Banning Mobiles in Schools - by Krish Ashok

I was reading Krish Ashoks blog on "Banning Cellphones in School"

http://krishashok.com/blog/2009/08/banning-cellphones-in-school/

He advocates that change should be embraced and his examples on past attempts to resist change were un-questionable.

An idea immediately jumped into my mind (luckily i was not in the bath tub ;)

Why not build a Web 2.0 app for schools to integrate the students phone with the school CMS?

The possibilities are endless - This would take the education domain to a whole new level.

Not only the students but the parents too can be targeted - (apart from asking them to pay for it)

One quick tag line - "Taking the class room to the student"

RIA for Automobile Industry

Automobile industry has been one which has been the long time patron for new technologies. I would say they were the pioners in using RIA solutions.

Volkswagen Used car locator is one such example. I would not rate it high on innovation as we come across such sites by the dozens now. However i would rate it high on the simplicity and neatness of the application.

Highlights of this application are good Information Architecture, highest degree of task optimization and content level navigation.

Check out - http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/used/search

Creating a usability dashboard

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/dashboard.html

Now this site is a must read for those in BI, RIA or UX line. The article is constructed around the usability of creating a dashboard. But i see it as the tutorial for collecting the KPI which form the foundation of all dashboards - this is realted to B1's

The representation of the KPI's in one page forms the RIA part

And the overall readability forms the UX part of it.

Why i am asking you to read it is that you will not get such a explanation with examples in any real life situation.

Read it and let me know ur views

What will be the focus in 2009?

Good question isnt it. Well this is what i have been thinking from my last entry. Well my answer to that is RMA - Rich Mobile Application.

You might ask hey why is Subbiah jumping from Rich Internet to Rich Mobile application. My answer is simple - mobile screens are going to be the next window to the internet.

What i am talking about is the next revolution. Imagine doing most of the work we do on the computer in the mobile itself.

Blog,
Share photos
read/send mails
Check the news
RSS feeds
Pay bills
Fund transfer
book tickets
Play games
............ and the list goes on.

The catch now is how much of this can be done in such a small device. Come on where is the user experiece angle here.

This is where the RMA steps in. Not only will will one be able to do the above and more but they would be satisfied using the mobile for it.

Watch out for more on RMA

Designing Executive Dashboards by Tom Gonzalez

For all those in RIA field, Dashboard is not a new word. In fact it is one of main most asked for requirement in the RIA space.

Tom Gonzalez is the founder and Managing Director of BrightPoint Consulting, and has a wonderful article on Designing Dashboards: Part 1 , Part 2 and Choosing Correct Metrics & KPIs .

I would highly recommend reading this article.

Widget Library

There are some amazing widget libraries out there and one such library is http://www.gwt-ext.com

what i liked in this site is the way the content is organised. the whole site itself is created by the widgets they are show casing.

worth a visit :)

RIA Company watch - Effective UI

I have been looking at latest RIA tools and services all these while. One thought came into my mind as to who are the people behind them and how are they defining their solutions/services.

The first of my series is Effective UI.

These are the people behind ebay's AIR desktop tool and few other Discover channel application. The reason why they require a special mention is that the number of downloads for ebay desktop tool has crossed 1 million downloads.

They also follow my doctrine of integrating Usability with RIA technology. Everything said for any application Usability comes first and then comes the technology used to deliver it.