Leg No. 8 - Salzburg, Austria - 22-29 June 2012

254 days, 06 hours, 10 minutes, 03 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

The next part of my trip will be to Salzburg. I will be travelling via train which is expected to take an hour. My reason for visiting Salzburg is to meetup with some of the lecturers and professors at the university. In my research to date I had come across C.U.R.E (Center for Usability, Research and Engineering) and in discussion with one of their representatives they had indicated the strength of knowledge at the university. 

Salzburg

In light of that I then have been emailing the university and its HCI (Human Computer Interaction) department to meet up and discuss issue with respect to usability and how this study is carried out. I have outlined the areas of interest and issues face by our department but in general most users. I wanted to get a better understanding of how I would go about understanding this science and how it can be applied to my project. 
To date I have receive a couple of offers to catch up and explore these and other issue I discover in my travels.

Leg No. 7 - Heidelberg, Germany - 15-22 June 2012

261 days, 02 hours, 36 minutes 00 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

The next leg is to visit SAP in Heidelberg, Germany. I don't know much about this city but grew up in Germany. We lived in the North of Germany in a town called Fallingbostel. 

Heidelberg Castle

SAP has taken on a new product with a company they had purchased and are dealing with mobile solutions in the area of software and the delivery on multiple platforms.

Leg No. 6 - London - 8th - 15th June 2012

263 days, 01 hours, 40 minutes, 1 second

until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

The next leg will be to London from Boston. In London I hope to be visiting agencies that are using mobile technology in the field. I am looking to see what they have done and if and how they have addressed the usability aspects of taking on that technology.


what have been the considerations they needed to consider. What environments and situations will the end users find themselves and how have they found the value of the technology.

St Paul's Cathedral from the Banks of the Thames
©Marc Dimmick 2011

London Bridge from the banks of the Thames©Marc Dimmick 2011

These were photos, I took this year in London.


Travel arrangements have now been locked in so now I am finalising all the accommodation locations. Just about have all bar New York, and Salzburg. I am using airbnb.com for a lot of the locations and some really great locations and prices.

Leg No. 5 - Boston - 1-7th June 2012

274 days, 0 hour, 41 minutes, 9 seconds

Boston, I will be traveling to there from New York via amtrak. I have used the trains before going to Washington from New York. This is a very enjoyable way to travel in the States, I am not sure if they have high speed rail as they do in Europe. 

Typical train in the states

I have never been here so this is quite exciting. Due to the number of world famous universities and institutions, the likes of MIT and Harvard. I have been trying to make contact with each of these universities to hopefully meet and talk with people in the HCI (Human Computer Interaction) Departments.

Skyline of Boston

I am still working on trying to make contact with the different universities and institutes. As more details come I will update this blog.

Harvard University

MIT Dome

Not exactly sure but looks cool

Leg No: 4 - New York - May 25th / June 1st 2012

277 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes

Well I get back to the big apple yet again. :) This will be my third time and I really love it. The architecture, the environment, the contrast. 

My Visit to New York is meet up with a number of specialist in the field of Usability. I looking to meet with a number of Usability Experts.

Usability Expert: Charlies Mauro of Mauro New Media,

Adam Greenfield of Urbanscale and author of a very interesting book called "Everyware" which is about "The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing".  The book is about the form that computing will take in the next few years. Its about the vision of distributed processing power that basically computers will disappear in the way we know of them today. That computers will be so integrated into our lives that we will not see or think of them as computers. We will just engage within our environments and over time will not even be aware of where the line between carrying out a task and our engagement with using a computer. 

Norman Vincent Peel

Someone who has had a big impact in my life on perspective. Wrote a very good book call the "Power of Positive Thinking". You should read it.

The Empire State Building

The first time I was here I got to 34th Street which is where the Empire State Building was situated. I looked around and I could not see the building. It was 10pm at night and the building across from me was only half light up. anyway I asked the Police Office where I could find the Empire State Building, he looked at me and said "you're not from around here are you?" no was my answer. He then proceeded to pointed over his left shoulder to the a building and said "that's it, there". I looked again "it's not that tall". He then advised me to check-it out in daylight. 

Second Hand Rose
(Owned by Friend of Mine's Father)

This place is where a lot of movies are filmed in when they are looking for a street scene in New York. My friends dad specialise in Antique Wall Paper. The shop is very interesting inside, wall to floor antiques.

The Wedge
First Skyscraper in New York

I have a picture of this building over my bed and always wanted to see it for real, well I got the photo and I dare say I will try again as the weather last time was not to good.

IBM Research: The other areas I am hoping to get to is IBM's Research Laboratories. This I am still working on and when I have firmed up details I will post to the site. IBM also has research locations in Cambridge, Boston and there is my next leg within this trip.

Again accommodation has been arranged via airbnb.com. 

Leg No: 3 - Austin Texas - 20th / 25th May 2012

282 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes

**UPDATE: Change of Dates from 20-25th May to 23-25th May

Night seen of the city

In Austin I am hoping to catch up with two organisations. They being the Department for Child Protection and Motion Computing. Austin and Texas I know very little about. As a child I remember seeing the movies about the Texas Rangers and there is the discussion about their cattle stations being big but that is all I know. I have a little research to do before gettting there.

Austin, Capital Building

Department for Child Protection - I read a case study which indicated that the deparment is using tablet computers. So I am interested in finding out how they are using them, have they addressed the usability aspects I feel that get missed. If so how have they worked with the end user to achieve their results.

Motion Computing - I have been a user of their tablets for a few years and have found them to be very good. I am taking the opportunity of visiting the company to get a perspective of how they go about the design and building of these devices. How does usability aspects effect what they produce.

Again I have arranged my accomodation using a great site called http://www.airbnb.com. This site and its services have recently had an increase in funding and as a user of this service through Europe recently I have found it to be great. You can get everything from and igloo through to a castle and it can cost as cheap as $9 a night through to $2000+ so everyones tastes are covered. We used this site for accomodation in France, Lyon and Nice as well as the UK. It is well worth a go. All of my accomodation has been arranged using this service for my entire trip.