Elk Bratwurst with Purple Sauerkraut
Friday, May 18, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Obligate Carnivore Slumber
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Obligate predators sleep hard, even when their food comes in a bowl.
Designing Search: As-You-Type Suggestions
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - Tony Russell-Rose
Have you ever tried the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google? It’s meant to take you directly to the result you want, rather than return a list of results. It’s a simple idea, and when it works it seems like magic.
But most of the time we are not so lucky. We submit a query and review the results, only to find they’re not quite what we were looking for. Occasionally, we review a further page or two of results, but in most cases it’s quicker just to enter a new query and try again. In fact, this pattern of behaviour is so common that techniques have been developed specifically to help us along this part of our information journey. In particular, three versions of as-you-type suggestions— auto-complete, auto-suggest, and instant results—subtly guide us in creating and...read more
By Tony Russell-Rose
Taking Mobile Global:Tips for Aligning Mobile and Global Web Strategies
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - John Yunker
With more than 55 million iPads in use around the world and more than 400 million smartphones sold in 2011, companies are increasingly thinking “mobile first” when developing their web and mobile app strategies.
Hotels.com, for example, offers not only a mobile-optimized website but mobile apps specific to both the iPad and iPhone.
Unfortunately, as companies rush to go mobile, they often overlook the importance of maintaining their global reach. That is, their mobile...read more
By John Yunker
May Wildflowers in Texas Hill Country
Saturday, May 12, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Indian Blankets, Lemon Mint, Prairie Coneflowers, and Texas Thistle are dominant now.
Indian Blankets, Texas Thistle
W3C Invites Implementations of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Multimodal Interaction Working Group. has published a Candidate Recommendation of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. As the web is becoming ubiquitous, interactive, and multimodal, technology needs to deal increasingly with human factors, including emotions. The specification of Emotion Markup Language 1.0 aims to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness. The language is conceived as a "plug-in" language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data; (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior; and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior.
The group also published Vocabularies for EmotionML, a Working Group Note.
Learn more about the Multimodal Interaction Activity.
Registration for W3C Online Course on Programming Mobile Web Apps; Early Bird Rate through 25 May
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - W3C Staff
W3C is pleased to announce that registration is open for a new edition of the W3C online course "Mobile Web 2: Programming Web Applications". Developed by the W3C/MobiWebApp team and taught by Marcos Caceres, this course gives developers all the tools and knowledge necessary to write mobile Web applications that can ship both online and in application stores, using today's advanced technologies. The 6-week course begins 11 June. An early bird rate of 195 Euros is available until 25 May; after that date the full price is 225 Euros so register now.
Call for Review: Geolocation API Specification Proposed Recommendation Published
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Geolocation Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Geolocation API Specification. This specification defines an API that provides scripted access to geographical location information associated with the hosting device. Comments are welcome through 10 June. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.
6 Key Questions to Guide International UX Research
Thursday, May 10, 2012 - Liang Zhang, Pamela Walshe, Elizabeth Shelly
Are you worried about how customers in other countries will react to your product or service? Not really sure who your international customers even are, or what they want and need? To find out, it might be time to pop outside the domestic market and conduct an international user research study.
Understanding international customers is more critical than ever as emerging market economies continue their rapid expansion. With Internet and mobile usage in particular, the recent adoption rates have been astonishing. China reported 513 million Internet users by the end of 20111—an increase of 30% since 2009—with nearly 70% of them accessing the Internet using handheld devices. Meanwhile, in the next decade seven emerging economies including China, India, and Brazil, are on track to...read more
By Liang Zhang, Pamela Walshe, Elizabeth Shelly
W3C Launches Linked Data Platform Working Group
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - W3C Staff
Today W3C launched the new Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group to promote the use of linked data on the Web. Per its charter, the group will explain how to use a core set of services and technologies to build powerful applications capable of integrating public data, secured enterprise data, and personal data. The platform will be based on proven Web technologies including HTTP for transport, and RDF and other Semantic Web standards for data integration and reuse. The group will produce supporting materials, such as a description of uses cases, a list of requirements, and a test suite and/or validation tools to help ensure interoperability and correct implementation.
Learn more about the Semantic Web.
W3C Community Groups Growing Source of Web Innovation
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - W3C Staff
W3C announced today that eight months after the launch of Community Groups to speed Web innovation, more than 1200 people are participating in 80 groups with wide-ranging interests, including mobile profiles, Web games, and big data. "We wanted to encourage richer and more diverse conversations about Web technology at W3C, and we are off to a great start," said Jeff Jaffe, W3C CEO. "A number of design choices (such as the permissive copyright license) have made this an appealing work environment to important stakeholders. The program is young but promising, and will continue to improve as we learn from our community."
The W3C Membership, which convenes next week at its semi-annual meeting, plays a preeminent role both in Community Groups and in turning innovations into interoperable, Royalty-Free Web standards through an open consensus process. Open Web Platform traction has resulted in more than 80 organizations becoming W3C Members in the past year. Read the full press release and testimonials from some new W3C Members and learn more about W3C Community and Business Groups.
W3C Invites Implementations of Battery Status API; Vibration API
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Device APIs Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendations of Battery Status API and Vibration API. The first defines an API that provides information about the battery status of the hosting device. The second defines an API that provides access to the vibration mechanism of the hosting device. W3C publishes a Candidate Recommendation to indicate that the document is believed to be stable and to encourage implementation by the developer community. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.
Last Call: Performance Timeline; User Timing
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Web Performance Working Group has published two Last Call Working Drafts: Performance Timeline and User Timing. The first defines an unified interface to store and retrieve performance metric data. The second defines an interface to help web developers measure the performance of their applications by giving them access to high precision timestamps. Comments are welcome through 07 June. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.
Three RDFa Specifications are Proposed Recommendations
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - W3C Staff
The RDF Web Applications Working Group has published three Proposed Recommendations for RDFa Core 1.1, RDFa Lite 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1.
Together, these documents outline the vision for RDFa in a variety of XML and HTML-based Web markup languages. RDFa Core 1.1 specifies the core syntax and processing rules for RDFa 1.1 and how the language is intended to be used in XML documents. RDFa Lite 1.1 provides a simple subset of RDFa for novice web authors. XHTML+RDFa 1.1 specifies the usage of RDFa in the XHTML markup language. The group also published a draft of the RDFa 1.1 Primer today.
Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.
Combining In-Person and Remote Research
Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - Sabina Idler
In the early 90’s, Jakob Nielsen declared in-person user research as state of the art. “User testing with real users is the most fundamental usability method and is in some sense irreplaceable, since it provides direct information about how people use computers [...]”.1 Sometimes in-person user research can be logistically impractical or cost prohibitive, so remote user research is often employed as an alternative. As well, companies that specialize in user research often combine both in-person and remote user research.
In-person user research has been around the longest, and is still widely used as a great way to gather feedback on websites, advertisements, or software. In-person research usually involves letting users perform tasks on a computer while asking them questions, observing their behaviors and body language, or having them think out loud. Additional hardware can be used, such as eye tracking devices.
Most research...read more
By Sabina Idler
New Design Practices for Touch-free Interactions
Monday, May 7, 2012 - Brian Pagán
Touch interaction has become practically ubiquitous in developed markets, and that has changed users' expectations and the way UX practitioners think about human–computer interaction (HCI). Now, touch-free gestures and Natural Language Interaction (NLI) are bleeding into the computing mainstream the way touch did years ago. These will again disrupt UX, from the heuristics that guide us, to our design patterns and deliverables.
HCI Is Getting "All Shook Up"
With touch, people were given a more natural, intuitive way to interact with computing devices. As it moved into the mainstream, it opened up new interaction paradigms. Touch-free gestures and NLI, while not...read more
By Brian Pagán
Feet First
Sunday, May 6, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Some can’t abide shoes. Young and living from the toes up. Running, jumping, bleeding, and running some more.
Free Feet
Duct Tape X-Wing
Sunday, May 6, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Boy full of daydreaming hero seeks evil empire with fatal flaw.
Tzatziki
Friday, May 4, 2012 - Ryan Boren
Homemade Tzatziki. This one is heavy on mint from the garden and balanced with a metric fuckload of garlic. Addictive.
Content as Conversation
Friday, May 4, 2012 - Ginny Redish
Every use of your website is a conversation started by a site visitor.
Think about it: why do people come to your site or app?
IA, Search, Design, and Technology All Support the Content
Site visitors and app users come for the content. Of course, the information architecture (IA) and the site search must make that content easy to find. The design must be attractive and usable. The technology must work.
But IA, search, design, and technology are all there to support the content that people come for: the words and images that make up the conversations between your visitors and your site or app.
Planning Successful Conversations
Planning is critical for successful conversations. I find that answering these three questions helps greatly for everything I write (even...read more
By Ginny Redish
Two CSS Level 3 Modules Published: Exclusions and Shapes; Regions
Thursday, May 3, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group published Working Drafts of CSS Exclusions and Shapes Module Level 3 and CSS Regions Module Level 3. Exclusions and Shapes lets people define arbitrary areas around which inline content content can flow. CSS Exclusions extend the notion of content wrapping previously limited to floats. The CSS regions module allows content to flow across multiple areas called regions. The regions are not necessarily contiguous in the document order. Learn more about the Style Activity.
Five Provenance Drafts Published
Thursday, May 3, 2012 - W3C Staff
The Provenance Working Group published 5 Working Drafts today related to the PROV data model. Provenance information can be used for many purposes, such as understanding how data was collected so it can be meaningfully used, determining ownership and rights over an object, making judgments about information to determine whether to trust it, verifying that the process and steps used to obtain a result complies with given requirements, and reproducing how something was generated. The PROV model is used to represent provenance records, which contain descriptions of the entities and activities involved in producing and delivering or otherwise influencing a given object.
- PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model introduces the provenance concepts found in PROV and defines PROV-DM types and relations.
- Constraints of the Provenance Data Model introduces a further set of concepts useful for understanding the PROV data model and defines inferences that are allowed on provenance statements and validity constraints that PROV instances should follow. These inferences and constraints are useful for readers who develop applications that generate provenance or reason over provenance. (First Public Working Draft)
- PROV-N: The Provenance Notation allows serializations of PROV instances to be created in a compact manner. (First Public Working Draft)
- PROV-O: The PROV Ontology expresses the PROV Data Model using the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2).
- PROV Model Primer provides an intuitive introduction and guide to the PROV specification for provenance on the Web.
Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.
New UX Job Opportunities Via UX Magazine
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - UX Magazine Staff
You may not be job hunting right now, but it’s still interesting to look at recent job postings in aggregate to see where the jobs are, what the positions are called, and what sorts of companies have the openings. And if you know someone who's looking for a change, they might find an opportunity here.
These employers' support of UX Magazine is part of what makes it possible for us to bring you frequent, high quality articles for free, so please help support us by supporting these employers in their search for new UX team members.
| Associate Director, Product Partnerships Verizon Wireless - Basking Ridge, NJ | UX Strategist ...read more By UX Magazine Staff W3C Advisory Committee Elects Advisory BoardTuesday, May 1, 2012 - W3C StaffThe W3C Advisory Committee has filled six open seats on the W3C Advisory Board. Created in 1998, the Advisory Board provides guidance to the Team on issues of strategy, management, legal matters, process, and conflict resolution. Beginning 1 July 2012, the nine Advisory Board participants are Ann Bassetti (Boeing), Jim Bell (HP), Michael Champion (Microsoft), Steve Holbrook (IBM), Qiuling Pan (Huawei), Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar Semiconductor), Ora Lassila (Nokia), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera), and Takeshi Natsuno (Keio University). Steve Zilles continues as interim Advisory Board Chair. Read more about the Advisory Board. Magic Flight Launch BoxTuesday, May 1, 2012 - Ryan BorenCall for Implementations: Web Workers; HTML5 Web MessagingTuesday, May 1, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of two Candidate Recommendations:
Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. Three SPARQL 1.1 Last Call Drafts PublishedTuesday, May 1, 2012 - W3C StaffThe SPARQL Working Group published three Last Call Working Drafts today:
Comments are welcome through 01 June. The group is further planning to shortly release a 2nd Last Call working draft of the SPARQL 1.1 Query Language, after which we plan to advance all Recommendation track drafts in the next iteration to Proposed Recommendation directly. To this end, the group is currently gathering implementation reports and would appreciate reports from the community of implementations of any of the SPARQL1.1 specifications. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity. CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3 Draft PublishedTuesday, May 1, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Working Draft of CSS Writing Modes Module Level 3. CSS Writing Modes Level 3 defines CSS features to support for various international writing modes, such as left-to-right (e.g. Latin or Indic), right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew or Arabic), bidirectional (e.g. mixed Latin and Arabic) and vertical (e.g. Asian scripts). Learn more about the Style Activity. Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization Draft PublishedTuesday, May 1, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Internationalization Core Working Group has published a Working Draft of Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0: Normalization. This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference on the use of normalization of text and string identity matching on the Web. The goal of this specification is to improve interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web. Learn more about the Internationalization Activity. Bison, Anchovy, Goat Cheese, Jalapeño PizzaTuesday, May 1, 2012 - Ryan BorenMmmm, look at those anchovies.         Using Proto-Personas for Executive AlignmentTuesday, May 1, 2012 - Jeff Gothelf When working in-house as a UX practitioner, one of the constant challenges is getting a seat at the leadership table. Without a VP or C-level champion who is specifically focused on UX, the alternative is often a proxy-champion such as the VP of Product, or even a marketing executive. Without a consistent voice of the customer present in executive discussions, corporate strategy, and product direction, decisions are debated and made based on each executive’s responsibilities and professional perspectives. The marketing executive will push for marketing initiatives important to meeting her goals, while the customer service champion will push for greater support for his department, and so on for each department present in these meetings. The VP of Product should...read more W3C Workshop: Web-Based SignageThursday, April 26, 2012 - W3C StaffW3C announces today a Workshop on Web-Based Signage, 14-15 June in Tokyo (Chiba), Japan, and hosted by NTT. W3C is organizing a workshop to share perspectives, business use cases, and technology requirements so that the Open Web Platform can be used on large digital displays (such as those found in city squares and at sporting events). We invite operators of consumer electronics companies, digital signage platforms, advertisers, browser vendors, sign owners, and others to participate in this discussion. W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop. Please submit a statement of interest by 16 May and learn more about participation. Call for Review: Media Queries Proposed Recommendation PublishedThursday, April 26, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Media Queries. HTML and CSS support media-dependent style sheets tailored for different media types. For example, a document may use sans-serif fonts when displayed on a screen and serif fonts when printed. Media queries extend the functionality of media types by allowing more precise labeling of style sheets. Please see the Working Group's implementation report and the Media Queries Test Suite. Comments on the Proposed Recommendation are welcome through 23 May. Learn more about the Style Activity. Last Call: Server-Sent EventsThursday, April 26, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Web Applications Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of Server-Sent Events. This specification defines an API for opening an HTTP connection for receiving push notifications from a server in the form of DOM events. The API is designed such that it can be extended to work with other push notification schemes such as Push SMS. Comments are welcome through 17 May. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. Creativity-based Research: The Process of Co-Designing with UsersTuesday, April 24, 2012 - catalina.naranjo.bock The practice of co-design allows users to become an active part of the creative development of a product by interacting directly with design and research teams. It is grounded in the belief that all people are creative and that users, as experts of their own experiences, bring different points of view that inform design and innovation direction. Co-design is a method that can be used in all stages of the design process, but especially in the ideation or concepting phases. Partnering with users ensures their inclusion in knowledge development, idea generation, and concept development on products whose ultimate goal is to best serve these same users. In this article I will examine the different stages of a co-design research process, as well as the methods and practices that are...read more Early bird extension until 25 April: W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Training CourseMonday, April 23, 2012 - W3C StaffGet started in developing Web sites that work well on mobile devices by registering to W3C's "Mobile Web 1: Best Practices" online training course! The now 6-week long course starts Monday, 30 April. Read the course description and register before April 25 and save 30 Euros! Call for Participation in The Graphical Web 2012Friday, April 20, 2012 - W3C StaffDevelopers and designers are excited by the ability to use the graphical features of all modern browsers - Canvas, SVG, CSS, WebGL, and HTML5 video and audio. W3C is proud to support The Graphical Web 2012, which is both the first in a new international conference series on Open Web Graphics and the 10th conference on Scalable Vector Graphics, 11-14 September 2012. This year, the conference returns to Switzerland and the site of the first SVG Open. ETH Zürich will be hosting the conference at its Hönggerberg campus. Members of the W3C SVG Working Group, including W3C Team members Chris Lilley and Doug Schepers, will be attending the conference. The SVG Working Group will also brief attendees on recent developments around the SVG specification, including SVG2 and integration with CSS3 and HTML5. The conference includes a day of instructional courses. The deadline for presentation abstracts and course outlines is 7 May. Learn more about the W3C Graphics Activity. W3C Invites Implementations of Web IDLThursday, April 19, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Web Applications Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of Web IDL. This document defines an interface definition language, Web IDL, that can be used to describe interfaces that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow the behavior of common script objects in the web platform to be specified more readily. How interfaces described with Web IDL correspond to constructs within ECMAScript execution environments is also detailed in this document. It is expected that this document acts as a guide to implementors of already-published specifications, and that newly published specifications reference this document to ensure conforming implementations of interfaces are interoperable. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. 5 Ways to Create Better iPad ApplicationsThursday, April 19, 2012 - Ken Yarmosh We've just passed the two-year mark of the iPad being on the market. And with a second milestone of 200,000 iPad applications on the App Store nearing, there's no better time than now to reassess how to approach the UX of iPad applications. Some of the ideas in this article are relevant to all tablets, not just the iPad. But in consideration of the tremendous success of the iPad (73% of all tablet sales last year), it does warrant specific attention and focus. So, without further ado, here are five interface guidelines to (re)consider when approaching the UX and design of iPad applications. 1. Retiring the Tab BarIntersection of the Physical and Digital WorldsWednesday, April 18, 2012 - KeepAustinWired It seems like every few weeks, we hear about a new field that falls under the umbrella of “design.” Though it is a great time to be a designer, we are not taking full advantage of the learning and techniques that stem from other design fields. With all the exciting new divergences in design and with the pressures of deadlines and deliverables, we can lose sight of the past and forget to combine traditional design methods in innovative ways to keep the field moving forward. My colleague Lindsay Moore and I wondered if there was a way to design better. We wanted to know what would happen if we combined the best aspects of interaction design and product design, as well as a little service design. This would hopefully allow us to create a holistic experience that transcends...read more Incubator Group Report: Towards a Semantic Decision Representation FormatTuesday, April 17, 2012 - W3C StaffThe W3C Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group has published their final report. The mission of the Decisions and Decision-Making Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, was to determine the requirements, use cases, and a representation of decisions and decision-making in a collaborative and networked environment suitable for leading to a potential standard for decision exchange, shared situational awareness, and measurement of the speed, effectiveness, and human factors of decision-making. The Incubator Group explored the question over the last year, including use cases, requirements and formats for representing decisions in a machine-understandable format. A standardized decision format would allow the decisions that occur everyday to be managed, archived, shared, and tracked. Two key benefits include the ability to expand and advance the meaningful use of web linked data, as well as the ability to tie-in domain knowledge to provide decision context. The final report captures the major accomplishments and results of the incubator group and ends with a recommendation to transition into a W3C Working Group for the establishment of a Decision Markup Language (DecisionML). This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track. W3C Invites Implementations of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - W3C StaffThe Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of CSS Backgrounds and Borders Module Level 3. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. This draft contains the features of CSS level 3 relating to borders and backgrounds. It includes and extends the functionality of CSS level 2, which builds on CSS level 1. The main extensions compared to level 2 are borders consisting of images, boxes with multiple backgrounds, boxes with rounded corners and boxes with shadows. Learn more about the Style Activity.
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