Friday, October 5 2012 marked the one-year anniversary of the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple’s visionary CEO that brought the iPod, iPhone, iPad and a bevy of other devices into the world. Jobs and Apple essentially jump-started the smart-phone revolution, and that revolution has been very useful for the accessibility community. What Now for Accessibility at Apple? Last year I voiced my concerns that Accessibility may be left to degrade (especially if the accountants took over) but maybe I was wrong.

A few weeks ago I gave a presentation at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) at the Technical University of Lisbon (UTL) in Lisbon. It was about Deep Accessibility and how we should think about adapting interfaces to suit our senses. Here are my slides and two entries in the style of a Tiny Transactions on Computer Science (TinyToCS); “the premier venue for computer science research of 140 characters or less”.

Seven years ago, or so, Yeliz and I decided Web Accessibility researchers needed a primer on the domain. We felt there was plenty of practical advice, but no research advice. In this case we decided to create a book1 on the subject. The other day we see that - with 4263 - the message seems to be getting out. You are surely aware that your book Web Accessibility is published in both print and electronic formats.

‘Caring for a person with Alzheimer’s can feel like a prison term spent in solitary confinement.’ Gran & Grandad (circa 1975) Carers for people with Alzhimer’s are faced with five key problems: - **Technological Disenfranchisement** carers of people with Alzheimer’s are normally their spouse or partner and are therefore of the same approximate age as the cared-for. This means that the carer has the associated disenfranchisement with: technology, computers, the Web, and digital-life in general, as would be expected of any senior citizen; - **Isolation** people with Alzheimer’s become increasingly dependent on their carer.

It seems to me that moving ActiveTiles from a visual UI to an auditory format may be very useful for providing point Gist updates, and fast systems overview status information Now, as you may know my thing is auditory glancing - and in the ‘mainstream’ glance interfaces. Interfaces that give you the ‘gist’ of something but not directly a summary of the content; an interface which enable you to answer the question ‘Is this useful (to me)?

Regular readers will have noticed a lack of posts in February. February was a crazy busy month because I was trying to get my new final year module up and running. The module is titled ‘User Experience from 30,000ft’ and the materials are presented as Open Courseware. Here’s the third lecture which is a guest lecture from the BBC R & D detailing UX in the real world. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOgV8EN6NNs&w=640&h=360] You can get access to all the lectures on YouTube; and you can also get all the material, slides, notes, videos, etc at: http://ocw.

‘‘If your interface has personality, good or bad aesthetics, quality, flow, satisfaction, or fulfilment are not important; I’d probably even go as far as saying that usability is not important either. Personality trumps all the rest because it is the only one that can give the user an emotionally valuable engagement with the software engineering artefact. There are no tests for this principle, if it has personality you’ll know it!’’

One of my ‘A History of HCI in 15 Papers’* “ The Star system (circa 1980, and as described in Byte**[1]**) gave rise to five principles, which in my opinion, are so important and timeless that their formulation and practical application as part of the Xerox Star user interface was without doubt revolutionary.” The Xerox ‘Star’ was a commercial version of the prototypical Xerox Alto – if one thousand fully working systems, used internally at ‘PARC’ day-in-day-out over seven years, can be said to be prototypical.

As you may know, I’ve been working on my UX notes for the new unit, and as part of this I’ve been collating some principles. Last week we looked at affective (Emotional) computing, and the week before at usability, but as it’s `Back to Work’, I’m adding those for Dynamics / Funology / and Gamification, just in case they may be of interest. You will notice in the table below that the left column describes the concept (these are sometimes used interchangeably between the different authors); while on the right side the authors are listed along with a footnote pointing to the text from which the concept is derived.

As you may know, I’ve been working on my UX notes for the new unit, and as part of this I’ve been collating some principles. Last week we looked at usability, but as it’s New Year, I’m adding those for affective (Emotional) computing just in case they may be of interest. You will notice in the table below the left column describes the concept (these are sometimes used interchangeably between the different authors); while on the right side the authors are listed along with a footnote pointing to the text from which the concept is derived.

So, I’ve been working on my UX notes for the new unit, and as part of this I’ve been collating some principles. As it’s Christmas, I’m adding those for usability just in case they may be of interest. You will notice in the table below that the left column describes the principle, guideline, or rule (these are sometimes used interchangeably between the different experts); while on the right side the experts are listed along with a footnote pointing to the text from which the principle is derived.

I’m writing a final year undergraduate unit on UX – it will be the first that that they have seen being that we are a hardcore engineering School – and I’d like your thoughts! Ignore the administrative stuff associated with work her in Manchester, but what about the unit content (both at the bottom)? Any suggestions for units that have already proved effective will be greatly appreciated! User Experience (UX or UE) is often conated with usability but takes its lead from the emerging discipline of experience design (XD).

‘User Experience (abbreviated: UX) is an umbrella term used to describe all the factors that contribute to the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific software artefact and focuses on the practice of user centred: design, creation, and testing.’ Defining “User Experience” (UX) is akin to walking on the quicksand – there is no firm ground and you’re likely to get mired in many unproductive debates – indeed, to me it seems we are currently “stuck in the muck”.

‘I find the sentiment within this book to be important in that the experience of the user, their enjoyment, their delight, and thedeliciousness (the Umami) of the software or application are often forgotten or ignored in a headlong rush to implement accessibility, usability, and inclusion. Indeed this enjoyment aspect goes into my current thinking on the practice of interface and interaction engineering within the software engineering domain.’ Funology, is a difficult book to read because the majority of chapters are so very certain over the theories and frameworks they present, seemingly without any direct scientific support.

“These commissioning constraints not only have a direct bearing on the decision as to which methodologies to use but also how the evaluation design is created.” I’ve recently been thinking more about the real world problems of UX and HCI evaluations for a book chapter I’m writing on how it’s really done. Textbook approaches to experimental design, and the choice of research methodologies, often rely solely on selecting the best methodology for the job at hand.

" Methods maketh the discipline, and I’d say that UX has some nice native methods in use with some others pulled in from other more traditional product marketing domains spliced up with advertising metrics. Importantly, the most interesting for me areHEARTPULSE which together represent some very innovative thinking which - with minor mods - can be directly applied from UX back to the wider Human Factors CS domain." A few months ago Rui made a post on measuring UX and the research methods employed - citing a paper presented by some Google UX Researchers at CHI 2010 as well as presenting a list describing the kinds of methods he proposes:

“It seems to me that gamification may be useful to add a little spice but that without answers to the possible transfer of negative game playing traits the amount of value-added may turn out to be smaller then we imagine.” I’ve recently been having a twitter conversation with Rui about gamification in the context of UX. Now I see myself as far more circumspect than Rui, in that I see gamification as a convenient term to describe ‘digital umami ’1.