Steven Voyles

I have been a huge fan of agile development and the Scrum methodology ever since I first started working with it years ago.  The iterative nature of Scrum development lends itself so well to both obtaining and implementing user feedback that it’s hard not to like it.  I just finished listening to a great interview with Michael Vincent over at Usability Counts where Michael and Patrick Neeman discuss how the use of an agile methodology like Scrum can enhance usability.  Here are some of the key topics, but you should definitely hit the link below to listen to the podcast:

• How Scrum decreases the time between finding and correcting usability issues.
• The increased visibility into the development process given to users by teams using Scrum.
• The increased level of buy in for a project that can be obtained using a Scrum methodology.

Podcast: About Agile And Scrum With Michael Vincent | Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media

Check out this video of a wearable interface from last month’s TED conference.  They basically combine a camera, projector, and fingertip indicators to interface with a phone connected to the internet and display context relevant information on any flat surface you happen to have handy.  Very cool.  I’m not a fan of the ‘Sixth Sense’ claim made by the creators here, but in terms of a usable, wearable computing interface this is one of the better examples I’ve seen and it lends itself to tons of possible applications.  Definitely worth a look.

James Padolsey has put together a nice introduction to the Document Object Model in Javascript over at Nettuts+.  He covers the Javascript types as well as some basic DOM manipulation techniques.  Should be a good read for anyone looking to become more familiar with the basics of the DOM API that so many of the frameworks we use in web development are built upon.

JavaScript and the DOM Series: Lesson 1 – NETTUTS