user experience with grace

Trust trending.gr guys for being professionals

Harris — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:07:15 +0000

Trending.gr is a web analytics site dedicated to Greek sector of Twitter. This site is their demo platform for their complete tool set called Monitor. In this page they have embedded a Customer Service Chat Tool from Olark. How do I know this? although there is a cheap version on a yearly plan, they felt like going for the professionally looking totally free plan which includes a link to the Olark website.

trending.gr screenshot

Gentlemen, I am sold!

The curious case of Papaki.gr

Harris — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:28:24 +0000

Recently I tried to register a new domain name with Papaki.gr . I am already their customer and although I use also another registrar, I thought that I should give them another chance. So I visited the following first page:

Screenshot of Papaki.gr landing page

Aesthetically, you may think you visited the site of a travel agency. It is easy to notice that Information Architecture is all over the place.”Email”, “Resellers” and “Support” are titles on the same level. “My Account” is on the right but “Sign In” is a small thing on top with a tiny cart next to it. Not one, but two flying banners come from both left and right side.

Needless to say that the nightmare continues when you try to buy a service with the final price ranging depending on the means of payment and extra complicated procedures to add complementary services. I would have suggested not to use this Greek registrar service but then I would not know were else to point you for a Greek registrar…

Better UX Design Needed for Enterprise Tablet Adoption

Harris — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 08:42:56 +0000

Reposting from UXmagazine, by Peter Eckert

A May 2011 study shows that 78 percent of business and IT executives plan to officially deploy tablets by the end of 2013, yet only 51 percent have adopted a strategy for tablet use. The majority (83 percent) plans to deploy iPads, primarily because of its widespread popularity. As a result, Android-based tablets have begun to tout that they are designed for enterprise deployment in an attempt to differentiate their platform.

This choice of the iPad for business use remains consumer-driven. So far, most employees using iPads as part of their job are just trying them out; there is still a certain sense of novelty in this highly portable device. The great appeal of the iPad is its intuitive, user-friendly interface. A two-year-old can quickly learn to play iPad games and navigate the device.

The conventional computing paradigm for businesses, as well as for most homes, is a desktop computer, maybe a laptop for mobility, and a smartphone. To fully take advantage of the emerging paradigm that places tablets (primarily iPads) in the office, new software strategies are required. The fundamentally complex software served up on desktops and laptops is far too cumbersome in a tablet environment. Successful tablet deployment in the enterprise will require smaller, more specific touch-enabled solutions and tablet-tailored applications.

Not a Hardware Problem

Currently, any function where mobility is a requirement is a potential fit for tablet adoption. Reporting and information facilitation are obvious targets. The entire media industry is keen on monetizing this new platform. Newspapers have struggled online because of the click-through model rather than premium advertisement placement, and they are eager to change that.

Other industries see the tablet as just an extension to their current offering. There’s nothing wrong with that—until one of their competitors shows off a tablet-specific solution. Then you’ll see panic ensue.

Current tablet technology only allows for a subset of the computing power used in high-end desktops. For example, image processing of the kind professional UX designers work with is not possible yet on tablets. Other industries cannot switch to a tablet environment any time soon; for example, industries dependent on ERP or heavy data input, or purchasing and HR, must rely on keyboards or other input devices. The touch-based UI, which lets users perform tasks with just their fingertips, is the great appeal of tablets, but it would be too cumbersome for these data entry applications. Voice technology might bridge the gap some day.

Hardware, however, is not the primary problem keeping tablets from widespread adoption in the enterprise. A bigger obstacle is that most business software solutions (think Oracle) are simply too complex. The power of tablet computing is that it is simple and intuitive. Yet many enterprise solutions are so overloaded with features—some of them unnecessary or seldom used—that they cannot be easily ported to a tablet.

In short, blindly trying to adopt existing products and software to the tablet space will not succeed. Tablet technology will continue to be disruptive until feature-reduced solutions are widely available.

How to Spur Enterprise Adoption

In the same study mentioned earlier, 42 percent of IT respondents said that business stakeholders do not understand the need for additional development in order to successfully enable enterprise applications on iPads and tablets. This is where high-quality UX design could play a major role in boosting enterprise adoption of tablets.

Beginning in Q1 of 2011, Gartner added iPads and other tablets to its computing hardware spending estimates. Analysts forecast a spending increase on media tablets of an annual average rate of 52 percent through 2015.

The form factor of a tablet and the usage patterns of end users require a very tailored user experience, one that showcases just a fraction of the functionality of a rich desktop application or Web application. That makes them a powerful option because people already understand the applications and can easily adapt to a new format of an old solution. Again, it all comes back to good UX design.

Evaluate the types of tools you are using. If the productivity software or any other package you are using will be “just” ported and launched in a web browser, then you might want to stay away from adopting that application for tablet usage. So if you are in purchasing and you have an order entry system that relies on the user to enter orders through keyboard input, that will not work on the tablet efficiently.

But any type of software that has been specifically designed for tablet space will be a good fit for enterprise adoption. We will soon see an increase in workflows that are perfectly suited for the tablet environment—ones that are simple, intuitive and have only a few features per solution.

Photoshop Is Not Design-Perfect

Harris — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:58:16 +0000

Have you noticed that all Main Menu Options expand directly below the selected option, aligned left?
Well, the same does not go for the Edit option on your Photoshop CS5 on a Win7 laptop. If you figure out why, please let me know, too.

photoshop edit menu detail

Dear Apparently Inventor User: Important Changes to App Inventor

Harris — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:58:23 +0000

Dear App Inventor User,

As a result of the recent changes to Google Labs and App Inventor, effective immediately, the URL for App Inventor will change from appinventor.googlelabs.com to appinventorbeta.com. This URL change WILL NOT have an impact on your projects stored in App Inventor. All data that you see in your appinventor.googlelabs.com account, as well as documentation and email forums will be available at appinventorbeta.com.

As we announced on the App Inventor Announcement Forum, Google will end support for App Inventor and open source the code base at the end of this year. Additionally, in order to ensure the future success of App Inventor, Google has funded the establishment of a Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab, where MIT will be actively engaged in studying and extending App Inventor. This transition will happen at the end of 2011. At that time you will need to download your data from appinventorbeta.com in order to continue working with it in the open source instance of App Inventor. In the coming months we will send you detailed instructions on how to download your data.

Please visit the App Inventor user forums to get future updates on App Inventor.

The App Inventor Team

You have received this mandatory service announcement email to update you about important changes to your App Inventor account.

Groovesharks says “Jailbreak your phone”

Harris — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:28:19 +0000

Grooveshark Mobile Trial Page

grooveshark.com

Single Page Website Designs

Harris — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:33:03 +0000

	User 1	User 2	User 3	User 4
Problem 1	X	X
Problem 2	X
Problem 3	X	X	X

user experience with grace

Trust trending.gr guys for being professionals

The curious case of Papaki.gr

Better UX Design Needed for Enterprise Tablet Adoption

Not a Hardware Problem

How to Spur Enterprise Adoption

Photoshop Is Not Design-Perfect

Dear Apparently Inventor User: Important Changes to App Inventor

Groovesharks says “Jailbreak your phone”

Single Page Website Designs

Deaxon

Melonfree

Visual Harbor

Contrast Rebellion

Ala.ch

Fat Man Collective

Denny’s

Yess BMX

Jan Ploch

Reverend Danger

Dentsu Network

Mball

Blink Calgary

Digital Hands

Colorful Visuals

Deda.me

Vertaa Verkkoja

Trifermed

Mark Lawrence Design

Born75

Pelanidea

the Bullittagency

Muziekpark

David e Maddalena

Zeropixel

Team Viget

Volunteer Louisiana

Incub

Fork

Jorge Rigabert

Irwin Mabini

Yogurteria Carioca

Adlucent

Tej Potter

Marco Barbosa

Low Geek

TME Solutions

Marco Rotoli

TruQua

We Are Empire

Made by Vadim

DesignBeast

Aimee Duplantis and Matthew Shwery

The New Albany Classic

Touchtech

Brock Kenzler

Leeuw Media

Webdesign Company24×7

Janette D. Council

Desamo

Biennale

Dairy Maniacs

Joey Lomanto

Piotr Kwiatkowski

Nikola Arežina Portfolio

Allan Yu

Animus

Resolutionim

Hello Carbon

We Came From Mars

Werbungrockt

Deeptime

Naomi Atkinson Design

Stonehenge Veterinary Hospital

Smorge

Balencic

Pixel Odyssey

Davide Colla

Wildcard Thinking

I Am Tiago