In today’s computer dominated world crowd sourcing is an important aspect of software. Various social media /portal integrations provide immediate feedback, and make the user a very rich contributor in how an application looks. With distributed delivery, the application is easily available across the globe on various devices to various demographic users.

Naturally, usability study is of prime importance in product development today. Usability analysis results in ease of learning, ease of use and navigation. Apart from typical usability studies like Focus groups and Heuristic studies, now a days there are specially devised methods and guidelines for Mobile application usability, Social Media portal usability etc. that contribute in enriching the distributed and social flavor a product. All of this helps keep the user focused on the product making it compatible with the principles of Attention economy .

Recently, we conducted Heuristic and Card sort usability for some of our products. There were some interesting findings there:

• We found that feedback from users familiar with various web portals, social media forums – in general users active on the web – was very valuable. This was so, because most of the products are trying to become more interactive, and crowd facing. This results in a lot of web 2.0 flavor in the product- be it FaceBook Twitter integrations, forums, chats or availability on mobile. So the users’ familiarity with lateral domains like web 2.0 and social networking helps a lot in this study.
• Another interesting conclusion was early application of usability principles in the product lifecycle. If we apply usability analysis techniques, at the time of designing wireframes, it saves a lot of time and makes the output look really great! The resulting design is based firmly on user feedback, which added to the products appeal in addition to reducing design iterations.

Usability of a product is valued forever. The popularity of a design is always determined by how effective and useful its users find it. Many inventions are a result of user feedback that prompted a design change. In the cyber world also, usability is and always will be a dominating factor. So adapting to usability principles throughout the design and development phase of product seems to be the way to go.

Microsoft is making the news again, first with Windows 7 crossing 150 million license sales and very recently due to the leaked presentation slides from the Windows 8 OS Strategy. The content lists new features like face recognition, touch screens, Windows store etc, which will best suit the future market needs.

I am personally excited about the Windows Store idea, which will be similar to the immensely popular Apple AppStore. The leaked presentation has not been officially endorsed by Microsoft, but it absolutely makes sense for Microsoft to jump on the app store bandwagon. Moreover, although Windows 8 is slated to hit the market in 2012, Microsoft could very likely bring the store idea in Windows 7 itself.

The proposed store will certainly have all the goodies of an in-OS, in-context market place for buyers. And importantly it will help application and hardware manufacturers sell their products to a broader set of buyers; something which was not possible in the conventional and isolated sales cycles.

So, with this Windows Store success story firmly set in my mind, I thought about how Microsoft would qualify such 3rd party products for their store. They have a ready turf for this with their Windows Logo Programs. The programs are targeted towards hardware devices/systems and applications for client/server operating systems. Through the program, Microsoft ensures product reliability and compatibility with Windows operating systems. As logo certified products are trusted by Microsoft, they will quite naturally be the favorites to easily qualify for publishing on Windows Store.

Till now Windows Logo testing was considered as a “good to have”, but the Windows Store assumption could become a reality much sooner than 2012. Product manufacturers would need to aggressively think about getting logo certified and push it up in their priority list.

Read my earlier post, 6 hurdles to Windows Logo Certification, to see what hurdles managers face in their thought process and roadmap to certification.

Most of us are closely following the standoff between Apple and Adobe over Flash. It is now clear that Flash won’t be available on Apple devices anytime soon. Folks like me hoping to use Flash as a cross-platform tool for different mobile devices and web browsers have to look for alternatives. There are clear signs that mobile industry is going to be a fragmented one. So, writing code for each individual platform is not really optimal. What we need to achieve very quickly are the following:

• Cut down development costs of highly interactive iPhone content and apps
• Publish for multiple platforms (mobile, web, desktop) with minimal or no additional efforts
• Provide immersive experience with rich interface and high interactivity

Although Unity is known as a game development tool, it can provide a good alternative to satisfy the above needs. A close look at Unity’s features reveals that Unity can go beyond games. It offers excellent features for 2D and 3D graphics, audio, video, animation, networking and deployment. It has an embedded game engine, a fully integrated IDE and uses JavaScript and C# as programming languages. It supports importing assets from all popular graphics tools. In short, everything a highly interactive application or content will need, and that a developer looks for, is available.

Unity also doesn’t seem to be harmed by the Apple OS 4.0 license change (clause 3.3.1) that closed the doors on Flash. Unity’s CEO David Helgason anticipates no problems so far. Even if it impacts, the fact that Unity compiles into an XCode project may help them realign quickly. Same may not be true with Flash, as the reasons there go beyond just technology (remember, Flash bypasses the native platform unlike Unity).

Unity has a proven track record on iPhone and iPod Touch (it now also supports iPad). It supports Mac, PC, Wii, XBox 360 and all popular browsers (check out this sample). The upcoming version, Unity 3, will also add support for Android and PlayStation 3. Looking at the growth of Unity both in terms of the number of registered users (130k+ so far) and the addition of platforms supported, Unity surely seems promising for the development of highly interactive content to face the proliferation of devices out there. It will be very interesting to see how well it works out in the interest of developers and end users!

We all test our products and have high quality standards. But is the end user aware of our standards? Does he trust our claim of delivering flawless products? I am sure that in majority cases, the answer is going to be a NO. Unfortunately, end users just don’t trust the manufacturer’s word on quality. However, there is one way to increase users’ confidence.. and that is through compliance testing.  Windows Logo Test is one such compliance program that is designed for ensuring strict compliance with Windows OS design and standards. From my personal observations, the buyer’s anxiety level is drastically reduced  when they see a Microsoft Logo artwork on the product. It gives them the confidence that the product will be of great quality, as Microsoft themselves have certified it.

So, Windows Logo testing is a critical stage in the life cycle of product development. However, on many products, such testing is considered as “optional” or “good to have”. Based on Harbinger Systems’ experience working with product vendors, we see that the Windows Logo Testing thought process goes through the following stages. Some vendors drop out midway through the process, while others do walk the entire distance and come out on the other side.

• Awareness - We start our list with the lack of awareness. Many product designers are unaware that such test programs exist. Even if they have heard about it, they are not sure what these tests do and what their results conclude.
• Cost Benefit – The next question that crops up is around the cost of certification. Obviously the program is not going to be free. But on the other hand, certification is an investment which when used to its full potential can help attain higher sales and better user reviews. This is because, after certification the product is robust and can sustain all critical user scenarios. Also important is that users trust Microsoft certification.
• Knowledge – After agreeing that there is significant ROI for the logo testing and willingness to give it a shot, after reaching this stage of the thought process, many still don’t know how to proceed. Microsoft provides elaborate information on Winqual site regarding the program, and it is a great resource to acquaint oneself with logo testing.
• Time - One of last reasons for not proceeding with Logo testing is the lack of time. Product cycles are so stringent that there is little room left for any kind of conformance testing. However, what the product companies should understand is that logo testing programs can be executed independently of their existing test cycles. If expertise bandwidth is an issue, then Microsoft permits the use of 3rd party test agencies for running these tests on behalf of the company.
• Infrastructure – So far we addressed some key hold-ups like awareness, cost and time. Another show stopper is the test infrastructure. The question we often get asked is, ‘Is it worth having an elaborate test setup costing thousands of dollars for a product portfolio that has very few products?’ Well, the answer is not straight forward, but an easy way out is to use a 3rd party test agency that has dedicated setups with the right mixture of architectures, hardware and OS versions to perform exhaustive testing. This can be done without spending huge amounts on infrastructure.
• Expertise - The final step is the expertise needed for such a conformance testing program. I wouldn’t say that executing and triaging such tests is a child’s play, but surely external help is available if the expertise cannot be cultivated in-house.

I am quite sure that many of you can visualize yourself at one of these stages when it comes to Windows Logo Testing. Hopefully, some of the pointers shared above will help you proceed to the next level.

Are you a product developer thinking about Logo Testing? Which stage of the above thought process do you find yourself in? Do let us know or contact us here if you have questions for us.

This is a new world for searches. More and more techniques are evolving to index, manage and present the tremendous amount of data available on the net, and make it fit for users’ need. Both old and new search players are trying to shape searches and refine results. More than ever before, relevancy and context are key to “organizing the world’s information” today.

Google has introduced many new initiatives to advance relevancy in its search results. Let’s take a look at few of the most critical ones of these:

1. Latent Semantic Indexing: Google’s effective use of Synonyms to determine if a page should qualify in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) of a particular search is the basis of this. With the help of synonyms, a search about “song words” or “song writer” will also include hits with the word “lyrics” or “lyricist” in the content. Google is going one step ahead, where it will not only look at the key words for relevancy, but also scan the entire content and look for keywords as well as synonyms. If the entire content satisfies the requirement, it will be judged as relevant. This is called Latent Semantic Indexing.The purpose behind this is to index searches closer to the way a human reader would rank the page. In natural indexing, actual information rather than repetition of words would be a factor in how well the page ranks. The use of related words (synonyms) would signify that the subject is thoroughly covered.
   

   As shown in the above example from the Google blog, the search for “pictures developed with coffee” will have all the search results with synonyms for pictures, and all the synonyms along with the search terms will be displayed in bold.

2. Semantic Searches based on profiles, reviews and events: For over a year the concept of Semantic Searches is doing the rounds in full force on the search scene. RDFa and microformat have been around for quite some time, but now they have caught prime attention spot as the new wave of search.
   Last year, Google announced its support for Semantic Searches with Rich Snippet. As an initial step, Google did this for two formats, people and reviews, with LinkedIn and Yelp as partners. They followed it up with semantic support for Video searches as well as events.

   The concept behind this is quite simple. There are people associated with documents, pictures, companies, addresses – almost everything. Similarly, there are events associated again with a place, an address, a company, a play etc.

   So now with the help of Rich Snippets, it is possible to tag profiles, events as well as reviews for a particular search string. An example outlined again in the Google blog shows three links to three events on Jan 23rd, Jan 25th and Jan 29th when a user searches for Irving Plaza on Google (see image below). Needless to say, this provides a fast and convenient way for a user to determine if Live Nation has any events lined up that he or she might be interested in.

   
3. Google Insight for Searches and Google Trends: While Google Trends show us the current search trends, Google Insight takes it one step ahead. It shows us the applicable (frequently used) keywords as well as the rising searches within a topic, so that we can make out what is the related ‘hot’ search topic. For example, if we search for “Tigers + animal”, in addition to the search trend information of these and the synonyms, Google Insight also shows us the top and the rising searches related to these words.
   
4. There are other new initiatives from Google in beta stage, like Real Time searches, Comparison Advertisements, as well as new domains in Semantic Searches, but we will leave them to another post.

Of course, relevancy in search results has been a determining factor of the success of a search engine for decades. Google is a key player in the search world, and will definitely be an important contributor in defining the semantic web. With all the above as well as other semantic analysis techniques like context servers and usage of explicit user actions when indexing content, the search scenario for 2010 and beyond looks very interesting… And Google seems to be taking small but sure steps towards the intelligent web of tomorrow.

Towards the later half of the twentieth century, a big revolution gripped humanity. After having tackled mass production and creating machines, people looked to using a single machine to do multiple things. I am happy to report that software was born, and with it, a period of information revolution was unleashed. The whole digital world is an automated mass production factory that can’t help being any other way. A piece of software is mass-produced the instant it is written (it is soft-ware after all!). In fact, people go to great lengths to limit this inherent mass production feature by encrypting information, using DRM etc. etc.

Industrial revolution took the pockets of automation already happening and put it on steroids. Similarly, information revolution takes the pockets of innovation and puts them on steroids. The result is for everyone to see. Just the internet itself doesn’t cease from being an immense source of innovative entrepreneurs and even more innovative users generating “user generated content”. However, just like automation couldn’t be an end unto itself, innovation for innovation’s sake is meaningless. And so here we go… What is innovation for? Automation enabled worldwide mass production, and what innovation is enabling is a worldwide mass varietization. There was a time when standardization was sought after as a means of achieving conformance. Parts were supposed to adhere to a standard. Today, standardization is looked upon as a means of achieving variety (companies now support a standard, don’t they?). HTTP, HTML, WWW and so many building blocks of the information revolution are examples of standards that enable variety to emerge and thrive. Open source only takes this variety-production-ability to the next level by freeing up the mass production of software.

Today’s teens and the so-called millenials have limited attention span, want a huge variety to choose from, and are just not afraid of the ton-loads of information that is being off-loaded on them. Mr. Henry Ford’s customers might have been content with “a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”, but today’s teens expect to choose from a free-flowing variety of options. Great companies of the future will be those that realize this need for variety and capitalize on it. So if you are building software, remember the following:

1. Build scope for variety into your system. Enable users to customize and personalize your software. It might seem like a whole lot of trouble for nothing, but it will pay off in the end.
2. Support a variety of standards. You don’t know where your software will end up finding its users and what they will make of it.
3. Have a big heart. Trust your users a bit and let go of some things. Don’t worry, they will catch the ball and run with it.

I have a feeling that this list will look a lot clearer in hindsight, but if you can add, please do. I am letting things go a bit myself!

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Following is an interactive flash image of the evolution of variety amidst us.

This post was thought out and written over 2 days. The two diagrams above were built with Raptivity in about 20 minutes.

• iPhone: It appears that iPhone will continue to dominate as the best mobile gaming platform for some more time. Developers are using iPhone and iPod Touch creatively, be it as a remote for playing games, as an extension to the game development IDEs, or as part of the integration with social platforms. On the flip side, the Apple AppStore is far too saturated, and that may encourage developers to look elsewhere.
• Android: That elsewhere is increasing looking like Android. As big as it is, considering that share of iPhone in global market is just around 3% of all mobile handsets and 14.4% of smart phones, and looking at the pace at which device manufacturers are adopting Android, there is no doubt that games will take to Android.
• Windows Phone 7: Microsoft demonstrated new tools (part of XNA Game Studio) that enable developers to write once and publish for multiple Microsoft game platforms – Windows, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7. This cross-platform development ability seems to have helped Microsoft in attracting attention. Folks are optimistic about it but they don’t expect an iPhone-killer, I think they are keeping their fingers crossed for something that really adds to Xbox 360, PC gaming experience.
• Others: RIM (Blackberry), Nokia and Qualcomm (Brew) are also in the game (do pardon the pun!) and doing their best to grab market share.