PROXIMITY, PERMISSION, PRIVACY: The three axes of workspace design.

Surrounded by people moving boxes, laptops, cables, desks and monitors. That’s been our experience over the last few days, as b-i is renovating  its Geneva headquarters.

That reminded me of an article I read a few months ago in the Harvard Business Review, called “Who Moved My Cube”, where they talked about some important aspects that should be considered so that workspaces can help to foster collaboration and creativity, but also respect privacy between colleagues.

The authors explore 3 main points, like signals that a design of a workspace should send to collaborators:

• Proximity – it’s about the ability to drive people to public shared spaces, like water coolers or coffee machines;
• Privacy – it’s all about people feeling confident enough to have conversations without being interrupted or overheard;
• Finally, Permission  – it’s about letting people feel free to start conversations and by that, to share ideas with each other.

This is also one major concern for some of our clients as they try to change organizations from inside. Not only through digital tools (e.g. collaboration platforms that we are happy to design for them), but also through physical spaces.

Looking at companies like IDEO, a design firm and innovation consultancy, the authors of the HBR article explain how they allow Permission, by having Open-plan offices, portable furniture and, of course, a company policy that encourages people to move around to collaborate with whom they are working with.

 So, wrapping up….

 If you want to “move your cube” think of three main pillars: digital platforms, well-designed offices and a company policy to support all that.

… Meanwhile renovations continue at b-i’s headquarters. But please don’t move our coffee machine and water cooler. That’s where we meet colleagues to talk about different projects and pitches going on. 

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E-Commerce: blue-infinity’s experts detail must-have features and functionalities to maximize customer experience.

As a large percentage of the global economy is focused online, it is up to e-marketers to provide a comparable experience for online consumers to the one that they would have in going to a physical store. Online shopping experiences must provide crucial levels of interaction and engagement that mirror the physical realities communicated to consumers at the store.

In order to promote their Analytics product Google has recently released a series of video clips that allows one to imagine what the in store shopping experience of a consumer would be if they were treated in the same way as most e-commerce sites treat them. Within seconds one is able to see the absurdity of this proposition. The videos show how cold and automated this experience can be in real life and makes one question the satisfaction level of consumers who shop online frequently.

blue-infinity experts Fabrice Perrin and Rémi Gauthier weigh in on this topic by detailing out a list of must have features and functionalities, as well as directions as how to implement them in order to create a more engaging and satisfying online shopping experience.

Read the full article in the French here.

Treat your e-customers like real customers. An in-depth guide from blue-infinity.

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From the Dilbert series

In the current world of software development clients want deliverables to be turned around as fast as possible, time is money, and the software development company that can deliver the fastest is usually the one that gets the contract. Traditional methods of software development/project management such as the “waterfall methodology” have increasingly become antiquated due to the time constraints that are placed upon the process, and this very much so because of the way requirements gathering is conducted.  In this article we take a look at how Agile, combined with User Centric Design processes, can significantly improve the accuracy and delivery time of software applications.

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Part two of Jamie McAllister’s Journey as a Microsoft Sharepoint Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

 A hair-raising start 

My journey to Seattle had an inauspicious start. After the 747 had left Heathrow an apologetic captain announced that the airplane couldn’t be pressurized and we had to return to London to fix it. There were a few hair raising minutes as the airliner dumped its excess fuel, and five hours later we were heading to Seattle again, this time without incident!

Putting faces to some “strange” names 

The MVP Summit began on Sunday, and I found that I was immediately meeting people in person who I’d only known online before. The first was an MS Excel MVP from New Zealand who goes by the online name Teylyn. We answer technical questions on the same forums regularly, but had never actually spoken before! This summit allowed me to put faces to many online aliases.  

There are around 4000 MVPs across 90 countries and representing 90 technology groups. The summit managed to attract around 1400 of those MVPs to Seattle this year. This is really quite a feat and highlights how important the summit is to the MVP program, Microsoft and its customers. It’s the premier event for everyone (including Microsoft) to find out what is actually happening in the industry!

The technology game-changers

Microsoft had arranged a lot of sessions on the present and future of their main technologies. This was a great insight into how the industry will be influenced in the next few years. The Cloud featured in conversations with fellow MVPs a great deal, and is likely to be a game changer for many businesses. I can personally see products such as Office 365 greatly extending the utilization of SharePoint in small and medium sized businesses (though large businesses are likely to benefit greatly too!). Due to the hosted nature of Office 365, there will be the ability for product updates to be pushed out every 90 days for Office and hosted SharePoint. This is something that simply wouldn’t have been possible before cloud solutions came along. 

Also featured was the importance of mobility. Tablets such as the Surface Pro are being positioned as a great solution to run business software. I decided it was time to embrace the Tablet revolution myself and picked up a Surface Pro when I was there. In my personal opinion Office 2013 works very well on the Surface Pro either through the touch screen or using a mouse, and I can sync my documents to SkyDrive Pro and continue working with them on my other devices or share them with colleagues. As I use the tablet more in the real world .I’m bound to find out what works best, so stay tuned.

News for solution providers

We now have amazing new capabilities to create Apps and distribute these via an App Store for Windows 8, Office, and SharePoint. These Apps can be very feature rich and powerful, potentially running right inside MS Word or Excel.  To provide the best solutions for our clients it’s likely that scripting skills need to be in the toolbox of all development teams from now on. 

Another interesting change is that SharePoint workflow is potentially no longer within SharePoint! We now have Workflow Manager which executes workflow processes on behalf of SharePoint. Hosted on a different server from SharePoint this makes Workflow very scalable indeed. However, if you are upgrading from SharePoint 2010 fear not! The Workflow Foundation that we relied upon is still available in SharePoint 2013 for backwards compatibility.

A chance to contribute to the future

During my interactions with Microsoft at the Summit I gained a deeper understanding of the ambassador-like role of the MVP. The MVP summit was our chance to meet the people who actually create the Microsoft products and we were able to present real world feedback and aspirations from our clients to them. This chance to use real world experience to influence the future is I’d say the reason that the MVP program exists, and I’m very glad I could be a part of it.

Finishing with a bang…. and karaoke

When these summits end, there’s usually a party, and this year was no exception. Centurylink Field – stadium for the Seattle Seahawks was hired for the night. There were cheerleaders, fireworks, death defying stunts, and most scary of all, a karaoke stage. 

After this, the curtain came down on the summit and we began our journeys home. Attending  Seattle this year was a truly excellent experience, which I hope I get the chance to repeat  in future.

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Bertrand Cirot from blue-infinity takes a look at this java-based platform and interviews Shai Almog, one of its founders. 

Codename One (CN1) is a java-based platform allowing mobile application developers to create real native mobile apps across multiple platforms with a single code base. It provides all the necessary tools to build, theme, debug and simulate in java.

Many platforms are supported, in order to allow real cross-platform development: iOS (iPhone & iPad), Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 (8 and RT to come) and J2ME (for older devices, with some obvious limitations).

It allows the developers to build rich user interfaces through lightweight component and access hardware such as camera, GPS, Etc. The SDK and Tools are open source and can be used for free, but they also provide premium services (Cloud storage, Cloud compilation, Support, Etc.)

The founders, Shai Almog and Chen Fishbein, have worked for Sun Microsystems for a while. Chen was the creator of LWUIT, a widget toolkit for building user interfaces for devices (mobile, TV, Etc.). They decided to create their own project without having to deal with bureaucracy and started from scratch with their mutual experience. Just out of the beta phase, it is now quite stable and quite powerful.

Read on for an in-depth look at the platform and read our interview with Shai Alog.

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I was privileged to be interviewed by the ICT Journal on a topic that is very close to my heart. In the article, I discuss the challenges of deploying mobile devices within organisations, the convergence of screen size between smartphones and tablets and the possible pitfalls in mobile development.

Click here to read the full article in French.

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Share Jamie McAllister’s Journey as a Microsoft Sharepoint Most Valuable Professional (MVP).

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On the first of January this year, 2013 seemed to be getting off to a slow start. Everything was shut for the holidays, the sky was grey, and my children seemed a little jaded with their Christmas presents.

SURPRISE!
Things were set for a big change however because later that day I received an email from Microsoft to tell me that I’d been awarded the MVP for SharePoint.

This was a very pleasant surprise indeed. The MVP Award, or Most Valuable Professional award is given to people who in Microsoft’s view are “exceptional community leaders who actively share their high-quality, real-world deep technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft. They are committed to helping others get the most out of their experience with Microsoft products and technologies”.

Now, I can’t pinpoint exactly why I was singled out to receive the award this year. For several years I have been involved in the SharePoint Community through Blogging, Speaking at the SharePoint User Group meetings in the UK, and have recently done a couple of global webcasts about SharePoint. These contributions must have been a factor, though MVP award or not I’m happy to give them and will continue to do so.

So, what happens now?
Well, first and foremost I’ve been invited to the MVP Global Summit in Seattle which begins on the 18th of February. This event is open to MVPs from across the world, and is hosted both in Bellevue (near Seattle, USA) and the Microsoft Headquarters at Redmond. There will be a number of technical sessions about SharePoint and other Microsoft products, but further it will be a fantastic chance to network with other MVPs and learn about the real world issues they face in their areas of their expertise.

Frankly I’ve been nursing a long standing ambition to see Microsoft’s Redmond campus. As someone who has specialized in Microsoft technologies since the dim distant days of the twentieth century I’m really looking forward to seeing where it all comes from. Some of the events will allow me to meet Microsoft Product Managers at Redmond, and I hope to gain an insight into where the product roadmap is heading and what solutions we’re likely to be able to provide with them in future.

It’s a long flight from Geneva to Seattle. As the day of departure approaches the excitement is building. The MVP Summit website has stern warnings about being prepared for the weather in Seattle, which is funny because from what I can tell the weather there is a little warmer than Switzerland if anything. My MVP compatriots from the tropics may find it a shock to the system though.

When I return from the Summit I’ll be armed with lots of pictures of the event, knowledge of future technological developments, and will have met many of the movers and shakers in the SharePoint world. The event promises to be wonderful, and is a great start to my year as MVP for SharePoint in 2013.

Stay tuned for more.

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Disability affects 1 out of 6 Europeans. EC mandatory accessibility rules for public and government sector websites are expected to be applied in the EU by June 2014.  What will be the impact of emerging technology such as  “Adaptive web design” in shaping Europeans standards?

Article by Nathalie Raux-Copin, Senior UX
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My brother being suddenly affected by a disability made me realize even more how much we all live in an inaccessible environment. And when it comes to user interfaces, it surprises me to note how far we are from being inclusive.

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Technology is playing a key part in the fight against Polio. Collecting, analyzing and reporting on the masses of polio-related data generated globally on a daily basis is a significant undertaking, particularly when data about new cases must be distributed as quickly as possible to allow global, regional and local partners to coordinate a response. 

- Article by Kevin Crampton

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If humanity en masse could make a New Year’s resolution this month then we could do a lot worse than aiming for the complete global eradication of poliomyelitis (polio). 

“Once polio is eradicated, the world can celebrate the delivery of a major global public good that will benefit all people equally, no matter where they live.” – World Health Organisation

The disease’s effects can cause limbs to atrophy, severe muscle weakness, paralysis and leave sufferers crippled, dependent on an “iron lung” to mechanically aid their breathing, or dead. It’s a virus that’s lived alongside man successfully for a long time and is first depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphics, causing untold suffering throughout our history since it primarily attacks children under 5 years old and there is no known cure.

Our resolution would have a good precedent too since a concentrated global effort coordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) led to the eradication of the smallpox virus in 1979 and the Rinderpest in 2011. 

A Polio-Free World
It’s clear what an enormous benefit the extinction of these diseases represent, once gone they are gone forever and every future generation benefits from improved health. The economic saving is estimated in the 10’s of billions of US Dollars.

More good news is that we are also very close to a polio-free world. The WHO and its partners have been working towards this goal since 1988 when the World Health Assembly, comprised of Ministers of Health of all countries of the world, resolved to eradicate polio. This launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and polio cases have been reduced by 99% compared to 1988 levels thanks to the use of vaccines. In 2012 for example there were just 223 cases, the lowest level ever reached, and the disease remains endemic in only three countries Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

But there are significant challenges; polio symptoms only become visible in about 1% of cases which makes targeting immunizations difficult and the disease can quickly re-establish itself due to its aggressive rate of infection. Also the last strongholds of polio are political sensitive regions as the murder of vaccination workers in Pakistan at the end of 2012 attests.

Solution delivered
Technology is playing a key part in the fight against the disease. Collecting, analyzing and reporting on the masses of polio-related data generated globally on a daily basis is a significant undertaking, particularly when data about new cases must be distributed as quickly as possible to allow global, regional and local partners to coordinate a response.

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Quite recently, there have been several new lightweight Java web frameworks which are becoming more and more popular within the Java developer’s community. It is interesting to notice most of them borrow ideas coming from other ecosystems (Python, Ruby, Scala, Javascript…) and therefore they do not always adopt the usual Web Application Archive paradigm we are used to.

Introducing Vert.x

One of those frameworks is Vert.x : 

 This framework is the Node.js counterpart in our JVM world… I refer to JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and not only Java, because the framework has been designed to handle applications development with many JVM compatible languages (such as Groovy, Jython or even JRuby)

Like its counterpart Node.js, it supports the reactor pattern but in a slightly improved version called multi reactor : application units (called verticles) can be instanciated on several event loops and since each verticle will always be assigned to the same thread, it simplifies greatly concurrency handling in your application code.

Vert.x provides several nice features such as :

• Http/Net server implementation
• Websocket support
• Can be used standalone or embedded
• Cluster support thanks to Hazelcast

Vert.x creator, Tim Fox, published a benchmark of Vert.X against Node.js (available here), and even though results were in favor of his project, some developers do not share his opinion because methodology because especially :

• NodeJs version was not the last one
• Test client was home made (whereas existing recognized tools could have been used)
• Client and Server were on the same computer, which is not a good load testing practice

This debate is not going to end soon since Vert.x is still quite young compared to others frameworks.

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Feedback messages and effects should not get overlooked in the application development process or be added as an afterthought, since they are at the core of the user / application interaction.

In an earlier posting, I outlined five guidelines to help improve communication with the user: The first is to give feedback upon interaction. The next is error prevention, followed by easy error recovery if an error could not be prevented. You also need to make sure that you communicate consistently across the application and, finally, provide help or more information where necessary.

Here are some more details on each point:

1. Give feedback

We all thrive on receiving feedback. Take the example of radar speed signs: they not only show you whether you are under or above the speed limit, but also give you a smiley or a frown. We have one close to home and my kids always urge me to make the sign smile – so of course, I slow down to a snail’s pace! This is a lot more enjoyable than “real” radars, which are punitive and not at all playful.

 When it comes to applications, these personal speed signs are a good example to follow, and the more immediate the feedback, the better. This includes simple things like :

• Roll-over effects on clickable items such as icons, images, buttons, links, rows (I know, basic stuff!)
• Visually showing focus on form fields
• Validating errors line by line and
• Providing additional progress indicators, such as checks for accomplished task or indicators for password strength.

Once the user has finished a task, it is important to show system progress (if needed) and success confirmation. For example, when clicking the save button, a little animation can show that the information is actually saved (when staying on the same page). If the action is tied to a workflow, it makes sense to display a clear success message that will also communicate what will happen next.

2. Prevent errors from happening

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You can also read this article in French.

The“mobile app” is becoming indispensable. At the start of 2010, there were 200,000 mobile applications. By the end of 2011, the one million mark was reached.

Driving this rapid market growth is both an increasingly complete offering from leaders such as Apple or Google but also, and above all, an increasingly high demand from users. As shown in a diagram produced by MDG advertising, by late 2010 more time was spent on mobile applications than spent on the web itself in the United States. A trend that should also catch up in Europe.

With richer user experiences, integration with specific hardware (camera, GPS, accelerometer, etc) and offline access, it’s easy to understand how mobile apps have taken such an important place in the lives of mobile users. However, this brings with it changes and new demands, especially in terms of applications for communication.

Java, originally intended for business applications, naturally finds its place in mobile development; services created for the web are transferable to mobile, provided that needs have been correctly identified and the right solutions found. 

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Earlier this year I had the chance to conduct usability testing in two different countries for one of our long-term clients, the International Road Transport Union (www.iru.org).  We have been helping them redesign a Web-based application that enables road transportation companies around the world to file advance cargo “pre-declarations” with customs offices, speeding up and simplifying the transport of goods across borders, while keeping a high level of cargo and data security.

For those who aren’t familiar with usability testing, the idea is to have real users of an application (or Web site, mobile app, etc.) interact with a prototype (often in the form of black-and-white “wireframes” rather than a fully designed interface) before beginning development. This allows us to identify flaws in the design while they can still be easily addressed, rather than during the development phase, when changes are expensive and time-consuming. Usability testing is a critical component of a truly “user-centred” design process.

Since the application is currently used in 26 different countries, it was important that we find users in several different countries to participate. Naturally, the choice of these particular countries raised some challenges that are common to many international usability testing efforts.

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Javascript belongs to those programming languages which easily divides people between those who love it or hate it, especially when like me you have a strong background in Java. Some differences in the general philosophy of the language are sometimes not trivial to grasp. But imagining today a web world without javascript is a pie in the sky

There would be a lot of things to discuss around this subject but today I want to talk about an important concept : modularization. There are no built in namespace and/or encapsulation concepts in Javascript available today in our browsers and this could have important consequences at Runtime. This is very annoying when you have to deal with lots of different script files written by different people, and this is more and more true nowadays where projects combine homemade scripts including Javascript frameworks (JQuery, Prototype, Dojo,…).

Of course, Javascript programmers quickly noticed this issue and proposed several workarounds and design patterns to deal with it : one of those is known as Module pattern (you can find a description of it at http://briancray.com/posts/javascript-module-pattern). Some frameworks also provide their own ways to reduce conflicts with other frameworks (especially when using the “$” alias) but it seems clear many people are unhappy with the current situation.

Another problem concerns dependencies and versions.  For instance the well known JQuery UI toolkit is based on JQuery core framework and therefore you need to load the second one in order to use the first one. Moreover, before using a cool third party JQuery widget, you have to make sure it will fit well with the version of JQuery used on your project. You may argue those problems are not currently solved perfectly in Java world either since there are specifications such as Jigsaw which aim to deal with it in Java 8 9. However Java is a static language which significantly reduces those issues at compile time and thanks to Maven POM definitions, we can also solve most of the possible issues at runtime.

Several initiatives have emerged in the Javascript world to solve those encapsulation and dependency issues. The clear winner today, on the client Javascript side, is the Asynchronous Module Definition format which has been adopted by Jquery, MooTools, Dojo and others… which basically works through 2 functions define and require. Then you will be able to lazily load dependencies via a script loader such as requirejs or curl.js. You can find more information on this well written article on http://addyosmani.com/writing-modular-js/.

Those issues explain why module concept should appear in the next ECMAscript version, known as Harmony, why is expected for next year. It is also important to note that the Javascript alternative from Google, known as Dart, includes some form of modularization.

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Feedback messages have come a long way since the time of Abort – Retry – Fail. For those of you too young to remember a world without graphical interfaces, those are DOS messages. Today’s feedback messages are rather more creative and playful, to the point where people have started making  “best of” collections. There’s even one error message, the “Fail Whale”  from Twitter – an illustration of a whale lifted up by birds displayed when Twitter is brought down by too many Tweets – that safely qualifies as a viral cult object. Even Microsoft’s infamous “blue screen of death” has undergone a dramatic facelift with Windows 8.

The current trend among writers of error messages is to be cute, with expressions like “oops” and “uh oh” cropping up in some of the most frequently used applications.

Here’s Gmail:

 And here’s Facebook:

I tend to think it’s a good idea to become more personal when interacting with the user, but when I’ve just lost all my work, a “cute” message feels glib and patronizing, not funny. In those circumstances, what I really want to know is why it happened and what I can do about it.

While finding the right tone of voice is one important aspect of crafting meaningful messages, there are actually a number of additional elements to consider. Based on my experience, I have come up with 5 guidelines to follow when defining the interaction between the application and its users (let me know if you feel there’s something missing!):

The truth is that feedback messages – alert, error, help, etc. – are often treated as an afterthought (oops!), when in fact they should be an integral part of the user-centric application design process.

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I attended eConsultancy’s “The Future of Digital Marketing” Conference last week in London. The crowd was very British and so were all the speakers with the exception of Kyle Lacy who is American. The day was organised into presentations on what is currently going on in the digital space, with both client case studies and agency best practices, as well as an outlook on trends and opportunities.

Here comes a summary of some of the most interesting aspects and ideas I took back with me:

Facebook versus Twitter

It appears that Twitter followers are 40 percent likely to purchase from the brand they follow as opposed to only 20 percent of Facebook (FB) fans of the same brand. That can be explained by the fact that according to research, on FB, people become fans mainly to receive discounts or special offers but quickly feel bombarded with irrelevant content, whereas on Twitter, if they follow a brand, it’s out of personal interest. So it seems worthwhile investing in a good Twitter channel and great content rather than on hunting down your customers on FB.

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Agility is a toolbox of practices dedicated to individuals, working software, customer collaboration and response to change. Yes, those are the values of the Agile manifesto.

No it’s not a method; it’s an approach. It isn’t only used in development, like Scrum; it can also be used for business management and for running analyses.

In his blog, Jurgen Appelo attempted to create a list of those Agile practices, some of which can be controversial. We might not agree with all of them but he does deserve credit for creating the list nonetheless.

Among those practices, two can be successfully combined to handle business requirements in an Agile organisation: User stories and Behaviour Driven Development.

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Ever since Adobe decided to move Flex into the Open Source world late last year, many people have been involved in discussions about the company’s move.  This decision has made some people think that Flex is dying.

When I mention Open Source to almost anyone other than a computer expert, it’s likely that the response will be: “What’s Open Source?”

To try and put it in simple words, Open Source software is free and generally available on the internet. It is also normally distributed with its underlying code, or source code, which a knowledgeable programmer can read and modify to meet specific business needs; unlike commercial software that is sold only in a compiled executable version.

Nowadays many people are giving HTML5 a shot instead of Flex because they think it’s the technology that is going to stick, but it may still be too early to switch. Most of them don’t pay much attention to the fact that, at the time this post is being written, fewer than 5 percent of browsers support HTML5. A simple search on the internet will give you several reasons to reconsider, or at least think twice, before going ahead with HTML5 as an alternative to Flex. This will most definitely change in the next couple of years, but even then it is likely that we go through  a few HTML5 iterations before it is widely supported.

I am a believer that a war between the technologies should never occur. Anyone who rules out one of the technologies is not necessarily doing you a disservice, but, as for any project, the pros and cons should always be considered. There will always be the argument to use Flex for several reasons, such as the code is much nicer, and it has far better object-oriented and pattern support.

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Users expect the same level of user experience as they consume your web content from any kind of computer devices, either for desktop or mobile use. But how can we then keep-up designing web interfaces for a constantly growing number of computer/mobile devices with different screen sizes, different resolutions, and different orientations?

Although it is preferable to design for the main two to three kinds (desktops, mobile phones, tablets) because use-cases vary considerably according to the context of use, budgets don’t always allocate for this to happen. So if the kind of project you’re working on allows it, you may consider adopting a responsive design approach.

Responsive design is a term that Ethan Marcotte* developed to describe a design that responds according to the medium that is used to view it. It isn’t a matter of just making the layout flexible as we use to do, but it is more about creating a fluid grid on which images and text behave appropriately. For example, instead of scaling down an image to the point where it loses its relevance, the trick is to hide or reveal portion of an image as you minimize the screen size. It is also about reordering and re-stacking navigation items and boxes of content on the flexible grid instead of scaling everything down. You can achieve this using a flexible grid-based layout, context-aware images and media queries (CSS3 module) to style the pages according to specific rules.

Here are some examples:
http://bostonglobe.com/
http://colly.com/
http://foodsense.is/

This technique works in most modern browsers (Safari (desktop, iPhone, iPad), Chrome, Internet Explorer (8+), Opera) and unsurprisingly degrades in other browsers, such as IE7 and under.

To find out more about this topic:
http://filamentgroup.com/lab/responsive_images_experimenting_with_context_aware_image_sizing/
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design

Reference:
*Ethan Marcotte is a Web Designer and Developer based in Boston

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