Karen McGrane

On a good day, I make the web more awesome. On a bad day, I just make it suck less.

September 30, 2009 • 2:02 pm 94

Widex Mind 440 Hearing Aid Review

I exchanged my pair of Oticon Epoq XW for a pair of Widex Mind 440s. The Widex Mind wasn’t even on my radar to begin with, because I was completely focused on Bluetooth.

Once I realized that Bluetooth integration wasn’t good enough yet for what I wanted to do, and I realized that the Widex family was a good fit for me because it offered superior noise reduction and a sound quality that I liked, I decided to stick with that brand and get their best model.

Problems, Problems

My initial fitting went badly. Widex sent the wrong hearing aids, and then gave my audiologist very specific instructions that caused him to break the earhook. I went home disappointed, but they promised to send the correct pair with a rush order.

CAMISHA Domes

I was told that I would do better if I was fitted with custom-made “CAMISHA” domes instead of regular domes. I spent $150 to have custom domes made that would sit deep inside my ear and connect to a thin, unobtrusive wire. The goal of the custom fitting was to reduce feedback.

These were a disaster. Blame it on my weirdly-shaped head, but the custom domes would not stay in my ears. The left earmold in particular popped out to such a degree that the hearing aid was useless. It was obvious from the second I put them on that they were not going to work, but I was a good sport and tried them out over the weekend.

Open Fit Domes

I then swapped out the custom domes for generic open fit domes. (Does anyone want to buy a pair of barely-used custom-made ear molds? I’ll give you a good deal.) I was pretty unhappy with these as well. I teach a class and when I wore these in class the first time, I couldn’t hear the students talking on the other side of the room.

I was told that the open-fit domes might not work as well for me, given my audiogram, and I’d get feedback. This was true! I had the sensation that the hearing aids were always just about to start feeding back, like an annoying whistle just below my range of hearing. Imagine what a teakettle sounds like when the water is just starting to boil. I was told that these fancy new hearing aids do a better job of recognizing and removing feedback, but that was not my experience here.

Back to the Drawing Board

During my trial with the Widex Mind 440s, I did not feel they were an improvement over my current Widex Senso Divas, which are 5 years old.

I did some research and learned that Widex makes an even newer hearing aid, the Passion 440. I’ve returned the Widex Mind 440s in exchange for the Passion 440s. I haven’t tried the Passion 440s yet, but I’ll tell you right now what my sense of the benefits and drawbacks are:

Benefits

  • Receiver in the canal: I was pretty annoyed that the Mind 440 didn’t offer RIC, but it looks like that’s what the Passion 440 does. In exchange for Bluetooth, it will at least permit me to wear earbuds on top of them, which should make it possible to listen to music or answer the phone. A low-tech solution, which means it will probably work.

Drawbacks

  • Size: Good god, these things are tiny. You might be asking “why is small size a drawback?” To me, this is just baby-boomer vanity. I’ve worn hearing aids for 25 years, I don’t care if anyone sees them, and I don’t need a hearing aid that’s the size of a dime. The smaller aids will have more moisture problems than the large ones, and they’re easier to drop. I’d be happier with a larger aid that I could hold onto more easily.
  • Size 10 Batteries: This goes hand-in-hand with the smaller size of the aid. I’m going to have to change these things twice a week, and the small size means it’s going to be a pain in the ass. I have tiny little fingers and even I don’t relish the challenge of popping these things in and out. I’m looking at my Senso Diva with its luxurious Size 13 battery and thinking I’ll miss it.
  • Remote Control: And yet another drawback because of the size! These aids are too tiny to include a button to switch between programs, so I have to buy a remote control to switch between programs. This is one more thing I have to schlep around in my purse, possibly lose, spill stuff on, etc.

I’m getting super cranky about this process. I think I’ve spent about 40 hours just going to the audiologist, I’ve plunked down over $7500, and right now I have nothing to show for it. I’m genuinely not happy with the options available to me. I hope the Passion 440s provide a great listening experience, and persuade me that the money and time are all worth it.

Filed under: Bionic Hearing

September 18, 2009 • 8:41 pm 58

Oticon Epoq XW Hearing Aid Review

The first hearing aid in my trial was the Oticon Epoq XW. I did a comparison test with it and the Phonak Audeo Yes in the audiologist’s soundproof booth. The Oticon was the clear winner in that test. I liked the sound quality better immediately, and the brief hearing test he gave me scored the Oticon significantly higher in word recognition than the Phonak. I picked both of these hearing aids to test because they offered Bluetooth integration, and I was excited to take the Oticon Epoq home and try it out with my Bluetooth enabled devices.

Bluetooth and the Epoq

I spent about $7500 on the Epoq and its Bluetooth enabling companion, the Streamer. A comparable pair of hearing aids without the Bluetooth would cost around $6000.

In other words, I spent $1500 to get my hearing aids to act like a Bluetooth headset.

If I spent $1500 on a regular Bluetooth headset, I would expect it to work FLAW-LESS-LY.

The Oticon Bluetooth did not work flawlessly. Not even close.

Pairing with multiple devices

I wanted to pair my hearing aids with my iPhone, my MacBook Pro, and my Mac Mini. I ran into immediate problems when trying to connect to multiple devices. Although the documentation says that you can connect up to eight devices, after unpairing and repairing I was only ever able to connect to two at a time. This wasn’t a dealbreaker, but I was frustrated by the troubleshooting I had to do, and disappointed when I realized that I was better off only connecting two at a time.

Wireless Streaming from Computer

I watch TV and movies from a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV. Usually I watch with captions, but when that’s not possible, I sometimes put on headphones so I can listen more closely. Wirelessly streaming audio from the computer to my hearing aids was a compelling prospect, but a disappointing reality. The sound quality was very soft and unacceptably tinny — so much that a Bluetooth connection was in no way better than just normal listening.

Wired Streaming from Computer

I also tried listening to music from my laptop with a wired connection. The wire ran between my laptop and the Streamer (worn around my neck), and then the sound was sent wirelessly between the Streamer and the Epoqs. The sound quality was so weak and tinny that I can’t imagine ever choosing it over listening to music with headphones. My old hearing aids are Widex Divas, and they have a good music program. I was really excited about the potential for wireless music streaming to my hearing aids. The reality was a poor quality, wired connection. Headphones plus hearing aids were still a better solution.

Mobile Phone

I was able to successfully make and receive calls on my iPhone using the Streamer. If this is the only Bluetooth integration you wanted, it would probably suffice. The sound quality was good and there was something magical about being able to push a button and have calls come in via my hearing aids. The downside is that you have to wear the Streamer around your neck in order to make and receive calls. Also, some of the people I talked to on the phone complained that I sounded like I was on a bad speakerphone.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

I really, really, really wanted to love these hearing aids. I was so psyched to get them. But a couple of things pushed me over the edge:

Background Noise

Never have I appreciated my Widex hearing aids so much as the first time I took my Oticons into a noisy restaurant. I am accustomed to being able to hear relatively easily in restaurants, at conferences, and in other noisy situations. I assumed that all hearing aid manufacturers had similar noise reduction programs to the Widex. I was wrong.

Now, I admit that I am accustomed to the Widex and so a shift in manufacturer may have been more disorienting for me. Someone who was not as familiar with Widex may not have experienced the same dissatisfaction that I did. But I was shocked! There was a dull roar of noise in the background of the restaurant that I was used to having filtered out. This extended to other environments — I particularly remember visiting my mother and asking if her birds had always been so loud. I found myself thinking that smarter hearing aids would have made better choices about what sounds to filter out.

Streamer Fail

The last straw for me was the failure of my Streamer, only two weeks into my trial. I went on a ten-day trip and the Streamer stopped working on Day 2. It refused to charge, but it would blink a flashing orange light to let me know that it was still doing something. I couldn’t find any documentation or guidance online about how to fix the problem. The instructions in the user’s manual about how to reset the Streamer didn’t work.

Onward

So back they went. Let me offer some proactive defenses here about why this was a reasonable solution:

  • I had three fittings. I went in for fittings on three separate occasions, and spent a fair amount of time with my audiologist on the noise reduction program in particular. I don’t believe he could have done anything else to resolve that problem.
  • I tried to get help on the internet. Someone might be able to tell me here how I could have fixed my Streamer problem. And if everything else had been great, I might have been willing to sort that one out. But I was not willing to pay a significant premium for spotty Bluetooth on hearing aids that weren’t meeting my basic needs.
  • I’m an expert user. I am probably in the top 95th percentile in terms of technology savvy hearing aid wearers. I am willing to experiment to get things right, and I’m comfortable searching the internet for help. But the balance between cost and effort on one hand, and benefits on the other, was just not good enough with these hearing aids.

    • My next choice was the Widex Mind 440.

    Filed under: Bionic Hearing, TV in the Future

June 16, 2009 • 7:10 pm 2

Content is King, or, if you don’t have a content strategy you’re living in a fairy tale.

This year, I was invited back to Malmö Sweden to give a new workshop at the From Business to Buttons conference. Because I was so close to the home of Hans Christian Andersen, I organized the presentation around a fairy tale. Like most fairy tale people, the ones in my talk made some mistakes.

I’m super excited by all the momentum around content strategy right now. From our local NYC meetups to Kristina Halvorson’s new book, there’s a community of people that I am delighted to be a part of.

Filed under: Content Strategy, Presentations

May 22, 2009 • 6:33 am 10

Why Web Ads Suck

I’ve been researching and writing about the advertising business model for a while now, and for one simple reason: I hate online ads. They suck.

And yet, I’ve come around to believing that despite its flaws, advertising is only chance we have of making any real money off the internet. Or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, advertising is the worst business model for the internet, except for all the others that have been tried.

Brian Morrissey of Adweek asks Are designers to blame for bad Web ads?

There are any number of reasons that web ads are terrible, but most of them sit far upstream from the beleaguered agency art director asked to churn out banner ads each week.

Advertisers Don’t Spend Enough
If you want better online ads, why not pay more for them? When you pay more for something, you often get better quality. CPMs for online ads are between 1/7 and 1/10 of print ads. That means that for every dollar an advertiser like Chanel will pay to get my attention in a magazine, they’ll pay only a dime to show me something online.  Do you expect to get the same quality from your $10 sushi from Whole Foods as you would get if you spent $100 at Nobu? It’s a chicken and egg problem — advertisers want to see better returns before they will spend more — but the advertisers will have to start paying more before quality will improve. Lower CPMs are the main reason that traditional media businesses are floundering; even if publishers devise a somewhat-palatable way for users to pay for content it still won’t make up the difference.

Measurability is a Double-Edged Sword
The saving grace of web ads — measurability — is also their downfall. Publishers tout measurability as a key reason to shift to online media, yet the metrics used to evaluate success are too simplistic. Click-through is a terrible way to measure people’s interest and engagement. People will click more often on things that are annoying, but that doesn’t mean they like the ads. Take the example from those subscription cards in periodicals (“magazine seeds”) which were previously the most intrusive form of advertising known to man, before the invention of Eyeblaster. Subscription marketers know that if you put five cards in a magazine, you’ll get more subscriptions than if you put four cards in — regardless of how much you annoy the people who don’t subscribe. Similarly, the more irritating you make your ad, the more likely it is someone will click on it. If that seems like a flawed way of doing business, don’t blame the designers who are encouraged to make obnoxious ads. Blame the system that focuses on click-through metrics to the exclusion of more meaningful evaluations. (If you still think that measurability is the end-all-be-all of the internet, and you haven’t read Doug Bowman say Goodbye, Google, now would be an opportune time.)

Industry-standard Sizes are Too Constraining
I’ve designed sites for dozens of newspapers, magazines, and blogs, and I can confidently say that having a limited palette of ad sizes (and thus grid structures) to work with really constrains your creativity. The only ad format anyone wants to buy is a 300×250 rectangle. The IAB and other industry organizations put Soviet-style pressure on publishers and advertisers to force them to conform to a single standard. The argument for standard sizes is that it widens adoption, since advertisers are assured of being able to place their banner on as many sites as possible. In practice, it retards growth, because sites are unwilling to branch out to new formats. I’ve been advocating the half-page ad (300×600) for years now, but few sites have re-architected to support it, and so agencies don’t design for it. I asked one client why they didn’t run more of the larger ad size, and he replied “We can’t run it unless 12 of our competitors run it. And they don’t.”

Advertising is About More Than Awareness
Much has been said about how the traditional marketing funnel has been turned sideways and inside-out by the internet. Not enough has been done to educate clients and creative teams about how to change the way they work to engage and persuade people throughout the transaction funnel. Everyone still focuses on banner ads and microsites, which are the equivalent of bus sides and TV commercials. Says Bob Greenberg of R/GA in Art & Commerce: Funnel Clouding (also from Adweek):

I suspect the reason agencies haven’t tackled consideration and preference is because they are far beyond their capabilities rather than simply outside their comfort zone. Real engagement requires entirely new teams of people—like information architects, data analysts and an army of technologists of various stripes. The traditional teams found at agencies simply do not possess the skill sets needed to tackle areas that are deeper inside the funnel, where purchase decisions increasingly take place.

You get flashy, glossy microsites because you’re dealing with an industry of advertisers and publishers that haven’t had a chance to develop and assimilate a new set of values. The digital agencies are schizophrenic, emulating backwards as often as they strive to set new standards. And the cult of measurement ensures that content, tools, and guidance that go beyond mere banner click-through just don’t “count.”

Is it any wonder that online ads suck? Frankly, I think it’s a wonder that agency designers do as well as they do.

Filed under: Advertising Business Model

May 18, 2009 • 1:36 pm 1

Ad relevance is the next big cash cow

Umair Haque argues that the way to beat Google (and, presumably to be the next internet company with eleventy billion dollars) is to serve ads that are more relevant. Google got part of the way there, can Ad Block Plus go farther?

Ad Blocker Plus is on the verge of turning into an open network that (finally) does the same as Google does: massively boost ad relevance, stripping out the useless junk — by factoring in whether or not people find ads useful or not. Ad Blocker plus is, almost unwittingly, making the world’s first reverse ad network. It doesn’t aggregate more ads to push — it aggregates people’s preferences about ads, so better ads can be chosen.

via How to Challenge Google (And Win) – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org.

Filed under: Advertising Business Model

May 5, 2009 • 9:36 pm 7

Bionic Hearing Wish List

I am kicking off the process of buying new hearing aids, starting tomorrow! My audiologist asked me to make a wish list of what I want. Here’s my advanced, futuristic version of what I want from them.

1. Bluetooth

Bluetooth hearing aids would take me from feeling like someone with a disability to feeling like I’m a superhero. I’m reminded of Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was blind, but he could see with his visor. He couldn’t see the way everyone else sees, but he could see better. Ever since I was in high school and I’d listen to my Walkman with headphones on, I’ve wanted to be able to pipe music in directly through my hearing aids. I’ve spent more money than most people will ever spend on expensive audio equipment, and I expect them to play music directly into my head. Frankly, if you’d asked me about this even 10 years ago, I would have been happy just to listen to music directly through the aids. Now, I also want my my phone calls piped into my aids, and while I’m at it, I plan to connect via Bluetooth to all of my computers, so I can hear movies, TV shows, and videos too. This will change my life.

2. Open Fit

The last time I bought hearing aids, I didn’t even consider buying open-fit models. But in the last few years this new style has taken off, and today more than 50% of new hearing aid sales are of this type. Open fit has a couple of advantages. To me, the best part is that it’s a BTE style with a new kind of tubing that doesn’t need to be replaced every 3-4 months. Open fit also sounds less “plugged-up” or occluded, which is probably more important to someone who hasn’t been wearing hearing aids for 27 years. I am hoping that open fit will be more physically comfortable, otherwise I’ll just stick with BTEs.

3. Data Logging

I don’t know much about this new feature, but it sounds great. Apparently newer models will record information about your different listening environments, which gives your audiologist more data to use in customizing your aids. I have always wanted to have my audiologist trail me around, reconfiguring my hearing aid settings for conferences, airplanes, and noisy bars. This might be even better!

4. Rechargeable Batteries

Battery life is a problem for every small, portable electronic device. My 2.5 year old MacBook Pro now gets about 24 minutes of battery life before it squawks and needs a recharge. But hearing aid batteries hold a special place in my heart for their environmentally-unfriendly neediness. Every purse I own holds a packet of hearing aid batteries, lest I get caught out on the town and wind up suddenly deafened. Every year or so I drop off a ziploc baggie filled with tiny batteries at my local recycler, the sight of which makes me relieved that I don’t have toddlers who might swallow them. I know hearing aids are more demanding than the average Bluetooth headset, but, as a society, aren’t we better than this?

5. Invisibility

I really don’t care that anyone knows that I wear hearing aids (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about them.) I just don’t want them looking clunky and ugly next to my jewelry. The kids these days seem to be all into having hearing aids in bright colors with contrasting molds. Call me old-fashioned, but my main goal is for them to be as unobtrustive as possible. There’s nothing I like better than someone I’ve known for years telling me “No way! I didn’t know you wore hearing aids!”

Filed under: Bionic Hearing

May 5, 2009 • 8:58 pm 5

Bionic Hearing Basics

Wearing hearing aids is just like wearing glasses, except for the part where they cost as much as a used car and you wear them inside your head.

As such, buying hearing aids is complicated and nerve-wracking. I’ve had lots of practice: I’ll be buying my 8th pair of hearing aids sometime this summer. These are the basic features I’m looking for in hearing aids:

1. No Tubing

My primary source of frustration with behind the ear (BTE) hearing aids is the need to have them re-tubed. In older model BTEs, the plastic tubing that runs from the hearing aid to the earmold (the part that sits inside your ear) gets brittle and dried out. When it’s too old, it can crack, separate from the mold, or get stiff and uncomfortable. Usually, BTEs need to be retubed 3 or 4 times per year, which means too many trips to the audiologist for me.

2. Moisture Controlled

The biggest cause of hearing aid repairs is moisture. Humidity can easily build up in the tiny workings of the hearing aid. For my most recent hearing aid purchase, I opted for in the ear (ITE) aids because they wouldn’t need to be re-tubed. However, ITE aids are much more sensitive to moisture because their electronics sit inside the ear, where they’re more exposed to wax, sweat, and other moisture. While having ITE aids did reduce the time I had to spend getting the aids re-tubed, it greatly increased the time my hearing aids spent being serviced by the manufacturer for moisture problems. Moisture will always be a problem, but BTE models are better, and newer hearing aids control moisture buildup.

3. Large Batteries

If I giving advice to anyone on what to consider in purchasing a hearing aid, the first thing I would tell them to consider is battery size. Size is important not just because it determines how often you have to change the batteries, but also because of how physically challenging it is to swap the batteries out. Tiny hearing aids use tiny, tiny batteries, which have to be changed frequently and can easily be dropped. I like to imagine myself as the sort of person who would only change my hearing aid batteries at a table over a soft cloth. In real life my hearing aid will die just as I’m late for a meeting, and I’ll find myself replacing the battery while standing on a street-corner waiting for the light to change. So the battery has to be large enough to be easy to manipulate (and hopefully last longer so I have fewer intersection exchanges.)

4. Wax Guards

Wax guards in my ITE aids changed my life. A previous pair of ITEs was in the shop constantly due to wax buildup in the tubes. Newer hearing aids have little plastic wax baskets that sit in the tubing, and can be flicked out and replaced when they get full of gunk. Genius.

5. Digital

Oh, yeah. The biggest revolution in hearing aids in the past few years is also the last on my list. My current set of hearing aids is my first digital set. The difference was life-altering. New digital hearing aids do a much better job of focusing the sound and filtering out background noise than older analog models. Analog just amplifies everything it hears, while digital focuses on speech and reduces static. I remember getting my first pair of digital hearing aids and going out to a noisy, crowded restaurant for the first time. Imagine what it feels like to go from having to struggle to hear anything in a noisy room to being the person who could hear better than anyone else at the table.

That’s the promise of bionic hearing.

Filed under: Bionic Hearing

April 13, 2009 • 4:23 pm 4

Improving the Drupal Admin Interface

Be careful what you wish for — good advice! In working with various content management systems, I’ve always wanted the chance to improve the user experience. But actually getting the opportunity to do so uncovered much more complexity than I’d even dreamed.

For me, the biggest challenge was in bridging the gap between what the users of Buzzr would expect to do, and how the Drupal admin interface actually works. It’s possible to do so much in Drupal if you’re a trained professional — but is it possible to enable ordinary people to take advantage of what Drupal has to offer?

The three areas of greatest conceptual difficulty for the user (from my perspective) are:

1. Confusing overlap among blocks, pages, templates, and features
For a user (even a relatively experienced user) trying to set up a new site or manage an existing one, configuring “what you want on your website” first starts with deciding what goes in the navigation. But what are those things? Are they features (“blog” or “wiki”) that might have any number of pages associated with them? Are they static pages, or are they dynamic containers? Is it clear what it means to choose a template layout  like “gallery view”? If they choose to show information in the sidebar, do those blocks appear on every page?

2. Confusing overlap between page layout and page design
When a user thinks about “designing” the site or choosing a “theme”, what does she mean? Is it the colors and the typography? Is it the underlying column and grid structure? The placement of the navigation bar? What about the categories and types of pages that go in the navigation? Even though I’ve dealt with these very issues every day at work for nearly 15 years, it’s not always clear to me — and certainly wasn’t clear-cut to our users.

3. Confusing overlap between navigation and views
The ability to create custom views of content is one of Drupal’s strengths. Communicating that capability to a site administrator so she can set up her own filters can be tricky. How do you explain that some navigation elements are views on the same content (products filtered by product type, or posts filtered by location, for example) and some navigation options are to static page templates?

We puzzled through these issues for quite some time, and I know we’ve made good progress. But we’re focusing on the needs of one particular type of user. Solving these issues to meet the needs of the wide range of people who use the Drupal admin interface is vastly more complex.

Filed under: Drupal

April 13, 2009 • 3:44 pm 1

Introducing Buzzr

I met the team from Lullabot through Ed Sussman, who was our client (jointly) on a project to redesign FastCompany.com. About a year ago we all teamed up to begin working on a new product that we called “Project Codename.”

Lullabot brought their expertise in Drupal, my company Bond Art + Science brought our skills in user experience and interaction design, and Ed brought his experience with managing and monetizing large scale web properties. A kick-ass team, if I’ve ever seen one.

Some of the things that made this complex project really fun for me to work on:

Getting my hands on a CMS interface
Over the years, I’ve worked on products based on many different content management systems, including all kinds of “homegrown,” Vignette, Interwoven, Sharepoint, Fatwire, Movable Type, WordPress, Joomla, and, yes, Drupal. And while I’ve had the opportunity to make changes to some admin interfaces like content entry templates, I’ve never had the chance to redesign an entire administrative interface. But boy, have I wanted to.

Look Ma! No clients!
I’ve been making websites for clients since 1995, and I do love working in client services. That said, it’s been a real delight to work on an in-house project. Having the freedom (and the burden) to make design decisions free from client organizational politics and compromises has been a welcome opportunity.

Iterative design and development process
Working as a hired gun, time to iterate can often be a luxury the client isn’t willing to pay for. Often we’re hired as a user experience team separate from development, which means we focus more on lo-fi or front-end prototypes. And we’re sometimes not around to participate in any experimentation with or changes to designs that happen during development. Being able to go from week to week, trying out different ideas and having them brought to life was my favorite part of the process.

We continue to iterate and develop the product, but we thought it was time to share the product with the community.

Introducing Buzzr.com!

(And I give thanks to the community, specifically Jen Simmons, for helping with the embed code.)

Filed under: Drupal

April 11, 2009 • 1:49 pm 12

Designing for, with, and around advertising

One day in 2005 I woke up and discovered I worked for an advertising agency. This came as kind of a shock to me, particularly since I was working at the same job I’d always had, leading the user experience practice in the New York office of Razorfish. But through various acquisitions we’d become Avenue A | Razorfish, and now we were in the business of making ads and selling ad space.

I had a tough time reconciling this with my focus on delivering the best possible experience for users. In fact, it’s one of the things that led me to leave and start Bond Art + Science in 2006. But in the intervening years, I have had the opportunity to work with many publishers — large and small, print and online-only — and have gained new perspective on advertising as a business model.

This talk, given at the 2009 IA Summit in Memphis, is my attempt to explain why user experience designers should open their hearts to advertising as a revenue model, and find ways to meet the needs of both users and advertisers.

Filed under: Advertising Business Model, Presentations

April 11, 2009 • 1:38 pm 0

Content + Commentary

I’ve worked with many publishers over the past few years, and one of the biggest challenges traditional media brands face is in adapting to social media and user generated content. Even opening up articles to comments from readers is a perilous step to some.

Our team at Bond Art + Science decided this was a worthy subject for some research and analysis. This report evaluates the landscape and makes recommendations about how to benefit from the new media landscape.

Content + Commentary: How Media Brands Invite, Manage, and Benefit From 
User Commenting and Participation Online

Filed under: Advertising Business Model, Content Strategy

April 11, 2009 • 1:15 pm 0

Foundations of Interaction Design

In 2007 I conducted a three-hour session on the history of interaction design for Smart Experience in New York. I’m a big fan of teaching about the historical underpinnings of our field, particularly since so many people working today don’t know the background of the discipline. Learning how the field evolved is an important part of education in other design disciplines like architecture or graphic design, and it should be equally important for students of interaction design.

To that end, I will be teaching a longer version of this course in the new MFA program in interaction design at SVA starting in Fall 2009.

Filed under: Machines with Brains, Presentations

April 11, 2009 • 1:07 pm 0

From typing to swiping: interaction design has come a long way!

In July of 2008 I presented at the first Ignite NYC event. The Ignite format is demanding for a speaker: 20 slides which auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of 5 minutes. It also takes place in a bar, so the environment can be a bit raucous. Someone told me afterwards “if you can do that, you can perform in the Superbowl half-time show.”

This presentation includes both the actual slides and the bullet point speaking script I memorized.

Filed under: Machines with Brains, Presentations

April 11, 2009 • 12:53 pm 3

Creating Usable Websites: Do It With Drupal!

Jeff Robbins of Lullabot asked if I’d speak about ways Drupal developers can learn more about user experience and make more usable websites at their Do It With Drupal conference, held in New Orleans in December 2008.

Since “making more usable websites” is a pretty broad topic, I decided to focus the talk on interaction design patterns, and the many libraries that exist to guide people in making design decisions. This got me thinking about a pattern library that could live on Drupal.org, which I think would be a good way for people to share design solutions and code.

Filed under: Drupal, Presentations

April 11, 2009 • 12:37 pm 0

The Users That Use You

I was invited by the IA Institute to speak as part of a full-day workshop at the 2008 IA Summit in Miami. The workshop topic was leadership, and each of the presenters (Mags Hanley, Harry Max, and Chris Fahey) addressed ways that IAs can be leaders within their organization or within the field.

Josh Rubin and I discussed ways that techniques from user-centered design can help people sell their ideas more effectively within their organizations. By thinking of a personal agenda like a product that needs to be adopted by its users, user experience professionals may discover that they already possess skills and perspectives needed to make their ideas reality.

Filed under: Presentations

April 5, 2009 • 2:16 pm 0

Understanding User Behavior Online

In 2006 I spoke at the eMarketing Association conference in Boston. My talk was a roundup of research and perspectives about how users perceive and interact with what they see on the screen.

Filed under: Presentations

April 5, 2009 • 2:10 pm 0

The Future of Media Interfaces

In 2007 I was invited to speak at the first From Business to Buttons conference in Malmö, Sweden. I worked with a colleague on two presentations: a workshop on the Future of Media Interfaces, and a case study of the New York Times redesign.

The Future of Media Interfaces looked at the effect digital distribution has had on the media and publishing industries, resulting in commodified content and declining advertising revenues. We then examined several new platforms for content delivery and discussed the challenges interaction designers face, as well as potential business models.

Filed under: Presentations, TV in the Future

April 5, 2009 • 1:50 pm 0

Effective Communication: In-House Training

In 2006 Razorfish was growing at a fast pace, and HR identified a need to train new employees on aspects of the business and basic consulting skills. Senior staff were asked to prepare training sessions on a topic in which they felt they had some expertise.

I conducted a two-hour training session on effective communication techniques in the workplace. Topics covered included:

  • Basic writing tips
  • Use of email and IM
  • Presentation structure and formatting

Filed under: Presentations

April 5, 2009 • 1:36 pm 0

Building Interactive Creative Solutions

In July 2006 I spoke to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association about the overlap between user experience and creative on projects. The overlap between UX and Creative can be difficult to manage within a large agency that produces both advertising creative (such as microsites, banner ads, email blasts) in support of a larger campaign, and transactional web applications. I found that many projects suffered from a clear sense of decision-making authority, and the ones that had the most trouble were those that required strong input from both sides. In this talk, I discussed the shared values and areas of disagreement in how UX people and Creative people make decisions, and suggested some ways for teams to share power more effectively. Still, as with all issues of organizational politics, the real change has to come from the individuals involved — I believe there are few structural solutions to this problem.

Filed under: Presentations

February 23, 2009 • 3:32 pm 0

Superfantastic dataset of advertising expenditures broken down by category

I’ve been looking around for  a while trying to find data that compares advertising spending on the internet with spending in other channels. And did I ever find it!

U.S. advertising expenditure, for various media and type categories across the years 1919 to 2007, is now available in a dataset convenient for extensive analysis. These data quantify the rise of advertising on radio, on television, in telephone directories (yellowbook), and on the Internet. They also quantify less widely discussed media for advertising, such as direct mail, billboards and outdoor advertising, and advertising in business papers (trade press).

via purple motes » U.S. advertising expenditure data

Filed under: Advertising Business Model

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