Amory Lovins & Backcasting

Sometimes things just seem to come together… for me, this is the case with backcasting and Amory Lovins.

Recently we discussed backcasting after a colleague (Nikki Roberg) had seen a presentation at the IA Summit in 2007.  In this case, backcasting was discussed as another tool or method we could use as IA’s to elicit client needs and set a strategy for success.  Personally, I had in mind a client who has a very complex set of business rules which are largely based upon the historical limitations of their AS400.  Moving forward (and off of this system) will require extreme change in how they do business to which I thought backcasting exercises may help to sort out the differences between business rules based on smart business versus those based on the past limitations they had faced with their IT options.  This would in turn help to create a road map for success that would allow us to work with them more strategically and add value to our services.

Backcasting has its origins, however, in energy planning and sustainability.  This makes perfect sense as a match up for strategic project planning in our case as we are all looking at creating sustainable practices and models that can help achieve success.  This article paraphrases J. Robinson as later saying “…backcasting is not only about how desirable futures can be attained, but that it can also be used to analyse the degree to which undesirable futures can be avoided or responded to”.

So how do all these things come together for me?  Well, I had just happened to be looking at a series of articles in this week’s Economist in which technology and the environment are discussed.  Sure enough, there’s an article called “The Frugal Cornucopian” which is all about Amory Lovins.

Now, I’m off to find more articles about backcasting…

Plastic Logic E-Reader Aimed at Business Users

Plastic Logic reported today that they will be demonstrating their new e-reader hardware before “industry influencers” at DEMOfall 2008.  Though black and white only,  this actually looks like a pretty neat little product.  I’ve always liked the idea of the eBook or eReader but couldn’t get behind the Kindle’s 1980s inspired design.  Plastic Logic’s reader is much more svelte looking and with a screen nearly twice Kindle’s size.Plastic Logic says they will launch the product in Q1 2009.

It does make me wonder though, if devices like this start to take off, will we need to create yet another CSS to ensure usability?  It would be nice if a standard could be agreed upon to ensure some kind of cross platform “e-newspaper” standard… Good luck with that.

Microsoft Patents Page Up and Page Down…

Seriously… do they already own CTRL+ALT+DELETE?

via Gizmodo:

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page. For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

Target Settles National Federation of Blind Accessibility Suit

This article ties in nicely with my earlier thoughts on progressive enhancement vs elegant degradation. 

While a lot of the driving force behind design on the Web is sexiness, we can’t forget fundamental usability and accessibility.  Federal guidelines require government institutions and some federally funded organizations to ensure a certain level of accessibility be baked into their electronic information mediums.  I don’t believe that there are federal guidelines for commercial sites, but Target stepped up regardless.  

I know Target takes its position in the community very seriously, it would be interesting to see if settling their case starts a greater trend in how corporations review their site’s accessibility and/or taking stock of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Sarasota Opera Goes Live

This project has been a long time in the making.  The original redesign began in late November of 2007 but due to staffing changes and a busy season for the opera, has only now just launched.  The goals for the new Sarasota Opera site redesign included an overall visual update to match the quality of their newly remodeled theatre, more prominent display of the opera’s season, easier online ticket purchase and, of course, to elicit financial support for the opera going forward.  Additionally we wanted to ensure that the design met the needs of their primary ticket buying population (retirees) and that it reflected their Florida beach location.  There are two “before & after” screen captures after the jump.

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Social Networking & Twitter – Facebook Finally Has Value For Me

I probably shouldn’t admit online that I’ve never really been a big fan of social networking site.  Frankly, I feel that they all get so cluttered with distractions that they lose their value pretty quickly.  I have had accounts on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and a few others but rarely check them out – I guess mostly because I feel that I don’t have the time to cut through the chaff to get to the wheat.

Then I met Twitter…  I was pretty convinced that Twitter was another waste of time and just another way for the self-obsessed to say “hey look at me”.  Then I tried it and decided it has some good uses after all.  Initially, I got it setup so that a friend on a road trip could post her progress to all of our friends without having to find someplace to send an e-mail from.  Then I just started randomly posting what I was up to as a sort of online journal to myself.  And eventually, a couple weeks ago, I tied the tweets into my Facebook accounts and this blog.  While I was in New Orleans on a family emergency last week I found out that at least one friend keeps track of me via Facebook – an account I rarely check but now update by default when posting a tweet. 

Of course, one side affect of having an identifiable account and of having it post to so many places is that I need to watch what I say.  At one point I accidentally did a public reply that was none too polite and certainly not the type of copy you may want to have a potential employer or account come across…

Finding Paths through the World’s Photos

Wow.

Just came across this today on Gizmodo.  As someone who fancies themselve’s a photographer and a UX Designer, this is pretty cool.  Basically, the folks at the UW and Microsoft put together an application that works with photo collections to create “3-D” photo tourism experiences.  You’ll have to see it to appreciate it.

Personally, I love shooting long exposure photos to capture activity in a scene.  For the most part this tends to render people only partially or as a blur (unless I use a strobe).  What I like about this application is the sense of activity created by seeing random photos featuring random people streamed into a single experience.

Maps!

I have to admit that I love maps.  I suppose that it makes sense that someone with a linguistics degree has an interest in seeing where in the world stuff is but its really the “new” interactive features that I love.

Recently I’d had an opportunity to spec out a project for a client in which we’d use some pretty simply “off the shelf” features to build a very informative Google map.  I was impressed with how much data can be displayed via the API and how easily.  In this case it was for a major film festival where we wanted folks to walk out of the theatre and make a last minute plan to see their next film.  Of course they’d need theater locations and all that but the ability to show them bus routes, position on the route, walking time/distance, etc.. were all great ways to get someone to decide that they could catch another film.

I just remembered an old just-for-fun-project I’d done an eternity ago (4 years) in which I did an overlay from my Garmin GPS onto some forest service maps.  It took a few steps and a bit of wrangling to get it to work out the way I wanted but now it would take next to nothing.  In particular GPS Visualizer is a nice online tool to help make some pretty cool maps for visualizing a variety of information.  Not all of them are “click and save” – meaning they take a little work – but they are still all relatively simple.

I need to start making some maps!

University of Washington MSIM Guest Lecture Opportunity

I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve managed to stay involved with the Masters of Science in Information Management program since graduating with the first cohort.  Mike Crandal, the program Chair, has remained a valuable contact and a helpful reference throughout the years.

Last spring I was invited to present to the graduating daytime program regarding IA as a career and just what can be done with it.  Of course, there are a million possible things to say as there are any number of ways to use the knowledge learned in the program.  I took the opportunity to give a fairly minimalist presentation in which I discussed the IA’s role as part counselor, interpreter, partner, and sleuth.  Fortunately, it was well received and put me in contact with several up and coming IA or UX folks.

This Fall I’ve been invited back but this time instead of meeting them as they get ready to graduate it will be in one of the first classes of the program.  I’ve only got an hour to impart my “wisdom” of just what an IA does (or at least what I do) and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it!

Progressive Enhancement VS Elegent Degredation | Forethought VS Afterthought

I don’t claim to be the genius who thought of it but I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of this approach lately.

After attending a UIE conference in San Diego last year I started to think a lot about the phrase Elegant (or Graceful) Degradation and its counterpart Progressive Enhancement.  I’ve found that the concept of Elegant Degradation can be quite damaging if taken as the view as the best way to think about making user experiences accessible to all. 

What I mean by that is that rather than creating the “killer app” and then dumbing it down (aka taking away features) we need to take the Progressive Enhancement approach by thinking about the best lowest common denominator experience and then piling the “sexy” on top of it.

As I thought about it more, I equated the two to Afterthought and Forethought.  Elegant Degradation reeks of afterthought to me.  “Here’s a killer app, now how can we make it work for users without <insert technology here>?”  By applying a little forethought, or Progressive Enhancement, we can attempt to ensure that a site, application, or any experience scales UP nicely rather than trying to pare it DOWN to meet user needs.

This next part may seem controversial or heretical to some but a colleague and I were just comparing this approach to how Vista was delivered to the public.  Vista has all kinds of sexy and exciting visualization features that work really well on the right computer.  However, if your computer isn’t “the right computer” the experience can be pretty painful out of the box. 

Run the install or unpack the computer and you get hyper slow visualizations and the potential for crashes until the USER slowly turns off the unnecessary features.  This puts the user in the position of having to be in charge of their own “elegant” degradation when all they really wanted was to type a document, check their e-mail or surf the web.

After saying all that, it’s probably good that comments are disabled on this blog for now!