Synesthesia

Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Synesthesia on 2006-03-22

• Go to the source or use your imagination:
  David Anderson reckons development already ‘goes to the source’ through the use of Personas, Snapshots and Usage Scenarios
  Keywords: Development/Lean, Requirements
• Perfecting Your Personas:
  A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design. By designing for the archetype you can satisfy the user requirement
  Keywords: Development/Requirements, Requirements
• Wink:
  Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots of your software, use images that you already have, type-in ex
  Keywords: Flash, Software
• iTunes Music Store Queries:
  Searching the ITMS by using web services
  Keywords: WebServices
• Making Flash demos using Open Source Software:
  Documents using vnc2swf to record a Flash movie of a remote session.
  Keywords: Flash, OpenSource,, Software, VNC,
• Lifestyle Snapshots:
  A lifestyle snapshot is a ‘day in the life of’ a persona
  Keywords: Development/Requirements, Requirements
• vnc2swf - Screen Recorder:
  A screen recording tool for X-Window (X11), Windows and Mac OS Desktop. Vnc2swf captures the live motion of a screen through VNC protocol and converts it a Macromedia Flash(TM) movie (.swf).
  Keywords: Flash, Software, VNC
• Mathemagenic Processing and Ernie Rothkopf:
  Rothkopf highlighted the fact that it is something that learners do in processing (thinking about) learning material that causes learning and long-term retention of the learning material.
  Keywords: KM, learning, mathemagenic

Technorati Tags: Development, Knowledge_Management, web-based+tools

…browser-based and thick-client.

I’ve been coming back to the use of a wiki in the work environment, again with project teams, for rapid development of specifications and management of action lists.

Two things that struck me, after spending a large chunk of the working day creating and editing stuff in a group of browser tabs. Firstly, that this is a really good way of developing a set of inter-related ideas; secondly, how it made periodic checking of my Bloglines feeds list and various email accounts less disruptive: it’s far easier and faster to Ctrl-PageDown to the next Firefox tab than it is to switch context between browser, email client and word processor. (And as you will note, implicit in that statement there is also my view that tabbed browsing is vastly more efficient than the non-tabbed variety.)

I think there may be a clue here about what needs to be done to increase the use of blogs and wikis in a corporate setting - if you look at the user patterns within browser-based tools and the more traditional thick-client set of email-wordprocesssor-spreadsheet it is much easier to switch and share within each sub-system than between them.

It’s an idea I’ve touched on before; the question remains will we see an end-to-end solution from Microsoft? Or will the independent tool vendors and the Open Source community be able to come up with something first?

Technorati Tags: interface+design, Productivity, social+software, Social_Software, usability, web-based+tools, wiki