Friday, August 31, 2007

Starting up a new adventure

As you might have already noticed, my job description on LinkedIn, Facebook and on my blog has changed. Yes, it's true, after weeks of planning and considering different options I finally decided to try something new and co-found a company - Artesia.si that will specialize in 2D and 3D virtual communities. We will be offering consulting for companies wanting to improve or build virtual communities, and I will mostly focus on testing new technologies, planning and delivering (e)learning for our clients, and on presenting our company in Second Life. At least for now we'll be focusing on the Slovenian market, so we only have a website in Slovenian. But we do have a virtual office in Second Life that you can all visit (yeah, we're a real flat world company with no brick and mortar office :) ). And things are actually already moving faster than we could hope for. On Thursday we were invited to help with a piece on Second Life for the evening news on national television in Slovenia! I have the video with English subtitles on Facebook if you'd like to see how it turned out :)

But despite the fact that I'm changing jobs, I still intend to keep this blog alive. It will still remain my personal learning space, on which I'll be talking about my personal learning experiences, emerging technologies, and of course the occasional random thoughts of a geek :) So stay tuned, and if you've got more questions about my new professional adventure let me know!

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.


Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Giving good directions

Lately I seem to be stumbling a common problem a lot while surfing the web, visiting different places in Second Life or just going to different analogue places by analogue roads. That problem is lack of good directions related to different content and places.

A common example: I often find an interesting blog post, and when I try to find more about the person that wrote it or the purpose of the blog, there is nothing. Nada. On blogs, I often get my hopes up when I see the "About" page, but too often I find the default message to the owner of the blog that no visitor should ever see (something like: "Write something about yourself/your blog on this page"). I really don't expect everyone to provide their full CV and contact information, but even if you decide to be anonymous, you can at least tell us what field you work in and what is the purpose of the blog.

Then another common example from Second Life. I won't even mention those places that are supposed to have a grand opening and can't be found anywhere on the map or under search. What I find even more disturbing is getting to a new place and receiving no clue of what the place is about and no help for getting easily from one part of the sim to the other (i.e. teleporters). Flying is fun in Second Life, but I don't always have the time or will to fly from one corner of the sim to the other to see there is nothing really interesting on the other side.

The immediate reaction to the lack of (good) directions is for me confusion, self-consciousness (thoughts like: are there really no directions here or is it my fault that I can't find them?), and the final result is usually leaving the confusing place without plans to return in the near future. This confusing place should of course never be your online course site, your virtual world presence, or even your personal or professional website.

So, what can we do to avoid users leaving our places, and how can we prepare good directions for our users (students, clients or friends)? Having really good directions is not an easy job I grant you, but I think there are some things we can do to get closer to that goal:
  • The first step is of course recognizing that some directions are needed. In our enthusiasm of building something new we often forget that.
  • Think like a newbie and like an average user of your content when preparing directions, and (if possible) test them on a random person that was not involved in the design process and is not a super geek. If your grandparents can understand your directions you're certainly on the right track!
  • Make directions easy to read, help yourself with simple visual clues (a map, icons etc.). Keep it simple and try to include the basic information. First time users/visitors don't need to know all the details, but they should be able to get to those later when they need them.
  • Make directions visible for first time visitor, but not disturbing to frequent visitors. Avoid using intrusive tools such as pop-up messages. The first time user might appreciate them, but only the first time. On the second visit he/she will start looking for the mute button, on the forth he/she will start looking for excuses for not visiting.
  • Not all directions should look like they're there just because they have to be there. Add value: entertain your visitor, provide additional functions (i.e. teleporting in Second Life, a list of the most interesting posts etc.), make them feel welcome and appreciated.
  • Be polite to all users, not just those that you want to have today or those that pay you. You never know when you'll need somebody, so try to make a good first impression on everyone.
  • Provide personal support options. Even if you don't manage to give good directions, you can be saved by giving your users/visitors/students and easy way to contact you and get personal directions from you or your staff. It's the age of a user-centric web, on which we like the feeling we can all go talk to the boss if we want to.
  • Listen to user feedback. And don't listen just to the users that talk to you. Sometimes you have to make the first step and ask the users for feedback.
These are just some of my guideliness for designing good directions (that don't apply just to giving directions on the internet, but should also be considered in offline spaces!), but I would of course love to hear how you approach the task of providing good directions for your users. How do you, for example, provide directions for the students of your course or visitors of your website, online profile or blog?

On my blog, I try to provide good directions by having a "Who am I?" block right on the top of the blog sidebar, which has some basic info about me and a few links to my extended profiles if the visitors want to know more about me. Also, I decided to visualize my blog purpose with a simple moto (Click. Learn. Share.) and icons right below. I might also add some links to my most interesting posts in the future, but overall I hope I did a decent job in providing directions and different ways for navigation. If you think I'm missing something, please let me know :)

I certainly think that once in a while we should all stop to think about how new users feel when they first enter one of our places. And I think we can often find some little and sweet details to add that will make the visiting experience for first-timers and regulars alike that more pleasurable and memorable.

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.


Monday, August 20, 2007

Catching up: 8 random things about me

St. Nicholas Port on ZakynthosHuh, what a busy August! After a lovely Greek vacation (I highly recommed Greece for vacation - great food, great people, crystal clear sea!) I had one of the busiest week (and weekend) ever: all the catching up with RSS feeds, mails + intensive work on two different projects... and the result of that is that I still haven't managed to reply to all mails (bad Alja, bad!), and I'm also late for my blogger homework, which was assigned to me by The Four Eyed Technologist 12 days ago (so says Technorati :) ). So, it's now time to stop making excuses and join the "8 Random Things" game that has been spreading around the blogosphere for quite some time now. I admit that I've been reading many random things about many of you in the past weeks with quite some interest, so it's only fair to do my share now :)

First, The rules:
  1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
  2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
  3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
  4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

My 8 Random Things:
  1. I trained track and field athletics for about 10 years in different disciplines; I started in first grade in long distances, and ended up doing long jump and 60m/100m hurdles. I wasn't too bad at it (even got into the national team once), but I quit because I lost my interest in competitions.
  2. At the end of elementary school I wanted to study chemistry, but then lost all interest for it in high school and turned towards computer and social sciences.
  3. I love animation movies and cartoons in general. On my top list are Pixar movies (this short one is imho enough to explain the brilliance of Pixar) and Japanese sci-fi animes, but I like to watch just any animated thing that pops on screen.
  4. I don't like travelling much, especially by car. I keep hoping teleport systems will be invented in my lifetime :)
  5. My interested for education highly derives from the fact that I was bored at school 90 % of the time, and I spent most of that time drawing various sketches in my notebooks.
  6. I am shortsighted - couldn't get far through the day without glasses or contact lenses! Part of it is inherited, and part of it is the price of being a computer geek and living behind computer screens.
  7. I love the sea; now that I don't live by the sea anymore, I really miss the sea air, and the wind you only get on the coast... And thinking of that always reminds me of the song "Gente di mare".
  8. I had compulsory Italian classes for 12 years in school as I lived in a bilingual zone (near the Slovenian-Italian border). And now I haven't really spoken it for 5 years! I still understand it very well, but I don't dare to speak or write it anymore - and that's something I'd like to change.
So, I hope you found my 8 random things interesting :) Now, I should tag 8 more people, but I feel like so many of you already played this game or been tagged, and I also don't want to make anyone play this game, sooo I will follow Angela's example (and KJ's ;) ) and invite you readers of this blog, who want to be tagged and share with us 8 random things (I assure you: it is quite fun and painless! :) ) to leave a comment on this post and I'll add you to the list, ok? :)

List of great bloggers that will be happy to share 8 random things:
  1. Daniel (not a blogger (yet! ;) ), but he shared some interesting things in his comment)
  2. Christopher
  3. position open
  4. position open
  5. position open
  6. position open
  7. position open
  8. position open



Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.


Sunday, August 05, 2007

Taking another week off

As some of you already know, I'm taking another week off next week. This time I'm going to sunny Greece, and I won't be taking my laptop or have internet access, so it'll be a real offline holiday. I'll be back on Monday, the 13th, and until then I won't be answering my mails or other messages (Facebook, Second Life etc). But I'm planning on having a little experiment with Twitter on my cell phone. I'll post some updates from my phone during the next week (I'm just telling my mom how she can receive notifications :) ), and I've also turned on mobile notifications for some of my favorite contacts. I'm really curious about how this will work out :)

So, I'll be posting again after I return, and hopefully I'll have some nice photos to upload to Flickr :) (I'm such a Web 2.0 addict!)

Note: This is just an archive post. The blog has moved to a new home at blog.ialja.com, where you will also find a copy of the entire blog.