Oct 17 2008
Hello,
The One to One insights presentation on October 9th by Jeremi Karnell and Dan Berlin was fascinating! Don’t worry if you weren’t able to attend. Below, you will find a link to a file that will stream the video of the presentation when it is opened in RealPlayer. (I apologize that you are required to install RealPlayer to view it)
OTOinsights RealPlayer video file
Thanks.
Oct 10 2008
I recently started following some very interesting conversations on the IxDA discussion forum.
One fiery debate about User Centered Design (UCD) Vs. Activity Centered Design (ACD) was great. It seems to have been instigated in a large part by Donald Norman’s polemic against “Human Centered Design” (HCD) in favor of ACD.
Jared Spool brought some good historical perspective to the discussion.
In this follow up discussion, I liked Robert Hoekman’s analysis of the distinctions between the two methods. I’ve included the main points here.
1. UCD = persona descriptions; ACD = activity analysis (focused on users, objects, and the activities themselves)
2. UCD = research focused on user goals, aimed at a niche audience; ACD = focused on how people perform activities, abstracted to a wider audience
3. UCD = involves talking to users in (almost?) every case; ACD = designer can sometimes/often become a SME on the activity with very little or no outside research
4. UCD = users are unreliable, unstable, and often unpredictable; ACD = activities are relatively stable, by comparison
I feel strongly both ways. 
By the way, Jared Spool’s User Interface 13 Conference is in Cambridge October 13-16. It could be fun if you have the time and money to attend.
Oct 02 2008
When: Thursday, October 9th, 2008 7:00-9:00 PM
Where: Bentley College, LaCava 305 A/B
What: Dan Berlin, Senior Research Associate at OTOinsights, and Jeremi Karnell, President of One to One Interactive, will be speaking about their company’s quantitative methods for measuring user engagement. This is accomplished by measuring physiological and emotional reactions to media (Web sites, applications, video, etc).
Dan and Jeremi will be bringing the equipment that is used to gather users’ physiological response: the bioharness (heart rate, breathing rate, skin temperature, and 3D pitch), the Neurosky (EEG), and a Tobii eye-tracker. The equipment will be demonstrated and the company’s methodology will be discussed.
To ensure that we will have space for everyone, please RSVP to FITEK_DANI@bentley.edu
