Dear Roadster Diner's

Dear Roadster Diner’s

April 8th, 2011 by Souppie - Random

First things first, I am a die hard RD fan, if I am not at one of your restaurants, I am ordering a delivery!

So here it goes:

I downloaded your mobile application and all, love the fact that I have the menu in my pocket now just in case I forget an item, but here’s a small wishlist for the next version:

Mobile ordering: I don’t wanna call, I just want to pick items, customize them, send them with a press of a button and you get a detailed order plus my location automatically (GPS): you are saving time, opening a new channel (we all know how busy your lines get during peak hours) and avoiding orders mess ups
Mobile Payment: I cannot count the times I didn’t order just because I didn’t have cash and was too lazy to walk to an ATM to withdraw money. I don’t know how feasible it is for you to have portable credit card machine terminals, but one option you might want to look into mobile payment (a bank introduced it lately)
Turn it up a notch: have your delivery cars/motorcycles tagged with a GPS tracking device and give us the option to “watch on a map” where my order is.
Some mini game: just to kill some time while waiting for the order to arrive
And will nag you with some other stuff later on…

Wireframing Part Deux: Wireframes vs Prototypes

April 8th, 2011 by Souppie - Design

I hear a lot of people abusing both words and definitely not knowing what each one is for. Here it goes:

Wireframes are a skeleton version of a website illustrating the components/modules/content placement in the web pages.

Prototypes are functional demo/navigation (not high fidelity) of the web site. It could be a compilation of the wireframes put together in a way that a user can navigate through them depicting a certain sequence. How? some prefer an HTML version (along with Javascript) you are not limited to that though, you can have a prototype as Flash (Flash Catalyst is perfect of that).

It always starts with the wireframes and next comes the prototype. Wireframes are essential and depending on the nature of your site (simple/complex) you can either have a prototype (complex site) or just mockups (closes thing to the final design) for simple sites.

End of mini-series number 2, in the next mini-series/post I will be sharing some thoughts on how to create wireframes. If you wanna take it a step further with wireframing and prototyping, this book is a good start.

Dear UberVU: Which one is it?

April 7th, 2011 by Souppie - Web

Folks, always remember to read the fine print and scan before buying anything. Some sites just love messing up with you (and if this was an “honest to god” mistake, they should check with whoever QA-ed the site).

I made my mind up, I didn’t even sign up with uberVU, I am going with Lithium Social Media Monitoring (Scouts Lab)

All plans include:

uberVU brings you all the blogs, Twitter, Facebook and many more social platforms, all in the same place.

And then (in fine print under an image): uberVU Basic only offers Twitter support. For all the platforms you need at least the Plus.

Wireframing Part Un: Quick intro

April 7th, 2011 by Souppie - Design

Enlarge

I am going to publish some “mini” posts, giving quick insights and how-tos, if you have ANY question, just comment or drop me a line, I’ll be more than happy to answer.

I was fortunate enough to work with a neurotic (yes, I was fortunate) person, I will never ever forget the first time I was about to “wireframe”, I pulled the laptop out to start and he yanked it from my hands and screamed at the top of his lungs NEVER! handed me a pencil and a paper, and screamed again USE THIS! YOU GET TO PLAY WITH THE TOYS LATER and in a calm voice, “now I know you will never forget this golden rule”

I cannot count the times I twitched and felt a part of me die when I saw “graphic designers” fire up a software and start “designing” and I cannot count the times I wanted to just shoot myself in the foot when I saw “web designers and architects” firing up Illustrator and start “designing websites” and they just thrown in “sketching? that’s a waste of time” when you ask them why not start with wireframing…

Anyways, if ANY sort of designer starts “designing” immediately on a software, for your own good, let him go. You will thank me later. So, off to wireframing, this will be a multiple post over the course of days/weeks, nothing mind boggling just simple tips.
Wireframing is an essential step in the whole design process, as a matter of fact it’s the first step. Is it a deliverable for your customer? debatable (we will get back to that sometime..)

Wireframing helps shed the light and document what goes on every page of the site, components/modules/info…
Picking a pencil up and sketching a simple wireframe will help you tackle all the elements and components that should be in every page, when you do this step, you will save time (money) by not having to revise the site later on and fixing the whole design (How many times did you have to re-fix a site just because an element was forgotten, because text was added/omitted…)

Just like cars need a solid frame to be built, websites are not different.

Next post will be about Wireframing vs Prototyping, the difference, what each one means, and when you really need to prototype.

Image courtesy of Edmittance

Why Some Managers Hate Twitter

April 6th, 2011 by Souppie - Thoughts

Enlarge

“What you just tweeted is unacceptable, it is a direct attack against me and the company”

If this sounds familiar to you, you might enjoy what I am going to babble about.

I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints lately about CEOs/Managers nagging their employees what to tweet and what not to tweet knowing that the tweeps are not associating their handles with the company directly.

I can understand (at least try to) why some executives and business owners do not like the fact that their employees are using Twitter, BUT, I am pretty sure that most of you will agree that Twitter activities should be encouraged and there’s no reason why one should worry or “hate” a whole medium.

I am gonna take some wild guesses to why some don’t like social media and Twitter in particular and feel free to share your own views the comment sections.

No control whatsoever: I think this is the number one reason why they “hate” Twitter. Why you ask? Well I strongly believe that they get worried about having their “hidden skeletons” in public. Companies do face the case of an employee gone rogue and can contain the situation, but when the company is dysfunctional and has a well known record of mistreating its employees, lack of control over what the employees tweet is their main concern (Mass resignations and people “tweeting” about it?)
Head Hunting: Yip! Executives are afraid of competition head hunting their best “assets and resources” (referring here to human beings…) Again, you rarely see someone moving from one company to another just like that or just because that person “felt like it”. It all comes down to a better salary, better position, better benefits, better environment…
Fear of the unknown: People are afraid of the unknown and they cannot tame their fear if they really don’t know something.
Transparency (lack of): Some companies do not put their money where their mouth’s at. Executives fear that being public. How many times you were sucked in some sugar coated speech only to find out after a bit of time that this is NOT what the “salesman” told you.
Direct criticism: We saw a live example at Arabnet 2010 when people where just “telling it like it is” in few panels (e-commerce panel had the highest negative tweets) Some concerned parties did not like them and tried to mask by counter tweeting some meaningless supportive tweets and missing the whole point without taking these criticisms positively and correcting what went wrong. (A perfect example is what the good folks at Arabnet did, they took all the comments that were tweeted in 2010 and fixed what people thought should be fixed and came up with a better conference in 2011)

I had to get this off my chest, and some great folks over Twitter shared their thoughts, I am picking 3 out of the whole bunch! (Thank you all of you for your replies! I should turn this into a scientific survey!)

@Fadisabbagha: I love Twitter because I see in it a fun, fast, interesting and relevant personal and professional update tool and channel.

@Chemali. : I usually hold them accountable for results.So no prob. Of course they gotta dissociate their own opinions from the company image(like I do)

@Skaramist: (in reply if she encourages her employees/staff to go on twitter) yes :) To data mine, market our deals & keep an eye on the competition

Three different examples why executives SHOULD love Twitter. What do you think? Twitter yey or ney?

10 books to get you on track for a UX career (sorta!)

April 4th, 2011 by Souppie - Tools

1253D0B4-2E43-A26C-4A85-A6B194DE80C8wallpaper

Enlarge

I can’t help it but smile when I hear this statement “I want to learn about UX, what books do you recommend?” I wasn’t lucky enough to get some guidance when I first started, I was put with one book (User Centered System Design), a dvd (Paper Prototyping) and a training seminar!

After that I was flooded with books, white papers, insights, videos, webinars, I didn’t know where to really start and where to really stop.

after a few months of swimming in total darkness, I had the fortunate help of people around the net and was put on track and had a cleaner start and learned that you can never stop…

I am not going into what it takes to be a UX designer (yet), I am just gonna list 10 books that anyone should read in the given order if one wants to get his feet wet with UX design

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Emotional Design by Donald A. Norman
About Face 3 by Alan Cooper
A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville & Louis Rosenfeld
Web Form Design by LukeWroblewski
Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen
Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
Measuring the User Experience by Thomas Tullis and William Albert

That’s pretty much it for the time being, I didn’t even scratch the surface here but this should give you a good start. If you have any question just drop a comment/line!

Why is “Water” Blue? [Guest Post]

April 4th, 2011 by Souppie - Thoughts

Enlarge

This is a guest post by Joe, (Joe’s Box). In UX design everything counts, even the colors, and here’s Joe tackling the color of water bottles in Lebanon. Enjoy it! I know I did…

Yesterday in the supermarket I needed to buy a bottle of water, I went directly to the beverage section and found myself in front of a big wall full of boring copycat blue bottles…
Research has shown that color influences our emotions.”the first point of interaction is shaped by the color, and color is the most memorable sense”. Packaging as well is used to capture consumer attention as they are shopping , where a product must stand out among other products , it wasn’t the case here unfortunately all the Lebanese bottles have almost the same package, even the label that serve to capture the attention is the same with the same color not even a catchy word to capture your attention.
Well the water is water same taste same color, we all know that the Evian water originates from a spring in the French Alps but all the Lebanese water originates from the same source the Lebanese Mountains to make this product different the Package designers and marketers should chose a catchy different design, why not a red bottle ? A design that stands out on crowded shelves is essential!
So to make the story short I chose the closest bottle in front of me and I went home holding in my hand two boring blue bottles, something outside that catches my attention! A purple cow!!

Nokia Situations

April 1st, 2011 by Souppie - Thoughts

Smartphones aren’t “that” smart, it needs a lot of input and help from our side. And what really bugs me is that I have to manually switch back and forth, closing emails, launching programs, silencing the phone when I am at work/home, I just want someone to do that for me! (I love Mac’s Automator…)

I am currently using two phones, an Iphone 4 for my gaming pleasures, Hipstamatic, Nieves and Wunderlist and a Nokia E7 purely for business.

Apple fans I am sorry, iPhone is more of an entertainment device. Nokia fans, I am sorry, Nokia phones are more on the “phoning and business” side, competition is toughening up, we will see drastic – positive- changes. So don’t lash your fury on me.

Anyways, I always complain about the lack of “profiles” on iPhone and complain that the “profiles” on Nokia are not that smart. Thing is, when I get home I disable my work email – manually – and just dedicate that time for the family, friends…I leave work where it should be, at work. Another situation that I face on a daily basis is muting my Twitter, Facebook, personal emails when I get to work…

And here is where “Nokia Situations” come in play. Here’s what it does (taken from Nokia Beta Labs)

Change Ringtones, make the phone go silent or louder, turn vibra on/off, and all the other profile settings.

Answer missed calls with SMS. Especially when you set your phone to silent, you can also make it reply to missed calls, from contacts in your phonebook, with a pre-defined SMS.

Save Power. Not using phone for a while, like when sleeping? Turn Bluetooth on/off or let your phone change to power-saving mode totally.

Change UI theme / Wallpaper. Want to make the phone look different in different situations? Change the Theme during free time vs. when you are at work.

Open a Web bookmark or application. Want to see weather forecast for the day when you wake up? Look at the calendar as first thing? Or open your favorite TV show discussion page at show time? Or perhaps change the Device Mode when at work?

So far so good and I am LOVING it! how does it do it? well you define “situations” and everything changes accordingly. How? well…

Once I am home, it switches WLAN or just uses my GPS location the profile changes, ringtones…plain, simple, straight to the point and definitely a feature that all phones should sport…

So far so great BUT…Here’s ONE feature I would love to have: Enable/Disable emails! If it’s already there, for the life in me I cannot find it, please do point out where. If you own a Nokia device, just hit the Beta Labs, lots of goodies back there, but always remember, some/most are just in beta or experimental phase!

Google +1 Social Functionality Preview

March 31st, 2011 by Souppie - Web

So the whole +1 buzz that’s familiar to most of us on Twitter went all the way to Google’s search results, yes it’s not exclusive to Twitter. Is it really a necessity? well Google did say that they are rolling out some features that will make the search experience “social” and it starts…

I just grabbed a few screens for your “viewing pleasure”

They are rolling them out in the states and to some testers, a matter of hours (days max) and it will be available to all…