Day 29 - End of US Leg of My Trip

Today is my last day in the States, it has been a great start. Some disappointments and there again some great opportunities and surprises. I have had some really great accommodations experiences especially San Francisco and New York. I have had the opportunity to meet some really interesting people and get some great insights into the areas they work and to better understand what I am researching.


Thank you to all the people who have given me their hospitality and time. It has been great and I am looking forward to my next leg of my trip. Leaving Boston tonight around 8pm and then heading to London, followed by Europe. Sometime to reflect and get some notes together some questions answered and more questions raised.


The journey goes on. :)

House in Somerville

Nice flower

Taken from Prudential Tower

Fenwick Park - Baseball

Christian Scientist Church 

Signing off 10:28am Friday 8th June

Day 26 - No interviews

Today I had no interviews but I had arranged a tour of Boston at 5:30pm. As well as some night shooting. I went into the city earlier and took a hop-on and hop-off tour of the city before meeting up with Toni. Toni took me around Boston first to see the sights around the city and then we drove North out of town for some night shooting.


Before we headed off Toni took me to a pastry shop to try one of the local delicacies which is called a lobster tail. This is a pastry filled with a sweet cream cheese.

Toni advertised her services on a site called Vayable.com

Vayable is another service similar to airbnb.com but offering tours by locals. Great service I have used it in NY, Boston and London.

Grand Lodge of Massachusetts

Paul Revere's House

Steaming Fountain

The real location of Cheers, where everyone knows your name.

Tomorrow I will be catching up with Mr Zachary Tumin Special Assistant to the Fac.Chair & Dir., Science, Technology & Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School. Zachary came recommended by Alan Merrihew from Microsoft. Zachary in conjunction with William J.Bratton recently published a book called "Collaborate or Perish"(2012).

Zachary Tumin

In Collaborate or Perish! former Los Angeles police chief and New York police commissioner William Bratton and Harvard Kennedy School’s Zachary Tumin lay out a field-tested playbook for collaborating across the boundaries of our networked world. Today, when everyone is connected, collaboration is the game changer. Agencies and firms, citizens and groups who can collaborate, Bratton and Tumin argue, will thrive in the networked world; those who can’t are doomed to perish.


No one today is better known around the world for his ability to get citizens, governments, and industries working together to improve the safety of cities than William Bratton. At Harvard, Zachary Tumin has led senior executives from government and industry in executive sessions and classrooms for over a decade, burnishing a global reputation for insight and leadership. Together, Bratton and Tumin draw on in-depth accounts from Fortune 100 giants such as Alcoa, Wells Fargo, and Toyota; from masters of collaboration in education, social work, and the military; and from Bratton’s own storied career. Among the specific strategies they reveal:


   • Start collaboration with a broad vision that supporters can add to and make their own 
   • Rightsize problems, and get value in the hands of users fast 
   • Get the right people involved—from sponsors to grass roots 
   • Make collaboration pay in the right currency—whether recognition, rewards, or revenue 


Today companies and managers face unique challenges—and opportunities—in reaching out to others, thanks to the incredibly connected world in which we live. Bratton and Tumin provide practical strategies anyone can use, from the cubicle to the boardroom. This is the ultimate guide to getting things done in today’s networked world.


I look forward to our meeting.


Singing off 12:31am 7th June

Day 25 - Visit to Bentley University

Today was my first interview in Boston. The meeting started at 12 noon before we went to grab some lunch. My meeting today was with Bill Albert, Executive Director of the Design and Usability Center, Bentley University. Bill was a contact that I received from Charles Mauro of New Mauro New Media when I was in New York.

Entry to Bentley University Campus

The initial meeting that I had with Bill was in his office and again I recorded the session. At first I had outlined my background and the work that I was aiming to achieve with the Churchill Fellowship. After that I then turned on the recording to get an understanding of Bill's background and his work in the area of Human Factor Engineering and User Experience. His initial work was in Geography and he was interested in the intersection of Geography and cognitive psychology and came across the field of spacial cognition. 


He spent a lot of time working in this space then began work on navigation systems that  required minimal attention, as in car systems. So a driver can obtain the necessary details without being distracted. After completing his work in this area he stumbled upon the area of usability and found that it aligned quite well to what he had been doing in cognitive psych and human factors. He was also interested in perception, cognition and behaviour and the relationship that goes on in these areas. He then moved into the web in its initial days and learn't a lot in the area of usability and design.


Later moving on to the research side and focused in on the data but looking at the research methods for usability and being able to demonstrate the true business value. Usability has for quite a while been more focused on the qualitative and the area of quantitative research was a field that he worked on with Tom Tullis. Between them they wrote a book called Measuring the User Experience. 

Book Written by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert

Bill works closely and teaches with Tom his work at Bentley is building revenue to the university in the capacity of a consultancy business. Providing services mostly to the fortune 500 companies on all sorts of matters of usability, user experience research helping to advice them on building technology to be easy and intuitive. The other goal is to train graduate students, he is responsible for running one of the largest UX (User Experience) graduate programs in the US and has more that 100 graduate students. A small percentage of those students work in the centre with real clients gaining both experience with real world clients, products and services. For this they receive a small hourly payment as well as the experience and building industry knowledge and networks. 


One of the questions I asked was the difference in designing for tablets to desktop. My assumption to date had lead me to believe there is a difference. But from the UX perspective there is no real difference in the approach and the way that UX specialist work. The difference is more the use of UX and the developers that design systems are not necessarily knowledgeable about this area of work. Many developer make the assumptions based on their experience which does not reflect any understanding of UX and the requirements to delivery on that experience.


Poor information architecture and navigation will always create the same problems no matter what format the system is delivered on.  As Bill pointed out that the emergence of mobile technology for the delivery of these systems has forced the issue and need for proper UX work is needed. The Apple/Google effect has raised the bar and there is less tolerance for bad design. Now that people are experiencing better design products it has raised the bar to what we will accept. 


An interesting example that Bill highlighted was with some work he was involved with Fidelity a usability lab in the mid 90's. They quickly realise or made a connection between usability issues and support costs. They found that people were calling up for various reasons that they might not have called up if they were able to locate the information they required. The realise that every word counts and that there were savings if they designed their site better and made it easier for the client. They found it resulting in savings a real business saving in phone calls.


I then queried at what stage they get involved in projects. Bill indicated that they still get calls from clients about to go to market and wanting to get sign off from a usability perspective. In some cases they are able to add value and also inform the client it would have been better for the project as a whole if they were involved at the start and not the end. In some cases they don't do the work as they are not able to add a demonstrative value to the project. This situation has improved and more and more clients don't really need to understand that this work can produce savings and a return to the business. 


Clients that do leave it to the end usually learn the hard way. But basically the point from the usability aspect is that if the customer can't buy or use your service which can be demonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively then there is a problem. Usability is no longer a service that needs selling and businesses are starting to understand the value and benefits.


After this discussion we then went on a quick tour of the usability labs that they had. One was a one person arrangement with a computer and screen and a number of cameras around the room, with a second room behind a mirror for the staff carrying out the assessment. The second lab similar in style but designed for multiple users and mobile devices with a digital camera in the ceiling that can focus on the screen in high fidelity quality.


We then went to lunch in the cafeteria, where Bill introduced me to one of his students and a number of other colleges. 


Signing off 10:30pm 

Understanding Your Research Goal, Before Doing Your Research.

226 days, 13 hours, 26 minutes and 31 seconds
until my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012
Perth>SF>Seattle>Austin>NY>Boston>London> Heidelberg >Salzburg>Vienna>Singapore>Perth

I have been listening to several HBR (Harvard Business Review) Idea Cast and it has raised many ideas. One of the main themes that have been coming out of several the Podcasts was that knowing the objective you are looking to achieve in what you do. As you may have guested this is the areas I am recording my journey in my research overseas for my Churchill Research Project.

The information I placed in my application for the 2011 Churchill Fellowship was:

"New Frontiers in Technology for Child Protection

This project will explore how breakthroughs in mobile technology can help social workers in the field, and providing an improved child protection service. It will examine how to remove usability barriers imposed by the complexity of unwieldy applications and devices. It will try to remove, or moderate, the impersonal use of technology in meetings, with clients, where a high degree of empathy and emotional intelligence are needed. Working with experts in child protection this project will seek ways to record and process information captured in the field using a new generation of smart devices and innovative software applications. Key goals will be in a drop in staff workload, improved access to information for colleagues, and a rich interaction with clients strengthened by the removal of technology barriers. A decreased in computer training can be achieved due to better understanding of usability and human interfaces into these devices. This will allow staff more time to focus on relationships with clients."

During my time since being awarded the scholarship I have been thinking more about my topic in this research. Working to better understand what it is I hope to communicate in my final paper.  Trying to better understand how my trip better arm me with the necessary information to address my topic. But to understand what I will need, I need to better explain exactly what I am trying to achieve. In other words my objectives and why I am going where I am going as well as why am I meeting the companies and people that I have identified so far.

I am looking to address my topic from four aspects. They are:

1.    Technology - The actual device be it a tablet, laptop, ultra- laptop and desktop computer

2.    Software – The design of the software and the usability aspects of that software

3.    Business – How do we re-engage business to usability? To be involved in the discussion before the product or services is developed

4.    Usability – In general how do we go about addressing usability both in design of specific technology and then the interfaces into the systems that are used on this technology?

To address these questions I am working to meet with several different people, companies and organisations involved in technologies. In meeting with these organisations I am hoping to better understand the questions that need to be asked and considered where building, developing and using technology. Other organisations I hope to meet and talk with are organisations which use technology and understanding how they have addressed these questions and do they have some of the answers.

My first stop will be San Francisco (SF) where I have made contact with Stanford University where I will be meeting Professor Terry Winograd. He is a professor of computer science and is involved with the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Department. He has invited me to visit and to be involved in any of the workshops that might be running at that time. Here I hope to find out about the study of human computer interaction and what is studied.

While in SF I am also arranging to meet representations at Cisco, Facebook, Google and Apple. But as it still is sometime before I head off I am waiting to make contact early in the New Year. I am fortunate to have a close friend, Jack & Lucy who now lives in SF and works for Cisco.

Following SF I then head to Seattle to meet with Microsoft. I am hoping to see their futures laboratories but this is to be confirmed. I have made contact with the Child Protection Agency in Seattle but still waiting on a response. I will follow this up in the New Year. From Seattle I then head to Austin Texas where I will be visiting Motion Computing a manufacturer of tablet computers. Looking at their work with tablets and how they go about design their product. While in Austin I am hoping to catch up with the Department for Child Protection who did a case study on their use of tablet computers in the field. And finally I have received confirmation from Craig Tomlin to meet and discuss his work in Usability. I came across Craig on a blog discussing his views about usability and it was a re-buttle to a response to his article from Charles Mauro of Mauro New Media. I then head to New York to actually me up with Charles.

In New York I have confirmed meetings with Charles Mauro, Adam Greenfield of urbanscale LLC | Design. Adam I came across in a book he wrote called "Everyware" - The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. After reading this book I then started to research Adam and found him in New York and approached him to see if he would meet to discuss some of his idea. He has agreed and is another of my interviews. I have also arrange meetings with the Chief Software Architect of Epicenter Consulting. As well as a number of other contact if I get the time. One of the other locations I am hoping to visit is the IBM futures laboratories just outside of NY but this is still being worked on.

I then head off to Boston to visit MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This has been one of the locations I have dreamt about and the opportunity presented itself. I have made contact with a professor involved in HCI and Usability and will be meeting. I am still trying to find a contact at Harvard to see if I could discuss the business angle with this research project. From Boston I then head to London, UK.

In London I am still working on my contacts. Child Protection in the UK comes under Health but is managed in the shires and Burroughs. I am fortunate in that I have a contact in the Department here in WA who has worked in the UK in the area and working on a contact there. From London I then head to Heidelberg to visit SAP.

SAP recently purchased a company called Sybase and they have a technology which is used in the production and deployment of mobile solutions. At this point in time I don't have much more information. I will be flying into Frankfurt and then taking a train to Heidelberg. From Heidelberg I then catch a train to Salzburg.

In Salzburg I will be visiting  the university of Salzburg and their HCI department. Again I have made contact with one of the professors their and this discussion is to be further developed. I am there as with most places for a week so I am leaving this opportunity open to see what I can achieve. From Salzburg I then catch a train to Vienna.

In Vienna I will be visiting C.U.R.E. the Centre for Usability Research and Engineering. I have has some initial discussions with one of the staff at this centre and this will get further developed early next year. Finally after eights weeks I then head to Singapore via London.

Singapore is 4-5hrs from Perth and will be where I was going to take a break. But I just can't help myself and have already found a connection there. I have made contact with MicroUsability one of the largest usability organisations in the world which is based out of Mumbai. Again I have a confirmed contact and will be corresponding in the New Year to fix dates and times. 

When I arrive in Singapore I will be meeting up with my wife after the initial 8 week for a bit of a break. Before heading back to Perth and work on the 16th July after leaving on the 11th May I would have travelled over 29,000 miles and meet many different people and hopefully be in a better position of understanding to be able to offer some insights into better designs for usability aspect in the area of Child Protection.

Stay tuned for more information as it come to hand. 

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