Gamification

By Sven Koppens on 9 November 2011

Games are hot. It’s undeniable. In the past people looked at gamers as nerds,
antisocial people who lock themselves in their basement for days on end. But this time has long since passed. Nowadays everyone plays games. The concept of gaming is implemented in everyday life.

tagged with: serious games, gamification

How to measure online success?

By Erik Hekman on 5 November 2011

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to download and read the research report from Culture24 focussing on museums and the Internet. Online strategy and how to measure online success were central in this four year during study. Developing effective ways to define, measure and evaluate the success of online activities is an issue faced by all parts of the cultural sector. Organizations regularly invest in cultural websites, social media activities and online services without a clear idea of what the services are trying to achieve, or their intended audience.

tagged with: metrics, museums, social media

Google away but ...

By Olga Steen on 2 November 2011

Revisiting the Media Battle last September. One of the ‘clients’ was a public library looking into attracting new groups of users (students, freelancers, etc) while keeping the existing ones. I was shocked during the intermediate pitches to see how students working on this case were almost ‘allergic’ to books and did not see the point of libraries nor librarians.

tagged with: media battle, library, google, information skills

What’s Augmented Reality?

By Kees Winkel on 31 October 2011

In daily educational humbug, we’re almost halfway with our Mobile Business Design ‘minor’ (a free-of-choice-half-year-course to enhance the bachelor level). And while the students did their first written exam in this context, it struck me that we are talking a lot about locative or Location Based Services but not a lot more about Augmented Reality.
Sure, three of the five teams use Layer or likewise as a technological solution to their heavyweight assignments. But nobody uses the word Augmented Reality anymore. That’s strange. So, in retrospect, what is Augmented Reality?

tagged with: reality, ar, augmented reality

Facebook status: “33 thousand feet above the Atlantic”

By Dennis Ringersma on 28 October 2011

The three-month field research in Southern Africa that my girlfriend and I executed has sadly passed. After a gruelling five-hour traffic jam (during which a three lane highway was temporarily transformed into six lanes) had caused us to miss our plane, we managed to catch our connecting flight to Europe in the nick of time.

tagged with: airbus, mediaplayer, service, 3g, network, online, customer orientated, airline, mediaairbus, media

Most of the organizations are ready for internal blogging. Good for change management?

By Dick van 't Hof on 24 October 2011

With the growing use of social media it goes without saying that more and more organization experts advise: ‘Use it, because otherwise you lose the opportunities of this powerful means.  Of course we can mention some advantages, like:
• Employees and their expertise is easy to reach
• It approaches the informal part of organizations, where their power is
• The informal part determines the competition power of organizations’

tagged with: change management, internal blogging

Measuring or weighing

By Eric Leltz on 21 October 2011

The recent oil disaster in the gulf of Mexico has caused a rise in the gross domestic product (GDP) adjoining countries. The same happened in Alaska when back in 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez created the biggest natural disaster till that moment. But the Alaskan GDP rose because never had there been so much activity in the country. Hotels, restaurants, shops and gas stations did serious business.
This example shows how absurd it is to use economic growth as a sole indicator of progress. Quality of life is not just measured by the number of produced units. A cynic could say: ‘the more disasters the more employment’.

tagged with: knowledge management, implicit, framing, smart

Experience the Museum

By Karen Bosch on 18 October 2011

A few weeks ago the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam has reopened after they started four years ago with a rebuilding. Now the museum is not only interesting for the traditional ‘die hard’ museum visitor who visits only for the collection and for learning. But now it’s also interesting for other target groups such as people who likes to experience things: a whole new type of visitor. The museum has build an attraction inside where you for example can experience a tempest on sea.

tagged with: museumkompas, opportunities, attraction, museum

Artistic Research

By Dick Swart on 14 October 2011

One of the nicest things of doing a Master of Arts instead of a Master of Science is that you are allowed to do Artistic Research. No, this is not an oxymoron. if your fairly open minded than your reaction could be: ‘Okay, we have for instance scientific research, journalistic research and even legal research, so why not artistic research? Please tell me what peculiarities this form of research has compared with other forms!’

tagged with: master, artistic, research

You cannot afford bad affordance

By Thijs Waardenburg on 10 October 2011

The day I started to work at the Crossmedialab I tried to adjust my chair. It is one of those typical office chairs that should be adjustable in every thinkable fashion. I managed to change it in several ways - armrests, seat, back - but I just couldn’t figure out how to adjust the height. A pretty standard and therefore easy accessible option, I would say. Because I am an engineer, I forced myself to understand how it works. So I first turned the chair upside down to see the mechanisms, but they were all covered up. It was only after a few frustrating attempts of pushing and pulling all kind of parts of the chair that I figured out how to change the height of the thing.

To my opinion the chair - or the designer, that is - should give me clear visual hints on how to adjust it. A lever affords pulling, a door with no handle affords pushing, a cup affords pouring fluids into it and so on. Something that is generally known as affordance or to be more precise perceived affordance. Donald Norman describes perceived affordance as: “The appearance of the device could provide the critical clues required for its proper operation” .    

So, I didn’t perceive any good affordance of the way to operate the chair properly. And that frustrated me. Desk chairs are around for many decades. So they should at least have reasonable affordance to be operated properly. Of course this not only goes for desk chairs, but for any technology. But I often see that designers prefer ‘eye-candy’ above the functionality and that can lead to bad affordance. And that, on its turn, can lead to frustration of the user.

Oh, and you can adjust the height of the mentioned desk chair by pulling (!) a small knob that actually affords pushing. It’s placed at the bottom of the right armrest. But to my opinion an explanation about this function shouldn’t be necessary.

_{[1] Norman, D.A., Affordance, Conventions and Design.}

tagged with: deskchair, affordance, form follows function