"Inmates Running the Asylum"

Friday, October 20, 2006

Having recently finished reading The Inmates Are Running The Asylum - Why High-Tech Products Drive us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper, the potential for applying some of the proposed solutions cropped up almost immediately.

While designing the prototype for the MakeTheGame e-commerce website, three key 'personas' who would be using the website were generated - we gave them names, photos, created a history and a personality. These three personas, Pete, Clive and Andrea, then became the guiding light for any design decisions we made concerning the website.

Instead of designing a website or piece of software for software engineers (an easy trap to fall into, given that the majority of early-level testing and feedback is from peers who are almost always from an SE background), Cooper proposes that user testing should be conducted as early as possible, and that dialogue between end-users and designers and developers be liaised with specialists who can talk both the language of the software engineer, and the business / real-world needs of the client. The client doesn't necessarily know how to expres what they want in software engineering terms, so the programmers end up interpreting their requirements through a filter that simply makes the solution 'easy to program'.

This translation of needs to software design requires more effort from all concerned parties - programmers' creativity rises to meet the often unique challenges of users' requirements, as they set about to create something that hasn't been done before, or do it far better than anyone else. The 'dancing bear' analogy is repeatedly used to highlight the fact that sub-standard software and design is often used simply because there aren't any excellent alternatives.

VRML and the X-Box

Sunday, March 12, 2006

As a project for my Virtual Environments subject this semester, I'm hoping to represent a content management system in a 3D environment, ideally controlled using an intuitive interface.

Few interfaces are more natural/ubiquitous for navigating a 3D environment than a controller from one of the current-generation consoles. In this post, I'll be describing how I went about controlling VRML worlds with an X-Box controller on a Windows XP machine.

The Hardware

X-Box controller (third-party or genuine). I prefer a genuine 'S' controller, for smaller hands. $25 from Cash Converters
X-Box:USB converter cable. $15 + P&H from eBay
A PC running Windows 98/ME/2K/XP

The Software

The Method

Install XBCD drive
Restart machine
Connect XBox controller to USB adapter
Run XBCD Setup to calibrate / configure controller buttons
Install ControlMK software
Select controller 1 (if there are no other controllers connected to the PC)
Import VRML ControlMK Profile
Install Cortona VRML plugin
Navigate to a VRML model page in your browser (here's an example)

Tips

The VRML ControlMK profile emulates a typical dual-analogue controller setup. Left analogue stick controls forward/back/strafe movement. Right analogue controller controls camera orientation.
Digital pad controls camera height/tilt in fly/study mode
White/Black buttons cycle through VRML model's various views

Limitations

Several Cortona functions do not have keyboard mappings as of the current release, these include: Fit, Reset, Align, Restore

The joy of prose

Thursday, January 26, 2006

After enjoying Don Watson's recent works ("Death Sentence", and "Dictionary of Weasel Words"), two essays bemoaning the lack of thought given to public language, the next natural step seems to be to encourage the principles put forward by Watson amongst those I work with, and those I work for.

Maintaining websites is one thing, but creating quality content is another. For better or worse, this process is almost solely in the client's hands.

Writing clearly, concisely and creatively is a difficult (and under-valued) skill. Several recent articles on the web offered a few practical pointers when honing web-based writing: