New Media Writing Prize

Anna's web design skills will be on display at Poole Literary Festival at the end of October where her O2 Tales digital fiction piece has be short listed for the New Media Writing Prize.

O2 Tales was created by Anna using a combination of html and JavaScript with links to Facebook and Twitter using their own APIs. The sound track was created using Audacity and happyworm's jPlayer. The pictures.... well that is of course the very high tech use of some coloured pencils abandoned by her children.

HOTBOOK

The HOTBOOK is an exciting digital literature project for 11 to 14 year olds.

It makes a nice change to be designing a system in a colour scheme other than grey, blue and white which seems to have become a standard of the noughties. What is the future going to look like? The HOTBOOK went through almost as many clothes changes as Doctor Who before the if:book team finally settled on the fantastic outfit it is currently sporting. Take a look at the Bookfutures blog for a preview.

The stick-on buttons were as difficult to manipulate as the cheap alternative to sellotape I still forget not to buy at Christmas, but the result is quirky, especially when they do a spooky disappearing act leaving odd bits of sticky tape behind.

Thanks must go to Queensbridge School in Birmingham for helping me test the system and I look forward to testing it in other schools in the next two weeks. To register interest go to the if:book website.

The Future is Simple

'Simplicity is when someone takes care of the details.'

- from an interesting article posted in Facebook this morning: http://informationarchitects.jp/whats-next-in-web-design/.

The really important bit everyone forgets...

Someone sent me a link to this today with a nice summary as follows:

[Three] concerns must shape our strategy for gaining acceptance of any new technology.

- First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable).

- Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy.

- Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business.

This "Three-E Strategy," if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.

From Tom Haymes, 2008, The Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol 31, no. 4 (October - December 2008)

I have been saying this for years! Often the part of the system that is most neglected (and budget squeezed) is the very part that explains how exactly a system can make life easier for the users. Users are far too often told they must use something or else. Not often enough does someone stop to explain the benefits they can get too!

The people part of any computer system is the most important part. Get the people bit right and the data quality will follow.

CreativeCoffee Club Leicester

Pitt Layfield Associates is delighted to be working with Narrative Laboratory (NLab) on a short social research project looking at CreativeCoffee Club Leicester.

NLab's CreativeCoffee Club Leicester has been running for about eighteen months, meeting alternate Wednesdays during term-time. Since the Club started there have been some dramatic changes in the global economic situation, and an explosion of local and national networks and social media tools.

The survey will examine current provision and inform the planning of future activity.