Over the Air 2009

Over the Air 2009 was great.

Interesting presentation given by Dr. Philip Rhodes. It was a mix of research and market experience well applied. He gave us an overview of user experience in applications and widgets. He mentioned that we have the heuristics principles in usability, but without observing real users they don’t make much sense. Observing users we can identify their brand familiarity and user experience. It makes me think that it is a cumbersome activity to try to develop for different brands, different user models according to the device characteristics. Sometimes, in my case, that it is a research project, it is better to focus in one (brand) way of interaction. He also pointed out that it is important to know which apps users use and how people understand interfaces. Additionally, he presented some characteristics of the mobile technology that should be considerate when developing apps, such as: it is a communication device, spontaneous, geo-sensitive, short temporal usage, focused activity ( it is better to have one feature, option in which users do very well that to have a lot of choices that they don’t know what to do) and engaging. He showed an app case study. Participatory design study was undertaken in which users used an app for three months. Designers and users talked about their views. It was very interesting for the designers that could check how people accept and understand their project. After the three months usage, they applied the focus group technique. It resulted in valuable information for the marketing people to understand which language users use to talk about the app. In the end of the presentation, he highlighted the results of studying real users: Identification of usability issues, real world behaviour (way finding insights); identify new features (prioritize the actions), Marketing message, reinforce customer segmentation data. User participation results in good design. It is interesting to evaluate the idea while the idea is developed.

Jung and Mcleod from Nokia drew attention to design research for mobile gestural interaction. The presentation was brilliant. They studied how people behave in different contexts and which natural gestures could be used to interact with mobile phones. They shared some surprises happened in the course of the research in a very illustrative way. Cultural background and some “natural gestures” were not so natural when they tried to apply in mobile phones. They showed the steps of Design Research and presented Gesture Design Principles.

In the second day, the presentation called Open Air by Mark Kramer gave an idea of how Wikitude works. He demonstrated how we can add information in wikitude and the possibilities that this tool offers. I’m testing it now, if it is suitable for my research purposes I will definitely use. I still have to check in which extent I can change some settings and layout configurations.

The last presentation that I enjoyed was Mobile Widgets testing by Dan Shoshani. He showed a system Perfecto Mobile that allows you to test apps in different devices. Very interesting and it looks to be very useful. From the installation time, user experience to layout.

I also meet some people from the Mlearn, Mobile Learning and Handheld learning conferences. Good to see them and discuss new ideas!