Keeping and Losing Track

Self-tracking has become increasingly popular in the past few years. Apps like FourSquare, RunKeeper and Fitocracy have accrued a huge user-base of people tracking, tipping and tagging. In return for all the tracking users get kick-ass stats, badges and achievements. What’s more: you get to share your impressive feats with your friends (although I doubt anyone likes getting their timelines flooded with personal horn-touting).

But although these apps give you a lot in return for tracking your activities, it’s actually a lot of work to do so.

Continues: meta-work is actually hard work

Contextual User Testing @ WebExpo 2013

Recently I did a talk on the importance of contextual user testing WebExpo 2013 conference in Prague. During the talk I shared my experiences and learnings from the user tests conducted for SalesChamp.

These days user testing fortunately is nothing unusual, but I wanted to show the importance of doing this in the realm of the user instead of a laboratory set-up. I showed the assumptions that were busted during the user testing sessions in the field and shared best practices.

Read on to view presentation, slides and interview

Business cards done right

After my talk at WebExpo 2013 I was approached by Czech designer Adam Hrubý who handed me his business card: Adam Hrubý's smart business card Smart! This “reverse” business card doesn’t ask the receiver to please contact the one who gave it out. Instead it tells the recipient that he’s lucky to get one. And it’s personal at the same time. I love it!

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HTML5 App Development – Advantages & Drawbacks

Recently I was invited for an in-company talk about a hotly debated subject: HTML5 vs. native apps. The company that invited me was struggling with the decision which path to take. What made it interesting is that the apps to be developed would all be used exclusively in-house and that this being a fully Microsoft-oriented company all employees would be given Lumia phones running Windows Mobile.

I wanted to give a balanced overview of the current state of HTML5, and although it may come as no surprise that I’m in the HTML5-camp I am not blind to the challenges that we are facing. So instead of only showing off all the glorious delights I also shared the sometimes harsh reality of things we as HTML5 developers have to deal with.

» Read on to see slides

Save a Click

A very common UX myth — one that clients will “remind” me of in about every project — is that everything should be accessible within 3 clicks. Numerous research studies and practical implementations have debunked this. It has been discovered that the number of click doesn’t negatively contribute to the user experience or even improve it! As part of Adaptive Path’s advice to improve Twitter’s user engagement an extra step was introduced in the sign-up process. The result? 29% more first-time tweeps completed the on-boarding process than before the re-design.

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Moo!

Over the past year me and my colleagues have been working hard on a fantastic project: SalesChamp. SalesChamp is a sales application running on tablets. It’s not purely an iPad application. As all the magic is happening in HTML5 this baby is cross-platform. As we are closing in on our TTM deadline we are readying all the important marketing stuff, like a kick-ass website and of course, business cards.

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