Piers Jones

My top ten, top tens of 2010

I have hardly blogged at all this year, something that I should probably take a look at when it comes to new year's resolutions.

In the meantime I will leave you with my top ten list of top ten things in 2010 and wish you a very happy remainder of the year. I probably did this far too early as I'm sure there will be plenty more lists to link to coming up, see you in 2011.

1. Google Zeitgeist top tens for 2010, with a really nice summary video of what the world searched for this year
2. The ten most searched for terms on Guardian.co.uk, shows wikileaks at number one
3. Top ten semantic web products of 2010 from RWW, 2010 was a good year for linked data, which we made a start on at the Guardian
4. Top ten twitter trends for 2010, I am going to make the wild prediction that 'vuvuzela' doesn't come up in the 2011 list.
5. Top ten start-ups of 2010 from RWW. Some really great products in there, my personal favourites are the flipboard ipad app and Instagram for the iphone.
6. The Rough Trade albums of 2010, always a great list even if everything isnt to my taste and broken bells didnt make the top ten which they of course should have.
7. Top ten youtube videos of 2010 - um speechless
8. Strictly speaking there are 11 items in this list of Trendwatching.com's 11 trends for 2011, although I was slightly depressed to see 'acts of kindness' demoted to being a zeitgeisty trend. Anyway some interesting things in there, sort of.
9. OK, so there are also 11 key facts on this Mobile Future mobile review of the year and some great mobile stats in the video. I still cant believe that US teenagers send an average of 3,339 texts per month.
10. Right that's quite enough of that, I've run out - how about this post?

Playing with the iPad

New York Times app on iPad at launch at San Francisco Apple Store 141, originally uploaded by Steve Rhodes.

I managed to borrow an iPad from a colleague last night. Just for work related research you understand.

So here were my first impressions:

• Of course the Guardian eyewitness app is beautiful and I'm really not just saying that
• Its much easier to read with on a train than a laptop, the touchscreen means that you are no longer 'all elbows' with the person sitting next to you. Even if the iPad changes dramatically over the next few versions, touch screen interfaces are here to stay and just make sense when you start using them on a larger device.
• Pictures and video look great, games are even better.
• I wasn't so impressed with all the page turning animation in the books app, it seems unnecessary to pretend that this device is made of paper. Its really easy to read text in long form though I've never tried using a kindle or e-book to be able to compare the experience.
• It feels a lot more sharable than a 'mobile device' I always feel like I am handing someone my wallet if I give them my phone for something, its just very personal. Not so with the iPad which I can see as something that you could share with family and friends.

Then I handed the iPad over to my 4 1/2 year old son. He picked it up instantly and within seconds he had found the labyrinth game that he liked and was moving everything around the screen. Then straight onto Youtube and asking me to find him dinosaur videos. There is no barrier to using this type of device at all, like needing to type the right letters or use a mouse. That makes it perfect for younger children or maybe older people that have never learned to use a computer.

Even though I was very impressed I still don't think I'll be buying one for a while yet. It's really nice, just too expensive for me for what it does and I'll wait to see if the price comes down. I can get away with doing most of the things I need to do on myiPhone for now.

Crowdsourcing UKtrain delays on Twitter

I first found out about the UK trains updates service when I saw this tweet by @subutcher when stuck in the #uksnow.

The service which was put together by Ben Smith aggregates travel alerts for each train line from the BBC backstage travel feeds and other sources.

Users can then follow the twitter account that corresponds with the trainline that they usually use and can be updated to any travel issues. So for example I follow the account for National Express East Anglia.

A recent feature allows users to get delays retweeted by that account by using a '*' in their tweet.

I think that this is a fascinating project in 'real time' crowdsourcing. I've been comparing the unofficial feed provided by UK trains with the 'official' version from national rail and have found the unofficial feed to be much more up to date and helpful.

I'll be really interested to see how this service evolves over the coming months. At the moment there is a time lag between someone posting an update and the tweet arriving and hopefully that can be made quicker.

You can find a list of all the UK train twitter accounts to follow on the homepage. So if you are a regular train commuter like me or just interested in crowdsourcing projects its worth a look.

Covering #uksnow with Twitter

I enjoyed being a small part of the Guardian News blog coverage of the snow across the UK today. The editorial team included a component on the page which looked for tweets from a selected list of twitter accounts when the hashtag #uksnow was included. So having been included on the list I had the opportunity to send a few tweets with that hashtag and let more people than usual know about the delights of my daily commute.

It was a quick, effective and relatively easy way of showing real time coverage of an event that had an impact across a wide area. Alongside the UK Snow map which shows pictures submitted to twitter with a postcode, I thought it was a really cool way to cover the big freeze.

Magazines on a tablet

With the arrival of hardware like tablet PCs people will be able to consume news and media in new ways that build on how they read print but take advantage of the capabilities of online.

I can't help thinking that the iphone user interface has had a major part to play in shaping how that might look for the next few years.

I like this concept  for reading magazine content on a tablet called Mag+ from from Bonnier and can imagine myself reading a magazine like this on the train. What do you think?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

thanks to one man and his blog for finding this over a coffee

A summary of User Experience in 2009

For those interested in Product Development and User Experience, this is a good summary of how User Experience design has evolved from the Information Architect, Jesse James Garret. 

Its quite a long video and quite heavy on theory but worth the effort if you have half an hour to set aside.

Jesse James Garrett | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Twitterjobsearch

A relatively new job aggregator twitterjobsearch is pulling together all the jobs posted to twitter across the web. In this interview with Robert Scoble, cofounder Willaim Fischer claims that in the past month twitterjobsearch have used natural language search to publish 280k unique job vacancies to their site, making it one of the top five job boards in the world by jobs volume already.

found on cheezehead

Talking to users of your product

It goes without saying that the more people that you talk to that actually use your product, the closer you are going to get to understanding what they need. Then you stand some kind of chance of delivering a product that actually meets those needs. However its very easy to forget to do that as often as you should and get wrapped up in the process of delivering products instead.

In my experience as a Product Manager to date I've found a variety of ways of taking feedback from users in order to improve the quality of what is delivered. There are times when pouring over web stats or undertaking formal usability testing is exactly what is called for. Sometimes though its just good to get out of the office and go and talk to people.

Today I tried out a new and very easy way of gathering product insight by using some software called Silverbackapp. I had know about this software for a while but never actually used it in the wild so to speak.

Its very very simple, you can talk to website users and as you have a conversation with them the software records the on-screen activity as well as filming a video of people's reaction to the product. This all plays back in a video at the end.

With the expert help of Martin Belam - we recorded quite a number of sessions today from website users. I hope the results will help us design some improvements to the product we were discussing based on those insights. I would recommend silverback app to anyone wanting to try more informal testing of their product - as well as recommending that getting out from behind your desk and talking to real customers is a really worthwhile thing to do for anyone in product development. You learn a great deal for free, just by asking.

Here's a video explaining silverbackapp in more detail:

Web Trend Map 4

Web Trend Map 4 Final Beta, originally uploaded by formforce.

A new version of the web trend map, just in and well worth a look.

Via information architects

Essential strategies for creating a successful web product from Dion Hinchcliffe

There is some excellent advice from Dion Hinchcliffe in this article outlining '50 essential strategies for creating a successful web 2.0 product'

Although web 2.0 is mentioned in the title I think these ideas could apply to most online products, especially "start by solving a simple problem".

I have a feeling that this is one of those reference articles that I may have to come back to from time to time. Its a great checklist.