "status" the Facebook smart-interface would pull possible icon images from the link and give me several choices to pick from. All good, except when I completed the transaction the "update" went to my [Wall] and not to my [Status].

I tried a number of times with no success. At one point I was able to force Facebook to not look-up the URL and post the status as a raw URL. But I could not make any comments along with the URL to describe why it's part of my "status."

So this is an epic fail of UI, where the interface designers attempt to make the process easier and more interactive, BUT they break something else in the process.

So as I posted "The FaceBook UI UX sux." on my facebook [Wall] I will now share a small bit of UI advice with Mark Zuckerberg and company. They didn't ask. But I can ask them to fix the Top Nav. Fair nuff!

[This presentation is posted on Slideshare.net as a downloadable PPT presentation if you want to look at or reference the orginal. CC - Attribution Only.]