• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

In Reading Ahead, our recent self-funded study on books and digital readers, we saw how much people prize the physicality of books – the tactile and kinesthetic aspects of the reading experience. One of our design recommendations was to “include the sensual” in designing digital readers.

One tounge-in-cheek example of including the sensual is this Kindle case by Busted Typewriter.

Here is a recent iteration of the same idea; this time in a case for the MacBook.

Artist Brian Dettmer creates “book autopsies” by carving away the pages of books to reveal the images inside.

Talking about the growing popularity of digital readers, one of the people we interviewed for the Reading Ahead study said, “Someday there will be this cool retro thing called a book.”

If she’s right, what else will people do with them?

Tags: art, book, Brian Dettmer, Busted Typewriter, case, design, design research, digital reader, Kindle, Reading Ahead, retro

• Frames: Notes on Improvisation and Design [SlideShare] – Slides from Liz Danzico's excellent Interaction|10 presentation

Tags: bobulate, conference, danzico, design, improv, ixd10, presentation

• After 40 years, Heinz revamps ketchup packets [msnbc.com] – The redesigned ketchup pack, unveiled Thursday by H.J. Heinz Co., is shaped like a shallow cup. The top can be peeled back for dipping, or the end can be torn off for squeezing. It holds three times as much ketchup as a traditional packet. "The packet has long been the bane of our consumers," said VP Dave Ciesinski. "The biggest complaint is there is no way to dip and eat it on-the-go." Heinz struggled for years to develop a container that lets diners dip or squeeze, and to produce it at a cost that is acceptable to its restaurant customers. Designers found that what worked at a table didn't work where many people use ketchup packets: in the car. So two years ago, Heinz bought the design team a used minivan to give their ideas real road tests. The team studied what each passenger needed. The driver wanted something could sit on the armrest. "We created the packet in 1968," he said. "Consumer complaints started around 1969."

Tags: catsup, design, food, heinz, ketchup, packaging, redesign

The Omaticaya clan link the group mind via the Tree of Souls in the movie Avatar

Steve published a Quickie post recently on the Twitter remix of his Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets webinar.

I was struck by how the Twitter remix goes beyond reportage, not just echoing the points raised in the presentation but adding a layer of synthesis and translating the content across different media.

It’s a crowd-sourced boiling-down, and yet another of many examples of how this type of platform can be harnessed to interpret and respond to events in real time.

It’s also another illustration of how, as complex as technology has become, it so often still exists in service to the most elemental human activities. In this particular usage of Twitter, the support of tribal communication and the distillation of the group mind.

Tags: avatar, communication, cross-platform, crowdsourcing, hive, social networking, synthesis, Tree of Souls, twitter, wisdom of crowds

• Remixing Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets [Things On Top] – This remix of tweets from “Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets”, a UIE virtual seminar by Steve Portigal, gives you some of the answers. I missed out on Steve’s webinar, unfortunately, and decided to check out what others had tweeted about it using the hashtag #uievs. Luckily, there had been lots of activity and discussion, and I felt that Twitter provided me with quite a comprehensive summary of Steve’s stunning insights in to interview techniques. For my own sake and for future reference, I decided to compile that Twitter timeline in to a short document.
• Remembrance of Candy Bars Past [WSJ.com] – These companies are the face of what the candy industry in America used to be. Each city or region had its own factories, and people could actually see and smell the place where their favorite sweets were made. Regional candies are a dying breed. Today, there are perhaps a dozen such concerns left in America. The rest have been swallowed up, or put out of business, by the massive consolidation that has shaped the modern confectionery industry. Thousands of candy bars have disappeared along the road to consolidation, including such recent delicacies as the peanut butter-and-chocolate pods known as Oompahs, the treacherously chewy Bit-o-Choc, the glorious, nougat-and-caramel-filled Milkshake, and the Bar None, an ingenious marriage of peanuts and wafers dipped in chocolate. Also gone (but not forgotten) is the curiously alluring Marathon Bar, a braided rope of chocolate and caramel whose wrapper featured a ruler on the back.

Tags: candy, chocolate, confection, food, history, interviewing, portigal, regional, summary, tweets, twitter, uie, webinar

• Skirting the Glut of iPhone Apps [NYTimes.com] – The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly. This despite the surfeit of available apps: some 140,000 and counting. [The iPad] doesn’t mean that people will change their habits. Actually, it may just make them feel a tad more overwhelmed. The next generation of gadget users might prove different, but for now it is clear that people prefer fewer choices, and that they gravitate consistently toward the same small number of things that they like. For every zealous owner whose iPhone is loaded with little-known programs that predict asteroid fly-bys, there are many more who seldom venture outside the predictable. Most say they’re too busy, too lazy or just plain flummoxed by the choices. “I think I’m supposed to want more of them than I have,” said Julie Graham, a psychotherapist in San Francisco. “There’s this sense that I’m missing out on something I didn’t know I needed.”

Tags: app, download, expectations, iphone, marketing, mobile, mobility, need, stereotype, technology

Vegan jerky, brand name: Primal Strips

Jerky with real beef in it? The Jerky Kids! Yee Haw Original Flavor!

Ironically, both packages feature demonstrations of affection between human and cattle.

Tags: beef, brand, cattle, children, food, irony, jerky, packaging, primal, smiling, steer

• Apple introduces iBooks: iTunes for eBooks [Download Squad] – Basically iBooks is like iTunes for eBooks. Apple has reached deals with 5 major book publishers and starting today there should be a ton of books available for download including New York Times bestellers. We don't have details on the price yet. And I'm a bit skeptical that Apple's 1.5 pound, 10 inch tablet with a full color display is going to provide the same kind of reading experience as a thin, light, and high-contrast grayscale eBook reader such as a 10 ounce Amazon Kindle. But it should be interesting to see how Apple's new eBook marketplace affects the digital book space. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other eBook distributors are about to get some serious competition. And that should be a good thing for innovation both in the software and hardware for digital book readers.

Tags: apple, books, digital, ibooks, ipad, marketplace, online, reading, readingahead

• Confessions of a Book Pirate [The Millions] – I own around 1,600 physical books, maybe a third of which were bought new, the rest used. I buy many hardcovers in a given year and generally purchase more books than I end up reading, so I have not chosen to collect electronic books as opposed to paper books but in addition to them. My electronic library has about a 50% crossover with my physical library, so that I can read the book on my electronic reader, “loan” the book without endangering my physical copy, or eventually rid myself of the paper copy if it is a book I do not have strong feelings about.
• Google’s "Search Stories" advertising – Very powerful quick ads made of screenshots only, show how using Google for search (and other) is an element – perhaps integral – of the stories that our lives are made of.

Tags: advertising, books, campaign, commercial, digital, download, google, piracy, reading, readingahead, search, stories, storytelling, torrent, videos

• Ethnographic Insights Inform Suggestions for Making Google’s Services More Relevant for Chinese Users [culturalbytes] – Google has failed at brand recognition. People didn’t even know how to correctly pronounce and agree on the pronunciation of the name “Google.”
  The confusion over Google’s Chinese name also has other consequences: people were unsure of how to type in the name “Google” on the computer keyboard.

Tags: china, culture, ethnography, google, research, UX

On January 28th, I’ll be presenting a UIE Virtual Seminar on Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets. Sign up here!

You”ll learn how to ask great interview questions and take your user research to the next level. You’ll see that the best information comes from what Steve calls “breathing their air”—getting out of YOUR environment and into THEIR environment. Empathy brings about the best understanding. In this not-to-miss-seminar, you’ll get:

• How to prepare your Field Guide: the complete overview of interviewing questions and other techniques that go beyond the spoken interrogative.
• An understanding of how to build rapport with your users through listening, and the many ways to do that effectively.
• How to work with varying levels of experience and expertise, in your user community, and even within your own team.
• Techniques to use when any opportunity presents itself, even those chance encounters with users.
• Lots of great examples. The good, the bad, and yes, the ugly.

This seminar will provide techniques for your design team getting them to a solid understanding of your customers’ and users’ needs. You’ll come away with techniques and tools you’ll want to put to use right away. Once you do, you’ll see immediate benefits and better designs as a result.

Check out a quick preview of the session, and register here. Use promotion code CHITTAHCHATTAH to get lifetime free access to the recording after the fact (normally a separate cost).

Tags: interviewing, learning, steve portigal, training, uie, virtual seminar, webinar

• The Book Club With Just One Member [NYTimes.com] – Reading might well have been among the last remaining private activities, but it is now a relentlessly social pursuit. …The collective literary experience certainly has its benefits. Reading with a group can feed your passion for a book, or help you understand it better. Social reading may even persuade you that you liked something you thought you didn’t. There is a different class of reader, though. They feel that their relationship with a book, its characters and the author is too intimate to share. Ms. Stead remembers having had especially intense feelings about books when she was young. “For me, as a kid, a book was a very private world,” she said. “I didn’t like talking about books with other people very much because it almost felt like I didn’t want other people to be in that world with me.” Particularly with the books we adore most, a certain reader wants to preserve the experience for reflection, or even claim the book as hers and hers alone.

Tags: books, community, interaction, online, reading, readingahead, social, solitary

• In An Era Of Immediacy, Why Fear The E-Book? [NPR] – The fact is that books are special. Why else are we so careful not to bend their spines? Why else do we grant them honored space in our living rooms, our bedrooms? I can't see people expressing the same reverence for the flashing bits of data that flicker across their e-books (and don't even get me started on what this means for book signings). Yes, it's wonderful to have a library at our fingertips. But the digital library is a noisy, crowded place, filled with sports stars and politicians and celebrities. I'm afraid the reader might not even notice I'm there.

Tags: bits, books, data, digital, reading, readingahead, tangible

• Lost Garden: Ribbon Hero turns learning Office into a game – If an activity can be learned; If the player’s performance can be measured; If the player can be rewarded or punished in a timely fashion, then any activity that meets these criteria can be turned into a game. Not only can you make a game out of the activity, but you can turn tasks traditionally seen as a rote or frustrating into compelling experiences that users find delightful.
• With Rival E-Book Readers, It’s Amazon vs. Apple – [NYTimes.com] – Ian Freed, vice president for the Kindle at Amazon, said he expected developers would devise a wide range of programs, including utilities like calculators, stock tickers and casual video games. He also predicts publishers will begin selling a new breed of e-books, like searchable travel books and restaurant guides that can be tailored to the Kindle owner’s location; textbooks with interactive quizzes; and novels that combine text and audio. “We knew from the earliest days of the Kindle that invention was not all going to take place within the walls of Amazon,” Mr. Freed said. “We wanted to open this up to a wide range of creative people, from developers to publishers to authors, to build whatever they like.”
• Pushing Military Styles to a New Level of Ferocity [NYTimes.com] – A stepped-up demand for vests, blazers and hoodies tough enough to deflect a .22-caliber blast but sleek enough for a night of clubbing suggests that body armor is not just for the security-conscious. Fake or real, it exerts a pull on those inclined to flaunt it as a flinty fashion statement. “The trend to protective gear is pretty strong right now,” said Richard Geist, the founder of Uncle Sam’s Army Navy Outfitters in downtown Manhattan. “It’s big with rappers, alternative types and even some women.” Uncle Sam’s sells protective gear to the military. But most of its clients are civilians who snap up authentic bulletproof vests for as much as $1,000 or trade down to look-alike versions stripped of their armored lining ($24).
• ComScore Calls Shenanigans on Gartner’s 99.4% App Store Figure [Maximum PC] – Gartner says 99.4% of app sales in 2009 were from Apple. ComScore disputes the figures but Gartner stands by its determination.
• Amazon launching Kindle Development Kit so third parties can develop apps – Active content will be available to customers in the Kindle Store later this year. Remember that unlike smart phones, the Kindle user does not pay a monthly wireless fee or enter into an annual wireless contract. Kindle active content must be priced to cover the costs of downloads and on-going usage. Voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way are not allowed. In addition, active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code.

Tags: api, apple, apps, bulletproof, clothing, comscore, design, developers, development, experience, fashion, functionalty, game, gartner, gear, Kindle, market, meaning, office, protection, readingahead, revenue, ribbon, sales, sdk, share, store, theory, UI, utilities, UX, windows