Prepare to Merge: Streamlining My Interests Into One Blog

 
You may have noticed that I've added some posts to this blog that relate, in one way or another, to communication theory.  I want to take this opportunity to explain why I'm including them here and why I'm adding these posts now.

(photo: found here and used in accordance with a Creative Commons license)

My interests are many and varied, and when I can draw connections between them and share them with others, I'm thrilled.  However, when I first started this blog, I wasn't sure of the exact direction I wanted it to take and what kinds of topics I wanted to cover (apart from usability and psychology).

My original idea was to create two separate blogs: one for me to talk about usability, psychology, and related topics, and another for me to write about communication theory.  Then, one of my potential readers suggested that I try to incorporate my communication theory posts into this blog, a practice that would allow me to focus my energy on one blog and one readership rather than two.

I liked this idea, but then I wasn't sure how I would blend the two topics together in a way that really made sense and didn't seem forced.  Thus, for the past few months, I have kept notes on what I've wanted to say about communication theory and held off on finalizing and posting them until this week.

I think (or hope?) that I've done a good job of integrating communication theory and usability/psychology.  I've posted them according to the corresponding dates of my notes, and I've given them the label "theory" for easy retrieval.

I hope you enjoy my postings (and maybe even learn as much as I have during the process of writing them).  I also hope that you will continue down this road of the blogosphere with me.

As always, comments and questions are welcome.

Thank you.

The Story So Far: A Reflection on My Blogging Experience

In this post, I will talk about my experience with creating, maintaining, and updating Wired for Writing, my very first blog.

When I first created this blog and started writing in it, I didn't have too firm of a grasp of exactly "how" a person writes in a blog ("What should the tone be?  Can I go 'off-topic' from my mission statement?"), since I hadn't read blogs on a regular basis.  My only experience with reading blogs at that time was when one would pop up in my search results for something else I was looking for.

In short, I was a little intimidated.

At the beginning, it became obvious that I was a frustrated novelist: my posts were pretty long.  In whatever I do, I try to be comprehensive, which I suppose is an admirable trait in most circumstances.

In my efforts to find material to write about, I truly learned a great deal about topics like usability, social media, and design.  When I wrote my posts, I wanted to share what I had found with you, including pictures and links to outside material whenever possible and appropriate.

As time went on, I did my best to be more careful with my word choices so that I wouldn't have to use so many words to get my points across.  I also "loosened up" a little bit and tried to make my posts sound different from everyone else's in the blogosphere.  I tried to have fun with my posts and treat them like little creative writing projects.  I hope that came across and that my posts have been fun for you, the reader, as well.

So, what's next?  Who knows.  I definitely want to keep posting here and updating the look and feel of the blog as I learn more about design and CSS.

In the meantime, do you have any suggestions for changes you'd like to see in the blog?  Anything about it that you strongly like or dislike?  Any writer needs to know her audience, so please share you thoughts.

Thank you for taking the time to read my writing.

Shameless Self-Promotion: My Social Media Proposal

My most recent project has been to develop a proposal for defero, a media consulting company that is looking to make the jump into a Web 2.0 world.  You can view it here.  Once again, I used Google Sites to create and host my site.  I noticed that my work on Google Sites went a lot smoother than last time.  I guess experience is the best teacher.

In order to create an effective proposal, I needed to research how companies are using social media and find examples of its effective use by corporations.  During this process, I learned a great deal about the different ways that companies are maximizing the potential of the technologies that I often take for granted. I use social media on a daily basis (and often more than once a day): I log into Twitter regularly (but you probably figured that one out already), and I also check my Facebook account on a near-daily basis.  Like most people my age (mid-20s), I'm a huge fan of YouTube and have over a hundred videos on my Favorites list.  I've dabbled in social bookmarking, and I've come to rely on Wikipedia when I want to find basic information about a topic (linking to a Wikipedia article about Wikipedia...doesn't get much more meta than that).  And, of course, I blog.

But I never gave much thought to how corporate entities would use these tools.  When companies began to use platforms like Facebook to spread their message, I actually resented it a little bit.  I figured that I was already bombarded with advertisements and longed for the days of my early Internet experience (circa 1997) when ads on the Internet weren't as intrusive and pervasive as they can be today.  But then I remembered how the times when I got kicked off my dial-up connection about ten times per night and how slow the pages would load, and I thanked my lucky stars that the Internet/technology in general had advanced as much as it did over the past twelve years.  But I digress....

As I learned more about the corporate use of social media, I found examples that I had never seen before and made a mental note of which companies I thought were most innovative.  For instance, I had no idea that Adobe had a Delicious account where it shared links and resources with its customers.  And I also wasn't aware of the existence of Coca-Cola's Facebook page (which, I might add, is the best corporate presence on Facebook that I've ever seen).  I give Coca-Cola a lot of credit: the company has been around for over a hundred years, and yet its page is twice as rich as those of some companies that are half as old.

The more I researched, the more I saw that social media is really a reiterative, circular process: post content that you find or create for others to talk about, get exposed to cool/informative content posted by others, repeat.  At least, that's how it seems to be for companies.  An individual can merely absorb content without contributing any, but where's the fun in that?

I also found that as I was exposed to more corporate use of social media, I began to view companies that didn't make use of social media tools to be behind the times and irrelevant.  Is that fair?  Maybe, maybe not.  But it does speak to the power and importance of having a Web 2.0 marketing strategy and presence.

How about you: what do you think of my proposal?  Do you have any memorable experiences with company-generated social media content?  Do you think that corporations who don't use social media are irrelevant?  Share away!

Three Flavors of "Smart": Sternberg's Theory of Triarchic Intelligence

 
Do you know anyone who's really "booksmart" and did great in school but can't seem to accomplish what they want to in life?  Or how about someone who's very creative and clever but isn't living up to his or her full potential?

Prof. Robert J. Sternberg has an explanation.  His research suggests that there are really three different types of intelligence, which each person has to varying degrees.

Sternberg's three intelligences are as follows (and you can also look at this summary):

1. Analytic – good at “reasoning abstractly, acquiring knowledge, processing information, and planning and executing strategies” (Howard 54)

2. Creative – excels at “using experience, insight, and creativity to solve new problems, create new ideas, or combine unrelated facts” (Howard 54)

3. Practical – does well at “adapting to contexts; selecting or shaping one's environment” (Howard 54)

So, how are these intelligences observed?  According to Sternberg:

"The kinds of tasks people face in everyday life often require all three kinds of thinking. For example, selling a product requires one to analyze customers' needs, to invent a sales strategy, and to convince people to buy a product. Managing a business requires one to analyze market requirements, create products or services as well as a demand for them, and then to convince people of the value of dealing with the company. But the fact that many tasks require all three kinds of thinking does not mean that people…are equally adept at all three kinds of thinking" (n.p.).

I guess a good analogy to make here is that the three type of intelligence are like the three flavors in Neapolitan ice cream: they're designed to work together, and the more you have of each, the better off you are (unless you're lactose intolerant...then I just feel sorry for you).

(winter needs to end so I can have this or something like it)

(photo: found here and used in accordance with a Creative Commons license)

At any rate, these intelligences translate into different ways of learning and of seeing the world.  Because I'm interested in usability and its implications, the theory of triarchic intelligence makes me wonder if people with different levels of intelligence would disagree on what makes a website "usable."

For example, would someone with a high level of practical intelligence and lower levels of analytic and creative intelligence find a site like this (a School of Management) to be easier to use than this one (an Economics Department)?  How about this one (a Lifelong Kindergarten media lab)?  I tend to think so.

What do you think?  Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Works Cited:

Howard, Bruce C., Steven McGee, and Namsoo Shin. "The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence and Computer-Based Inquiry Learning." Educational Technology Research and Development 49 4 (2001): 49-69. Print.

Sternberg, Robert J. "Patterns of Giftedness: A Triarchic Analysis." Roeper Review 22 4 (2000): 231-5. Print.

I Love When the Sum is Greater Than its Parts: Collaboration Online

 
As Internet-based applications become more prevalent and sophisticated, opportunities for collaborating online will continue to increase and offer more effective ways for people to work together to achieve their common goals.

In this post, I will discuss some of my experiences online collaboration, particularly as they relate to forums and chatrooms.  I will also talk briefly about my experiences using co-ment and Writeboard, which allow groups to work collaboratively on documents.

In one of my prior technical communication classes, my classmates and I were required to analyze the usability of the documentation for a thesis and dissertation template to be used by graduate students at my school.  After finishing the analysis, we then had to collectively write up our findings in a report suitable for submission to the Office of Graduate Studies.  Before the report could be assembled, however, we had to establish, among ourselves, who would be in charge of which parts of the document.  Prior to that, we had to determine how to divide up the labor so that each person got near-equal amounts of work.  That task was left up to me and two other classmates.

Because we were the only three people to participate in the first scheduled Wimba chat, we got to determine how the work was to be divided and which parts we, ourselves, wanted to be in charge of (which was a nice little perk for the three of us).  I should add that we used the audio-chat feature in Wimba to discuss the details of the project.  Wimba also has text-based chat and screen-sharing features.  Our professor had some difficulty getting the screen-sharing feature to work properly during a prior chat session, but the text-based chat option was used during later project chats when we had participants who did not have microphones that they could use with their computers.

At any rate, once we had determined the parts in which the work would be divided, we posted the list of available tasks in our class forum and let people post responses saying which part they wanted to be in charge of.  We also used our class form to post our completed individual work and to comment on the work posted by others.  Other Wimba chats were scheduled, as needed, to discuss our progress and air any concerns.

An interesting finding that we made toward the end of the collaboration process was that it is sometimes better to have two people, rather than one person, take on the role of "final editor."  While the one person we had in that role did do a good job, our professor reviewed our final product and made suggestions for edits in each part of the report.  If we had two people collaborate on the final editing process, perhaps we would have been able to reduce the number of edits that had to be made after the report was submitted to our professor.

Chatrooms, whether they support audio- or text-based chatting, may be the ideal way to brainstorm online.  During one of the weekly text-based chat sessions in my iPhone app-development course, I, along with my professor and a few of my classmates, talked about possible app ideas.  We were able to help each other refine our concepts and think of new ones, and it was, in my opinion, a very productive and fun hour.  I sincerely doubt that we would have had the insights we did if we had tried to have our discussion in a forum, since real-time and immediate dialogue is a crucial part of the brainstorming process.

As I mentioned previously, online forums can be effective collaboration tools.  They can be referenced at any point during a project, and they're a great way for team members to communicate when they can't all meet for a live chat.  Even outside the context of collaboration, a group's forum can allow members to learn from one another and even provide sparks of inspiration.  Getting another person's viewpoint on a topic can enable group members to see concepts in ways that they never would have otherwise, giving them the opportunity to have a more comprehensive view of a subject.

Similar in many ways to a forum is co-ment, a "Web-based text annotation" service that allows designated users to view a document, chose a passage to comment on, and write and respond to comments.  A screenshot of this process in action appears below:

(check out the article...noticing a theme here?)

I should add that I was given only "commenter" privileges for this particular document and that this document represents my only experience with the co-ment service.  Therefore, I cannot comment (no pun intended) directly on any other features or capabilities of the site.

My only real complaint about using co-ment.net is that it was difficult to read everyone's comments.  I kept having to click links like "minimize" and "read," and it was hard to keep track of which comments I had already read.  However, I liked that I could click on a highlighted passage and read the comments associated with it.

I also had the opportunity to try out Writeboard, which allows group members to edit a document, compare previous versions, and comment on the document and the changes they made to it.  Here's a look at what the editing process was like:

(looks pretty straightforward, right?...it was.)

I liked the simplicity of the editing process: there wasn't too much formatting code for me to worry about messing up, and the large editing screen gave me a pretty accurate idea of what the document would look like after I saved my changes.  I also thought the "Compare Versions" feature was very useful, and the comparisons were easy to interpret (with strikethroughs representing content that had been deleted, etc.).

One drawback of Writeboard is that it isn't "safe" for more than one person to edit the document at a time.  On two occasions, when I tried to edit the current version, I got a message saying "Hold On!  Someone's editing this Writeboard right now!" and telling me that it would be best if I waited to make my edits.  If each person were required to make extensive edits to a Writeboard document, it would probably be beneficial to set an editing schedule of sorts to prevent two or more people from trying to edit the document at once.  Of course, setting up such a schedule isn't the most convenient thing in the world.  Such are the trade-offs of online collaboration.

Do you have any experiences with online collaboration that were particularly positive or negative?  Have you collaborated in other platforms besides the ones mentioned here?  Comments are welcome. :-)

Twitter for Tots? A New Toy Lets Little Ones Tweet

 
Sometimes when I browse the Internet, I find an article that just makes me pause and say, "Wow."  Here's one from Wired.com called "Twoddler Toy Lets Toddlers Tweet."

In case you may be questioning the story's veracity, here's a screenshot of the official site for Twoddler:

According to this site, Twoddler was created by researchers at Hasselt University in Belgium as part of a course in mobile and pervasive computing. 

This excerpt from the Wired article explains the concept of the toy and how it translates kids' activities into tweets:

"Twoddler is a modified Fisher Price activity center, the kind that toddlers have tweaked and poked for what seems like generations. The difference is that this one has its activities monitored by a computer and the activities are translated into Tweets. The example uses a baby called Yorin, and if he spends, say, a few minutes playing with a picture of his mother, this Tweet will be forced on the world: '@mommy_yorin Yorin misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening.' Further, if he annoyingly bangs on the bell, over and over, for far too long, the computer will translate this to say 'Yorin is showing off his music skills with a new tune.'"

The video below, produced by the research team responsible for Twoddler's creation, shows the toy in action (although I will say that I was unable to find a version of this video that had audio included):

Twoddler: Twittering Toddlers from Bart Swennen on Vimeo.

While, as far as I can tell, this toy isn't yet available to the public, its ability to monitor and tweet the activities of toddlers can be used to serve several purposes:

a) to let parents monitor their childrent's activities and feel closer to their kids when separated from them

b) to get kids accustomed to the idea of social media/broadcasting their activities to others

c) to collect data on how kids are using the toy (e.g., which features are most frequently used, how often the toy is being played with, etc.)

Option A is probably the most innocuous, option B is kinda disturbing, and option C may just be the next evolution of consumer data collection.

What's your take on Twoddler?  Would you get one for your child?  Discuss.

Change is Good: How I've Revised My Blog Layout

 
As you can see, I've changed many of the attributes of my blog.  In this post, I will explain how and why I made these revisions.

First, let's look at how my blog looked before the changes were made.

When I first created this blog, I spent a considerable amount of time going through the templates and decided that the simplicity of Blogger's Minima template would allow the reader to focus on my content rather than extraneous graphics, and I thought that most of the other templates could be too easily identified as being Blogger templates.  Being the non-conformist that I am, not only did I want a template that didn't look so "ready-made," but I also wanted to change the default fonts and colors right away.  I thought that the titles and links should stand out, so I chose bold colors that would look particularly vibrant against the black background.  My original typeface choice was Trebuchet because it's clean and simple, and it also isn't as commonly used as typefaces like Times and Arial.

Then I looked at the possible edits that I could make from the "Page Elements" section of the "Layout" settings page in Blogger.  Here's how it looked after my changes:

 

I was thrilled to find a gadget that made a cloud out of my labels, and I thought that the "Search" functionality and "Subscription" buttons would increase the usability of my blog.  I also changed some of the titles of the sidebar gadgets in order to make them sound like something I might say (as opposed to generic titles), and I added a little blurb about me so that people have some idea who's writing these posts.

In addition, I moved the default location of the attribution, time posted, and labels for the posts to the bottom of the posts to the top.  This way, the reader will know, upfront, who wrote the post, when it was written, and the topics it covers. 

Next, I decided that something had to be done about the column width of my posts.  In my search for guidance on this matter, I found an article called "Displaying Text on the Web: Are Narrow Columns Better?" that detailed a study on people's preferences for things like column width and typeface.  The writers found that people strongly preferred 400pt. and 640pt. column widths and that there was no significant difference in preference/readability between the Times and Verdana typefaces.  With that information in mind, I changed the column width of my posts to 640pt. by changing the appropriate CSS settings.  The result is shown below.

After that, I decided to play around with my color scheme and add a header graphic to my blog:

 

In my Visual Design class, I learned that you should aim to have no more than two colors (aside from black and white) in your website design.  I had three: green, blue, and purple.  I thought that, while I liked this color combination, it would be better to eliminate the green because it didn't go as well with the other colors nearly as well as blue and purple looked together.

When I designed my header graphic, I wanted to convey the idea that traditional ideas about communication and text were being reevaluated in the context of New Media and the Internet.  To accomplish this goal, I took old-style text (similar to that created carefully by hand in the Middle Ages and Renaissance) and made it appear as if it was being viewed on a CRT monitor.  After I uploaded the image, I edited my CSS settings to remove the light gray border that formerly appeared around the blog's title.

Finally, I decided to change the default font in my blog to Times:

 

I changed my font to Times because I wanted to continue the theme of "the old being viewed in the context of the new."  Times has been a standard font in newspapers and magazines for decades, and I wanted to see how the "feel" of my content would change when presented in this typeface.  Right now, I think it helps to establish a sense of authority that helps to balance the light-hearted nature of many of my posts.  We'll see how I feel as time goes on.

As I learn more about HTML and CSS, I may test out my new skills by making some more changes to my blog's code.  Stay tuned!

What do you think of my changes?  Let me know!

Usability Crimes: Are You Guilty?

In my efforts to learn more about usability and web design, I found a blog post called "10 Usability Crimes You Really Shouldn't Commit."  I think the title is a bit redundant (Are there any crimes that really should be committed?  And are there any crimes that should kinda be committed?  Talk amongst yourselves.), but I thought it had some valuable information (along with an excellent use of illustrations).

Here are some points that I had never considered before:

Crime #6: A Background Image Without a Background Color

(screenshot from the article)

This one never came remotely near to crossing my mind.  However, I don't think it's as common as it once was to put text over a background image (and if I'm wrong about that, please correct me).  At any rate, color and its implications for readability is always important to keep in mind.

Crime #9: Telling People to "Click Here"

(screenshot from the article)

Here's the given description for this tip:

"The words click here have been around since the dawn of the Internet, but have been shunned aside in favour of more usable options. Using the words click here requires the user to read the whole sentence to find out what’s going to happen. Instead, describe what’s going to happen in the actual anchor link text."

What I find particularly interesting here is the idea that "click here" was, at one time, acceptable and commonplace on websites. Looking back, I realize that this claim is true, and it also occurs to me that I don't see it nearly as much as I used to. Perhaps this practice has fallen out of favor because we've become so accustomed to the idea of hyperlinks that we no longer need to be told to "click here"? Or is it because, as a society, we've lost patience for reading?

Crime #10: Using Justified Text

According to the article, "Justified text might look at neat and square to the eye, but it can generate some real readability problems, particularly for dyslexic users who can find it troublesome to identify words due to the uneven spacing of justified paragraphs."

Here's another one that I had never even considered, especially the part about dyslexia. However, justified text can be frequently found in printed texts, such as magazines and newspapers. Why is it acceptable to use this type of text alignment in print but not on the web? Could it be that web designers are more conscious of the possible needs of their audience than print publishers? And, if that's the case, does that mean that the Internet is a more democratic medium than print?

As always, feel free to share your thoughts on any of the questions that I have posed. Additionally, let me know how you feel about the various crimes listed in the article.

The Beginning of the End of Free Online News?

I don't know how widely this story is being circulated, but I do want to share this article about Google giving news outlets the opportunity to charge users for reading their stories online.

Basically, some news publishers are arguing that Google News is a "backdoor to subscription-protected sites," like the one maintained by The Wall Street Journal.

As the article explains, "You can read WSJ.com stories for free if you search for them on Google News and then click through. News Corp. The owner of the Wall Street Journal, knows this, but allows it because otherwise Google won’t index its site and then it will lose 25 percent of its traffic."

To appease the publishers, Google has agreed to let news publishers opt into a new program called First Click Free.  If publishers choose to participate in the program, they will be able to limit the number of times per day a user can access their stories through Google News.  After the publisher-determined limit has been reached, the user will be asked to pay for additional access.

The way I see it, there are two ways of looking at this situation, which I will describe later.  For now, read the article and Google's press release and make of them what you will.

Twittiquette: Is There Such a Thing?

Shhh...

Did you hear that?  That's the sound of Emily Post rolling over in her grave.

During my online travels, I came upon this article from The New York Times about how people are taking to Twitter to vent their frustrations, with some less-than-desirable results.  For example, "Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, was fined $25,000 for criticizing a referee in a tweet after a game."  Now I didn't read the tweet in question, so I can't comment on whether or not such a large fine was warranted in that case.

However, I will share a tweet tweeted by Courtney Love aimed at designer Dawn Simorangkir, whom Love accused of being a liar and a thief:

“You will end up in a circle of corched eaeth hunted til your dead”

(I believe that was supposed to read, "You will end up in a circle of scorched earth, hunted until you're dead."  I wasted about ten seconds of my life trying to decipher that little gem...ten seconds I'm not getting back.  Thanks, Courtney.)

The lawsuit over these and other similar tweets has yet to be settled.

What really troubles me about the information presented in this article is the idea that people are using the 140-character limit on Twitter as an excuse for being overly blunt and downright insulting.

Here's a short excerpt from the article:

“It’s the same reason why schoolyard fights don’t start out with, ‘I have a real problem with the way you said something so let’s discuss it,’ ” said Josh Bernoff, a researcher and an author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” “You get right to the punch in the nose. Twitter doesn’t allow room for reflection. It gets people to the barest emotion.”...

“The basic [libel and defamation] law[s] will be the same, but I would think that a defendant might argue that the language used on Twitter is understood to not be taken as seriously as is the case in other forms of communication,” said Mr. Abrams, who has represented The New York Times. “We will have to wait and see how judges and juries figure out how to deal with this.”

No room for reflection?  Not to be taken seriously?!  Sounds a lot like a cop-out to me.  The art of haiku is just one example of writers making the most use out of the amount of space allotted to them.  The problem here is that people too often use Twitter because they want to get a message across quickly, which often means that they don't think before they tweet.  They're looking for that instant "rush" that comes when they feel that they've successfully gained revenge on someone by defaming them in front of the entire world (or, at least, the people reading the tweets).  Now that this issue has been brought to the public's attention through articles like this one, maybe we can acknowledge this unfortunate reality and make sure that we're at least civil in our tweets (and in our online communications, in general).

Think those quotes were bad?  It gets worse.

Jeffrey Michael, an executive at Horizon Realty Group, is quoted as saying, "We as a society have to realize this type of behavior isn’t going to go away. We are not going to have civil conversation in all corners of the Internet. Part of that means we have to develop a thicker skin. We should not accept physical threats, of course. But what we recognize as upsetting and hurtful will diminish over time."

I think poor Emily just did a somersault.

As far as I'm concerned, an insult will always be an insult, regardless the medium used to express it.  While it's true that insults, themselves, may change over time, the sentiment behind them remains the same.  I seriously hope that he's wrong when he says that what we consider to be hurtful will change as time passes.  If he's right, then we're basically in for an anything-goes society were people fire insults at each other at will.

I'm sure I'll be revisiting this topic (or some related tangent), since people's lack of willingness to think before they post something doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.

I'm interested to hear what you think about this topic.  Have you been the target of a tweet like those described above?  Or have you found yourself succumbing to the temptation to tweet in the heat of anger?