Jonathan Jeter

Director of Application Development

Home Archives for Jonathan Jeter

Jonathan Jeter

Jonathan Jeter has been creating websites since 1997. He is currently Director of Technology Services and Digital Development at TracyLocke, a shopper marketing agency. You can follow him @mywebthoughts, on LinkedIn or connect on Google+.

Kate Brigham – PatientsLikeMe: Adventures with Data Visualizations

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Kate Brigham - PatientsLikeMe - Adventures with Data Visualizations
Kate Brigham - Adventures with Data Visualizations

8 in 10 internet users have looked online for health information

patientslikeme helps patients track chronic conditions and learn from the experience from other people who are experiencing the same symptoms, medications and conditions

People share stories as part of a typical conversation. PatientsLikeMe tracks all data about members by translating stories into data.

Given my status, what is the best outcome I can hope to achieve and how do I get there? – establish a baseline for member engagement

Make it easy for people to create data

If you’re asking people to invest time and energy to give you the data, let them know how it will benefit them.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Make forms easy

Start with questions that are easy to answer and don’t use jargon…

Read the rest of Kate Brigham – PatientsLikeMe: Adventures with Data Visualizations

Steve Portigal – Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Steve Portigal - Design Fieldwork - Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In
Steve Portigal - Design Fieldwork

Main Topics

  1. How insights from users can impact our designs
  2. How to gather those insights

Be a methods-polygamist

Choose, mash-up or create methodology based on the problem, integrate (Triangulate) with other methods, Create a library of methods and artifacts (screeners, interview guides, stimulit, storyboards, etc.) You can even create new ones and make it up as you go.

Different methods work together.

Innovation means getting beyond pain points

Users may not actually know what is causing the problem.

Pain points may not really be that painful anyway

Satisficing (Herbert Simon – 1956) refers to our acceptance of good enough solutions.

thereifixedit.com

Fieldwork leads to refined beliefs about customers

“You are not your user.” It’s good to realize that you are different than your users/clients, but it’s also necessary to realize similarities and commonality.

Read the rest of Steve Portigal – Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In

Bill Scott – Designing for Mice and Men

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

Bill Scott from Netflix – Designing for Mice and Men
Bill Scott, Netflix – Designing for Mice and Men

Bill has been in the industry for a long time, at Sabre, Yahoo! and now Netflix.

Challenge is designing across devices: web, mobile, tablets & TV. Iteration changes based on devices. In Canada, they don’t even have a queue.

People like to make lists.

Chaos – 400 SKUs (devices) can run Netflix. Different manufacturers can create different NetFlix experiences. Using HTML5 for all platforms. Using Webkit (QT Webkit, Skia Webkit, iOS Webkit) Takes advantage of the same engineering team to create for most devices.

Server-driven dynamic UI

Webstyle release vs CE firmware updates

Support A/B Testing

Controlled Variances

Managing Across Platforms

Read the rest of Bill Scott – Designing for Mice and Men

  • portability layer (html5)
  • vary the experience across platforms
  • design for user posture, input capabilities, navigation styles and display capabilities

Julie Zhuo – Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

Julie Zhuo – Facebook - Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions
Julie Zhuo – Facebook - Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Facebook likes the start-up culture. They believe in small teams: photos, engagement, etc. Each team is treated like a small company with a product designer, researcher, engineers & a product manager.

Facebook uses data to form a lot of the decisions that are made. Data helps understand how users use product and how they can be optimized.

Facebook had great ideas, built products and then left them to move on to the next thing.

Photos

Were using an old photo uploader tool built in Java, didn’t work well and was poorly designed. Built their own tool, which required a plugin. Tested it and only 34% users successfully uploaded photos. Went back to the drawing board. Research showed that people were bailing at the plugin install step.

Read the rest of Julie Zhuo – Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Josh Clark – Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

Josh Clark (author of TapWorthy) – Mobile Apps-Native or Web-Based
Josh Clark – Mobile Apps-Native or Web-Based?

Josh Clark, Author of TapWorthy

Mobile Apps

Mobile is growing quickly, with many platforms (many cultures)

App design needs to take mobile culture into accounts, how to develop for a iPhone user vs Android user, etc.

Read the rest of Josh Clark – Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?

Blackberry still has 40% of the global enterprise

  • Text-centric
  • low browser activity (blackberry browser has sucked until recently, when they adopted webkit)
  • how does your app fit into a text heavy culture

iPhone

  • active
  • high browser activity
  • spenders (big buyers – 70% of ebays mobile commerce is iPhone; eBay accounts for 25% of mobile commerce)
  • older, wealthier
  • according to OKCupid, iPhone users have more sex

Android

  • it’s about the technology
  • it’s about tools and features
  • customization
  • cutting edge
  • technically-proficient, customized

Social Farming?

By Leave a Comment

Goat kids will stay with their mother until th...
Image via Wikipedia

My Farm is a social networking project in which members (who pay £30) work together (online, not actually working together) to decide how the farm should be managed. Decisions are made about what is planted in what locations, what livestock should be raised, etc., etc.

The web site keeps up-to-date information about what is going on and the progress of crops and livestock. There is even a webcam so you can see what is going on real-time. For educational purposes, I think it’s great. As far as changing the way farming is done in the future…

I really don’t think so.

 

Related articles

Noah Iliinsky – The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations

By Leave a Comment

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

 

Noah Iliinsky - The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations
Noah Iliinsky - The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations

Noah Iliinsky

How do you start from a mountain of data and create something presentable that conveys the message?

Analysis vs Presentation

Data Visualization vs Infographic

Data Visualizations are generated

Infographics are designed (manually drawn)

Education vs Persuasion

Education distributes information without a message

Persuasion has an agenda

Complexity

The number of different information axes represented

Large number of targets

Finite number of visual properties

Qualitative relationships are more difficult to represent because there are no standards and the reader has to be educated before the reader can understand the data.

Intentional choices are superior to arbitrary choices. You need to make intentional choices when presenting data, not just use a template of what you’ve done before.

Read the rest of Noah Iliinsky – The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations

An App That Tracks Your Driving… and Sends the Results to Your Insurance Company

By Leave a Comment

A red light camera in Chicago, USA.
Image via Wikipedia
State Farm has created an app that helps track your driving habits. They’re not the only insurance company to jump into the driving app space as Progressive has created a monitoring device that bases your insurance cost on your driving habits. While the idea of an app that helps you improve your driving sounds great, isn’t there any concern that the data will somehow find itself in the wrong hands?

With red-light camera‘s everywhere and GPS navigation companies selling data to police departments, isn’t the next logical step that the data from our cars and apps will be used to send us invoices for road usage, tickets for speeding or wreckless driving or raising our insurance rates based on driving habits, regardless of who is driving the car.

Read the rest of An App That Tracks Your Driving… and Sends the Results to Your Insurance Company

Awesome or Scary?

By Leave a Comment

Google I/O
Image by Hezi Cohen via Flickr

A lot of really cool things have been coming out of the Google I/O conference this week, one of which is zero-touch near field communication (NFC) in the upcoming version of Android (name Ice Cream Sandwich). Engadget.com has a video of the demonstration where two Android Nexus phones share things with each other without having to press anything or start an app.

On the surface, that’s really cool. You don’t have to wait to fire up an app or wait for someone else to approve your request. However, how easy is it going to be to “pocket share” a web site or your contact information with someone you’re standing next to in line at the store. Or once NFC payments are a reality, how easy is it going to be to accidentally pay for someone else’s purchase or have your credit card information unwittingly shared?

Read the rest of Awesome or Scary?

Flying Trains?

By Leave a Comment

Shinkansen 700T train head at Kaoshung depot, ...
Image via Wikipedia

I love robots and all things technology, so this article on how a Ground-Effect Robot Could Be Key To Future High-Speed Trains caught my attention. Growing up in Europe, trains and subways are a way of life and convenient transportation, but not always the fastest. However, living in Texas now, I appreciate the convenience of good, reliable public transportation because here (at least in the Dallas / Fort Worth area) it is virtually non-existent. Everyone here has to have a car, because even if you wanted to take public transportation, you would most likely be able to only get almost where you wanted to go, but not all the way there.

I tried to see if I could take public transportation to work a while back, but living on the outskirts of the DFW Metroplex, there was no way to get from my house to work without a private vehicle. I have to drive 15 minutes just to get to the closest park and ride, to start an adventure that would take me two hours and still wouldn’t get me all the way to work.

Read the rest of Flying Trains?