My six-year-old is taking a new class this year at school – Computer Lab – and he couldn’t be more excited. It may seem odd for someone who works in the business but until now he hasn’t had much access to screen time. We don’t watch TV and apart from occasional movies and Skyping with far-flung relatives he really hasn’t spent a lot of time in front of a computer. While the characters and games that dominate popular culture are very much a part of his play and interaction with his peers, until recently the exact details have been pretty much a product of his imagination. When he was three, for example, he was convinced that Spiderman was a shoe salesman, having experienced the web-slinger entirely through his merchandising. It’s very clear, however, that screens are going to be a big part of his future, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the best way to approach this.

When I think about the kind of experiences I want him to have in front of a computer screen I think about:

- An opportunity to be creative – to look behind the curtain, manipulate the environment, learn how to control what he sees and how it works, tell a story his way
- An engaging way to learn a useful skill or concept – there are some things (like sight words) that just have to be memorized, the more fun you can put into it, the better
- A perspective or experience that’s impossible to duplicate in real life – like venturing inside a cell, or flying low over the African savannah
- Some protection from the relentless marketing and merchandising directed at kids from diapers on up

We’ve been having good fun lately with a free open source application called Tux Paint (www.tuxpaint.org). With large, colourful icons, goofy sound effects and a large dose of whimsy it gives my son plenty of room to play. I love the ‘magic’ tools and rubber stamps and I’m constantly amazed at how deftly he draws with a big clunky tool like a mouse. He loves to print out his colourful creations and then incorporate them into other drawings and paintings.

There’s a lot about the interface for this application that’s interesting from a design perspective too. All of the icons are large and have both images and text. Everything is big – arrows, icons, text – to accommodate users with little hands just figuring out how to use a mouse. The effects descriptions are all very kid-centred. ‘Toothpaste’, for example, is the way to describe a drawing tool that creates tubular images. ‘Real rainbows’ creates just that – realistic rainbows wherever you want them on the screen. A little penguin mascot (the symbol of Linux) pops up to cheer him on and give him more information whenever he seems stuck. Nothing un-undoable happens until you answer the question ‘Did you really want to x?’. The screen is optimized for a 640 x 480 resolution, ensuring that even the smallest, lowest end computer screen can display it nicely. The admin system is completely separate from the program, so that no settings can be changed while using it.

I haven’t tried this yet, but apparently Tux Paint runs well on small handheld computers as well. It probably won’t be long before we see an iTouch interface. It also comes in about twenty languages, from Chinese to Catalan.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with this one as a fun, creative, useful place for my kids to spend time. Anyone out there have some other favourites?

Correctly pronouncing that file extension can up your coolness factor

Most of the time the passing of electronic files back and forth in an office environment is a mute and satisfying enterprise; nobody speaks and the files flit blithely off to where they’re sent. But occasionally something goes wrong; the file doesn’t make it to its destination, say, or something about it isn’t right when it does. All of sudden you have to talk about it, using your actual voice and real words. You find yourself apologizing for – or maybe demanding an explanation for – a non-animating animated .gif, a washed out .png, or a non-looping .swf.  But when you do, will you be pronouncing it correctly? Or will you – as I did – wander around mispronouncing some file extensions the wrong way for years, all the while thinking you’re coming across as a professional, when really you’re the audio equivalent of the well-dressed woman with toilet paper stuck to her shoe?

GIF: Jif?! You’ve got to be kidding me.

It’s true. I hard-g’d the thing for years, but it isn’t gif-like-gift at all, it’s jif-like-gin or geez-that’s-a -surpise. But don’t take it from me, take it from the developers of the format, who surely should know. This is from documentation for version 8.33 of Compushow, a graphics display program developed by CompuServe:

The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), pronounced “JIF”, was designed by CompuServe and the official specification released in June of 1987.

If you still don’t believe me – and I don’t blame you if you don’t – visit Steve Olsen’s The Gif Pronunciation Page, which has been faithfully serving a list of very persuasive arguments in support of “JIF” since 1988. That’s right: 1988! The whole “gif/jif” debate is probably the longest standing and most passionate of all file extension pronunciation debates, and it still gets people all riled up.

People like me, for instance. Because although I’d like to honour the developer’s chosen pronunciation, I’ve discovered that I can’t.  I tried to say it, but alarm bells rang in my head and my tongue became paralyzed. Maybe pronouncing it “gif” for 20 years has done irreversible damage. Or maybe I still think “jif” sounds too much like a brand of peanut butter. Either way, no matter what’s right or wrong in this case, I’m afraid I’m going with “gif.”

PNG: It’s PING, not pee-en-gee.

The developers of the .png format, in their format specification documentation, declare fitfully but clearly:

“PNG” is always spelled “PNG” (or “Portable Network Graphics”) and always pronounced “ping” in English, not “pinj” or “pee en gee” or any other multi-syllabic disaster. (For non-English speakers, the three-letter pronunciation is fine, however.)

Steve Olsen mentions this one on his Gif Pronunciation Page too, which is generous of him even if it does make him seem a bit of a rule monger.

I’m pleased to say that I got this one right, having always pronounced it “ping,” no matter how many eyebrows were raised around the office when I did so.  Unfortunately, I don’t employ this format so often that I can shout “ping” with the gusto it deserves anytime soon. But when the time arrives, I will be ready.

SWF and FLA: Adobe’s little oddballs

My line of work includes doing a bit of animation now and then, and I usually do this in a program of Adobe’s called Flash. Flash files that include all the source materials have the extension .fla; the compiled versions of these files have the extension .swf.

Now me, I’ve always called them “flah” and “swiff” files respectively, as in “Do you need the flah or the swiff, esteemed co-worker?”  (For some reason these terms don’t raise eyebrows around the office the way “ping” can, but this may simply be because my co-workers were just tired and not into playing word games that day.) So was I right?

Yes. “Swiff” for .swf is correct, according to the first sentence in the SWF File Format Specification documentation. that states:

The SWF file format (pronounced “swiff”) delivers vector graphics, text, video, and sound over the Internet and is supported by Adobe Flash Player software.

But what about “flah” for .fla? I couldn’t find anything as reliable as a statement out of a Format Spec Doc to help figure this one out. Nowhere could I find a written guide to indicate how to pronounce this particular file extenstion. To make matters worse there are those, like Lead Flash Developer Mark Grossnickle, who insist – based on nothing but a gut feeling, so far as I can tell – that “FLA is pronounced ‘EF-EL-AYE’ (NOT Flauh!!!)”

Finally I stumbled onto an Adobe expert – Flash Engineering Manager Jeff Alquist, who says “flah” out loud about fifty times in his nifty Adobe TV presentation “XML Based FLA: The New Flash File Format.” Thank you, Mr. Alquist, for making it absolutely clear, in myriad contexts, that .fla is pronounced “flah.”  And sorry Mr. Grossnickle, but this time it’s you with toilet-paper-shoe.

O yeah, and FLV

Might as well address one more common Flash file format while we’re at it, and that would be .flv, which is used for Flash video files. You might think, given that .swf is “swiff” and .fla is “flah,” that .flv would naturally become “fliv” or maybe the more “fluv” But no. I was unable to find any reference to support any pronunciations other than “eff-el-vee.” Curiously, I’ve never had cause to say this one aloud, although I have heard my co-workers use it and am happy to report that, whether by gut instinct or happy accident, they always get it right.

And all the other file extensions

Of course, that’s only five out of about a billion file extensions, and your problem might not be with these particular ones.

Here on SearchServerVirtualization.com they offer a list of tech terms with audio files so you can hear for yourself how to pronounce them. The list is a bit outdated (didn’t have SWF or FLA or FLV, for instance) and it includes more than just file extensions but it’s worth a quick review.

So will this really up your coolness factor?

Well, much depends on the milieu in which you work, and the passion you bring to the challenge of getting-things-right in general.  To me, anyone who takes the time to figure out right from wrong is cool. So yeah, this will up your coolness factor, for sure.

So just to re-cap – here’s the way to say “GIF, PNG, SWF,FLA,FLV” like a pro:
(drum roll; clearing of throat)

jiff-ping-swiff-flah-eff-el-vee!

Booyah!

In conceptualizing content –rich web sites, interactive exhibits, mobile learning applications and other digital interactive media, a key question we always need to answer is: What is the takeaway? In other words, if a user only takes away one idea or concept from this interaction, what should it be? We know it’s critical to clearly define takeaways. Lovely as it is to imagine that users will spend extended periods of time exploring our content in depth, the reality is that most users will touchdown briefly on a web site, or pause for a short time at an interactive exhibit in a museum setting. In a world of “continuous partial attention”, where users are bombarded with a constant stream of distractions and are continuously paying “partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING” (Linda Stone), it is essential that we focus on our key message and communicate that message clearly and powerfully. That message, the one idea or concept or impulse that the user will take away from his or her interaction with what we have created, is the takeaway.

Now I know this is not a unique use of the term. If I do a Google search on the term “takeaways” (or “take-aways”), I’ll get a list of results like this:

Obviously these folks are using “takeaway” in the sense I am: the important concept or idea that sticks with you from a presentation, event, publication or experience. Yet when I search online – (for example at dictionary.com, thefreedictionary.com, wordnet, answers.com, Wikipedia, etc.) – this usage is no-where to be found. What gives? And given that there doesn’t seem to be an established definition for this usage, how about this one:

Takeaway ( n. ) (also, Take-away): the key concept, idea or message that an individual retains following an experience.

A few weeks ago I flew to Calgary for the launch of the Bow Habitat Centre , a new natural science centre at the Sam Livingston Fish Hatchery on the Bow River. The setting is beautiful – surrounded by trees and wetlands, teeming with migratory birds and other small creatures. The Centre is built right into the hatchery so that visitors can walk past tanks of hatchlings while learning about the natural history of lakes and rivers in Alberta.

One of the centerpieces of the ten interactive touchscreen exhibits we created for them is the multitouch map of Alberta, one of the first of its kind in Canada. Projected from the ceiling onto a plexiglas surface cut into the shape of the province, the map is an introduction to water usage in the province, including Agriculture, Nature, People and Industry. Visitors move around and resize images, play video and explore the province, all at the same time and all with the touch of their fingers. It’s a bit like looking at a giant iPod touchscreen. The kids loved it and many of the adults had to be dragged away as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an interactive exhibit that was such a draw for both adults and kids simultaneously.

It was very experimental when we first talked about it two years ago and there were a lot of unknowns about how it would work and what the strengths and weaknesses of the projection and touch detection technology would allow us to do. We worked with a new company in Helsinki, Multi Touch Oy with an innovative multitouch interface that was unique in the field.

Here are a few things we learned along the way:

Resolution:

Projected from the ceiling, the resolution was quite low, compared to a traditional touchscreen. Text had to be minimal and, before we added a drop shadow, was difficult to read. Video and images, on the other hand, look great, even after resizing and moving around. Simple background graphics help to keep the focus on the content.

Capacity:

There’s a limited amount of video that one computer can handle simultaneously, so we couldn’t use as much as we’d planned to initially. The video that we did use looks amazing, playing without a hitch even while resizing and moving around the screen. Very cool.

Projection:

The building, which was built on an aquifer next to the Bow River, shifted after the hatchery tanks in the basement were filled with water, resulting in some changes to the projector alignment. We were able to compensate for some of that by changing some of the calibration but in the end, the only thing that would line it up perfectly would be unbolting the table from the floor and moving it. Since the tanks are emptied and cleaned regularly (resulting in more shifting) this might be an ongoing issue. Also, the two images of the map projected on the table do not match up perfectly – there’s some distortion in the centre of the screen. Three projectors rather than two might make for a better match. When using multiple projectors, background images without obvious connections running through them (like rivers, for example) might be easier to work with. The irregular border of the province along the Rockies makes for an irregular projection surface – at that end of the table the shadows of people leaning over the table are more noticeable.

All in all, however the ‘wow’ factor for this exhibit far outweighed the technical constraints. The multitouch table really captured the imagination of visitors and met its goal of introducing water use in Alberta in an engaging, creative way. The client was very happy with the results.

I’m really looking forward to working with some of the new multitouch technology coming our way that will allow us to push the envelope even further. But that’s a topic for another blog entry…

Why isn’t there a standard keyboard I can attach to my iPod Touch?

Sometimes I write fiction. It’s one of the things I enjoy doing. When I got my iPod Touch, I thought, Great, now I can write anywhere, anytime without lugging a laptop around. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

For now, I use my pointer finger and I keep it brief.  I’ve seen other people use their middle fingers, little fingers or even their knuckles. But the efficient people – the ones who look like they’re really going places in terms of entering text on their iPod Touch – use their thumbs, both at once, swishing them over the tiny keyboard at ninja speed. I’ll bet my iPod Touch wishes I was one of those people, but by now my iPod Touch knows very well that I am not.

Biological adaption for rapid text entry on mobile devices.

Thumbers say it just takes practice, but when I see that miniscule keyboard, no bigger than a business card, I find myself asking: Is it worth it? Am I willing to put in the time – a  lot of time – re-wiring my brain so I can do the work normally assigned to all ten fingers with only my thumbs? (That’s kind of like telling me that because I can drive a car I should be able to make myself comfortable riding a unicycle for Cirque du Soleil.) I have a full-time job, for heaven’s sake. And what if, in the attempt to assume this new skill, it turns out that I’ve compromised my typing speed on a standard QWERTY keyboard?

The problem is, while I feel the need to enter text more efficiently on the iPod Touch, I just can’t get excited about entering text with my thumbs. Something is holding me back. Actually, now that I think about it, lots of things are holding me back. Consider the following:

1. Time wasted is gone forever

Remember text messaging on early cell phones using the numeric keypad and hitting a number three times to get the letter “l”? Lots of people got very good at this. Fortunately, I was never any good at it and didn’t bother practicing long enough to re-wire my brain to accommodate what is now a completely useless skill. Most cell phones meant for text messaging now come with little QWERTY keyboards,  like the Blackberry. But…

2. QWERTY isn’t a real word, you know

The QWERTY keyboard was created to maximize text entry using all ten fingers, but right from the start the QWERTY was controversial. There are other options, like the  ABC keyboard, or FrogPad, the one-handed keyboard. And if we’re going with just thumbs, maybe its time for a thumb-based keyboard. Or maybe we should just do the right thing and…

3. Let people plug their iPod Touches into regular QWERTY keyboards

What I’d really like to see is an affordable, smartly designed add-on standard keyboard interface for the iPod Touch/iPhone, but I can’t find one anywhere. Back in the day, I recall using an infrared keyboard with a PDA, and while it wasn’t ideal I was still grateful to be able to leverage my existing typing skill when it came to writing anything longer than a password. Plenty of people seem to want this to happen, but nothing is out there yet. A Bluetooth keyboard – the BTKeyMini,  was rumoured to be available for the iPhone as long ago as March of 2008. But for some reason it is not yet available anywhere. So what’s up with that?

4. Twinging is not my problem

Interestingly, one of the reasons people choose a Blackberry over an iPhone is the need to feel a “solid” keyboard button under their fingers. A third party vendor has provided the iPod Touch/iPhone consumer with a remedy should this be their complaint. It’s called the iTwinge. But this still does nothing to address the fact that the keyboard remains too small to be truly useful for longer text entry, which I feel I should be able to do on my iPod Touch.

C’mon Steve Jobs!  I want to write my novel wherever I happen to be – outside Starbucks, on the seabus, or over the rainbow. You have the power. Please make it so.

I’ve been doing research about the 1936 Olympics and how the Nazis orchestrated them to push their racist ideology. The results are in two touch screen interactivities at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, part of their “More Than Just Games” exhibit.

It’s a regular part of my job as Creative Director at 7FM to research unfamiliar content areas, and I usually have an interesting time discovering peculiar stuff that is out of my usual sphere of reference. For example, I recently learned quite a lot about Alberta fish species in connection with interactivities we created for the Bow Habitat Station in Calgary. When an animator asks what species of fish would appear in a drying coulee, I’m supposed to know — or find out pretty quickly.

The Olympics research involved learning about Canadian and German athletes whose lives were affected by the Nazi Olympics. A few Canadians decided to boycott the games to protest Nazi anti-Semitism. Welterweight boxer Sammy Luftspring was outspoken about his decision, although he also wished the best for the participating Canadian athletes. He and some other Canadians opted to compete in the “alternative” Olympics, to be held in Barcelona — a stew of anarchist, unionist, and leftist politics in the heady days of the Spanish Republic. Luftspring and his comrades landed in France just as the Spanish Civil War erupted in Barcelona. The games were cancelled.

The really heartbreaking stories are of the German Jewish and other “non-Aryan” athletes. There was a lot of international pressure for Hitler to play by the Olympic rules, so he used prominent Jewish athletes as pawns. Gretel Bergmann, a high jumping star, was forced out of exile in Britain by threats to her family, then dropped from the German team as soon as the US Olympic team embarked from New York. She had served her propaganda purpose. The Jewish hockey star Rudi Ball did play on the German team, but only after he extracted a promise that his family could leave Nazi Germany.

Maybe the most remarkable story of Nazi ruthlessness I encountered was Johann Trollmann’s. He was a light-heavyweight boxer with a remarkably modern style — light on his feet, fast and powerful in a way that Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammed Ali would make popular decades later. Trollmann was also Sinti, — a German-speaking “Gypsy” and, therefore, a member of an “inferior race.” He fought for the title, and when it was obvious that he was defeating his slow-footed “Aryan” opponent, Nazi officials ordered the referee to declare the fight a draw. The crowd roared its disapproval and the embarrassed (and probably frightened) referee awarded the victory to Trollmann. The Nazis rescinded the title a week later.

But they weren’t through with Trollmann. They said that unless he adopted a more “manly” style, he would be disqualified from all matches. In protest, he appeared at his next bout with his dark hair bleached blond and his body covered in flour, a caricature of an “Aryan” fighter. For four rounds, he stood stock-still in the ring as his opponent pelted him. He fell in the fifth round. Trollmann was drafted into the army, sent to the Eastern Front, wounded, then sent to a concentration camp. For their amusement, SS guards would force Trollmann to fight them, one after another. When they finally had had enough fun out of him, they shot him.

Most of the research I do is not as heart-wrenching. I’m pretty well versed in bathroom water consumption these days.

People often throw around terms such as “needs assessment”, “requirements gathering”, and “user experience design” (or UX Design!). I confess that I am as guilty of this as others – after all, it’s a big part of what I do. But what do those terms really mean when you’re talking about developing web sites or other interactive digital media for education and culture? And why are they important?

Here’s an exchange that took place with a major organization with an informal public education mandate during a discussion about a web site it was planning. We had – after much discussion – come to the conclusion that the primary audience/users of this web site would be K-12 teachers:

Me:  What is that teachers need?

Client:  They need a web site that does X.

Me: Hmm. Why do teachers need a web site that does X?

Client: Well, because otherwise they can’t do X.

Me: But why would they want to do X?

Client: Because their students will find it interesting?

Me: What difference does it make if their students find it interesting?

Client: Well, they’ll pay more attention and learn the concepts better.

Me: Okay. I’m going to keep pushing a bit here. Why do the teachers care if the students learn these concepts?

Client: That’s one of the requirements in the Ministry of Education’s Provincial Learning Outcomes.

Me: Ah. So teachers need their students to learn these concepts in order to meet the learning outcomes required by the Ministry of Education?

Client: Yes.

Me: Okay, then, how is this web site going to help them learn those concepts?

I’ve lost count of the number of times that someone has told me that their target users “need a web site.” Of course, no-one needs a web site. People need to eat, to sleep, to be healthy, to feel safe, to form relationships, and many other things. But no-one needs a web site (or a mobile application, or an interactive installation). It’s like the pair of 3” stiletto heels on sale in the shoe store. Who “needs” a pair of 3” stiletto heels? – they hurt your feet, they’re hard to walk in, they’re dangerous, they slow you down. No-one needs them. But maybe the young woman who buys them needs to look sexy in order to attract a guy she likes. Now that is a real need. (Especially if you’re a lot younger than I am.)

Audiences and needs may be internal or external – or both.  There may be multiple audiences or user types, and each one will have needs: or at least they’d better have needs – and you’d better understand them. Otherwise, you can be pretty well guaranteed that you’re going to spend a lot of time, energy and resources creating something that won’t be used.

There are a variety of ways of getting at user needs, and different approaches are suited to different stages of the conceptual and development process. I’ve found that when you proceed from a real understanding of what your intended audience/user needs, it drives everything from how you describe what you’re creating to content, organization, technology, functionality, tone, language and look-and-feel.

Here are a couple of links to sites where I think it’s clear the people responsible have really thought through the needs of their audience/users:

Translink:  Okay, maybe you think it’s obvious what the needs of transit users are. But this site does a really good job of making it easy for transit users to get the information they need quickly and easily. – And to illustrate that it’s not as obvious as you might think, contrast the Translink site with the web site for New York City Transit.

MSNBC TV:  Not perfect, but pretty darn good. The folks at MSNBC TV know what people coming to their  site want – entertaining editorial news. If they’re fans of a particular show, they want to get right to the latest video from those shows. If their interests are topic based, they want to get right to those topics. Within the sub-sites for each program, the video window allows users to clearly see what’s available, what’s playing, what’s up next, and choose a different video. The main navigation allows users to jump to regular features of that program, link to related programs, or search for specific items. At the bottom of each page are more in-depth or interactive content such as blogs, commentaries, host bios, and twitter feeds for the dedicated fan.

I’d be really interested in hearing about your examples of web sites or interactive digital media that you think really reflect an understanding of audience/user needs.