Webvideo: The Road to Suleman Shahid's PhD

As one of the final assignments for the course Business Information Technology we had to make a webvideo including one of our teachers. We immediately knew we wanted to interview Suleman Shahid, our teacher for User Interface Design, since he really inspired us. Moreover, we were very curious about his past education and his almost finished PhD about emotions in games. Here you can see the video we made. Hope you like it.

We want to thank Suleman for his cooperation with the interview.

Stufficient App: making a students' life efficient

In one of my first blogposts I told about the lack of usability on Blackboard. Many students experience problems while using Blackboard: where to find deadlines, homework and activities? Besides students use Blackboard, they mainly have an agenda for the planning of other activities. To integrate a person’s school and social life, we designed the iPhone application Stufficient for the course User Interface Design. This application enables students to manage their courses, homework and deadlines in an agenda, make a to-do list, register for exams and check their results. But above all, this application can be personalized to meet the needs of any student.

Here are some previews of the different phases and our final design, however the real app will be kept secret until after the User Interface Design Symposium on may 18.

After a lot of brainstorm session we finally made a so-called low-fi design with the main functions of our app. First we pretested the app on paper. We wrote a few scenarios and let some respondents test these functions by clicking on them. After that a new screen was showed. Above you can see a preview of this phase.

Thanks to the low-fi evaluation we made some little changes to improve the application. Then we made our final design in photoshop. Finally, we had to program the whole application. Some screenshots are shown below.

If you want to see the real working application, please visit my website after may 18 or come to the User Interface Design Symposium to see our application and the projects of our classmates.

Saturday, April 23, 2011 // Labels: User Interface Design // 0 comments //

The Future Part 1: 'The future will be made of glass'

From now on I will regularly discuss some interesting predictions that are made about the future. Today I will show you a video from Corning, a company that states the future will be made of glass.

Can you imagine organizing your daily schedule with a few touches on your bathroom mirror? Chatting with far-away relatives through interactive video on your kitchen counter? Reading a classic novel on a whisper-thin piece of flexible glass?

Even though this video might look like an imaginary fantasy, the company Corning is currently engaging in research that could bring this alive in the near future. During my lectures of User Interface Design I have seen some other interesting movies about real working applications like this. Therefore, I think this could definitely be made in the future. Moreover, this video shows some fun and useful functions we could definitely use in everyday life or at work.

However, I doubt if within ten years people will seriously live in houses and environments like this. First of all, their whole house needs to be renovated to live a life like this. This will be way too expensive for a normal household. Nevertheless, a house made of glass is not the best place to live with kids or animals, since glass can be broken or scratched easily. Although I do not believe houses like this will be the standard within ten years, I do believe some of the applications you have seen will become reality sooner than you might think.

Reliability: 6/10

Source and more information at: www.corning.com

Sunday, April 3, 2011 // Labels: The Future // 0 comments //

Take a nap and get smart

Even though the memory tricks have come to an end, I have got one exciting new trick for you to store your memories carefully. When I have a period with lots of exams I sometimes take a nap, and not because some books are so boring that I almost fall asleep. I do this because I feel like afterwards I can better remember the things I had learned before. I did not know how this worked and if it worked for more people, however recent research by the University of California has shown that people were indeed better able to remember things after they took a nap.

For this experiment 44 volunteers were invited to the laboratory at 12:00 pm. They had to remember 100 names and faces for the test they had to make at 18:00 pm. Half of the group was allowed to sleep between 14:00 pm and 15:40 pm, while the other group remained awake. The people who slept after they learned the names and faces performed better than the ones who stayed awake. The difference between the two groups was even about twenty percent.

The scientists suspect that during a nap the information in the hippocampus, the part in the brain where memories are made, moves to the long term memory. Since the hippocampus is emptied, a person is ready to store new memories.

Although I do not recommed you to go to sleep during a lecture, do not hesitate to take a nap while you are studying for an important test. There is a big chance you will do better on your test. Sleep well!

Sunday, March 20, 2011 // Labels: Fun Research, Memory Tricks // 1 comments //

Back on track with a brand new layout

Hello everyone! Here is a quick update. I know it has been almost two weeks since my latest blogpost, but I'm back and this time with a brand new layout!

I have chosen a blue layout, because I was reading a very interesting research article about the influence of color on the purchasing habits of shoppers. It was an article of Bellizi, who investigated two colors, blue and red, within an electronics store. In the experiment where the store was blue, the visitors stayed longer in the store and were more likely to buy something than when the store was colored red. The people who were in the red store quickly left. I thought if this works for stores, it might also work for blogs. Of course I do not want my visitors to leave quickly, thus I thought a new blue layout was the best option. Within a few weeks I will see the results in Google Analytics, so let's hope my hypothesis is right. Moreover, I did not want to frighten you away with a red layout, as you could see in my previous post.

I have spent quite some time figuring out the HTML, but it is more or less finished right now. I'm very curious what you think, so let me know! Moreover, I have a lot of new and interesting updates for you, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 // // 2 comments //