Just an experiment in bringing in photos from Flickr. Enjoy!
Monday, August 6, 2007
Random interesting sites
Interesting things being discussed on other sites/blogs:
Preservation and archiving of digital media, particular of film:
Library of Congress Preserving Digital Content
National Archives Partners with CreateSpace and Amazon to Digitize Movies
Reframe Project
Make a donation, save a film
Academic Film Archive of North America
Narrative and storytelling
Ira Glass on storytelling
Other kinds of storytelling
What happens when they come for us?: Murdoch buys the Dow Jones
From ResourceShelf
New program color-codes text in Wikipedia entries to indicate trustworthiness
The Cyberchondriacs: How Often Do U.S. Adults Search for Health Care Information Online?
Preservation and archiving of digital media, particular of film:
Library of Congress Preserving Digital Content
National Archives Partners with CreateSpace and Amazon to Digitize Movies
Reframe Project
Make a donation, save a film
Academic Film Archive of North America
Narrative and storytelling
Ira Glass on storytelling
Other kinds of storytelling
What happens when they come for us?: Murdoch buys the Dow Jones
From ResourceShelf
New program color-codes text in Wikipedia entries to indicate trustworthiness
The Cyberchondriacs: How Often Do U.S. Adults Search for Health Care Information Online?
Culture Code
It happened AGAIN. I keep meaning and meaning to post, and then I don't, feeling like I need to get the post completely together in my head (and "on paper" with full references) before I post. I am still learning to think of the blog as a posted email versus a formal written document.
In any case, I have been meaning to write about a very interesting book I read lately: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do, by Clotaire Rapaille. Although focused on marketing (which I have generally viewed as something only undertaken by those in the darkest corners of the business world), it has much to inform those of us working with usability issues. Why DO people do what they do?
Rapaille was born and raised in France, but immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. This background allows him to be immersed in, and also removed from, two cultures, informing his work. He has primarily been hired by companies (like GM, etc.) interested in understanding how their branding is or is not working.
What is fascinating about Rapaille's work (and how he justified his ROI to the companies hiring him) is that he just doesn't ask people what they like or do not like about a product. As the fictional Gregory House might say, "Everybody lies". Rapaille doesn't think people will lie deliberately to focus groups, but there is an overwhelming skew on the part of participants trying to supply (unconsciously most of the time) with the answers they THINK the researchers want to hear.
Rapaille's approach is quite different. His sessions are broken into three sessions. In the first hour he asks people to consider that he is an alien from another planet and he has never seen of or used coffee/car/insert other product here, then asks them to explain to him what that thing is for. Doing this, he posits, helps understand all the ways in which that thing is or is not useful/meaningful in people's lives.
The second part of his testing has people doing collage, starting to access the right-side of their brain. Rapaille does this and the next step because he feels that the way people perceive things (i.e. the way a particular product or action of a culture is "coded") depends very much on the emotional imprint associated with that product or action. Things with positive emotional imprints will have positive cultural codes and vice versa.
In the final step of his testing he dims the lights and lays people down on the floor and has them talk about their first, best, or strongest memory associated with that particular thing he is testing. Then he analyzes the essence of what this is about and comes up with a one word "code" that embodies what that thing represents to people in that culture.
He does caution that these codes are cultural generalizations and do not apply across the board to every single individual, but the results are interesting. For instance, in America, a Jeep is coded as "HORSE": something that helps people get out in the wild and feel free. In France and Germany, however, Jeep is coded by those cultures as "LIBERATOR", Rapaille feels because of the association of the Jeep with liberating American forces in WWII.
He covers things like coffee and make-up, but also more non-product things, like how a culture views shopping, food, alcohol, and even the American presidency (apparently we don't just want a father figure - we want Moses!)
While at first glance this may have nothing to do with usability, Web sites, or instructional design, I think it has a lot to inform us about how things become imprinted in people's associations and how far we may have to dig to get the information we really need to create the interfaces that will work the best for the majority of the patrons in our particular "culture". What "CODE" do they have? How can we make these embedded codes work for us? Are we doing things inadvertently to work against them in an unknowingly negative way? These are the questions this book made me think about.
In any case, I have been meaning to write about a very interesting book I read lately: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do, by Clotaire Rapaille. Although focused on marketing (which I have generally viewed as something only undertaken by those in the darkest corners of the business world), it has much to inform those of us working with usability issues. Why DO people do what they do?
Rapaille was born and raised in France, but immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. This background allows him to be immersed in, and also removed from, two cultures, informing his work. He has primarily been hired by companies (like GM, etc.) interested in understanding how their branding is or is not working.
What is fascinating about Rapaille's work (and how he justified his ROI to the companies hiring him) is that he just doesn't ask people what they like or do not like about a product. As the fictional Gregory House might say, "Everybody lies". Rapaille doesn't think people will lie deliberately to focus groups, but there is an overwhelming skew on the part of participants trying to supply (unconsciously most of the time) with the answers they THINK the researchers want to hear.
Rapaille's approach is quite different. His sessions are broken into three sessions. In the first hour he asks people to consider that he is an alien from another planet and he has never seen of or used coffee/car/insert other product here, then asks them to explain to him what that thing is for. Doing this, he posits, helps understand all the ways in which that thing is or is not useful/meaningful in people's lives.
The second part of his testing has people doing collage, starting to access the right-side of their brain. Rapaille does this and the next step because he feels that the way people perceive things (i.e. the way a particular product or action of a culture is "coded") depends very much on the emotional imprint associated with that product or action. Things with positive emotional imprints will have positive cultural codes and vice versa.
In the final step of his testing he dims the lights and lays people down on the floor and has them talk about their first, best, or strongest memory associated with that particular thing he is testing. Then he analyzes the essence of what this is about and comes up with a one word "code" that embodies what that thing represents to people in that culture.
He does caution that these codes are cultural generalizations and do not apply across the board to every single individual, but the results are interesting. For instance, in America, a Jeep is coded as "HORSE": something that helps people get out in the wild and feel free. In France and Germany, however, Jeep is coded by those cultures as "LIBERATOR", Rapaille feels because of the association of the Jeep with liberating American forces in WWII.
He covers things like coffee and make-up, but also more non-product things, like how a culture views shopping, food, alcohol, and even the American presidency (apparently we don't just want a father figure - we want Moses!)
While at first glance this may have nothing to do with usability, Web sites, or instructional design, I think it has a lot to inform us about how things become imprinted in people's associations and how far we may have to dig to get the information we really need to create the interfaces that will work the best for the majority of the patrons in our particular "culture". What "CODE" do they have? How can we make these embedded codes work for us? Are we doing things inadvertently to work against them in an unknowingly negative way? These are the questions this book made me think about.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Confessions of a podcast junkie
Yesterday I attended an ALA/ACRL webinar called "Podcasting for the Classroom", led by David Free. One of the many resources he referenced was an Educause article
"Confessions of a Podcast Junkie", by Carie Windham.
While I am not (yet) a podcasting junkie, the possibilities for using it as a design tool for the learning process are tantalizing. Windham describes how in some classrooms they use podcasts as a way to bring in the voices of different speakers or theorists who students would not normally have the opportunity to hear. I am thinking this would be particularly useful for learners who tend towards an auditory style of learning.
The possibilities for having students really work with the ideas they are grappling with in class appear to be enhanced by the opportunity to create a podcast to put together a class presentation, thereby contributing to students' motivation in the learning process. Likewise, podcasting (with it's prevalence of interviewing as a format) would appear to contribute towards greater classroom collaboration.
Again, however, just using a new technology is not a panacea that will instantly enhance all learning situations. As one student said, "If you're going to use [podcasting], make sure it's practical. Don't just give us busy work."
So, one more tool to put in the toolbox for teaching and learning to keep in mind for the future.
Full notes from Free's session will be available on his blog (http://davidsrandomstuff.blogspot.com/).
"Confessions of a Podcast Junkie", by Carie Windham.
While I am not (yet) a podcasting junkie, the possibilities for using it as a design tool for the learning process are tantalizing. Windham describes how in some classrooms they use podcasts as a way to bring in the voices of different speakers or theorists who students would not normally have the opportunity to hear. I am thinking this would be particularly useful for learners who tend towards an auditory style of learning.
The possibilities for having students really work with the ideas they are grappling with in class appear to be enhanced by the opportunity to create a podcast to put together a class presentation, thereby contributing to students' motivation in the learning process. Likewise, podcasting (with it's prevalence of interviewing as a format) would appear to contribute towards greater classroom collaboration.
Again, however, just using a new technology is not a panacea that will instantly enhance all learning situations. As one student said, "If you're going to use [podcasting], make sure it's practical. Don't just give us busy work."
So, one more tool to put in the toolbox for teaching and learning to keep in mind for the future.
Full notes from Free's session will be available on his blog (http://davidsrandomstuff.blogspot.com/).
Monday, July 9, 2007
EVERYTHING is miscellaneous
I recently read David Weinberger's new book Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Weinberger is the one who also (with others) recently brought us The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual.
A video of Weinberger providing an overview of the ideas presented in Everything is Miscellaneous as part of the Authors@Google series is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43DZEy_J694.
This was a profound book, one that I have underlined and dog-eared within an inch of itself because of the copious amount of cool and interesting ideas I saw running through it. I will have to do several postings on the ideas in this book since there is so much there.
Essentially, Weinberger points out the fact that Mr. Dewey was just one person and the organization of knowledge Dewey presented is just one of the numerous ways one can organize and present information. Current technologies are finally making possible the infinite organizations of information in the multitude of ways that make sense to different individuals (something about which Dewey would have, perhaps, been horrified). Weinberger, however, points out the incredible value when all this information is "thrown into a big digital 'pile' to be filtered and organized by users themselves."
Information is not an asset to be guarded, but to be "let loose" so it can be mashed up by people in the ways that work for them.
More to come!
A video of Weinberger providing an overview of the ideas presented in Everything is Miscellaneous as part of the Authors@Google series is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43DZEy_J694.
This was a profound book, one that I have underlined and dog-eared within an inch of itself because of the copious amount of cool and interesting ideas I saw running through it. I will have to do several postings on the ideas in this book since there is so much there.
Essentially, Weinberger points out the fact that Mr. Dewey was just one person and the organization of knowledge Dewey presented is just one of the numerous ways one can organize and present information. Current technologies are finally making possible the infinite organizations of information in the multitude of ways that make sense to different individuals (something about which Dewey would have, perhaps, been horrified). Weinberger, however, points out the incredible value when all this information is "thrown into a big digital 'pile' to be filtered and organized by users themselves."
Information is not an asset to be guarded, but to be "let loose" so it can be mashed up by people in the ways that work for them.
More to come!
Monday, June 25, 2007
Musings on OPAC interface
In May I went to Oregon State University to be part of a panel presenting an overview of options for the OPAC. One of the other presenters, Michael Boock, had an interesting overview of "The Future of the Catalog". (http://hdl.handle.net/1957/4589). Some of his discussion echoes the study done by UC Berkeley on Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University (PDF).
Both Boock and UC call for OPACs that offer greater flexibility and control in terms of how librarians can set up these resources for their users, as well as more flexibility in the options users have for finding their information (through faceted searching and other things). Both point to the ability to support recommender features and support customization, as well as providing bibliographic services where users are, as important and necessary changes to how libraries provide service.
Good, user-based interface design has never been more crucial if we are going to convince our users that we have the tools and the know-how to remain vital information resources in their lives. More and more parts of the library world, such as the ones mentioned here, are raising the call to attend, as quickly as possible, to this pressing and urgent need.
It was very frustrating in the usability testing I did last Fall to see users (all intelligent people!) struggling to find their desired information or function in the OPAC, just because the button for that function was not where they naturally tended to think it should be. And this frustrated me, because a lot of the simple changes I could see that they needed were not those I had control to make in the OPAC.
To my colleagues who might argue that I am trying to throw out MARC, nothing could be further from the truth! Give me MARC in all it's organized glory. Just let me have more control over how I can present all this MARC-y goodness to my users. That's all I'm saying. And I'm not the only one.
Both Boock and UC call for OPACs that offer greater flexibility and control in terms of how librarians can set up these resources for their users, as well as more flexibility in the options users have for finding their information (through faceted searching and other things). Both point to the ability to support recommender features and support customization, as well as providing bibliographic services where users are, as important and necessary changes to how libraries provide service.
Good, user-based interface design has never been more crucial if we are going to convince our users that we have the tools and the know-how to remain vital information resources in their lives. More and more parts of the library world, such as the ones mentioned here, are raising the call to attend, as quickly as possible, to this pressing and urgent need.
It was very frustrating in the usability testing I did last Fall to see users (all intelligent people!) struggling to find their desired information or function in the OPAC, just because the button for that function was not where they naturally tended to think it should be. And this frustrated me, because a lot of the simple changes I could see that they needed were not those I had control to make in the OPAC.
To my colleagues who might argue that I am trying to throw out MARC, nothing could be further from the truth! Give me MARC in all it's organized glory. Just let me have more control over how I can present all this MARC-y goodness to my users. That's all I'm saying. And I'm not the only one.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
New uses for Webcasting
Just when you thought you had seen all the uses for webcasting that were already out there, something new and fun!
There have recently been various reports of universities using webcasting to provide "remote graduation" broadcasts for friends and family who could not attend their loved one's graduation. I think this is such an awesome use of this technology!
Check it out at http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/devlin/11270.
There have recently been various reports of universities using webcasting to provide "remote graduation" broadcasts for friends and family who could not attend their loved one's graduation. I think this is such an awesome use of this technology!
Check it out at http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/devlin/11270.
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