How amazing is that? I was going to say “if it works”, but of course it will work! Free food? Nothing Brazilians like more.

Brazil has been quite “relaxed” about the whole recycling-organic-local farming thing. There is too much water, too much food and too much of everything there – wherever you looks, there is abundance. So I can understand it is harder to remain conscious of the scarcity of resources in the planet.

But one sort of “surplus” has called my attention last time I visited in April: the trash surplus. Too much, everywhere. Plastic bags are like bacteria, omnipresent. No one thinks of recycling them, and even worse, people BUY plastic bags to put their trash in.

So good on them. I really hope it works. Two good things, hand in hand.

How about that? Will this be a trend? Will stars go for the mass reach/(still)free/crowd style when showing their sprouts to the world?

Now that this post is finished, off you go, here is the link: Do Hyperlinks Endanger Reading?

“User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and product ownership, but it also covers a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system. User experience is subjective in nature, as it is about an individual’s feelings and thoughts about the system. User experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change” (from Wikipedia)

http://www.gogamestorm.com/?author=62

Thanks Dave!

She calls it a ‘voting’ method, and it  goes like this:

- Before each user session, a moderator gives each of the observers 3 post-it  notes

- Observers write down the 3 main points that called their attention during each session – without talking to each other.

- In the end of the day, all notes are collated in a wall and grouped according to their themes

- Each observer votes on the groups they found most important by putting stars or marks on the group’s post its

- A discussion follows

The objective of this exercise is to gain direction to design. In the end of the session with the clients (observers) there is a clear sense of what issues found during the test need to be looked at first. The first time around

My client, however, asked me the following question:

” After watching the same thing coming up as a problem in 3 or 4 sessions, I stop taking note of it as important, because it is not new anymore. Therefore, there will be less post its about that specific subject, which will influence us when sorting out the post its at the end”.

I agree with her, but I understand that the objective of the exercise isn’t to find a trend of behaviours, or identify what is the problem that happens the most. The idea is to find the problem we all agree is the “hairiest” one and that is more urgent.

This week, after the session with my clients, I knew exactly what part of their new site we needed to spend the following morning working on. By lunchtime I had 4 different sketches I could share with them and – while I was waiting for the feedback – I was able to start tackling the other problems we had found.

The method doesn’t save you the analysis of the session – not at all. You still need to take care of every other problem identified during the sessions and revise all your notes, and videos when necessary. But it buys you time and speeds up the next iteration.

http://www.newser.com/off-the-grid/post/480/the-last-mogul-has-steve-jobs-won.html

Murdoch says that Jobs is the best CEO in the nation?

Would this help with the praising?

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/07/apples-iads-going-live-on-july-1/

“iAds will keep users who tap on ads within the app instead of taking them to a web page outside of the app”.

Paywalls + ads in controlled environment.

I wonder why they are greasing each other’s palms.

I crossed the road, very annoyed because I should have got the money before I went into the dry cleaners. I didn’t have time to spend in the middle of the day, escaping the office, the laundry owner wasn’t happy with the shirts I had forgotten there for 3 weeks, and now, on top of everything, it poured down with rain. First person went quickly, the second checked a couple of screens before heading out, the third was me, finally.

I put my card in, my coat getting really wet, my password, my hair getting stuck to my forehead, the desired amount, and my feet feeling really cold now… whilst I am freezing to the bone, the machine asks me:

“Do you require an advice slip?”

No. Thanks.

And, by the way, what is this? Some fairground fortune teller? Some sort of sad piece of astrological technology that can tell me what to do with my money? Will the machine tell me I need to put back the money I just took out and invest in BP shares?

WHY ON EARTH, will I EVER require you to give me some piece of advice about what to do with my money, while I stand here in the rain?

The joys of being a foreigner. I never knew that the word ‘advice’, in this context, only meant a receipt, a ticket, a proof of the amount I just took out. All these years I have avoided saying ‘yes’ to the cash machine’s kind offer, afraid of paying a fee, or realising I have been mismanaging my money – which is probably true…

When someone asks why I like to  speak different languages, I tell them stories like this.

I was very pleased to see the new The Times and Sunday Times websites, after so much effort myself and my colleagues at Wilson Fletcher have gone through during this project. I am curious about how the paywall will pan out and I am still unsure of how many people will actually hang around after the payment wall goes up sometime this summer.

In the meantime, I have been enjoying reading comments about the new sites.  Looking back, what really impresses me is the change in tone of the general conversation about paying for online content.

When we started researching consumer habits for this project, the sound of the sentence ‘paying for news’ was reason to deep disgust and revolt in focus groups sessions – and not differently, in pub conversations on and offline.

With time, and surely influenced by the rather extensive media coverage of the debate, News International’s message – that ‘quality journalism needs to be paid for’-  gained lift and shape: readers not only started adopting it, but reproducing it and even accepting it. It was if someone gave them an excuse, a good reason to – literally – buy in.

Even some free-Internet fundamentalists, who before would condemn any possibilities of restricting access to news and information online, seem to have migrated to a less extreme view position and to have adopted the ‘curiosity discourse’. One of the most common comments on blogs posts I have read were neither one side or the other: ‘I wonder what will happen now…”

I won’t stand in the middle: I have been skeptical and I still am. But there is something that makes me think that the future of news online in your computer, your iPad, your phone will be a paid for one . Whether we want it or not.