iPrepNS website A website that I’ve been working on for over half a year has finally been launched. The website iPrepNS is for guys who are about to enter National Service in Singapore. It aims to prepare them for their 2 years of National Service. The website covers 3 main phases - pre-enlistment, where there are a whole slew of activities that need to be done even before a boy enters National Service; the enlistment day itself, the big day when the boy enters National Service; and life as a recruit, the first few months in service. Probably the most attractive part of the site is the pixel art banner, which unveils some of the memorable moments covered by the website. Like when a recruit gets his crew cut. It adds a touch of humor, which is quite unexpected from an official website by the Singapore’s Ministry of Defence. Another of my favorites is the interactive on learning the basic foot drill commands. Besides drawing lots of chuckles from people who’ve tried it, it serves a very real and common need mentioned by recruits we interviewed during our research phase. Many recruits were unsure of the foot drill commands during their first couple of weeks, which added to their stress caused by all the adjustments they had to make. So this interactive was designed to help them learn the bare basics, without overwhelming them with the more advanced commands. Similar is the interactive on identifying ranks. We decided on putting only 7 ranks that was most likely to be encountered by a recruit. Anything more would be overwhelming. What I appreciate most is not the flashy stuff, but the move towards honesty and transparency in the content, especially in the section on recruit training. Boys who haven’t gone into National Service would have heard stories on training from those who have gone before them. What they have heard may not always be accurate, since human memory is malleable, or simply because the training itself may have changed. It was thus important to include training information that is current and accurate. We presented the information like how an informed older brother would - informing and advising, being honest about the difficulties to be expected, yet encouraging and being positive about it. For example, in page on field camp, under “what is it like”: The 6 days of field camp are tough, but you will definitely remember these days as they are packed with new and interesting experiences. [...] Mosquitoes: They’ll always be there, buzzing around when you’re training or trying to sleep, and giving you a bite or two in the process. You’ll be issued with insect repellent, so don’t forget to bring it along. This honesty about the negative side of training is important for the credibility of the content. You may have noticed that we even have a section on “safety concerns” on every training page. We found this section important after interviewing parents, especially mothers who were worried about their sons’ safety. It’s been months of hard work, traveling to different camps and even Pulau Tekong numerous times, doing numerous interviews, taking countless photographs and video footage. It was thus quite gratifying that the project won the first prize within the Ministry for Defence, and so was launched officially by the Minister of Defence Teo Chee Hean yesterday: Here’s the official news release from the Ministry of Defence. My colleague Maish also blogged about this project. How to sustain your corporate blog A client recently asked me to give a presentation about blogging - how to make blogging successful in their organization. I didn’t have to convince this client that blogging is an important medium with great potential - they already believed it. In fact, they’ve already made a number of attempts at different forms of corporate blogging. Except that most of these efforts eventually fizzled out, often because the bloggers eventually became “too busy”. This problem is common among many other organizations I’ve dealt with. They’ve tried out blogging, sometimes with great fanfare. But the results have turned out disappointing. The blogs, hardly updated, and mostly uninteresting, mostly fade slowly into oblivion. Corporate blogging isn’t an easy and straightforward matter, if you want it to be successful and sustainable. It’s not just a matter of setting up a blogging system, and convincing some volunteers to contribute. Sustainable corporate blogging needs to be approached systematically, with the following factors accounted for, otherwise it will be just a hit-and-miss affair Intrinsic motivation of blogger Is the blogger motivated to blog? Or are they just an unwilling volunteer? I’m not talking about extrinsic motivation here (”I want to blog so that I can get a raise”), but intrinsic motivation. The blogger has to believe in blogging, that their voice through blogging can make a difference to the organization. Don’t even bother if you don’t have an intrinsically motivated blogger. Ability of blogger Just because a blogger is highly motivated and enthusiastic about blogging doesn’t necessarily make them the right person to blog. Can your blogger write in an engaging manner, or are they effective sleeping pill substitutes? Your blogging efforts (and your readers, if any) will soon doze off if it’s the latter. Sociocultural support Your motivated and competent blogger does not blog in vacuum. They are affected by their peers and colleagues. Is your blogger eyed with suspicion and disdain? Do they become the butt of “harmless” jokes at the water cooler? Or is the blogging role encouraged and admired by colleagues and peers? If your blogger does not get social support from co-workers, motivation will soon wilt. Top management support The corporate blogging effort probably has top management approval, but how strong is it? Is the blogging project some stealth project that top management can quickly denounce if something goes wrong? Or are they fully behind the effort? If the blogger wants to interview the CEO, does the CEO welcome the interview, or is the CEO “too busy” and puts the blogger on hold? Indefinitely? Top management’s actions towards the blogger speaks volumes about their attitude towards blogging, no many how much lip service they give. And their attitude towards blogging often cascades down to the rest of the organization. If top management fully supports blogging, then the rest of the points should come quite easily. Resource support If the blogger requires additional resources for blogging, such as a digital camera, does the blogger get it? Is there a real and reasonable budget allocated for blogging? Or must the blogger beg, borrow, or steal to get necessary resources to support the blogging effort Time Blogging - quality blogging - takes a lot of time. Is blogging an additional responsibility for the blogger? Or is the blogger relieved of some other responsibility, so that they actually have the time to blog? This point is so obvious, but yet it’s almost always overlooked. We somehow expect bloggers to keep blogging consistently, in addition to their normal work, and despite their already-packed schedules. Unless your blogger is wildly passionate, obsessive, or slightly insane, you can expect the blogging frequency to decrease. Extrinsic motivation and accountability Congratulations if you’ve met all the previous criteria - your corporate blogging efforts already has a very good chance of sustaining, even without this point. Extrinsic motivation is how the blogger as an employee rewarded for their performance in blogging. (What “performance” means in this case is another matter.) Is blogging among their KPIs? Is their performance bonus tied to their blogging performance? Closely related to this is accountability. Who is accountable to ensure the blogging performance? Who is held accountable for non-performance? Many bloggers reading this might balk at this last point, since they’ve only known blogging out of pure passion, and think that extrinsic motivation and accountability might kill the passion. It would, if this was the primary motivation. I would emphasize that extrinsic motivation and accountability should be put in place last, only after all the preceding points have been put properly in place. Once the preceding points are in place, extrinsic motivation and accountability then becomes an additional and official recognition of the blogger’s role. Just like every employee should have the extrinsic motivation and accountability for whatever their work is. Conclusion When you hire someone to, say, be the salesperson of your product, you find someone who likes sales, who can sell well, and you put in place structures to support their sales activity. Corporate blogging should not be treated any differently from any other kind of work activity if you want it sustainable. Web Ribbon In my last post, I talked about the Ribbon interface in Microsoft Office - a good solution with limited screen estate, without the usability problems of the cascading menu. Now what if the Ribbon was used on a webpage? My only encounter with it so far is on Singapore’s Ministry of Education homepage, which was launched only a couple of weeks back. It only occupies a row of space (above) before it slides and expands downwards to reveal more (below). I liked the idea the moment I saw it. As an information architect, I’m always on a lookout for ideas to navigate lots of information, so this was something quite new to me, and most of all, it works. It works so much better than the typical drop-down menu you often see on bad websites. It’s certainly not perfect - the space could be better utilized, rather than occupying just the left column. But I see that the web Ribbon has a lot more potential to be further explored and exploited, and I expect to see more websites using the Ribbon interface in the near future. I asked Lucian, the designer of the site where he got the Ribbon idea from. He told me he just “expanded on the idea” of a normal drop-down menu. He had that idea in 2006, way before he encountered the Ribbon in the Office software. Whether implemented on a desktop app or on a web page, the Ribbon is definitely a good innovation, a step in the right direction, giving designers and developers an additional tool to improve the user’s experience. Update: Lucian has started a blog detailing the development of the Ministry of Education website - Webdev at MOE. The Ribbon interface I’ve been using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac for a few months and so far I’ve been quite happy with it. (Disclosure: I was given a copy by Microsoft.) One of the major changes in the interface is the introduction of the “Ribbon“. The Ribbon interface is a non-threatening and elegant way of organizing and presenting a lot of functions in a relatively small area. The Ribbon first appeared in Microsoft Office 2007 (for Windows), but they managed to clutter it. The one in Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is a lot more friendly. (Update: Nadyne Mielke has informed me that the “Ribbon” in Office 2008 for Mac is called the “Elements Gallery”. I’ll still call it the “Ribbon” as it’s a lot more vivid.) Before activation, the Ribbon occupies a thin strip, just enough for the labels (see circled). Once an item is selected (see below), the Ribbon expands downwards, resembling the usual tabbed interface. The key difference from the usual tabbed interface is that the Ribbon can expand and collapse. It’s a small innovation, but it makes a load of difference. At first glance, the Ribbon looks quite simple. That’s why it’s elegant - it looks simple and it’s simple to use, but there’s actually a lot of functionality there. 1. Labels and instructions This lets you know what to expect. When the mouse is on an item (circled below), the label text changes accordingly. 2. Filters to narrow down your search The default “All” gives 15 pages of items in the above case. You can always narrow down your search (below). Unfortunately, when there are too many filters, it overflows into a menu (below). Not so elegant anymore, but not a big problem those overflow items aren’t accessed often. 3. Additional options For some items, there is an additional level of options. The Ribbon is deceptively simple. To get to the first item in the above diagram, you need at most 3 clicks: Document Elements > Header > Item 1 This is what we’re looking at in a hierarchical view: Document Elements Cover Pages Table of Contents Header Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 (Next page) Footer Bibliographies Quick Tables Charts SmartArt Graphics WordArt I mentioned that you need at most 3 clicks to get to Item 1 in the previous image. Well, the good thing about the Ribbon is the next time you need Item 1, 2 or 3, you might need only 2, or even 1 click. Think about it. Besides reducing the overall number of clicks, the Ribbon interface presents a number of advantages over a drop-down menu interface: The Ribbon needs less hand-eye coordination. If your mouse strays when using the drop-down menu, you’ll have to start over. It allows for additional options which comes as a result of the space it occupies when expanded. The Ribbon allows for bigger icons which comes with more space again. The Ribbon is more inviting with the bigger icons and more space. In other words, the Ribbon provides a better user experience for most users. Microsoft is known for feature-packed (or bloated) software, not user-friendly software. But the Ribbon has shown that they’re still capable of useful innovations every now and then. For more information, check out Enter the Ribbon by Jenson Harris, explaining some of the thinking behind the Ribbon. Jenson is the Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team. (Update: Check out evolution at work by Nadyne Mielke who’s a  user experience researcher in the Macintosh Business Unit - the guys behind Office for Mac.) 5 tips on teaching software - delivery When teaching software, although the approach you take is paramount, how you deliver the lesson can also significantly affect how easily your lesson is followed, and whether the learner can actually use the software by the end of the lesson. This post assumes a particular setting - the one I’m most used to (both as the teacher and as the learner) - the teacher in front with a computer and projector, and around 15-30 learners with their own computers. In such a setting, the learner have at least 3 things to look at and focus on - the teacher, the projection screen, and their own screen. They may also be looking at the handouts, or taking notes. In other words, the learner isn’t always looking at your screen (the projection screen) even if you want them to, or even if you ask them to. They may be trying to copy what you’re doing - click the same buttons, press the same keys, etc. Inevitably, they would miss something on the screen that you’re trying to show. Which brings me to my first tip… 1. Slow down or pause your mouse You may be pretty efficient and accurate with the mouse thanks to your great hand-eye coordination. However, the learner would quickly lose track of the tiny mouse pointer if they’re not completely focused on your screen. Even if they are focused, it’s still hard to follow if the pointer is skipping to different parts of the screen very quickly. Added to that, because the learner is new to the software, they have no idea where you’re going to move the mouse next. This uncertainty can become stressful, but can be greatly reduced if your mouse pointer slows down, and the learner is easily able to follow the mouse pointer. An alternative method I prefer (because I find it hard to slow my mouse pointer) is to pause right after I move the mouse. So instead of moving the mouse to, say, a button and clicking on the button in one swift motion, I would move the mouse to the button and pause or leave it there first, so that the learner has time to relocate my mouse pointer. Then I continue on. (An exception to this tip is when the learners are already familiar with the step you’re doing. For example, if they’ve already saved the file many times, there’s no need to do the File > save sequence slowly. Just tell them to save the file.) 2. Verbalize positions of controls (buttons, menu items, etc.) Sometimes, no matter how slowly you move your mouse, the learner just isn’t looking at your screen. For example, if you’re teaching Powerpoint and you show them the ‘Slide Sorter View’ button and ask them to click it, if they don’t happen to be looking, they wouldn’t know where it is. It would help a lot more if you say “click on the ‘Slide Sorter View’ button which is right at the bottom left.” In fact, I would say this instead: “click on the ‘Slide Sorter View’ button which is over here at the bottom left.” It’s a slight but important difference. I’ve found from experience that when I say things like “over here”, they know it’s time to look at my screen. It’s just a subtle way of saying “look over here - what I’m showing now is useful!” And as mentioned in the previous tip, I would also leave my mouse pointer there on the button to give the slower ones more time to locate it. If it’s within reach, I would even walk to the projection screen and physically point it out. There’s no way they’d lose you like this. 3. Verbalize mouse and keyboard actions Besides verbalizing where things are, you also want to verbalize what you’re doing. The learner isn’t just uncertain about where you’re going to move the mouse next, the learner is also uncertain about when you click the mouse button (and which button) or hit a key (or a combination of keys). One might think that this seems obvious or trivial, but I’ve been through countless software classes where the learners struggle to keep up simply because the teacher didn’t verbalize an important mouse click. A context menu appearing out of nowhere is particularly mystifying especially for non-expert learners. Even for expert computer user learners, it still takes a bit of thought before they realize that you’ve clicked the right mouse button. And all this while they’re trying to remember the steps that you’ve just taken, and understand what’s going on. Thus, make it a habit to verbalize all your mouse clicks and right-clicks and keystrokes. 4. Repeat the more-difficult procedures The learners won’t always be able to get the steps right the first time, so it’s often a good idea to repeat them. There’s usually no need to repeat simple one-click steps since those are easy to follow, but which procedures should be repeated depends on the type of learner you’re dealing with. I’m most used to the non-expert learner, so any procedure that requires 2 steps or more, I repeat. And if the process is particularly complicated, I would say something like this: “I’m gonna show you how to do this first. I’ll do it pretty quickly to give you a feel of how it’s done - don’t try to do it yet. After I’ve finished, I’ll go through it again slowly so that you can follow.” A few things to note from there: I assure them that they’ll get an opportunity to follow my steps later I show them the steps quickly as an overview I show them the steps slowly, both to reinforce, as well as to make it easy to follow 5. Cut down unnecessary mouse movements A software teacher of mine had this very annoying habit of jerking the mouse around as he spoke. This meant that the mouse pointer would be flying all over the screen as he spoke. Unnecessary mouse movements is bad enough in any lesson where a computer is used, but it’s far worse in a software lesson. During the software lesson, the learner subconsciously realizes that it’s important to pay attention to follow where the mouse pointer is moving, so that the correct procedure can followed. So if the teacher is making unnecessary mouse movements, the learners are also expending unnecessary effort trying to keep track of those movements. The next time you’re attending a software lesson and you find the teacher moving the mouse unnecessarily, see if you catch yourself trying to keep track of the pointer. You’ll find it even more annoying when you find it hard to stop yourself from tracking the pointer. Then look around the room - you’ll notice most people’s eyes following the mouse pointer as well. It’s a sad but funny sight. Conclusion These tips are simple and small, but they can make quite a lot of difference in your delivery once you manage to turn them into a habit. Your learners probably won’t notice the changes you’ve made, since most of these are quite subtle. They’d just find that your software lessons have strangely become much easier to follow. Tips for teaching software - the approach Most of us who have attended software classes or workshops would know that just because you’re an expert with a software application doesn’t mean you’re good at teaching it. This applies to most other subjects as well - a history expert or a literature expert doesn’t make them good history or literature teachers. Except that the situation may be worse for software experts. The geek species is not known for empathy, and empathy is important for good teaching. (Empathy is also important in creating user-friendly software, which is why most software aren’t user-friendly - but that’s another story.) Because most software teachers are geeks to some extent, it is no surprise then, that most software classes and workshops are not well-taught. This situation isn’t going to change overnight, but I hope the tips in this post would contribute to that change. The tips in this post deal with the strategy or approach of the lesson. I hope to do another post on some tips on the delivery of software classes. Without further ado, here are the tips: Help learners answer “why should I bother with this?” I wouldn’t dare teach any software application (or anything else for that matter) if I can’t help the learner answer the question, “why should I bother with this?” This is about making the learning relevant. And if it’s relevant, the learner will be more motivated to learn whatever that’s being taught. If the learner cannot figure out why they should be learning the application or the feature, then you’re likely to lose them very quickly. If you’re lucky, the learner already knows why, or eventually figures it out on their own, so it doesn’t hurt so much if you miss out this point. If you’re teaching Powerpoint for example, the learner probably already knows that it can help them with their presentations. But if you’re teaching Excel as part of a Microsoft Office competence program for retirees, you’ll probably have a lot more trouble. If your idea of making things relevant is to tell them that Excel is “a spreadsheet and it’s important to know how to use spreadsheets”, good luck - you’ll need lots of it. But if you tell them that Excel is “a program that can help you keep track of your money, including how much you have in your different accounts, how much you’re getting from your pension and investments, and if you’re getting richer or poorer over the years”, they would have a clearer picture of what they’re getting into, and they’d be a lot more motivated too. That initial reason you’re giving them doesn’t have to give the complete picture. Like in the above example, we know that Excel can do much more than keeping track of money. But as far as learning is concerned, especially with beginners, it’s much better to start with something incomplete but easily within grasp. Here’s another example. When I teach Photoshop to beginners, I’ll give a brief introduction: Photoshop, as it’s name suggests, is a program used to edit photos. This means that after you take a photo, you could improve on it, like make it brighter if it’s too dark, or make it darker if it’s too bright. In fact, as you go along, you’ll find that you can do a lot more in Photoshop - you could change the color of a flower, you could make your complexion clearer. But let’s start with the basics first… I wouldn’t mention that Photoshop can be used for drawing, for painting, for design, until many lessons later, when they are already familiar with editing photos in Photoshop: Remember in the first lesson when I said that Photoshop is used to edit photos? I must confess that it’s not the whole truth - Photoshop can be used for design too… Don’t teach feature by feature - paint scenarios Teaching feature by feature is probably the most common and glaring mistake in teaching software, especially when the learners are beginners. If the class is boring, it’s probably because of this mistake. This is when the teacher teaches the application by going down the list of features, teaching one feature after another. Some may go down each menu item, or each toolbar button. This approach is convenient if you want to cover every feature in the application. But the problem with this approach is that it doesn’t match the mental model of the learner. When the learner uses the application in future, it’s because they have a problem to solve. They have to go through a thinking process that maps the solution with the features that will help them solve the problem. If they were taught feature by feature, it would take considerable effort and intelligence to pick out the features relevant to solving that problem. It doesn’t occur to them easily that those features (that they’re supposed to have been taught) can actually be used to solve that problem. So when you do point out to them how those features could be used in concert to solve the problem, they might exclaim, “why didn’t I think of that?” Perhaps they didn’t think of that because it’s the teacher’s fault. It would be a lot more useful, interesting, and relevant if you painted scenarios or problems before introducing the application or feature. So, when teaching Microsoft Word, the typical geek approach when introducing the page break feature is to just introduce it: To insert a page break, go to Insert > Break > Page Break. See the page break? Good. Try it out, then we’ll go on to the next feature. Snore. Most learners would just go through the motions, and they would miss the significance of the feature. It would be far better to introduce a scenario first: While Word automatically adds new pages for you, as you might have noticed already, there may times when you want to continue on new page, even before you reach the end of the current page. For example, you may have reached the end of a major section in your report, and you want to start the next section on a fresh page. To do that, you have to insert a page break. Go to Insert > Break > Page Break. It takes a little longer, but it will definitely stick a lot better. Even if the learner doesn’t remember exactly how to activate that feature, they’re likely to at least remember that such a feature exist. Even better, if you have the time, you could make things more interactive and to stimulate more thinking, by asking the learners to come up with their own scenario: To insert a page break, go to Insert > Break > Page Break. Try this out, then give me an example of a situation when you’d use this feature. But what if you want to teach a feature, but you can’t think of a scenario that relates to the learners? Don’t teach every single feature - only the useful ones It’s tempting to cover as many features as possible, and there’s often some pressure to do so. I’ve taught some classes where the learners pay for the workshops out of their own pockets, so they want to get the most out of what they’re paying for. In such cases, I’d tell them at the outset that I won’t be teaching every single feature. After a brief pause to let them regain their composure, I tell them “if you want to know about every feature, you can read the help file. And, there’s not enough time to cover everything anyway”. Instead, I promise them that what they’ll learn would be useful to them. “We’ll start with the basics, and I’ll make sure you understand the important concepts really well, so that you’ll have a good foundation to build on. Then we’ll move on to the more advanced stuff if we have the time. If not, the foundation you have will help you understand the help file.” So which features to cover? You should focus on the features that will be most useful to the learner. So if the learners are beginners, start with the basic ones. And if you follow the previous tip and use scenarios, you’ll already have some idea as to which features to cover and which to drop. If the learners are newbies, start with the most basic and common scenarios - these would cover the most useful features. If you have more time, then go on to other scenarios, from the most common to less common scenarios. If time doesn’t permit me to cover some other less-common-but-possibly-useful features in detail, I normally spend a short time just “flagging” some of these features. For example, if I’m teaching Photoshop, I might have taught them the sharpen and blur “filters” (features used to sharpen or blur photos). Photoshop has many other “filters”, but I wouldn’t cover them. Instead, I’d tell the learners, You’re already familiar with the sharpen and blur filters. If you look at the Filter menu in Photoshop, you’ll see a whole bunch of other filters - each of them will give a different effect to the photo. I won’t cover them, but do go and try each of them out in your own time and play with them to see their effects. Then I move on to the next scenario. Conclusion If you’re already an expert with a software application, teaching it well isn’t a difficult thing once your approach is right. Take a bit of time to look at your approach, and keep putting yourself in the shoes of the learners (yes try to empathize with them), and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a pretty good software teacher! The Princess, the Witch, and the PowerPoint Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess… The lecture room was pretty rowdy before I began, but the 17-year olds were soon absorbed my this fairy tale that I concocted to teach them the things to avoid and a few design principles when creating a PowerPoint presentation. This story started some years ago, when I was still teaching at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. A few lecturer colleagues who had attended some of my PowerPoint workshops thought that the material would be helpful for their own students, so I agreed to guest lecture for them. My initial presentation was called “PowerPoint Evils, And How to Avoid Them”. (The animations and sounds are missing in the above.) While students generally enjoyed that presentation, I eventually figured that I could do much better, especially since I had done a lot more thinking and learning in the area. Thus came the idea to revamp that presentation completely, and convey the message using a silly fairytale - “The Princess, the Witch, and the PowerPoint”. The video was taken when I was invited back to Ngee Ann Polytechnic again some time back to give the lecture to a group of Mass Communication students. Thanks to Kevin Lim for taking the video! P.S. Here’s another nice presentation done by Tony Osime - “How To Get Your Slides Noticed”. Instructional dialogues Professor Zo: I’d like to talk about this interesting way of teaching. The best thing about it is that it can work in a lecture or classroom setting, and it can work online as well. You don’t even need to be a computer nerd to do it online… Alice: Use a story? Prof Zo: Hmm you’re right actually. But I was thinking of something else, which is somewhat related to stories. In fact, you might say it’s a type of story. Anyone? Bob: You’re gonna have to give us a hint - we still haven’t mastered the art of mindreading. Prof: Okay here’s a huge hint. Plato used this technique frequently. While I’m not sure if he was the first, he’s probably the most well-known… Cindy: Dialogues. He’s known for his Socratic dialogues. Prof: Do tell us more… Cindy: Well, Plato wrote a great number of works in the form of dialogues - usually two or three people discussing about a matter. They’re called “Socratic” because the main character of the dialogues is usually Socrates. Alice: So by “listening in” to their dialogue or conversation, we actually learn something? Prof: You got it. If you’re interested, you can check out Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a very well-known dialogue between Socrates and someone else. It’s one of his easier ones too. Bob: Prof, any modern examples to show us? Prof: Certainly. How many of you have read or heard of Hofstadter’s book, Gödel, Escher, Bach? Prof: Nobody? What a shame. Anyway, it covers philosophy, mathematics, music, art. Bob: Philosophy again! Prof: It’s fascinating! Anyway, every chapter of the book starts off with an entertaining dialogue, usually between Achilles and Tortoise. Achilles: What is that strange flag down at the other end of the track? It reminds me somehow of a print by my favorite artist, M.C. Escher. Tortoise: That is Zeno’s flag. Achilles: Could it be that the hole in it resembles the holes in a Möbius strip Escher once drew? Something is wrong about that flag, I can tell. Tortoise: The ring which has been cut from it has the shape of the numeral for zero, which is Zeno’s favorite number. Achilles: But zero hasn’t been invented yet! It will only be invented by a Hindu mathematician some millennia hence. And thus, Mr. T, my argument proves that such a flag is impossible. Cindy: I’m not sure if I get it… Prof: That’s only an excerpt - too short to be very comprehensible, but long enough to give you an idea of what a dialogue could be like. Alice: Okaaay… but can we have one more example, please? And something that I can understand? Bob: And not on philosophy? Prof: Hah! I was expecting this. You’re in luck - just the other day, I was surfing around and found this blog on typography. It’s called “I love typography“. Bob: Typography? You mean about fonts and all that? Maybe we shoulda stuck with philosophy… Prof: Believe me, typography is not just about fonts. It’s a fascinating subject. In fact, I know of this book on typography and some philosophy as well… Bob: It’s okay Prof! Prof: But do let me know if you’re interested in the book. Anyway, I read this post in I love typography where the author used a dialogue in the form of an interview to teach about serifs. Cindy: Serifs are just little hooks at the ends of some letters. You don’t need a dialogue to learn about serifs! Prof: Perhaps not. But it certainly helps if you want to learn about adnate or abrupt serifs. Or the difference between Egyptian and Humanist serifs. Or… Cindy: Okay I get the point. Show us that post already! Prof: The post is The Return of the Serif. Type Terminology. That blog is worth reading - the blogger John D Boardley uses many interesting techniques to teach the reader about typography. Alice: Prof, could we have just one last example of an instructional dialogue? Prof: Alice, we’ve just been participating in one. Can we afford to design in a vacuum? I came across an article in a recent New Scientist issue (4 August 2007), where they interviewed 2 retired Apollo programme engineers from Grumman Corporation. (Grumman built the lunar module for the first manned moon landing 38 years ago.) The engineers’ reply to the first question stood out to me: Q: How closely did you work with the Apollo astronauts? Gerald Sandler: Very closely. They would continually come into Grumman and they were on the inspection teams for the vehicles. Everyone who was working on the lunar module saw them personally and recognised that their lives depended on what we were doing. Having the astronauts involved and very visible played a key part in ensuring that people felt personally responsible. That was one of the reasons why the quality levels where so high. Joe Mulé: Whenever a problem wasn’t getting attention I had a guy working in my group who used to say: “Are you going to tell the widows?” It was something we always kept in mind. This reminds me of what I said in a recent post on intranet design and governance: As part of the research, we had to conduct many interviews with different staff, to understand their work habits, their informational needs, and so on. As of now, we’ve interviewed close to 10% of all staff. Personally, those interviews weren’t just to find out what problems needed to be solved or even to understand the users - what was more important was that those interviews gave me an opportunity to have personal contact with those who will be using the intranet that I’m redesigning, to actually care about them. I’m not redesigning the intranet for some faceless silhouetted entity called the user; I’m doing it to help make the lives of these nice people a better. The longer I’m in the field of design, the more I see the importance of first-hand interaction with the clients and final users. More so because I’ve also seen instances where the designers were “designing in a vacuum”. I know of this web project done by a large web design company where the web designer never got to meet or have any contact with the client. Everything went through the project consultant. The designer was simply asked to create the design based on a given layout, and so they did, to the best of their ability. It was obvious from the design that the designer didn’t grok or have an understanding of what the client the final users needed. So, that marked the beginning of a long and frustrating process of redesigning and rejecting and re-redesigning and re-rejecting. Perhaps, that web design company wanted to save costs - it is costly to get the designer involved in attending meetings with the clients and the final users. But it’s even more costly for them not to do it. Costly not just in terms of the effort in redesigning, but even more in terms of branding, where the client becomes displeased with the whole experience. Rather than asking if we can afford to let the designer spend time meeting clients and users, we should be asking if we can afford not to do it. Grammar Made Interesting I’ve been interested in how grammar can be taught in an interesting and engaging way, and I sometimes use manufactured fairy tales as a teaching technique (for other concepts), so I was quite pleased to find a grammar fairy tale, The Grammarian’s Five Daughters by Eleanor Arnason. Once there was a grammarian who lived in a great city that no longer exists, so we don’t have to name it. It first introduces nouns: The oldest daughter thought a while, then opened her bag. Out came the nouns, sharp and definite. Sky leaped up and filled the grayness overhead. Sun leaped up and lit the sky. Grass spread over the dim gray ground. Oak and elm and poplar rose from grass. House followed, along with town and castle and king. Then it goes on to cover verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. I can’t really tell how effective this is, but it’s certainly a great effort, and might be worth trying on schoolkids. Since we’re on the topic of grammar made interesting, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon is probably the best (and most humorous) I’ve read (and owned). Gerunds as Objects of Prepositions: By being so pregnant with meaning, her announcement went over like a lead balloon. Through sporting a cudgel, the Neanderthal made a rude but necessary start. By dunking her crumpet in the marmalade, Melissa committed a midafternoon faux pas. In finding the chink in his armor, she found herself shown to the door. It’s been years since I’ve read it. I’m tempted to read it again. The Future Internet Some time ago, I argued that the future internet will not be virtual 3D worlds. So a number of people have asked me what I thought the future internet will be like. The answer: the Semantic Web. It’s an abstract concept, and definitely not as sexy as a 3D virtual world. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, talks about it in an interview, The future of the Web as seen by its creator. So, for example, if you are looking at a Web page, you find a talk that you want to take, an event that you want to go to. The event has a place and has a time and it has some people associated with it. But you have to read the Web page and separately open your calendar to put the information on it. And if you want to find the page on the Web you have to type the address again until the page turns back. If you want the corporate details about people, you have to cut and paste the information from a Web page into your address book, because your address book file and your original data files are not integrated together. And they are not integrated with the data on the Web. So the Semantic Web is about data integration. When you use an application, you should be able to put data there so that you could configure that data. I should be able to inform my computer: “I’m going to that event.” And when I say that, the machine will understand the data. The Semantic Web is about putting data files on the Web. It’s not just a Web of documents but also of data. The Semantic Web of data would have many applications to connect together. For the first time there is a common data format for all applications, for databases and Web pages. Intranet Design and Governance Over the last 3 months, one of the projects we’ve been working on at PebbleRoad is the revamp and redesign of a client organization’s intranet. The organization has over 700 staff, most of them at the headquarters, but a significant number of them in their other locations spread all over Singapore. The role of PebbleRoad was to conduct research, then redesign the structure and the layout (wireframes) for the new intranet based on the research. Another company would then use our design to do the actual implementation of the intranet. We’re almost finished with our part. Although I can’t divulge too many details at this point, it’s been a fun and fulfilling ride so far. As part of the research, we had to conduct many interviews with different staff, to understand their work habits, their informational needs, and so on. As of now, we’ve interviewed close to 10% of all staff. Personally, those interviews weren’t just to find out what problems needed to be solved or even to understand the users - what was more important was that those interviews gave me an opportunity to have personal contact with those who will be using the intranet that I’m redesigning, to actually care about them. I’m not redesigning the intranet for some faceless silhouetted entity called the user; I’m doing it to help make the lives of these nice people a better. Which makes the work alot more meaningful. It makes me want to do a better job. But creating a wonderfully-designed intranet is only the start. What is equally important is how the intranet is cultivated, so that the benefits of the intranet can be maintained or increased, in symbiosis with the organization itself. To help with that, we produced an intranet governance guide: This guide describes a set of processes that need to be in place and a set of actions that need to be taken to sustain and grow the intranet. Without these guides and checks, we risk diluting the very efficiencies and productivity gains that the intranet is designed to provide. My colleague and I had much discussion over this guide. I hope it’ll be useful for others who are maintaining intranets, or are planning to do so. Which Comes First: Design or Research? Since I’m into design (I’m a Design Consultant after all), I was pretty interested in PingMag’s interview with Ken Okuyama. While he’s mostly into product design (he’s behind the lovely design of the Enzo Ferrari), and I’m more into information and experience design, there’s always something I can learn from other design fields. What stood out to me the most was how he typically starts his design process: I put everything in my brain down on paper, stick all of it on the wall and judge objectively the best possible solution for the problem. Then I start the research after. Not before. Once you know, you cannot go back to “your ignorant yourself.” But the ignorant yourself is the best creative partner you have. Where I work at PebbleRoad, we normally do it the other way round - keep an open mind and do the research first to find and understand the problem, before embarking on the design. Humanized described our design philosophy very nicely in a recent post on interative: Coming up with a solution is often the most straightforward part of the design process. That isn’t to say that creating the solution is easy, or doesn’t require a deep knowledge and honed skill set. It’s just to say that when you have a set of requirements and a well defined problem, you know where you stand and where you have to get to. It’s mostly straightforward. Much harder is the implicit problem of figuring out exactly what the problem is in the first place. If the problem is vague or ill-defined, the design solution will be too. So far this has worked well for us, and it makes sense too, since we don’t really want to design something for the wrong problem. But Okuyama has a valid point about “your ignorant yourself” being the “best creative partner”. Is that the key to the really groundbreaking and mind-blowing designs? Something to think about, and something I’ll definitely try out in my next project. But that would never work if we forget his qualifying statement, which I deliberately left out from the quote above: You also need the courage to adjust your original idea once it’s proven to fail. Explaining RSS Feeds and Aggregators Once upon a time… I was teaching a course entitled “Discover News Aggregators & RSS” to a group of librarians last week. Because most of them did not know anything about RSS, I wanted to make sure that every one of them left the course not just understanding what RSS was about, but remembering it for a very long time. What better way than to tell a story. But even before the class started, I got them curious: I crushed about 8 sheets of paper into individual paper balls, and placed them in front of random participants (there were about 25 participants). “What are they for?” some of them had to ask. “It’s for an activity later. Don’t throw them away; don’t eat them.” So when the class finally started, after I gave a brief introduction, I scared them with the Wikipedia definition of RSS: RSS (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. I also gave the Wikipedia definition of web feed: A web feed is a data format used for serving users frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation. This was useful to help them appreciate my story better, since nobody could really grasp these definitions. Before I started the story, I showed them the cast of characters: Me (Coleman) - the user You - the user’s favorite blog/website Paper ball - new content And I started my story (story words in italics): Once upon a time, there was a young man named Coleman. Every morning, he would turn on his computer, and access the internet. Now he had around 25 favorite websites that he would visit every morning. He would go the the first website, to see if there’s any new content. Any new content? (I went up to the first participant and asked her.) No? Then he would go on to the next website. (I stepped up to the next participant.) Any new content? No? Then to the next website. New content? (The 3rd participant had a paper ball.) YES! (I held up the ball.) Coleman would read the new content. Then he would go on to the next website? Any new content? No? So on and on he would go, visiting each of his favorite websites to check if there’s new content so that he could read it. This, as you can see, is very inefficient, and wastes a lot of time, so Coleman was VERY SAD. Then one day, the fairy godfather visited Coleman, and taught him about RSS feeds and RSS aggregators. Armed with that knowledge, Coleman used his RSS aggregator (I produced and raised a dustbin)… (And on the slide:) Me (Coleman) - the user You - the user’s favorite blog/website Paper ball - new content Dustbin - RSS aggregator Coleman used his RSS aggregator to subscribe to the RSS feeds from each of his 25 favorite websites. With that, every morning, when Coleman turned on his computer, he would open his RSS aggregator (raise the bin), and the new content from his 25 favorite websites would… (I motioned for those participants with the paper balls to throw them towards me, and I caught all of them with the bin) and the new content from his favorite websites would automatically be collected by the RSS aggregator (raise the bin), so that he could read the new content from his favorite websites (I took out the balls one by one) without having to visit them one by one, ever again. And so, Coleman lived happily ever after. They loved it. Update: I forgot to thank those who gave me their views when I first sounded this idea, including Siva, Ivan, and Vanessa. Feel free to use and modify this idea for your own purposes, as long as animals are not harmed in the process. Why BlogOut Was So Noisy BlogOut was too noisy. Sure, noise can be a good thing at the right time, when ideas are flowing, but when there’s a panel discussion going on in front of the room, and most of the (interested) audience can’t hear what’s going on, you have a problem (astro described the situation in his post, Blogout or SpaceOut?). So, why was it so noisy? Crowd control, or the lack of it. When the MC started the event proper, she didn’t manage to get everyone’s attention. There were still pockets of people standing and chatting at the rear area. (photo from Kevin Lim) It’s easy to expect the crowd to quieten down and pay attention eventually (I would have expected that myself), but it didn’t happen. On hindsight, the MC should have gotten the attention of everyone before starting. Which would have helped for around 10 minutes at most, before those standing in the background resumed their conversations. We know that because the MC did ask pretty firmly for everyone to “be respectful” during the panel discussion. The success rate was around 80%, for around 5 minutes. Mainly because there was a bigger factor at play: The lack of chairs, or too many people standing in the background. When you’re standing in the background in an event like that, it’s easy to feel like you’re not part of the seated group, meaning that you’re somehow excluded from the social norms and rules of that group. I know because I’ve done that too many times myself. Being excluded from the seated group, and part of the outsider group, there’s little inhibition from making a comment or two to the person standing beside you. And because you’re standing, it’s so easy to be facing your comment partner rather than the front of the room. The perfect setup for a “backchannel” conversation. There are a couple of other minor factors that I suspect have contributed in minor ways to the rather noisy atmosphere, like the arrangement of seats, the shape of the seats, and maybe even the presence of the food, drink, and waiting staff, but since they are minor, I shall refrain myself. I hope this post gives some insight into the design of an event space, and the human dynamics within it. And hopefully, there will be enough seats next time Kudos to the organizers. I still think they did well. Update: I completely missed out another major point - the poor sound system, although it was fine where I was (near the front). Thanks to Du Senyao Peter who pointed it out in the comments: Though I think a major problem is with the sound system, which could not amplify the talking one’s voice very well so people at the back could not feel the presence of the one who is talking, be it emcee or the panelists Forms Created by Nazi Developers I was doing a bit of research on a site, and had to fill in a form. It was an application form for a university course. As you can see above, I had filled in an address in the “Home Address” field. Then I got this Javascript error message: “Must end with a full-stop, have at least 1 but not more than 3 commas”? Amazing. Perhaps this is just a way to filter out applicants who have a poor comprehension of English. Undaunted, I obediently added the missing “full-stop” to my fictitious address (even though I could have turned off Javascript instead), so it became 1, CROSS STREET. (Note the “full-stop” I dutifully added. Also, it’s in CAPITAL LETTERS because the Javascript converted it so.) Perfect. Until I tried to submit the form, where I was greeted with another Javascript error: I couldn’t stop laughing. The real applicant probably wouldn’t be laughing though. Discover Podcasting & Vodcasting “How about YOU?” So said one of my PowerPoint slides, as I threw out this challenge at the librarians attending my course on podcasting and vodcasting last tuesday. By then, they had already learnt what podcasts (and vodcasts) were, how to find podcasts, how to subscribe to podcasts in iTunes, how to create a podcast using Audacity and ClickCaster, and how to upload a video clip to YouTube. But learning about podcasts and vodcasts and YouTube videos, or even knowing how to create them, wasn’t quite enough - I wanted to encourage and inspire at least a few of them to actually go out and do something, to create something, whether on their own or with colleagues. Not an easy thing to accomplish in a 4-hour session, especially where most of them didn’t know what a podcast was when they stepped into the room. Thus that challenge for them to go out and do something. To help them a step further, we did a sort of sticky-storming activity - we got all of them to come up with podcast or vodcast ideas, write down each idea on a sticky note, and paste them on the wall. When everyone had their ideas stuck on the wall, they would look through the ideas and put a marking on those ideas they found interesting. The most interesting ideas would then have the most markings. (I’ll post photos of this activity as soon as I have access to them.) When that activity was done, I asked the librarians if any of them would be interested in committing some time or effort in doing a podcast or vodcast. One lady raised her hand enthusiastically. Sensing their reticence, I asked the rest who were interested just to nod their heads as an indication, and many did - many more than I hoped for, which was really encouraging. The compiled evaluation from the participants, which came in earlier today, was encouraging as well. Here are the compiled comments: Liked Best: Practical work - setting up podcast (6) The relative informal way the course was conducted was refreshing. The topics were new to us therefore novel and interesting. Various examples given. The topic is interesting. The video shown stimulated interest in subject. Needs improvement: More on what types/categories of information available in podcast/vodcast. Step by step written guide from software to recording and posting. Examples of joint work, where not everyone was accessing same links. Other comments: Well conducted course. Short and sweet. And for those who like numbers, the average subject score was 4.5 out of 5, and the average trainer score was 4.6 out of 5. Librarians are so generous! Anyway, now that some of the groundwork has been laid, and with some interest coming from the ground, I hope to see some interesting “new media” projects coming out of NLB in the near future. Special thanks to those who’ve helped and contributed in one way or another, including Rajen and Ween from NLB Academy, Ivan from NLB, my colleague Maish, and Kevin, Walter, and Preetam. Discover Blogs & Blogging My colleague Maish is now teaching NLB librarians on blogging. 15:10: Talking about “live reporting”, using the 2004 tsunami example. 15:30 - 15:55: Break! The highlight of the day: 15:55: Comment spam 16:05: Searching blogs 16:20: I did an impromptu presentation on RSS aggregators. 16:25: Business blogs 16:30: twitter 16:35: Hands-on blogging! A Good Panel Moderator I must admit that I didn’t gain very much intellectually from the recent Nexus 2007, because the level of discussions was generally mediocre. Sure, there were some pretty smart panelists, but that alone isn’t always enough for a good panel discussion. Good moderation is thus crucial, which was mostly missing from the sessions I attended. In a perfect world, there really isn’t a need for a panel moderator, just like there isn’t a need for a soccer referee. But because some panelists dominate discussions, others don’t contribute much, and discussions tend to go off-topic, the panel moderator plays an important role. But while the role is an important one, the moderator should always remember that they are not the stars of the show, even though some of them may be stars in their own right. The moderator’s role is to bring out a good discussion from the panel, and stay out of the way when it’s happening. Just like you don’t want the soccer referee to be kicking the ball. Or worse, scoring a goal. Sure, there are times when it makes sense for the moderator to give an introductory presentation to help the audience have a basic understanding of the topic at hand, but it would do well for the moderator to remember that it should be introductory, and as brief and succinct as possible. It’s tempting to add in fascinating bits of information to interest the audience, but this should be left for the panelists to do. Once the introductions to the topic and the panelists are out of the way, the discussion proper commences. This is probably the toughest part of the moderator’s job, and this is where a good moderator makes the greatest difference. Nothing is more unfair and disrespectful to the audience than for a discussion to go completely off topic. The audience has chosen to invest their time to listen to a discussion on that topic, so the moderator should keep checking and deciding if there’s a need to pull the conversation back on topic. But unlike in a soccer game where the referee blows the whistle every time the ball crosses the white line, the moderator has a large gray area to work with. And even if a panelist goes off topic, the moderator has to exercise judgment - is the off-topic anecdote interesting enough and short enough to be allowed through? or is the audience getting impatient, so that the moderator should step in? Then there are panelists who talk too much, and those who contribute too little. The reason we have panels is so that we can hear different views on a topic. If a panelist dominates the discussion, or a panelist doesn’t contribute enough, the audience is shortchanged, and things aren’t moderate anymore. If the moderator can keep the discussion on topic with all panelists contributing more or less equally, that would make the moderator a pretty good moderator, but not a great one. A great moderator introduces tension into the discussion - tension in the form of controversies, contradictions, and conflicts. Controversies. Almost all topics have their controversies, and a good and easy way to create tension is for the moderator to ask the panelists on their view of the latest controversies. “Would if be a good idea for Singapore’s ruling political party to blog?” I might ask a panel discussing blogging in Singapore. The best controversies will bring out different views from different panelists. Contradictions. It takes a sharp moderator to catch the contradictions made by the panelists. “You mentioned X just now, but now you seem to be saying Y. Could you clarify this?” or, “you once mentioned X in your blog, but now you’re saying Y…” The panelist who self-contradicts is not giving the audience enough respect, especially if that panelist hopes to get away it. The audience will appreciate the moderator who catches this, and soon the moderator will be seen as the star of the show. Wait, did I just contradict myself about being the star? Conflicts. It’s hard to catch panelists contradicting themselves, but it’s much easier to catch them contradicting one another, giving the moderator a chance to create conflict. “Panelist A mentioned X just now. What is your view on X?” Good panelists (and dominant ones as well) will create conflict on their own, but quieter panelists would need a little more prodding. Again, conflict helps to add more views to the discussion, besides creating tension. Of course, the amount of conflict should be controlled, even though an escalation to physical conflict may make the panel a lot more memorable for the audience. So far, I’ve never encountered very serious (or exciting) conflicts during panel discussions. Unless you count the part when the audience gets to ask questions. (Have you ever noticed that the Q&A segment is sometimes the most interesting and exciting part of the panel discussion? That’s almost always because some audience member raised a controversy, or pointed out some contradiction or otherwise had some conflict with the panel. Go figure.) Then you have the audience member who rambles on and on before reaching the question, assuming that they even have a question. Nothing is more annoying than the audience member who needs to make a statement, or monopolizes the microphone. A good moderator must know how to firmly but politely remind the audience to get to the question quickly, and dismiss anything irrelevant. That audience member with issues may hate the moderator, but everyone else would be in love. And when the time is up, the moderator must know how to give the session closure - usually by asking for some final words from the panel. Again, this should be kept short. Nexus 2007. My favorite moment was during the Q&A of the final panel discussion, the Global Startup Panel. A young man from China went to the microphone to ask Cory Ondrejka a question. When Cory finally finished his reply, he asked the young man if he had anything else to ask, since he was still standing at the mic. “I’m standing here out of respect for you,” he replied. Everyone cracked up. Update: Guy Kawasaki has a nice post on How To Be a Great Moderator, which gives a bunch of very practical tips. User-Tested Designs In design for users, user testing is often crucial, especially when the designer isn’t already very experienced in the area, or when comprehensive guidelines or heuristics aren’t available. A couple of years ago, I followed some wheelchair-bound people around critique the accessibility of some new buildings that were designed with accessibility in mind. The next picture is of the bathroom at a condominium clubhouse. The picture doesn’t show the handle bar on the right wall beside the toilet, but it’s there. Is this friendly for a wheelchair user? The designer probably tried their best, and I thought their design was pretty decent. Then I saw the next one: This bathroom is at a rehabilitative hospital, where many of the users are actually wheelchair users. The obvious difference between this bathroom and the first one is that gray plastic seat folded up against the right wall, for a wheelchair user to sit on while having a shower. In the first bathroom, the wheelchair user would have to shower the wheelchair as well - not a good idea. The first bathroom was designed with the help of (inadequate) guidelines, while the second one was user-tested. The difference would be glaring to a wheelchair user who wants to shower. And once in a while, you encounter really bad designs. Maybe the users have very long arms. (Last picture via Chris Hielmann) Update: Here’s an interesting comment from Kim & Sophie that’s worth surfacing: I’m a wheelchair user and that last photo reminds me of a bathroom in the airport in Halifax, Canada. It was great accessibility wise. That is until I tried to wash my hands. The soap dispenser was stuck to the mirror halfway between the counter top and ceiling! There was also another “accessible” (and I use that term VERY loosly) bathroom at the airport in Toronto, Canada where the toilet papoer roll was so low you had to practically lean ahead and hold your body up with yoru hand against the floor to rech it with your other hand! Why the Matrix Will Not Happen (This is a continuation from “the Future of Internet Is Virtual Worlds. Or Is It?”,  and part 2). A lot of people think that the Matrix is inevitable. I take a contrarian view. But first - what do I mean by “the Matrix”? It’s just a scenario where our brains connect to the internet directly (not necessarily all the time), without the need for screens or keyboards, where we basically can live inside a shared virtual world, communicating, controlling, and sensing everything in our minds. Is that inevitable? Let’s first assume that the materialistic worldview is correct, meaning that human consciousness and thought is nothing more than neurons firing, and that there are no disembodied conscious entities like ghosts or spirits. If the sum total of humanity is no more than physics, then the Matrix is theoretically possible. Let’s also assume that we’ll be able to find a way to interface the computer or internet to the changing and highly complex neural structure of our brains, without adverse effects. And let’s just assume that technological advances will eventually make the Matrix possible - all you have to do, is recline and plug yourself in (assuming it’s not wireless). Other than a small minority of people diving into it, will the rest of us follow? Maybe not. If things become ideal, the Matrix will be incredibly compelling. Since computer data will have direct access to the brain, virtual environments with incredible sensations can be created and experienced, such that phycial roller coaster rides, reverse bungee jumping, and skydiving become sluggish in comparison. Imagine a heroin-induced high on steroids (assuming you’ve tried both heroin and steroids), only better. I’ll be the first to get addicted. But that’s only if things become ideal. Of course, things will never be ideal. Assuming that the internet remains decentralized, we can expect there to be rogue sites or virtual environments, created by naughty boys and girls. Imagine entering a rogue environment, designed specifically to harm visitors. The damage done will potentially be more than what a very bad drug trip can do, much worse than a serious case of paranoid schizophrenia. A horror nightmare on steroids? Besides rogue sites, there will also be (black hat) hackers. Sure, if our brains are connected directly to the internet, there will be very serious security measures in place to prevent our minds from getting hacked. But because the payoffs of a successful hack is so high, where the hacker can potentially gain control over your mind, or let you hear their voice whenever they want, or rewrite your memories, or eventually possess you, there eventually will be a hacker smart and patient enough to break past your firewall. That firewall is your final protection against the your loss of control over the only thing in the world that really matters - your mind. Would you risk the ultimate loss so that you can enjoy the ultimate experience? I don’t think so. The Future of Internet Is Virtual Worlds. Or Is It? (Part 2) (Note: this post is much longer and more complicated than the previous one. You can jump straight to the easier part 3, “Why the Matrix Will Not Happen“.) In part 1 of “the Future of Internet Is Virtual Worlds. Or Is It?”, I explained why an immersive 3D internet will not take over the 2D one. My whole argument really hinges on the assumption that the internet will remain largely informational, and not be surpassed by the experiential. If my assumption is wrong, meaning that the internet will become largely an experiential one, then it’s easy to believe that the internet will also mostly be in 3D. So why would the internet remain largely informational, and not experiential? Wouldn’t the Matrix-like scenario be inevitable? Let’s hold our proverbial horses for now and not go as far as the Matrix yet, since that would probably be a very long way off, if it ever happens. I’ll address that in a later post. For now, the internet is still mostly informational. People use the internet mostly for the informational. However, there is a small and growing proportion of users who spend more time in the experiential. The majority of these would be the game addicts enthusiasts. For them, the time spent in the experiential has replaced most of their informational time, as well as their real-life time. Fragging monsters in World of Warcraft is more compelling than much of their real lives, such as sleeping or bathing. Computer games and simulations are compelling because they offer opportunities that are otherwise impossible or very costly in real life. Most of us will never encounter monsters in real life, let alone experience the thrill of fragging them (or the danger of getting eaten). Nor do we really want to corner our cars at 300km/h in real life, either because our cars can’t (assuming we even have cars), or we’re not sufficiently inebriated. A main attraction of online immersive 3D games like Second Life (which some insist isn’t a game) is the ability to meet and chat with others in that virtual world. But the reason why Second Life isn’t exactly taking over the internet by storm (despite the hype) is simply because the experience in Second Life for most people is not superior or more compelling than that in real life. Thus for the rest of us well-adjusted people who lead normal lives, much of real life is still more compelling compared to the current experiential online offerings. (Something compelling need not be positive - screaming kids, for example, can also be rather compelling.) So, for the internet to be more experiential than informational, the experiential would have to be more compelling than (much of) real life. Which leads us to the next question: when will the experiential be more compelling for the rest of us well-adjusted normal people? When or how would 3D immersive environments surpass real life in terms of richness of experience? This can happen only when certain technologies advance to a certain level - specifically visual, audio, and haptic interface technology (I’m ignoring bandwidth and computing power here). The visual interface is definitely the most important. The current quality 3d renderings virtual worlds are very poor, compared to what we see in real life. To have a really gratifying and compelling experience, the 3D environment has to be photo-realisic, with a wide field of view (not the tunnel-vision views we’re used to on your computer screens). Think Omnimax. To make things even more compelling, throw in realistic sound and haptic feedback. Good quality sound, even with a feeling of 3D space, is within technical reach. But realistic haptic interfaces, due to the complex nature of how our sense of touch works, is almost impossible outside of a Matrix-like scenario. Imagine wearing a special suit to receive haptic feedback. How does the suit convey a light touch? (Easy.) How about a punch? (Not that easy.) How about a cold wind that flows around different parts of your body? (Very hard!) Or the sickening sensation of bouncing on a bungee cord? (Close to impossible.) You get the drift. But, even if I don’t get very realistic haptic feedback, if I could move around in a photorealistic 3D world with a wide field of view and good sound, it’ll be quite an experience. Instead of looking at nice photos of the Grand Canyon, I get to fly around in the canyons? I’ll be the next addict. So, does that mean that the experiential would then overtake the informational, given good-enough technology? Not necessarily. Even with serious improvements in technology, there will be things holding us back. And unfortunately, these would be mundane things holding us back. First of all is work. I would think that the informational would remain much more important than the experiential during work. Sure, with good-enough technology, we will probably have more virtual meetings with clients, but most of us don’t do that full-time, and never will. Of course, I may be wildly wrong in this case, since the nature of work might change drastically, such that the experiential becomes more important. But I doubt. The other thing that would limit the extent of the experiential, even with good-enough technology, is our real, offline lives. (Let’s not argue about what is real and not for now.) Sure, the experiential internet will eat into our real lives, but this will be limited by real life commitments. Yup - screaming kids, nagging spouse - the usual (some things don’t change). (Speaking of the nagging spouse - if the spouse starts nagging online as well, the time one spends online would be further limited, because of the drastic drop in experiential quality.) Sure, this is an anti-climax - the future of the internet in 3D virtual worlds getting limited by mundane issues like work and screaming kids. But one reason why the speculation of futurists often fail - they forget the mundane issues. Reminds me of the many books from the 1980’s that predicted what the year 2000 would be like - they always have flying cars. It’s 2007, and I don’t see flying cars coming anytime soon. I don’t see a 3D internet taking over either. So, how about the Matrix, where your brain interfaces directly to the Net? I’ll try to explore that in a later post. Update: Here’s the next post, part 3: “Why the Matrix Will Not Happen“. The Future of Internet Is Virtual Worlds. Or Is It? “The future of internet is virtual worlds. Or is it?” That was the topic of discussion in one of the sessions at the recent Web 2.0 Unconference. The discussion leader Douglas Abrams defined a virtual world as a fully-immersive 3D environment that is shared by everyone and used for interactions in areas like entertainment, communication, and commerce. Basically, the internet will become primarily 3D, instead of 2D as it is today. He believed that the internet will eventually become a 3D virtual world (or worlds), simply because of the richness of information that 3D is able to communicate, as compared to textual, visual, or video information. He’s wrong. His is a common mistake - the same mistake that people years ago made when they predicted that TV would kill radio. But I’m running ahead of myself. The internet as we know it now is mostly what I would call “informational” - where people access content. This could be for knowledge (reading up a wikipedia article or my blog *ahem*) or for entertainment (reading my blog *AHEM*). Currently, while the content is mostly in the form of text (like wikipedia and my blog again), there are other forms of content, including audio (podcasts, webradio), still visuals (photos, illustrations), and moving visuals (video, Flash animations). Besides the informational, the internet also has a large experiential element. These are interactive elements or environments, where the interactive experience is the goal itself, and not a means to an end. These would include Flash games, simulations, and so on. What do we get when web designers fail to distinguish the informational from the experiential? Flash-based websites that are a pain to navigate. Sure, surfing Flash-based informational websites is certainly a “richer” experience, thanks to pretty animations and sound effects, but when the information I want is best represented by text, don’t give me any animations along with it. Let alone a 3D experience. Here’s another example - RSS feeds. I can go to a news site or a blog to read the informational content, and experience the look and feel of that site as well. But why do many people eventually move to reading the same content from RSS aggregators? Yes, the convenience, but many of us are eventually only interested in the informational content, not the experiential. Virtual 3D worlds are better suited for the experiential, much like Flash. Because they are experiential in nature, they are great for the user to experience something, like exploring a new environment, playing an immersive game, or having social interactions with others. Thus 3D worlds are certainly here to stay, since they are best for certain types of the expriential. Now if a user wants the informational rather than the experiential, and a 3D environment is given, it may not be pretty, especially when the novelty of 3D wears off. Remember those horrific Flash sites you tried to navigate through? The horrificity of 3D will be worse in an order of magnitude, thanks to the additional third dimension. So are virtual worlds the future of the internet? No, it won’t. Unless… Only unless the experiential overtakes the informational on the internet in the future. Will that ever happen? I hope to explore this in a later post. Update: Read part 2 here, or jump to part 3, “Why the Matrix Will Not Happen“. Addendum: Kevin posted a video of the discussion. The quality of the discussion wasn’t great, so it may not be worth watching. DOM Scripting and Ajax Workshop with Christian Heilmann PebbleRoad (the company I work for) is bringing Christian Heilmann over to do a 2-day workshop on DOM scripting and Ajax on 29-30 March. Chris is the lead web developer in Yahoo, London, and he’s very much into web standards and accessibility, so the workshop would cover those areas as well. We’re getting him simply because he’s one of the best in the world when it comes to JavaScript with DOM and Ajax, much like Russ Weakley is one of the best in the world when it comes to CSS (thus his CSS workshop here). I suspect that this workshop will be quite a hit, since Ajax is a buzzword these days. This suspicion was confirmed when we found that we already had a signup soon after we posted the announcement on the company homepage - even before we started spamming anyone! If you happen to be interested, and you know some JavaScript already, do sign up soon. P.S. Chris has done a sample screencast on DOM essentials here. Good way to know if you can understand his German accent. Information Architecture, In Short In my new role as a Design Consultant, I’m involved in the design of user experiences (UX) - what a user experiences when they are, say, visiting a website. When people ask me what I do, one of the things I usually mention is Information Architecture (IA), which is a part of user experience (UX) design. Blank look. During that brief moment, I can tell that most people are thinking if they should ask me to explain further or not. Then I’d go ahead with an explanation similar to this: When you have a large website, it’s common for the information to be badly organized, such that it’s hard to find the information you’re looking for, right? I’d pause and wait for some glimmer of understanding to appear in their eyes, before continuing: What the Information Architect does is to use various methods, such as user studies, surveys, et cetera, to find out what is the optimum way to organize the information on the website, so that the website becomes a lot more user-friendly. That’s when they usually get it. It’s been a week into this new job, and I’ve been learning a tremendous amount, and there’s still loads to learn. Things are getting interesting. Russ Weakley’s CSS Workshop PebbleRoad (the company I work for) brought in the highly-acclaimed Russ Weakley to do a workshop on CSS today. Russ is a great guy to work with - extremely easygoing, and no hint of ego at all, even though he’s one of the best CSS gurus alive (or dead) today. And a humorous guy as well, with his self-deprecating style of humor (he claims it’s normal Australian humor). He carries the same style of humor into the workshop, telling us countless stories of his “idiotic” mistakes he made with CSS, which certainly makes the participants feel a lot better at themselves. He’s also great at making humorous analogies to explain concepts (”inheriting big noses from your parents”), which helps make concepts a lot easier to understand (analogies) and memorable (humor). All in all, I thought this was a wonderful workshop, and all the attendees I spoke to left the place very happy. I’ve a feeling that a lot of people who decided not to attend will regret that decision. Let me geek out now: Below is a list (mostly for my own reference) of the most interesting things I learnt- left and right padding/margin have no effect on inline elements inline elements can be made to appear like block level elements (and vice versa) using display:block (or display:inline) pseudo classes, especially tr:hover for to highlight a row in a table when the mouse is over it. (How I want to go back to the last website I coded to add this in.) calculating the weight/importance of selectors better understanding of shorthand rules (I need more practise on this) much clearer understanding of positioning - especially floats specify a width after you float a box margin collapse with normal flow boxes IE’s subtractive interpretation of the box model linking all CSS files within 1 CSS file elegantly using different CSS files for different browsers, including problematic ones (NN4, IE5, IE6, etc.) better understanding of forms, with fieldsets and labels, including the styling different styles for different pages resolution dependant layouts. Real cool. Russ Weakley’s CSS Workshop PebbleRoad (the company I work for) brought in the highly-acclaimed Russ Weakley to do a workshop on CSS today. Russ is a great guy to work with - extremely easygoing, and no hint of ego at all, even though he’s one of the best CSS gurus alive (or dead) today. And a humorous guy as well, with his self-deprecating style of humor (he claims it’s normal Australian humor). He carries the same style of humor into the workshop, telling us countless stories of his “idiotic” mistakes he made with CSS, which certainly makes the participants feel a lot better at themselves. He’s also great at making humorous analogies to explain concepts (”inheriting big noses from your parents”), which helps make concepts a lot easier to understand (analogies) and memorable (humor). All in all, I thought this was a wonderful workshop, and all the attendees I spoke to left the place very happy. I’ve a feeling that a lot of people who decided not to attend will regret that decision. Let me geek out now: Below is a list (mostly for my own reference) of the most interesting things I learnt- left and right padding/margin have no effect on inline elements inline elements can be made to appear like block level elements (and vice versa) using display:block (or display:inline) pseudo classes, especially tr:hover for to highlight a row in a table when the mouse is over it. (How I want to go back to the last website I coded to add this in.) calculating the weight/importance of selectors better understanding of shorthand rules (I need more practise on this) much clearer understanding of positioning - especially floats specify a width after you float a box margin collapse with normal flow boxes IE’s subtractive interpretation of the box model linking all CSS files within 1 CSS file elegantly using different CSS files for different browsers, including problematic ones (NN4, IE5, IE6, etc.) better understanding of forms, with fieldsets and labels, including the styling different styles for different pages resolution dependant layouts. Real cool. μεταcole Milestone Last friday was the last day of work for me as an Educational Technologist at the Teaching & Learning Centre of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and today marks my first day at PebbleRoad as a Design Consultant. As such, I’ll also be shifting the focus of my blog. To reflect that, I’ve changed the tagline from “education and everything else” to “design thinking, education, and everything else”. I’ll still be blogging about education, even though my new role doesn’t deal with it as much, since education is still an area I’m deeply interested in. As for what “design thinking” is exactly, we’ll just have to wait and see how this blog develops. Sit tight… P.S. the About page has been updated a little. Just a little. Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted We teachers have this tendency to encourage our students to do long-term planning, partly because that’s what we’ve been encouraged to do ourselves when we were younger, and even in every stage of our career. For myself, even though I don’t ask my students explicitly to plan, I’d sometimes ask  rather unthinkingly, things like, “so what are you going to do after you graduate?” The student who hasn’t made any plans yet would normally be a little embarressed that they don’t have any plans to speak of, and thus be pressured to start thinking and making plans. But after reading this article, “Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted“, I’m brought to realize that long-term career planning is overrated, probably useless, and often results in less-than-happy situations if followed. The next time I ask a student about their plans, I’ll remember to add that it’s really not necessary to plan so far ahead, and that they’ll probably be happier off without the planning. Creating Great Schools Educators know that there is something deeply wrong with the school and educational systems, and that there’s definitely a need for change. And yes, changes have been made, but real, positive results, if any at all, are barely visible. In fact, resistance is rife, or if not resistance, neglect or grudging compliance, perhaps until management gives up. Creating Great Schools: Six Critical Systems at the Heart of Educational Innovation by Phillip C. Schlechty is a book that addresses the issue. But what is wrong? What, exactly, is the problem? I often hear educators complain about “students nowadays”, who, unlike in the good ol’ days, have less respect for teachers and have little self-discipline. The implication would often be that the fault lies with the students (and their parents and the society), and there’s little the teacher can do. What educators often miss is that there’s a need for a paradigm shift - a shift from compliance and attendance to engagement. According to Schlechty, the present system is designed to produce compliance and attendance. What we need are schools that ensure that most students learn at high levels […]. To achieve this, schools must be redesigned to nurture commitment and attention. Because schools are really complex social organizations, when implementing systemic changes (”educational innovations”), social systems within the organization need to be managed and changed as well, without which the effort in systemic change is almost sure to fail. Schlechty identifies 6 critical social systems: Recruitment and induction systems Knowledge transmission systems Power and authority systems Evaluation systems Directional systems Boundary systems Schlechty explains in detail how each of the 6 critical systems affect the dynamics of the school system, and some key questions to be addressed by the management. While this book deals only with the American school system, the same problems often exist in other educational systems elsewhere. And Schlechty certainly seems to have a clear grasp of the problems in educational systems. An important book for those interested in educational and change management.