On changing the World

I spent the beginning of the week with Barbara and Francesca at my parents’ house in Mantova. We had a nice time (my mom is a great cook) and had also the lucky chance to find a great offer for the new car we were looking for (since I’ll leave my Citroen C4 at Consultechnology). We needed a family car suitable for daily travels to the office but good for weekends with babies and friends too, and the Destiny eventually broight us to a super-accessoired Renault Grand Scenic that’ll arrive at home in June.

But I’m digressing. While in Mantova I passionately told the ongoing efforts we (I and Leeander) are putting in the organization of this year Interaction Frontiers event: press relationships, speakers accomodation, the venue, the registrants, etc. etc.
One morning my mom questioned me about the money I was raising from the event organization and she was completely stuck when I told her that NO MONEY was coming in mine or Leeander’s pocket at all: we had expenses that were covered by the sponsors or the great help of friends that were doing this for free but the event was free for all.

And then she dropped THE QUESTION: “So, why are you doing this?”

The answer came to my mind in a blink: “Mom, I’m acting as an enabler for the transmission of cutting edge technology from bright minded people. I’m working to change the minds of the people who’re going to attend and hope they’ll be able to change the mind of their colleagues and friends. In other words: these are my two cents to create a better World.“

Nathan Shedroff at the Interaction Frontiers 06

It’s with great pleasure that I’m here to announce that, thanks to our friend - and Frontiersman - Fabio Sergio, we’ll host an exclusive video contribute at the Interaction Frontiers by the great Nathan Shedroff.

Here below you’ll find his own introduction to the speech:

Nathan will discuss and illuminate the connection between emotion, values, and meaning for customers and users and show a process for developing products, services, and interfaces directly configured around them.

Meaning is the most important part of any experience we create and offer to others and it’s only been recently recognized and analyzed.

Since we’re not planning to make this video publicly available the only way to see this is by subscribing (FOR FREE) at the event (seats are limited).

Another change in my life

It’s something past 2 in the afternoon and I’m at home on the sofa quietly sipping my espresso coffee. You’re probably asking WHY I’m at home, right now, during a working day.

I think there is no other way to say it, so I’m gonna straight to the point: I quit from Consultechnology and yesterday was my last day in the office; I won’t be offiicially out since the first weeks of June but I’m going to spend these weeks as vacation time.

I had great times during these 2 and a half years (I started there in November 2003) and was fortunate enough to meet very bright minded people both among colleagues, clients and consultants.

I think I’ve been able to build a crew of professionals very near to the Leandro defined “dream team” (in Italian, sorry): we innovated a lot the production processes for web sites and applications and were also able to file some patents and produce bright product prototypes such as Mobup and Flash Voice. I’d say we were among the first to include Eye Tracking tests on interfaces in the production pipeline (for every interface we’ve built we tested each iteration starting from the paper prototype).

I also managed the internazionalization of the RnD team (helped also by the great Giuseppe Baroni at Innovazione+) raising interest from universities and labs in a lot of EU countries.

I had good years there and ejoyed a lot the projects I was involved in. But now (as Richard Florida says) is time to move to new experiences. And - after 10 years working in IT companies, I’ll completely change the scenario around me; but won’t say anything more till mid June.

If you like, we can meet at The Interaction Frontiers 2006 just to say ciao and listen to some cuttin edge talks.

The Interaction Frontiers… in English

For all our english speaking friends I’d like to point out that nearly 50% of the Interaction Frontiers 2006 speeches will be held in English and 100% of the slides will be written down in English.

In this way we’re trying to make the life easier for all of you who’s going to join us but cannot learn Italian in 1 month.

We also created a small page in english containing the main informations on this year event, its philosophy and this year guidelines for content; you’ll also find more info on the services you’re getting for free (and, BTW, the entrance is free too but registration is mandatory) and on how to reach us at Bicocca University in Milan.

Is Click tracking the new Eye tracking?

A couple of months ago I wrote a post to point out my personal view on what was considered the low cost alternative to eyetracking: clickrtracking, via a web 2.0 application called Crazy Egg.

My post raised some buzz that eventually lent to an invitation from the Crazy Egg crew to their private beta program. I was happy to accept since I was so curious on the effectiveness of the results.

To summarize my position (disclaimer: the company I work for sells Eye-tracking services):

• You should care of what your users sees MORE then of what they click (otherwise you won’t be able to figure out why they haven’t clicked on certain links);
• The users interactions with a web site/interface shouldn’t be summarized to just their clicks;
• Crazy Egg is a cool app for zero-budget websites who care fo some more information on their users’ activity;
• Even though Crazy Egg disappears when compared to Eye Tracking technology it totally stands over all the other log analyzer softwares.

After joining the beta testers group I tried Crazy Egg first on this site (too few clicks) and then on the HOTMC.COM web site homepage, collecting a total amount of 3432 clicks in 10 days.

Have I changed my mind? IS click-tracking the NEW eye-tracking?

Well. no.

As you can see from the above pictures (click on them to zoom in) the results on click hot areas reported (on the left) are completely different from gaze hot areas.

Questions such as:

• Is my logo placement effective (e.g. Is my logo seen/perceived)?
• Is the top-left menu perceived as the main navigation widget?
• Is the design of the central (main) column effective?

remain sadly unanswered in the left image but find some anwers on the right one (the eye tracking one, so to say).

You can also see how click behaviours differ from sight behaviours: you don’t click everything you’ve seen and - interestingly - one of the least seen elements on the page (the Hotboard link nearly the base of the right most column) is the MOST clicked (I can give explanation on this if interested, just leave a note in the comments).

To conclude I’ll say that - where affordable - eye tracking remains the best way to user/reality check you designs (as said before Tobii eye tracking systems record the clicks too) but Crazy Egg is probably the best statistic visualization tool I’ve ever seen (a whole lot more then Webtrends) and let you discover some interesting data on your users’ click behaviours (in the above case we discovered that our users used the HOTMC.COM site to access our community forums).

Call for papers NOW open

I managed to publish (I’m still recaping from the flu that hit me this week) the call for papers for the 15 mins short talk slots at The Interaction Frontiers 2006.

If you’re a bright-minded soul that has something to say about

• Softwares able to understand users’ moods
• Adaptive interfaces
• Ubiquitous computing
• Robots and automas
• Natural interfaces
• Augmented interfaces

Send - before May 25 - an email containing your position paper in PDF (no more than 4 pages) to interactionfrontiers@gmail.com; the four best are going to speak about their project against TIF06 public.

Are you ready?