::slingthought::

Amana has an 18 Cubic Ft. Dry Erase Refrigerator.  Pretty sweet idea.  Why didn’t Amana post product images or a gallery of it in use???  I volunteer to scribble user interface ideas all over it if they send me one.  Hey Amana…did you hear that?  Send me a fridge and I’ll instantly join your marketing team for free.

Fun concept.  Let’s see if it sticks.  Perhaps the next product innovation will be PostIt Toilet paper?

There’s a plethora of job titles floating out in the Webosphere.  I’ve been gathering them from things like LinkedIn, Search Engine Keywords, Job Boards and other Social Networking Tools.  I’m curious about how you or your organization has positioned your role within our collective profession.  Take a look at how I’ve started to organize the job titles above and let me know if I’ve missed something or if I’m way off the mark.  This is work in progress.

I operate under the “User Experience Strategist” moniker.  Let me explain why I’ve chosen that specific label.  I have a multidisciplinary approach to user experience opportunities.

I have backgrounds and expertise in the following:
- Visual Design and Communications
- Illustration
- Usability
- Information Architecture
- Interactive Marketing

I specifically selected “User Experience” because I’m passionate about looking across the experiences that human beings have with the Web, Email Marketing, Intranets, and Web Applications/Services.  I haven’t spent as much time in the mobile field, but it certainly relates as being a user experience.

I decided to use the label “Strategist” because I may be looking at applying my collective background, or I may only utilize Information Architecture.  As a strategist I look at a plan of attack or approach for the overall experience.

Any contributions you may have to this organic categorization will be helpful for us all.  My intention is to help better define how we talk about and position ourselves to clients, recruiters, and other business professionals.  Please leave a comment and even some rationale behind your title if you feel like it.  I’d love to update the mind map with new labels that haven’t been accounted for.  Reminder- this is how I’m looking at things.  How does your point of view differ?

A simple cut and pasted line of javascript code opens the door to observing user behavior on your site.  It captures mouseclicks, keystrokes and cursor activity.

Clever way to be a fly on the wall and nice logo as well.

Scrutinizer is web browser, based upon the Adobe AIR toolkit and the WebKit browser, that offers a simulation of the human visual system.  It helps you get a better grasp on how users might be looking at your site or application design.

This video is an interesting peek at the science about how we see and perceive information on screens and might help you plan how to organize, group or re-arrange some of the screen elements in your experiences.

Looks like a promising marriage of task management, micro-blogging/status updates and file sharing for collaborative teams.

Waiting for the private Beta invitation to give it a go.

Now we’re talking.  Collaborative projects keep getting easier thanks to Skype.

Whoa, I did not see that coming.  Collaboration is everywhere and now it’s on the iPhone and iTouch.

The video touts some slick features like the meeting calls you and you can also chat with participants.

I want to believe this would work for watching a presentation, but I’m skeptical.  I’d also like to see how screen sharing looks and I want to know if you can listen to the audio via headphones on the iTouch.  I assume you can.

Regardless, it seems like a killer app for mobile professionals.

ProtoShare appears to be very promising as a rapid prototyping tool.  Most of the basic wire framing functionality is covered.  Additionally you can collaborate and share your prototypes.  It also appears that you can also do some things with HTML, CSS, RSS and framing other sites.  Unfortunately their 30 day trial requires a credit card, so I wouldn’t be suprised if a number of people, much like myself, skip test driving it.  I really would like to see how it stacks up to tools like Axure, but paying for a demo…not so much.

They should put up a sandbox to let us play before we pay.  I realize you can cancel at any time, but there’s a lesson in user expectations with Web-based services.  We need a snack before we feast on your app.

If you’ve tried it out, by all means, leave a comment.

Here’s an experience that fires on all cylinders.  Silverback is a Mac application that does one thing, easily captures usability sessions, and it does it a great job of it.  I appreciate everything about the tool.

First off, the marketing and experience design that positions the application is fantastic.  I love the uncluttered landing page that outlines everything you need to know about the tool.  Having a background in illustration, I’m a sucker for great illustration and design work and the silverback character has to be the coolest usability analyst on the planet.  He even appears in the tool during the video export process in place of a progress bar tapping a clipboard with his fingers.  Nice touch!

The tool itself is so simple that it makes me want to abandon Camtasia Studio (PC), Screenflow (Mac), Screenflick (Mac) and Screenium (Mac).  Maybe even Jing (PC & Mac).  Silverback makes it so easy to capture user sessions that I don’t even need to detail out the process.  It just does what you need it to do!

I’ve been on a mission pushing for Guerilla Usability and trying to sneak inexpensive, unplanned testing in whenever I can, so this tool will prove to be a great weapon in my arsenal.

Thanks to Clearleft in the UK for putting so much thought in and around the experience, design and marketing of this app.  I love that a percentage of sales actually go save the gorillas.

Useful, Usable and Desirable oh and Affordable.

Interesting.  Seems like an affordable means for getting a perspective on your Web app, service or site.  Folks are getting paid $10 via PayPal for 20 minutes of reviewing your site and talking aloud while they do so.  The company must be providing them with a screencasting app or service.

Wondering how insightful the feedback is, though any feedback is better than none.

Might be worth a go on a few of my client projects.

Sample User Test Video

Usertesting.com