BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) – The Xbox One is a great machine with a ton of potential. It will eventually realize said potential but for now it’s good and borderline annoying at times. That time will shrink considerably depending on the release dates of the games you want to play. 

Pregame Warmup – System Overview

In today’s NFL, the expectation is that rookies should come into the league contributing to a team and winning football games. The higher the draft pick, the higher the expectations. Last year, Andrew Luck was drafted first overall by the Indianapolis Colts and for the most part lived up to those expectations. He led the Colts to the playoffs and while they didn’t win, it was a sign of things to come. Even in his second year the Colts are off to a great start.

Continuing with the football analogies, the next generation is starting with the PS4 and Xbox One. Sure you COULD consider the WiiU, but it’s more like last gen than next gen so I will not discuss Nintendo’s offering further. In this metaphor the PS4 and Xbox One are Andrew Luck and RGIII respectively (the WiiU might be Brandon Weeden).

I compare the PS4 to Andrew Luck as the PS4 is highlighting its focus on games. Andrew Luck is a prototypical pocket passer with a very high IQ ala Peyton Manning. Conversely, the Xbox One began its media campaign touting all of the extraneous things that it can do as a machine and then showed off some games at a separate venue. Robert Griffin III (RGIII) has a cannon for an arm AND can run like nobody’s business. RGIII is supposed to revolutionize the NFL and Microsoft hopes the X1 does the same thing both for the gaming industry and the entertainment industry.

The Xbox One comes with one machine, Kinect 2.0 and a controller for $499. The PS4 comes without a camera (Kinect) for $399. For further comparison, the Xbox 360 launched for $399 and the PS3 launched for $599 in 2005 and 2006 respectively. Consoles are complicated computers and while I’m not excited about the cost, when I consider that a decently equipped gaming PC could end up costing four times that price and last me half as long as a console, I’m not complaining. I don’t drink coffee and I haven’t drank sodas since I was 14 – I take that money I save and put it towards gaming. Right now I’m in the black.

Kickoff – Initial Set Up

Unboxing the system was easy. I was able to score a Day One edition and honestly aside from superficial styling, some avatar goodies or achievement, I can’t tell much of a difference. The Kinect fits on a shelf above my TV and thankfully the cord is generously long. I would say at least 6 ft but probably more like 9 ft. I have a home theater so it is resting on top of my center channel speaker (more on that later).

The console is larger than the Xbox 360 but smaller I would say than the original Xbox and can not stand on its side. It looks good in black and has replaced my Blu-ray player. I moved my HDMI for my DirecTV box from my receiver and put it in the Xbox One (HDMI in). I then plugged in the Xbox One’s HDMI out to the receiver to complete the daisy chain. I used a CAT5 cable for internet as I don’t want any interference for online gaming, though the Xbox One does come with Wi-Fi built in.

The OS at initial startup needs an update from Xbox Live. Thankfully I don’t live in Okinawa any longer or I would still be waiting for it to finish downloading. Microsoft did have a way to download the patch to a thumbstick pre-Nov 15th in the event Xbox Live (Microsoft’s gaming network) went down but it was unnecessary. It was a substantial patch, but the 450 gigs went quickly.

While this is inconvenient, I completely understand the logistics of the process. Microsoft has attempted to fix early supply/demand issues that have plagued previous system launches by shipping a system earlier to get ahead of the logistical curve. This is a good move by Microsoft in my opinion knowing that people who were early adopters most likely will get on the internet. I expect that the strategy will work and in future builds will be less necessary as they preload system patches on shipping consoles.

Pass Interference – Gamertag Migration

Once I got online, my fun deviated from the typical gamer experience. What is supposed to happen is any current Xbox Live customer signs into his/her new console with an email and password. The Xbox One then downloads the profile and voila, gaming can commence. That didn’t happen to me and I will take some of the blame.

I have a lovely wife and three minions who live with me. I love them dearly and they tolerate me most of the time. During those times of epic tolerance, we will occasionally play games. Since the Xbox 360 allows for individual profiles (and my reluctance to have minion #2 constantly changing my avatars/spartans to pink females), I created Xbox Live accounts for everyone. The Xbox Live Family program grants four gold passes for less than the price of two so it was a deal. And before you go all crazy math on me, the youngest minion only has a local account.

Anyway, one of the great features that Xbox put in place is this family plan. As a parent, I can put gaming limits on said minions while blocking friend requests and explicit content (including voice chat from the unbathed masses). This seemed like a win-win. Then came some security issues.

Microsoft requires an email account for all gamertags. If you don’t have an email account at the time of creation, it will create an email for you whether you like it or not. And you don’t get a say as to what it is at the time of creation, so one minion is something like lodgedhelmet02851@xboxlivefamily.com (notice I said like). Who remembers this garbage? Why not make it my GAMERTAG that I created to the tune of gamertag@xblf.com? It should be unique because the gamertag has to be unique. But I digress… some more.

Recently security efforts have stepped up to ensure phishers aren’t hacking accounts. One of the measures is to ask for a good contact email for each account. Well, since my kids are gamers and not emailers I gave the system my email for each one. I thought this was for the system to contact me, not for identification purposes.

A few months ago we had an issue signing the senior minion into my console. The system kept asking for his email and password, neither of which we knew. At first I could override that because I am the parental unit/primary account holder but it was an issue I wanted to fix. After several emails and phone calls to Microsoft, we came to a resolution – all family members could sign in with their crazy emails and corresponding passwords. Disaster averted.

Fast forward to Launch night, maybe 0100. I’m ready to go and I enter my info for my account and the system asks for an adult. What? I’m the adult. I try again. It states that my gamertag is associated with a youth and I need an adult’s permission to get on. Remember my email that I typed into everyone’s account? *Facepalm. While I should have tried to contact Microsoft again (during launch night, shah), I was more inclined to try my hand at creative problem solving.

I looked online at some forum posts but ultimately downloaded the wife’s profile then granted myself permission to play on the Xbox. Yes, insert kitchen pass joke here. Thank you better half for permission to play my games  and I will always love you.

One interesting (and disturbing) thing that Microsoft is doing put me out. The way the system recognizes that the wife is a parent is that it charges a credit cart $0.50 each time you ask for parental permission to download a profile. I don’t know about you, but that’s ridiculous. I don’t understand what it’s doing, but I do know it’s doing it. The system states that the charge is mostly going to charity and I’m all for charitable giving, but I feel like I’m held hostage by my gaming system. I just want to play games.

Film Study – Launch Titles

Alright, I have the system hooked up and I’m ready to go and I want to play games. Xbox One launched with nearly two dozen games and this is very good from a quantity standpoint. To go a little further into it, games are either exclusive or nonexclusive. This means that some games will be available on most consoles like Madden football or Call of Duty, but some games will be exclusive to a specific console like Halo on the Xbox. Both PS4 and Xbox One have exclusives and oftentimes these games are system sellers. That said, I don’t think many systems were sold this year because of exclusive games with a few exceptions.

To illustrate my point, we’ll get in a super Delorean and go back in time. When the Nintendo Entertainment System launched in the 80s, it came with Super Mario Bros. Everyone wanted to play that game (we STILL want to play that game). Then Sega released the Genesis and it came with Altered Beast which wasn’t a bad game. When the original Xbox launched, Halo was there on the shelf to move the system, and boy did it move it.

When the Xbox 360 launched, I hoped that the new Halo would be a game called Perfect Dark Zero. It wasn’t. One game that did impress a lot of people though was Call of Duty 2. When I think back on it, I probably played a puzzle game called Hexic more than either of those two games.

Despite not having a fantastic launch game, I loved the Xbox 360 from the beginning. Why? Because it had a large portion of original Xbox games from the get go and in some cases the 360 made them better. Halo 2 from the original Xbox and now played on the new Xbox 360 was actually on a superior wireless controller in HD. I had a library of games to play and I was set.

Historically there have been some good games, a few great games, and a number of ok games with each launch. I think this generation’s crop is similar. Many popular franchises brought out next generation offerings on both systems but few of them took advantage of the hardware changes.

In general, any fledgling system is going to have growing pains. The game developers need to know what the system can do while still making money developing games for the established gaming systems. For example, in 2005 EA published Madden 2005 and everyone expected that the game would be SO MUCH BETTER on the Xbox 360 than on the original Xbox. It wasn’t for a number of reasons, but a major one was because EA would sell 10 times as many copies of the Xbox version than the 360 version. Couple that with the fact that building games takes tools and an understanding of the hardware and it isn’t an easy thing.

Going back to the quarterback situation, while Andrew Luck may have more raw talent than Peyton Manning, Manning has years of experience and it pays off. Peyton can read a defense and make adjustments like no other because he’s familiar with his system. He knows his own offensive strengths and can tailor his plays to work magic on the football field.

Likewise, game developers have had eight years with the current Xbox 360. They are familiar with the current generation hardware and can do amazing things with it. Conversely, they have had Xbox One systems for barely any time (less than a year) so the developers can’t maximize the games yet.

I Formation – My Games on the Xbox One

I picked up two games, Forza and Killer Instinct and both are exclusive. Forza Motorsports 5 is a racing game and looks amazing. The game uses many of the new controller’s enhancements, specifically the rumble in the triggers. When you’re braking you feel the left trigger rubble like ABS and I love it. The minions thankfully will not be driving anytime soon but they do enjoy the driving dynamics and crashing their cars.

Another neat deal with the game is the Drivatars. Using magic and “cloud tech” after you race a few races, Forza creates AI drivers based on your own techniques. So far three of us have played the game and when each of us race through the career single-player mode, the other two’s cars are there competing (or trying to wreck me). Minion #1’s camouflage Subaru is a treat to see in the races and makes for a surreal experience. There are hundreds of hours available on this game if you want to race or design cars.

Some people are upset because previous iterations of Forza had both more cars and more tracks. This is a consequence of the new tech again. Forza had to make the car and track models over again because the tech allows for greater technology. Just like when Blu-ray disks were released, it took time to remaster movies for them. Studios couldn’t simply record DVDs onto Blu-ray and be done. And it isn’t like playing Cruisin USA with a dozen cars (which was epic) – Forza has 200 cars and more to come.

My other game that I “purchased” was Killer Instinct. It’s a remake of a fighting game of the same title from the early 90s. I say purchase because I downloaded what is effectively a free demo but I can buy a copy of the game for $20 on XBL (Xbox Live).

The game itself is pretty good but this is where I show my snobbery. I dislike immensely using a standard controller to play fighting games. I am enjoying the demo, but it’s going to take a number of hours north of a dozen to get comfortable. The alternative is to purchase a Tournament Stick for the Xbox One but at $200 apiece, that’s a lot of money (or coffees not partaken). What’s REALLY frustrating is that the previous generation sticks use a USB connection, the same as the Xbox One, and it is not an option. I hope that this is fixed in the future as some arcade sticks have been compatible with 360 and PC in the past.

One thing about the Xbox One that I love is how convenient it is to purchase games. I purchased both games from XBL and downloaded them straight to the box. Since you have to install each game to play it, I figured I would forego the physical scratches on my disks that ruin them anyway and stay digital.

It has an additional consequence. Since the games are installed from a digital copy, I can go straight to it without inserting a disk. The Xbox 360 had the same functionality for any game that was digital, so it’s not unique but it’s still awesome.

As well, I was able to start playing the game prior to it completing the download. At about 35%, the game told me “ready to play” and I was able to start up. The system OS is snappy and brought me to the game quickly. In fact, all the apps are quick and responsive (for the most part).

In the Trenches – Operating the Machine

So that brings me to the OS. It’s very similar to the 360 in layout and it’s clean. It can multitask very well and I haven’t had many hangups with the OS. I have had problems figuring out what to do or how to do things in the system, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Since day one I have adopted the all-or-nothing approach for the console, or as Yoda would say it “do or do not, there is no try.” The device comes with the Kinect so I am going to use it. However it’s not perfect. So far I can talk to it and it gets a lot of what I say right, but sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s like Siri (Apple’s iPhone assistant) in that regard, and I think the system will only get better. But for something that the system is designed around, it’s not perfect.

The first night I used the Xbox to watch TV but I didn’t have a way to tell the system that I have an A/V receiver. Everything goes through the receiver but I couldn’t initially find the settings to set it up. The next morning I did (call it sleep deprivation) so now I can say “Xbox, volume up” and the volume does up on the receiver. While it’s novel, I can see using “Xbox mute” more often and thankfully that is an option.

When we come into proximity of the sensor i.e. the living room, the Kinect does sign me and the minions into the console automatically. That’s pretty fantastic. However, my minions now all want to talk to the Xbox One and when it doesn’t work, they just get louder and louder (like Americans in foreign countries) but the Xbox is frustratingly inconsistent with its responses. Saying “Xbox Pause” multiple times during Pacific Rim does not impress the wife nor me.

Special Teams – Apps

The Watch TV app was easy to set up. A few steps allowed me to tell the Xbox One my provider, my cable box type and my channel lineup based on my location/zip code. The DirecTV, along with my other devices, is controlled by the Kinect using an IR blaster. Simply stating “Xbox, watch ESPN” changes the channel to ESPN and it works as consistently as the rest of the Kinect commands (again, I have about 90% accuracy – minions are about 20%).

OneGuide is an extension of the TV app. It allows me to pick my favorite channels and they are there in one place. I have no idea what 97% of the channels I have on my DirecTV lineup as I want to watch the four networks and ESPN or NFL only (Sunday Ticket FTW – free with a new signup). This setup has those shows right there in one place, and that’s a plus.

Another crazy thing that is awesome is the “snap” command. The Xbox One allows me to pull up any app on the side of whatever I’m currently doing. Minions watching My Little Pony on Netflix that were previously interrupted by the Buckeyes now can only be mildly inconvenienced as I check scores. I am talking over their program and may lead to future griefing as they think it’s fun to turn off the Xbox with their voices, but that may only happen once (wink wink – the Xbox asks for conformation on that request).

A couple of other apps worth mentioning are Twitch and Xbox Fitness. Twitch is an app that allows you to watch other people playing games. While that may not seem like your cup of tea, it is a fascinating experience observing live play of some games you are considering purchasing. I saw a beta test of Diablo III, Reaper of Souls and it was pretty great to just veg out and watch someone else do the work. It could get addictive and it certainly is informative.

Then there is Xbox Fitness. This is a free app for XBL Gold members and it is basically P90X, Insanity and a few other fitness programs wrapped up with the Kinect Sensor. The Kinect tracks my movement and sends feedback in the form of “great form” or “raise your legs more” during exercises. I did have to stream all of the content, but it’s a different way to utilize the gaming console. When I did the movements correctly, I gained “fp” like playing a game of Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The fp is probably fuel points but I have no idea. Anyway, at the end of the workout it gives a summary so next time I’ll try and beat it. One note – it’s not the entire program but only a taste of each. I hope that they will expand their library in the future.

Monday Morning Quarterback – Some Loose Ends

The Blu-ray player is an app that you have to download separately (why it’s not part of the day one patch is beyond me). It works well as the movies are crisp and look great.

What doesn’t look great is the DirecTV feed through the Xbox One. While my sample size is small, I am a bit concerned that the programming coming through the Xbox One is somewhat diminished in clarity. I still have some experimenting to do and it might be me being picky, but I have noticed a softened picture.

Right now the Xbox One can control my whole system. It’s really wild but I didn’t think that it would do it day one. The wife thinks I’m nuts for talking to the TV, and maybe it’s the “command voice” but it can be great. When you walk in the room and say “Xbox On,” it’s straight out of Back to the Future as the TV, Xbox, DirecTV box and A/V Receiver turn on. Now, the receiver may be on a different input (Apple TV or Xbox 360 – more on that in a second) so there’s that, but it is a pretty big step in automation. “Xbox, Turn Off” does what you would expect and everything goes off.

Why do I still have my Xbox 360 hooked up to my entertainment center? It’s because I have to in order to play some of favorite games. My biggest gripe bar none with the Xbox One is its lack of backwards compatibility (ability to play Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One – think Blu-ray player playing DVD or CDs). I understand that the new system has different internal guts, but Microsoft is THE software company (sorry Apple). The Xbox One has multiple OSes running at all times – what’s one more? Couldn’t they have written code to emulate the 360? Is there an app for that? Again, I don’t get it.

The controller has a lot of potential. I love the trigger motors and I’m meh on the bumpers. It is a lighter controller and that’s a plus. The D-pad (the cross on the left side) clicks and feels a little stiffer.

It has lost some things though. The 360 controller had a light ring that let me know which controller went with which player. This is extremely convenient when trying to help three minions be the right Spartans (oftentimes for dress up) or more likely when playing Minecraft finding which screen to help the littlest minion build another house with her name on it.

Instead, the controller has an infrared-type thingy on it so the Kinect can recognize the controller. It uses this in conjunction with the facial recognition to pair up the controller with the player. This is cool but I can’t see infrared. And even more annoying is when Dad comes in to save the day, the Kinect cries foul. It seems to tell me to give the controller back (or something like that) as it pauses the game to ask who has the controller. I may be able to change that setting, but since I’m not exactly sure what it’s doing we’ll see.

Speaking of settings, the Xbox One seems to be very lean on them. I’m looking for an advanced or administrative tab but I haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s an app I have to download. You know how I had the issue with getting online with my gamertag, well the device thinks that I am minion #1’s first name. Xbox.com addresses me correctly. My Xbox 360 knows who’s paying the bills. But the Xbox One thinks that I have an identity crisis. Maybe I do and the Kinect can see into my soul, but more likely I think some bits have been switched. And I can’t find on the Xbox where I can correct it.

I also haven’t synced my universal Harmony remote with the Xbox One yet. Why would I do that? Because having a state-of-the-art system that only you can operate is a no go. It’s going to take some programming if it’s even possible but we’ll see.

Lastly, where’s the screen saver? I mean, it came in Windows 3.1, but seriously? I learned in the 80s while playing in an arcade that static images can be harmful for a display. Maybe it’s there and I haven’t waited long enough for it to come on, but it’s a risk I’m not going to take on my own equipment. Google doesn’t offer any resolution, thus I am forced to act as if it doesn’t exist. Call it R2T2’s Wager.

Postgame Quotes – Wrapping It Up

When Peyton Manning took over the Indianapolis Colts, they didn’t win hardly anything. It took them a year or two to become perennial contenders, but they did and it was a phenomenal run. Fast forward to the Colts QB transition and Andrew Luck took over for Peyton. It was a messy transition. Peyton is having an MVP season but the Hall of Fame QB is a little long in the tooth. So maybe it is time for Luck. Luck doesn’t have the experience of the veteran, but he has the tools to be successful now.

The Xbox 360 wasn’t the system that it is today right out of the box. Microsoft did some great things with both major and minor semiannual updates throughout the lifecycle of the system. I expect that they will do it again with the Xbox One, refining and polishing the OS and overall game experience to a mirror finish.

Speaking of games, for me it won’t be long for those next generation games to arrive. The major Xbox One exclusive that everyone is talking about is Titanfall. March 2014 will be a big time for the Xbox. Spring will also have Destiny (or at least its beta) the new game from former Halo developer, a Plants vs. Zombies FPS and I’m sure a few more.

Is the Xbox One a great system? Yes. Should you get one? I have no idea. It’s not going to make your dreams come true or help you realize some existential life goal. It will however allow you to play next generation games and also do some other amazing things in the process.

Let me know what you think, and hopefully I’ll see you on Xbox Live.

Written by: Jay Sharritt
Posted by: Situated Research

The post A Football Fan’s Take on the Xbox One appeared first on Situated Research.

Website Usability Tip #6: Recognition, Not Recall

Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the site to the other. Nor should the user have to remember or learn a new way to do something. (ex. Checkout Process)

• Use common icons that make sense to the user
• Do not over-complicate your interface
• Only use pop up instructions on buttons if you must

Website Usability Tip #7: Flexibility & Efficiency

Flexibility: allow multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing.

Users can find information through:

• A search box
• Using menu navigation
• Breadcrumbs
• Links in the footer

Efficiency: build in simple and efficient methods of doing common tasks, without making it difficult for someone new to the system.

Amazon’s checkout process and shopping cart system are an example, with users being able to set up a ‘one-click’ checkout system where a default credit card and address are stored to make checkout super speedy and easy.

Website Usability Tip #8: Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Aesthetics is important when designing for the web. Knowing how to balance aesthetics with what users want can be a challenge.

Here are some key points to remember:

• Make sure colors play off of the colors of a well designed logo
• Do not overwhelm users with too much content
• Content should be relevant to the site
• Use clickable videos
• Never use avatars

A big mistake that web designers often make is adding more pages to a website to make it look more ‘legit’. Always remember that users on the Internet usually quickly skim over information, and avoid wordy text. Overwhelming them with redundant information will make them leave the website.

Website Usability Tip #9: Assist Users

Help users recognize and recover from errors.

• Error messages should be expressed in plain language
• If there is a process for ordering something (or otherwise), guide users through the process
• Never make users guess what to do next
• Constructively suggest a solution if a mistake is made

Website Usability Tip #10: Documentation

Even though it is better if a website can be used without any assistance, it may be necessary to provide documentation for complex tasks.

Any such information should be easy to search, and focused on the user’s task.

• List concrete steps to be carried out
• Make sure instructions are not too long
• Ideally, it should be contextual (placed where it is needed, so users don’t have to search for it)

Let us know if you have any questions on our website usability tips. If you would like a free expert analysis of your website’s usability, request a free usability report from Situated Research.

Written and Posted by: Situated Research

The post Website Usability Tips, Part 2 appeared first on Situated Research.

Website Usability Tip #1: Visibility

Always show users where they are at on the website. 

• Use breadcrumbs
• Highlight where the user is at in the menu navigation
• Use sitemaps

Website Usability Tip #2: Communicate Clearly

The website should speak the user’s language. Nothing should be left up for interpretation. 

• Links and buttons should be concise and clear
• Labeling should make sense to the user
• Labeling should also be short and to the point
• ‘Error 404’ pages mean nothing to most users
• Buttons should be labeled in a way to bring a call to action (buy now)

Website Usability Tip #3: User Error

Users often click on items by mistake and need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted area without having to go through an extended process. 

• Use clear breadcrumbs
• Use sitemaps
• Have a search button
• Make sure your logo is clickable to take the user back to the home page
• In some instances pop boxes may be useful warning your users of their error

Website Usability Tip #4: Consistency

Consistency is key to keep your users happy and coming back for more. Users should not have to reorient themselves each time they click on a page.

• Keep the same format for all pages of your website
• Placement of menu navigation should remain consistent from page to page
• Heading font sizes and placement should be consistent
• Labeling should not change
• Functionality of buttons, forms, etc. should not change

Website Usability Tip #5: Error Prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place.

• Eliminate error-prone conditions
• Check for errors
• Present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action
• Design a simple environment

Interested in the last five tips? Read Part 2 of our website usability tips. If you would like a free expert analysis of your website’s usability, request a free usability report from Situated Research.

Written and Posted by: Situated Research

The post Website Usability Tips, Part 1 appeared first on Situated Research.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable. Note carefully that Google says nothing about the Internet in that statement. 

In the last few eye-blinks of human history, we’ve created virtual worlds: cyberspace, virtual reality, the World Wide Web … places that exist in our devices, on our computers, in our servers, on the internet, and in our heads. But there’s also a space in which we live and walk and eat and breathe. Realspace. Meatspace. IRL. The real world, so we say, that we can touch and taste and smell.

Google’s trying to bring those worlds together, partly through the work of Niantic Labs.

Augmented reality is nothing new, of course, with marketing-focused companies like Layar building connections between physical and virtual reality and Ikea’s most-downloaded branded app of 2012 doing similar things. Other startups have explored AR capabilities as well, such as Caterina Fake’s Findery, which invites people to leave geo-tied notes that others can discover and read.

But when a company with the resources of a Google tackles the problem, and has a tool in Google Glass that seems destined for significant developer (and probably user) penetration that can actually create interconnections between the real and the virtual perhaps more efficiently than any other previous product, you’ve got something interesting. And potentially huge.

So a couple of weeks ago, I chatted with the man who’s leading that effort.

John Hanke: the missionary of mapping

John Hanke is vice president of product for Niantic Labs, the year-old Google-but-not-Google division of just a few dozen engineers that brought us Field Trip, the app to explore the world around us with a virtual docent. And, of course, the virtual/real game Ingress.

Before Niantic, Hanke ran Google Maps, Google Earth, and other geo areas, and before Google, he was the cofounder and CEO of Keyhole, the innovative geo-mapping and visualization company. Google bought Keyhole in 2004, which brought Hanke in the search engine’s fold to lead the its maps, earth, street view, and local divisions.

Now, he told me, rather than let him leave to scratch his entrepreneurial itch yet again and do another startup, Google gave him a semi-autonomous group to, as his LinkedIn profile suggests, experiment at the “intersection of mobility, real world, and the Internet.”

“We set up Niantic as a group that could explore new types of mobile apps with ubiquitous always-on features,” Hanke said. “And we’re set up to act like a start-up.”

Virtual + physical = field trip

Field Trip was one of Niantic’s first creations, and while on the surface it’s an app that helps you find cool stuff, ultimately it’s a tool to merge metadata and data and then present them together. While you’re in the physical world, Field Trip pulls data about that experience from digital sources, feeding you that information, and changing — deepening, enriching — your experience of place. Layering with history, perhaps, or science, or culture.

Because, after all, one rock is very much like another rock, but if this is the precise rock where Geronimo attacked Mexican soldiers armed with only a knife and his courage, that changes our experience of this particular place. And the merging/melding/layering of virtual and physical makes it more real, in a sense — hyperreal.

Enabling that, of course, requires extensive virtual enhancement of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get world.

“One of the things that we’re trying to evangelize is the concept of geo-tagging everything,” Hanke told me. “I would have expected eight years ago that it would be ubiquitous now, but it’s still not. But I think we’ll get there.”

Geotagging everything digital is a key intersection point between virtual and real. If this blog post is written here, and not there, that adds flavor and nuance to the information. And if a particular historical fact is geotagged to a specific mapped location, that adds depth and dimension to our experience of that place.

“We’re applying some of the same techniques we currently use in standard web search, and the same kind of discipline, to pull really interesting, really good places up from everything else,” Hanke says. “The model is that you’re walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood, but with a friend who is telling you the best things around you. You enjoy it just like before, but you’re a little more informed.”

AR + MMO + IRL

Depth and dimension are definitely core components of Ingress, another Niantic Labs app/experiment/game. Ingress is a — take a deep breath — augmented reality massively multiplayer online video game.

The real world is real, but it’s fought over virtually by two shadowy groups: the Enlightened and the Resistance. Niantic has filled the Earth with virtual portals, usually coincident with actual physical landmarks or monuments, that players need to capture in order to gain territory. Capture territory with large numbers of people (aka “mind units”) and your faction gets more powerful.

Clearly, the massive integration of Google mapping technology with a sophisticated gaming engine is required. And the result is another intersection between the real and the virtual.

“Ingress is a massively multiplayer online game designed for mobile, with real location-based connections,” Hanke told me.

You play with everyone in your faction, and you might meet up with other players in real life, or you may just know them virtually as team members in another area. Along the way, Google learns an awful lot about how you use your mobile devices, about mapping physical locations, and about overlaying cyberspace on meatspace.

All of that knowledge is going to come in very handy with Google Glass.

Endgame: Google Glass?

Hanke is cautious when speaking about Google Glass, as is the PR handler who is copiloting our conversation. Even already public information is a question mark as we chat: Google is definitely being Apple-like in the control and distribution of Glass and its future.

But something tantalizing tidbits do come out.

“We definitely kinda had Google Glass in mind when we started work on apps at Niantic,” Hanke says. “We need mobile devices that are less intrusive than the phone is.”

And we need devices with different input/output modalities, he says. After all, it’s not easy to play Ingress running around holding an expensive and fragile device in front of you like a window ripped from its frame. And yet you need that portal from the physical to the virtual. For instance, while Field Trip is great to open the doors on human context for the world around us, it threatens to detract from our experience of the world by redirecting our eyes from the ultimate big screen of reality to the small screen of our mobile device.

Google Glass, on the other hand, sits unobtrusively on our foreheads, leaving our hands free and providing data as an overlay on top of the physical world rather than an alternative to the physical world. That model of layering, mixing, and intersecting is top-of-mind for Hanke.

“It just can’t be the case that people are walking around heads down tapping on a screen,” he says. “That just can’t be the future of the human race.”

Cyborg me now

Which, of course, is exactly what’s at issue: the future of the human race. Or, at least how we ingest, consume, and reconstitute digital data. And analog data. And meld the two into one harmonious whole of knowing.

That’s perhaps a little metaphysical for a small division of Google that focuses on maps and games and apps.

But the web has rewired our brains in a decade or so of virtually ubiquitous Internet access, and the smartphone has rewired our behavior in five years, taking us from creatures who look up to to see others to beings that look down at any opportunity to see small bits of plastic and glass and metal in our hands.

So is it really too much to expect from a transformation that brings us from clear divisions between what is real and what is virtual to an elegant blend of the two?

“This is not psychosis or some cognitive break, but an actual takeover of the mind,” Google’s introductory video for the Ingress game says ominously.

Art imitates life, I suppose, and life, in turn, imitates art.

Written by: John Koetsier, VentureBeat (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

The post How Google is Melding Our Real and Virtual Worlds with Games, Apps … and Glass appeared first on Situated Research.

In the video, Corning predicted large scale desktop touchscreen displays, bigger video screens, and dynamic billboards. And while much of the video is still in the future, the OLED TV’s shown by LG at this year’s CES do seem to bring the video to life.

Despite the fact that most of what was in the video still hasn’t come to reality, Corning apparently isn’t one to stand still. Just under a year after A Day of Glass was released, Corning released A Day of Glass 2.

The vision is even more heady, with nearly every surface you can see turning out to be an interactive glass screen. Windows, car dashboards, tables. There’s even a large wall in a forest (which is actually a cool concept when you watch the video.) Which parts are reality, which are close, and which are still far, far off?

Corning has an answer for those questions as well. Along with A Day Made of Glass 2, it released a second video (shown above), with a narrator to help explain the technologies and devices. As a tech enthusiast, I personally found it even more interesting than the basic video.

There was one aspect though which wasn’t explained, or even really touched on. During the video conferencing that the Dad was having with another hospital, the second doctor would move in relation to the readouts on the wall, as if he was really standing behind the glass. On a display with today’s technology, he and the readouts would be fixed, because the screen cannot tell where the user’s perspective is.

However, Microsoft is working on that problem. The Verge got a look into Microsoft’s Edison Lab back in December, and posted a lengthy video.

One of the things that Microsoft is working on is a smart wall, which would be able to tell where the user is standing, and change everything to match that person’s perspective.

With the technology that they and others are developing, Corning’s vision might not be as far away as we think. And hopefully a year from now, Corning will show us another glimpse into the future with A Day Made of Glass 3.

Written by: Andy Mercer, TekGoblin; video by Corning (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

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My recent column Mobile Content: If in Doubt, Leave It Out advised site owners to eliminate secondary material when writing for mobile users. Many tweets, blog postings, and other comments on the article all expanded on this theme: Yes, do cut the fluff from mobile content, but also cut secondary content when writing for desktop websites.

In one way, I can only agree. Since 1997, conciseness has been a key guideline when writing for the web. People don’t read a lot on the web and leave in a few seconds if a site doesn’t communicate its value clearly. These findings lead to more detailed guidelines, such as emphasizing the first 2 words of nanocontent (e.g., headlines and search engine links).

So yes, cut the blah-blah from your desktop site.

Mobile Is Less Forgiving than Desktop

However, there’s still a difference between writing for the web and writing for mobile:

• Desktop copywriting must be concise.
• Mobile copywriting must be even more concise.

The high-level guideline is the same: reduce secondary info. The difference is one of degree — certain information that might be acceptable on a desktop site should be removed from a mobile site or app.

Our original research on how people read on mobile devices used the example of sending users a coupon with a special offer. In the study, the best design presented fairly limited information on the first screen. To read “more about this deal” users had to tap a link.

In a desktop design, it would have been better to show all the information on the first screen and save users a click. Why this difference?

• Mobile screens are much smaller: reading through a peephole increases cognitive load and makes it about twice as hard to understand text on a mobile device as on a desktop. Short-term memory is weak, so the more users have to remember after it scrolls off the screen the worse they’ll do.
• Mobile users are even more rushed than desktop users because of the mobile setting.

Both differences support the same recommendation: be more severe when cutting text for mobile than for desktop.

A similar finding applies to the choice of functionality: the feature set should be much smaller for a mobile site than for a desktop site. For sure, desktop sites should offer as few features as possible. For every feature that’s removed, the UI has one less thing to confuse users and thus makes the remaining features easier to use.

But a mobile site should have even fewer features than the desktop site. (Thus the guideline to offer a link from the mobile site to the full site for users who need features that only the desktop site supplies.) The mobile site should have only those features that make sense for the mobile use case. For example, a company’s full site typically includes PR information and investor relations sections, but this info should be eliminated from the mobile site.

Your desktop information architecture (IA) should always feature a simple navigation space that avoids an overly deep hierarchy. But for mobile, the limited space makes it even more important to prevent user disorientation; you should thus limit the navigation options, because you can’t show full contextual information on every screen. (The total screen space allocated to navigation on a typical desktop site is more than the entire screen of a typical smartphone, leaving no room for the content.) That is, your navigation structure should be even shallower in a mobile IA.

Usability Guidelines Are Rarely Dichotomies

People want me to give hard and fast rules: don’t show more than X menu items; don’t write more than Y words per page; nothing should be more than Z clicks from the homepage. Sadly, UI design doesn’t work that way. Usability questions seldom have a single answer. Rather, they are qualitative issues that specify the direction and nature of inevitable design tradeoffs.

Every time your web page’s response time increases by 0.1 seconds, you’ll lose a few percent of your visitors. But it’s not true that everybody will wait 10 seconds while nobody will wait 11 seconds.

As another example, take the guideline about concise writing. The most concise copy would be a word or two, but that would typically make for an unsatisfactory web page. In fact, sometimes longer articles can be better (though even in-depth articles should cut the fluff and be written at an appropriate comprehension level for their target audience).

The simple point remains: it’s best to squeeze the text when writing for the web (as well as follow the many other web content guidelines). If writing for mobile, simply squeeze that orange even more. When considering which secondary content to defer to secondary pages, you need to move the cut-off point between primary and secondary when targeting mobile users. The principle remains the same, but your judgment should be harsher for mobile.

In all areas of user experience — feature set, IA, writing, images, and more — mobile usability requires stricter and more scaled-back design than desktop usability. That’s why you need a separate mobile site. Simply using responsive web design to make the full site accessible on mobile devices results in a substandard mobile UX. (This is actually an old lesson repeated for a new medium: accessibility ≠ usability.)

Written by: Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox
Posted by: Situated Research

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As one study participant noted:

Games have previously been denigrated as socially isolating, with the stereotypical, petulant and portly adult playing a viscerally violent game in his parents’ basement: the quintessential ‘gamer’ image that has existed for many years in popular culture. With grandparents now playing Wii Tennis and my cousins in Australia and Canada playing Xbox Live with each other, games are fulfilling [a much more social role] than they were a decade ago.

The study offers 3 key insights into the evolution of gaming (explained in more detail below):

• Games go beyond the screen
• Life becomes play
• Social matures into societal

The study included a Web survey amongst 290 smartphone owners between the ages of 15-54 who self-identified as at least “casual gamers,” with nearly half labeling themselves “game enthusiasts.”* The survey assessed technology usage and future orientation, attitudes and behaviors around gaming, and possible interest areas for new game experiences.

Who are the New Gamers?

The infographic below offers a snapshot of the emerging gamer: he or she is not bound by platform or location, and has many different motivations for gaming in addition to just having fun.

To view a larger version, click here. Infographic created by Latitude in collaboration with ffunction, (cc) some rights reserved.

A Video Portrait of the New Gamers

Latitude also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with game makers and gaming enthusiasts, culminating in the production of a video documentary: The Future of Gaming: A Portrait of the New Gamers, featuring Buster Benson, CEO of Health Month (currently, Co-founder/CTO at Habit Labs).

The Future of Gaming: a Portrait of the New Gamers [8:52 minutes] from latddotcom on Vimeo.

Video created by Latitude in collaboration with In The Car Media, (cc) some rights reserved.

In addition to investigating tomorrow’s gamers, the study pinpointed three key insights for the future of gaming:

1. Games go beyond the screen

While mobile devices have had a huge impact bringing games into offline life, true seamless integration will come through technologies like The Internet of Things and augmented reality. These technologies get beyond smartphone screens, foregrounding the experience in a way that makes the device itself seem, more or less, invisible. Study participants expressed an overwhelming desire for immersive integration of digital content with traditionally offline spaces and activities:

* 95% would like to see more games that do a better job of combining digital content with the real, physical world.

* 90% agreed that current and future technologies will play a critical role in extending games beyond the traditional screen environment, moving them out into the real world.

To view a larger version, click here. Infographic created by Latitude in collaboration with ffunction, (cc) some rights reserved.

“The gamers of tomorrow won’t be limited by platform or location. As technology becomes more seamlessly integrated with our lives, everyone will be a gamer, and the world around us will become the ultimate playing field,” explains Natalie Stehfest, a senior research analyst who led the study and who heads up Latitude’s qualitative research team. “Technology will allow us to measure—and, ultimately, improve—ourselves in the context of our daily activities and surroundings. Many people making small changes can have a large impact in society, and this study suggests that the new gamers are ready to ‘level-up,’ and be challenged in this way.”

2. Life becomes play

Not only did participants want games to be well-integrated with the offline world in a technological sense, they requested games that better fit into the context of their everyday life activities and which motivate them to do things they want or need to do anyways. Currently, a variety of “life games” exist, including ones that that motivate people to eat healthy and work out, learn science and complete household chores.

* 92% would like to use more “life games” (e.g., games that fit into the context of daily life routines)

* More than 2/3 would like games to help them achieve their personal goals (e.g. be healthier, more productive, etc.)

3. Social matures into societal

The social aspect of gaming makes it particularly well-suited to tackling larger societal issues, as people can now connect easily around meaningful, shared experiences in real-time. Obstacles related to engagement, crowdsourcing, and logistics are removed as mobile platforms make it easier to become an engaged community member or to get involved with socially good causes in a way that feels game-like, either overtly or in a broader, “social adventure” sense.

* 96% would like to see more games geared toward creating positive change in society over the next 5-10 years. (Only one-quarter have played games like this before.)

* 3 in 4 people would be more interested in getting to know their neighbors and the people in their communities if local meet-ups were designed to be more game-like (e.g., involving neighborhood “teams,” scavenger hunts, etc.).

“You’ll be able to use gaming to create a social network that could influence our world for the greater good—and that’s something that already exists to some extent,” explained Michael Critz, an interviewee in Latitude’s The Future of Gaming video documentary.

Special Acknowledgments

Latitude would like to thank The Future of Gaming video documentary interviewees:

• Buster Benson, CEO of Health Month (currently, Co-founder/CTO at Habit Labs)
• Michael Critz, UI designer and game enthusiast
• Amber Cyr, game enthusiast
• Jack Graham, game designer for Eclipse Phase and science fiction writer
• Dan Robles, director at the Ingenesist Project

Lead Researcher: Natalie Stehfest
Video Director: Dan Hemmerly-Brown

*Note: Smartphone ownership was a criterion for survey participation, but engagement with mobile games was not. See infographic above for gaming platforms preferred by participants.

Written by: Kadley Gosselin, Latitude (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

The post The Future of Gaming: A Portrait of the New Gamers appeared first on Situated Research.

Lost in cyberspace

You only have to be the parent of a child over the age of seven to know what I’m talking about: the vacant eyes so preoccupied by what’s on screen that they can’t focus on your face for more than a few seconds before being drawn back into the cyberworld.

As you talk, your little darling types or toggles. “Are you listening to me?” you ask, only to be told in a precocious tone: “Yeahhhh. I’m multitasking, Mum.”

It gets worse. By 16, girls no longer seem to have use of their tongues. “Text it to me, Mum,” quips my daughter, barely able to contain her contempt that she has to speak and breathe at the same time. I know one mother who got her daughter to the dinner table by posting the request on Facebook. It was so like social death for the girl that, like, she never failed to come to the table again. Technologies such as Twitter are alarmingly succinct. If you can’t say it in two lines, don’t bother. Luckily, I come from the dinosaur era of the telegram: “Come home (stop) Finish homework (stop) Or no mobile (stop).”

A study last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the US found that children from eight to 18 spend more than 7½ hours a day online and/or using electronic devices. And that doesn’t count the hour and a half that youths spend texting or talking on their mobiles. Because so many of them are multitasking – chatting on Facebook while playing games, surfing and texting – they pack an average of almost 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours. Some psychologists call this behaviour addiction; the Federal Government is investigating the effects of internet use on young Australians.

British scientist Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, believes that the pre-frontal cortex, which governs empathy and compassion, needs social nourishment in order to grow and develop synaptic connections. This starts with the mother’s gaze, the incredible stare of love that stimulates the brain. It is further developed by gazing at, and with, other people through smiles, sneers, flushes and changing voice tone, along with social skills such as reading. Greenfield even refers to pheromones, the smells we emit that give signals to others.

The danger with our technology-obsessed kids, Greenfield warns, is that they are no longer accustomed to the full range of messy and meaningful human interactions. Social technology is moulding children’s brains so that they are unable to empathise with others; in short, we’re breeding a generation of narcissists. A recent gag on TV sums this up. A comedian is selling a new device that discreetly projects text messages from his mobile onto other people’s foreheads. “Now you can read your texts or Tweets and your companion will think you are really interested in them!”

But before mums and dads are tempted to pull the plug on all this new technology, there’s a twist to the story. Enter Professor Dennis Del Favero, philosopher, artist and director of the iCinema Centre at the University of NSW. With a team of computer scientists, engineers, filmmakers and artists, Del Favero has pioneered technology that promises to transform the interactive experience for the better. Instead of pushing us away from the world, it unites us with it.

The technology, which involves interactive multimedia, has attracted worldwide attention. It’s already achieved $7.1 million in sales, most recently to China as a mining industry educational tool; the Museum of Victoria is about to launch a version of it; three universities here and abroad have expressed strong interest; and Hollywood’s Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, inspected the facilities on a recent visit to Australia.

How to best explain it? It’s called AVIE – Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment – and it’s a computer program shown on a large circular screen using 12 projectors. You enter the space and 3D moving images play all around you, including above and below. It’s not too far removed from Star Trek’s science-fictional holodeck, a large room in which holographic images are projected from every angle to simulate an environment. And AVIE is fully interactive. The most recent project, Scenario, which was displayed at the Sydney Film Festival on its way to Moscow, operates on the basis of movement. Explains Del Favero: “As a member of the audience you walk into the space, and the space is watching you and tracking you. Characters are making decisions and changing the story according to your behaviour and your actions.”

I took my daughter to a special screening of several AVIE-produced projects at the UNSW iCinema and she found the experience compelling. We were instantly down a mine shaft in 3D. After we made a wrong choice there was an explosion, and we felt terrified and claustrophobic as we tried to navigate our way out of the rubble. Then we were in a restaurant, hearing the conversations, watching the faces and body language, and trying to solve a psychological mystery in an interactive film called Eavesdrop. We visited countries in speeding cars; and sat on top of an archaeological site in India. Here is a case of interactive technology filling a real social, educational need – and not just an entertainment distraction.

The potential applications are huge. This is the classroom of the not-too-distant future. Our kids will travel the world in 3D – and feel they are really there. They will go to a 3D refugee camp and be exposed to full facial expressions, grief and fear, prompting prefrontal cortex stimulation. They’ll go to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and walk up to paintings that will unfold before them, the virtual reality or “avatar” artists seeming so real they’ll want to talk to them. They will build virtual buildings with their hands and gaze up at the structures.

At this stage, many people share a large space together and they talk and engage with each other, which is all part of the socially enriching experience. But over time, as the technology develops further, it will shrink down so it can become part of a circular home TV/computer system that can fit over a small family, like the cone of silence in Get Smart.

This new world of 3D immersive environments will be much better for our children’s developing brains, offering contextual problem-solving and a deeper understanding of human and environmental challenges. Social media and technology are moving in ways that no one can predict. It’s an exhilarating ride and quite the opposite to the messages being offered by a few fearmongers. Or, in Twitter talk: @readers. Great hope. Kids brains to grow. New Technology cool. Plug in now.

Written by: Ruth Ostrow, The Australian (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

The post The Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment (AVIE) and Children’s Developing Brains appeared first on Situated Research.

New Nintendo Wii, Star Wars Game Using Microsoft’s Kinect, and PlayStation Vita Portable

Coverage update from the world’s leading video game conference: the E3 Expo in Los Angeles

Situated Research is bringing you the hot news from the world’s largest annual video game conference, the E3 Expo, which began this week in Los Angeles. So far, Nintendo has announced it’s next-generation console, called the Wii U, and Sony has launched a new handheld called the PlayStation Vita. Microsoft has announced some interesting new games for the Kinect, including Star Wars, Disneyland Adventures, and Halo 4.

Nintendo Wii U

First, Nintendo revealed its newest home game console and the successor to the Wii, called the Wii U. It offers HD graphics, which Nintendo fans have long been waiting for, and a a 6.2-inch touchscreen controller. MSNBC’s Tech Watch has a video showing it in action, along with some of the new potentials for gameplay and interaction:

Microsoft Kinect Star Wars Game

Microsoft demonstrated some of their hot upcoming releases, including Halo 4 (for the 2012 holiday season) and Disneyland Adventures, which will utilize the Kinect and contain minigames based on Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and other Disneyland attractions. Also, a Star Wars game will use the Kinect by letting players engage in light saber battles by slashing their arms through the air,  or move objects via hand motions. Check out the live demonstration live from E3:

Sony PlayStation Vita

Finally, Sony announced to gamers the new PlayStation Vita, their next-generation portable game system. Rumors were true: many of the features such as dual touchscreens and cameras are incorporated in the new portable to replace the PSP.

Stay tuned as we bring you coverage of all the exciting news and surprises from the gaming industry at E3 this week!

Posted by: Situated Research

The post 2011 E3 Coverage: New Wii, Kinect Games and PS Vita appeared first on Situated Research.

Every time I give a talk, someone always asks, ”That’s all good and nice that helping users learn is the key to creating passionate users… but who’s going to do all that extra work? Who’s going to make the extra tutorials and better docs?” Answer: your user community. Think about all the things a strong user community can do for you: tech support, user training, marketing (evangelism, word of mouth), third-party add-ons, even new product ideas. And that’s not including any extra sales you might make on community/tribe items like t-shirts, stickers, and other gear.

Yes, there’s still a budget… but we’ve all seen third-party fan/user groups that got no support at all from “the mother ship” and yet thrived and gave users a level of support and training the company didn’t provide. But there’s still that little of issue of getting users involved, and for that–the single biggest factor is getting users involved at a much earlier path on their learning journey than typically happens.

This picture is from an earlier post:

In Building a User Community Part 1 we talked about the importance of not only a strict “There Are No Dumb Questions” policy, but also an even more dedicated “There Are No Dumb Answers” message.

Today, this post will offer a few more tips on how to use your marketing budget (tiny as it may be) to build, support, and grow a user community from the beginning.

* Host some kind of discussion forum (can include chat, wikis, and blogs as well), and do whatever it takes to get people there as soon as possible, ideally while the thing is still in beta (but it’s never too late to start!)

* Look on other third-party forums where users are discussing (which usually means struggling) your product, and find the most active people. Reach out to your earliest adopters or strongest new users and offer them non-paid incentives for becoming active. Chances are, if you have any users at all and your product is even the least bit complicated, people are discussing it somewhere. This could be anywhere from Amazon product reviews to technical discussion boards and even comments on related blogs.

* Make these folks life-time “charter members” with special privileges and recognition as ‘founders’ that nobody else will ever get.

* Have levels and rewards for participating (but again, not money–that totally changes the motivation, or at least the perceived motivation). The rewards can simply be status, early access to betas, and especially restricted access to the developers where they can discuss their ideas or at least listen to the engineers and designers describe why they made the choices they did, etc. [Don’t reward people for post quantity alone… if post-count is the only criteria, you end up with a zillion useless posts]. Study successful user group communities for examples (like, say, javaranch.com–3/4 million unique visitors a month).

* Teach users how to help other members by creating documents (or getting other users to write them) on how to ask and answer questions in the most productive way.

* Include some just-for-fun activities in your community, like one (usually ONLY one) totally off-topic forum.

* Make sure there are interesting, easy-access ways for users to get to know more about one another. Be SURE to have user profile pages that include gender, photos, and some other personal info in addition to the specifics related to this particular community. Which leads to…

* Encourage members to meet offline! Hold a dirt-cheap User’s Conference, ideally in more than one city, to get things started. Start a forum from the people who sign-up for the conference, and offer user group or forum leaders free entry to the event (and be sure to have a private user group or forum leader cocktail reception). Tips for that are in this recent post on face-to-face). Create a document on How To Start A User Group, and make sure users know how to get it. There is a great series of posts on how to start a user group written by the guys behind the Edmonton .NET User Group. (Thanks guys)

* Encourage forum moderators or other community leaders to have their own private discussion space.

* Don’t tolerate abuse of the beginners, but don’t force the experts to have to put up with newbie issues. As any community matures, you must provide separate areas for newbies and experts… if the community culture is one of generosity and motivation, there will still be enough experts who want to spend time helping newbies.

* Why not help your top community leaders get a book deal? You never know… if it’s a tech topic, direct them (or yourself) over to Wiley publisher Joe Wikert for some excellent and candid advice (search his archives, and you’ll find everything from how to write a proposal, whether you need an agent, etc.)

* Consider starting a monthly “official” user group membership subscription, with something that comes in the real mail each month. Think about it. Think about how you feel when Fedex or UPS pulls up with that little Amazon box with the smile on the side. Each month, send them a newsletter or DVD. Where’s the budget for that content? Get your users involved! Have them submit things, and use the small monthly membership fee to cover the cost of materials and mailing, etc. Maybe you can partner with a sponsor on this, to include other things in the monthly “kit.”

* Create limited-edition, not-for-sale t-shirts, stickers, and other gear JUST for the founding community members (if you’re just getting started in building a community). For ongoing communities, do the same thing and distribute them randomly, for free. Use the principle of “intermittent variable reward” that works so well to make slot machines and twitter so addicting ; )

* Make your community leaders or even just active participants HEROES. Create “superhero” Moo cards for them. Plaster their photos everywhere. (Cute story I heard from a reader here — she met her husband online while they were both moderators for an Autodesk CAD forum.)

* Host an offline retreat just for the key community leaders. Can’t afford to do what Microsoft does with its Search Champs? Can’t afford to put people up at the “W”? Have a campout. Supply the marshmallows.

* Above all, keep teaching members to teach other members. Give everyone a crash course in learning theory. The better they become at helping others–the more skills they develop in mentoring/tutoring others–the more meaningful and motivating it is for them to keep on doing it..

These are just a few tips for now. And of course, please add your own… while I have quite a lot of user group/community experience having launched several groups from scratch, they were all technology-related, and many of you are from very different domains.

Written By: Creating Passionate Users
Posted By: Situated Research, LLC

The post User Community and ROI appeared first on Situated Research.