Posts | Donovan's Brain

Mobile Usability Testing Tips

Feb 3, ’11 8:10 AM

On the AnswerLab blog, LabLog, I posted an article with ten tips to keep in mind while conducting mobile usability tests.

Over the last few years, more and more of the sessions that we conduct at AnswerLab are focused on the mobile experience. We test everything from early stage paper prototypes to live mobile sites. We even conduct mobile ethnography studies whereby we see what people are doing with their phones in the real world. Sometimes you just can’t get the best results from a lab.

It’s exciting to test mobile devices. Unlike testing stimuli on the desktop, mobile studies present many new and unique challenges. I outline some of those challenges and offer up solutions in the post on LabLog.

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My Chrome and Twitter Dashboard

Feb 2, ’11 10:06 AM

Here’s how I do it. Chrome on the left, Twitter on the right. When new tweets arrive, they automatically scroll to the top. Click the image for the full rez version.

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Try a Powerline Instead of Routing Ethernet Cables Around Your Home

Feb 2, ’11 7:26 AM

Tired of tripping over the long, ugly blue Ethernet cable that I had strategically routed from my upstairs office, down the hallways, across the living room, to the port on the backside of our esteemed Roku, I resolved to arrive at a solution more befitting a family’s aesthetic and safety needs.

My trusty RSS reader delivered to me one day, a post by someone discussing options for this very scenario. He spelled out four or five solutions, the best of which, for my situation at least, was a product called a Powerline.

The Powerline is comprised of two Ethernet devices, each identical to one another. Setup is incredibly simple and the results are amazing. Plug one device into a wall socket near your modem, the other into a wall socket near the device you’d like to bestow with speed. In my case that is our beloved Roku, in yours it may be the Xbox or Wii, or even a laptop.

The final step is to remove that ridiculously long, unsafe Ethernet cable you’ve strung throughout the house and replace it with one about six feet long. Plug one end of the short Ethernet cable into your modem/router and the other end into the Powerline.

Magic will now happen.

Turn on your Roku, Wii, whatever, and revel in wonder. I guarantee you’ll ask yourself, ‘What was I thinking?’

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Read and Trust and Multiple River2 Users

Feb 1, ’11 7:52 AM

The Read and Trust network of writers comprises a group of indies that are recommended by those we read and trust. I’m not sure who ‘we’ are but the quality of the list is excellent and well worth adding to your feeds.

While visiting their site, I noticed that one can download an OPML file of the entire Read and Trust network, allowing for quick and easy subscription to all the writers in one fell swoop. As a certified OPML nut, of course I grabbed the file. Not only did I add it to my daily feed reading, but I have plans to use the file as my guinea pig.

Allow me to elaborate..

As any reader of mine is aware, I’m an EC2 Poet. In other words, I have my own Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud server (micro instance) running the OPML Editor 24/7. Up until yesterday, my EC2 has dutifully been dishing up my RSS feeds in a river of news format for me.

Now, yesterday, Dave Winer added an important feature to the OMPL Editor. Multi-user support for the River2 news aggregator tool. I’ve been looking forward to this feature because now my EC2 can not only host my RSS feeds, but it can also host another user’s feeds.

The first thing I did was create an imaginary user, ‘readandtrust’ and imported the OPML file I had downloaded earlier. Create a password just for this new user and that’s it. It worked!

Now that my EC2 has two users, I’m going to add a third imaginary user (I’m in full on test mode right now) and then start taking notes. The multi-user implementation has a few kinks to iron out so I hope to help facilitate its progress by putting it through its paces.

The Read and Trust river of news is pass protected so I can’t show it to you. But here’s my river, pushed to my Dropbox, for public consumption, to show you essentially what it looks like. Imagine the Read and Trust network of feeds flowing through instead of my own set of feeds.

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My Clipper card holder is efficient and safe

Jan 31, ’11 7:17 AM

My daily commute to work is eased by the Clipper card, an all-in-one transit card that keeps track of my passage and automatically reloads whenever my cash balance falls below $10.

One day I discovered a photo on flickr of AgentAkit’s Clipper card holder and I knew I had to have one too.

After a bit of Googling, I found a company called Identity Stronghold that sells the card holders and other security badge type of items. According to their site, the information embedded in our cards can easily be read by credit card readers that may be concealed by those nearby.

Now, I’m not concerned about someone stealing my Clipper card information but maybe I should be? And it’s not just my Clipper card… enhanced driver licenses, passports, and other cards are regularly embedding our personal information on them. I can see this becoming a very real identity theft issue in the near future. It probably already is but I’m in a bit of denial since most of my cards, I believe, don’t have this level of info on them yet.

Another aspect of security is that I don’t like pulling out my wallet every time I enter/exit a BART station in order to pull out my Clipper card. That’s the real reason I wanted the card holder. So, as you can see from the photos, I’ve attached the card holder, via a secure carabiner & belt clip, to my Timbuktu bag. Now, when I approach the card reader, I simply grab the card, pull it towards me, slide the card slightly out of it’s protective position, and scan it on the reader.

I don’t have to pull out my wallet and I’m protected from rogue card readers.

I bought the holder that can handle two cards but I’m only using one side right now. Unfortunately, my plan to also keep my building security badge on the other side was thwarted because it’s an old school badge that is too thick for this holder. No matter though, it’s an inexpensive solution and I am happy with my purchase.