I waited till today to write about it because it took a little while to sink in. I mean, it’s over! The ambitious plan that started early this year with my attempt to get into the field of usability and gain some credentials has now been realized.

For new readers of this blog, Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) is a certification offered by the world-renowned usability consulting company called Human Factors International as an entry-level certification for usability professionals. It’s the perfect kick-start for people who are passionate about this field of science like me.

My plan to achieve this certification involved traveling all the way to India for a 10-days training course in July. That went pretty well. I came back and had about 2 months to study for and prepare for the certification exam. I wasted no effort reviewing all the course materials and reading lots of online and offline literature on this subject. Finally, I devised a strategy for taking the exam that involved creating a reference sheet (PDF) to lookup any piece of information I may need during the exam (it’s an open-book one). The latter proved very useful during the 2.5 hours, 100 questions exam.

With this certification under my belt, I’m now ready to delve into the world of usability and human-computer interaction. As a matter of fact, I already have a blueprint for a usability career plan. The steps of this plan go something like this:

1. Establish professional credibility by way of certification and actual practice.
2. Work towards bringing usability knowledge and practices into my workplace.
3. Start a dedicated blog and write regularly about different topics in usability such as user-centered design.
4. When I feel confident with enough usability work to back me up, I will start giving public speeches and training sessions.

What I’m really hoping to achieve is something bigger which is to bring the science of usability into this part of the world and make people (especially those involved in IT) aware of it’s critical importance. I honestly hope to look back on this post one day and say with confidence that I’m at least one step closer to achieving this grand plan of mine. It’s not completely selfless, as I’ll hopefully become famous for this effort. But in doing so, I’ll also make the lives of many, many people easier since the institutionalization of usability means we will start making (and using) many products that are usable, useful and effective. Everybody’s life will be easier. It’s what computers were always meant to do, and it’s up to us to make them do just that.

I’ve already been through the courses’ material twice. I read countless articles and white papers, and I’ve been through couple of fantastic books about the subject. It only seems fair to believe that I’m well-prepared for taking on and passing the exam.

However, no matter what I do I can’t seem to shake off the feeling of anxiety and anticipation. It seems that no matter what you do, exams usually have their dreadful sensation which you can’t get rid of. For me, this is mainly caused by the fear of failing. Although I do have the option of retaking the exam after 3 days in case of failure, failing this exam does a couple of things to me:

1. It shakes my confidence in the career path I’ve decided upon and chose to begin with this certification.
2. It sends a bad message to my friends and coworkers, possibly lowering the credibility I’m trying to establish in the field of usability.

Not to sound pessimistic, I do however believe in my knowledge and ability to pass the exam with flying colors. I’m just skeptic, that’s all. A healthy dose of skepticism is important to ground our egos in reality and level-off our expectations, don’t you think?

I’ve been on a 2-week trip to India attending a 10-day course series offered by the renowned usability consulting firm called Human Factors International (HFI) (read more in my original post).

So I’m now in Dubai airport with 8 hours of waiting time till my connecting flight back home. That’s plenty of time to reflect on the whole trip and that’s what I’m going to try and do here.

Overall, I’m really glad to say that objective of the trip was achieved in excess of what I’ve expected. I got out of the courses with such solid foundation of the material that it feels like money well spent. But what’s more important is that it reaffirmed my passion for this field since it was my first official exposure to the principles and methodologies followed in the world of usability and human-computer interaction design. I can safely say now that I’ve truly found my career passion!

For the rest of this post, I’m going to make a quick run through some of my observations and experiences during the trip in general. The outline will be as follows:

• Training courses
• First impressions
• Hotel
• Food
• City (Bangalore)
• People
• Funniest moments

Training courses

It’s really been a while since I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of an onsite training. For the past year and half, I was plagued with a streak of really bad training sessions that were in consistently horrible quality, both in terms of content and presentation.

This might be part of the reason HFI’s training seemed so impressive to me. But that’s not to deny they were actually well thought-out and presented. We had 3 instructors for the 4 courses, and they were all experienced working usability engineers with impressive academic background.

Honestly, my biggest fear going to India was finding it difficult or impossible to understand their unique English accent. However, none of that was ever an issue. All of the instructors were really easy to understand and their vocabulary was really good they could deliver complex concepts like a breeze.

My only complaint about the training is HFI’s decision to hand us the material (slides and supplements) in paper. By the end of the course, we had a huge pile of training material, so huge I had to pay for a 10 KG excess luggage weight that costed me a hefty amount at the Bangalore airport. I was really pissed off!

First impressions

It’s funny: my biggest mistake going to India was going through Dubai! It was a huge downgrade leaving Dubai airport and being greeted in Bangalore airport. The difference is impossible to describe in simple words, but Bangalore’s airport can be described in a simple analogy: a glorified mall, with planes instead of shopping carts!

For example:

• It is too small travelers actually stumble upon each other trying to move around the place. Also, some of check-in lines extended beyond the doors to outside the airport!
• It is so dirty in and out it made me question whether the department of sanitation was on a strike.
• It had all these complex procedures and pointless forms you have to fill when you’re coming in or out. Really aggravating when no other airport you’ve been through made you go through them.

Hotel

HFI recommended that I stay at this hotel which is a walking distance away from the training center. It’s supposed to be the best business hotel in Bangalore, and it’s really not that far from it. Although it’s a little bit on the expensive side, my experience staying in it for two weeks was generally positive. The best part is availability of broadband wireless internet in the rooms which really helped me stay in touch with family and friends.

Food

The hotel had a complementary breakfast, which wasn’t too bad. However, the training center served the same exact 5 meals for lunch for 2 weeks. All were traditional Indian meals. Speaking of which, next time somebody asks you to describe Indian food, go ahead and use the following pointers:

• Tell them it’s spicy. No actually too spicy. You know what, just tell them it’s spicy enough to build a nuclear bomb, provided sufficient Uranium.
• Tell them it’s too oily. If you have a minor form of cholesterol like I do, Indian food would be your best option to step up the game!
• Tell them it’s too sweet. Their dessert menu will almost always have that 1 item that makes you think you’re digesting loads of sugar.

I thought I was going to starve there the first couple of days. Then I realized the hotel had it’s own restaurant which served some humanly meals like good-old burgers and noodles. What a life saver!

City

Bangalore is an industrial city. It’s heart of India’s IT industry. Many big corporations have offices there and Microsoft is even building its very own university. When I read all that on the Web I thought I was going to a very hi-tech city, or at least something in that category.

With all the development that’s going in, you’d think the government would pay attention to to the outlook of the city, or at least provide it with uninterrupted stream of power supply. I guess that was too much to ask, because power interruption was very normal for them, but very frustrating for me.

I used to walk back and forth from the training center everyday. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen the larger portion of Bangalore, but from what I’ve seen, the city is extremely poorly-maintained. Streets look like they were last paved in celebration of India’s independence. The largest crack I could spot in one of the streets was enough to replicate a mini swimming pool in your backyard. It didn’t look far from that especially when it rained. I was tempted!

Pollution is another thing you can’t help but painfully notice walking down the street. There are apparently no rules imposing regular maintenance of automobiles and those 3-wheeler things.

Traffic is more of a fun movie to watch than an absolute disaster. At a big intersection that I used to pass, there used to be these traffic contentions, involving the following:

• Cars
• Bikes
• Bicycles
• 3-wheelers (whatever they’re called)
• People crossing
• Cows (also crossing)
• Dogs (just screwing around)

One of those days I just stood watching how the traffic contention would clear out. I’m telling you it was the most fun I had while being there. I’m pretty sure I was there for several minutes while dogs were dancing to the rhythm of the horns. The cows got their way in the end. Fair enough.

People

The most interaction I had was with the people who were taking the courses with me. The general impression I got is that Indian people are very social and welcoming. In these kind of courses, I usually stay away from emotional attachment due to the short time we have together. But some of our class mates insisted we go out for bowling. On another day, he suggested we stay after the course for some open heart-to-heart discussions, which was really fun. On the last day, he even arranged for a McDonald’s meal which was a breath of fresh air for me, albeit a spicy one.

Funniest moment

The funniest moment I can remember was that night when I was watching TV in my room. Here is what I saw:

I was flipping through the channels; lots of boring stuff. Then I stopped on a channel where an Indian version of American Idol was on. I curiously watched it for few minutes as some aspiring Indian singer was giving a performance. One of the judges seemed to be a popular Indian singer and he was really into that guy’s singing. He really loved the song that he felt the need to go out on stage in the middle and start dancing with the guy who’s singing. So he started making all these trademarked Indian dancy moves, until he did that move that just cracked me up. Here is what he did:

He pulled a scarf the singing guy was wearing. He pulled it from his neck and literally cleaned his balls with it! I’m not kidding. He held it from end to end and rubbed it again his balls in a dancy move. Right after that he returned the scarf to the guy and put it around his neck again. That’s it. He did all that and everybody in the audience chanted and clapped for that "cool move". Man, am I missing something here?!

Conclusion

The short version of all of this is:

• Training was awesome.
• Country wasn’t even close.

I realize now that Middle Eastern culture is far different than Indian’s culture. We’re so different in many ways. Sure, we share some family values but as far as everything else is concerned, we have more in common with the Western culture than the Indian counterpart. This isn’t meant to offend anybody, it’s just my observation and it’s just the way it is.

Below is the photo album for my entire trip. Enjoy!

Trip to India

The courses will take place in Bangalore, India and will span 10 days from July 16-26. Taking these courses will prepare me for my ultimate objective which is to obtain their highly regarded Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) certification, which I figured is a great kick-start for me in this path. The certification exam will be done online on September 13 this year, so I’ll have plenty of time to prepare and read more resources.

I had the option of doing this training in Washington, DC but the total cost of travel and training was more than double what I’m paying now, so I chose to go with Bangalore. Besides, it’s the same certificate from the same institute here and there.

Truth be told, the hardest part about this endeavor is having to explain to people and friends what software usability is and why it’s a relevant skill to have and an awesome field of science. Without formal training though, it’s really hard form me to concisely present a case-in-point for of how sofware usability is very important consideration for software vendors. However, if I had to quote a line that best says it all, it would be this:

Software usability today is what hardware was for the 80s and software was for the 90s.

There is a lot more to be said here but this is not the subject of this post. The bottom line is that I’m very excited and looking forward to attending this training series. The arrangements for the travel are almost final and I even ordered a relevant book to read on the plane.

Wish me luck :)

I’m super excited to announce that I’ll be giving my first ever public presentation on a topic I’m super interested in!

I’ve done numerous presentations in the past, ranging from business-oriented to educational ones. But this one is different: it’s public! Meaning anybody can attend which brings a whole lot of different flavors to it. I’ve previously written on how much I love giving presentations, but I’m not interested in giving tired old boring presentation this time. You know, I’ve been studying for a while the art of giving winning presentations: reading relevant blogs, books, and even practicing some of that on the presentations I’ve been giving in-house. It’s really exciting to finally get to put those skills to a bigger test with bigger and more diverse audience.

Plus, how wonderful is it to get to talk about a phenomenon as huge and relevant to our lives as Web 2.0? For the past year or so, I’ve been knee-deep interested in this topic, reading and following the news surrounding it on a daily basis. Since then, I’ve grown so fond of the power and influence it will have on our lives. For this reason, I decided it’s time to share all the knowledge I’ve accumulated with other people in order to spread and raise awareness about it.

So, about 2 months ago, I’ve contacted a local non-profit organization called ITDigest and expressed my desire to give out a public presentation about this subject. Something that is very introductory designed to enhance people’s overall knowledge of the principles and technologies surrounding it. They were more than willing to arrange that for me and even suggested it would be done in a local university. Ever since, I’ve scattered the web doing comprehensive research, gathering and putting together my material in a format that can be understood by novice and expert users alike.

And now: it’s show time! March 7^th, at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. For dear readers of this blog who won’t be able to attend, I’m going to have the whole presentation recorded and uploaded here soon after the presentation.

Anyways, wish me luck!

p.s., I’ve designed the picture above to be first in my presentation slides. Here is a bigger version of it, you’re free to use it with proper attribution.

Update 12/3/07: The presentation has been rescheduled to 15/4/07.

In this part, we’ll turn our attention to the computer keyboard. This mildly sophisticated device has received the least amount of innovation in the brief history of the computing era. This is understandable, given the simple purpose of this device which is either typing or sending commands. In the typing department, one of the most notable innovations, in my opinion, was the introduction of the natural keyboard layout in 1992 by Apple and then later in 1994 by Microsoft. The latter has gained wide popularity and adoption which proved that overall people were concerned about the ergonomics and fitness of their computer usage experience. For me, I never really bought into this layout, I guess because it kind of broke my natural typing orientation.

But what I really want to bring to your attention today is a key innovation regarding the second purpose which is sending commands. Historically, most of the improvements in this area have been on fitting bunch of extra keys around the keyboard to act as shortcuts for commonly used commands. This is great! But the genius guys at Humanized have gone a step ahead and crafted a wonderful and versatile software that is way ahead of its league. What this software can do is something I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen a lot on similar grounds. So read on to find out how this software promises to revamp your whole computing experience for good!

Hi, my name is ENSO

They called it ENSO, a Japanese word meaning “circle”. It is drawn in circle (duh!) that symbolizes enlightenment, strength, and the universe. The reason it’s a partially open circle is to also symbolize that it is not separate, but is part of something greater.And it’s certainly is. ENSO does not replace anything in your desktop. It just sits quietly in the back waiting to be summoned to perform wonderful things for you. What kind of things? Glad you asked! Let’s run through some of the cool features ENSO gives you out of the box.

I can start your favourite applications, files and even websites

ENSO Launcher is the part that can do all that and then some. While there are numerous so-called “application launchers” out there, this one does it differently, and does it with a style!

The idea here is that if you’re the type of person who relies heavily on using the keyboard or if you’re typing something and don’t want to switch over to the mouse, you can fire up quick commands in a human-natural form to open your favourite applications. Wherever you are, it goes like this:

1. You hold down the Caps Lock key
2. Meanwhile, you type “open …” followed by the name of the application.
3. Just release the Caps Lock and there you go!

While this may seem like a lengthy process, it happens really quickly. This is because the ENSO is very smart in the sense that:

1. You don’t have to type the full name of the application because ENSO filters the available results as you type more characters.
2. You can press TAB to auto-finish the command

“C” is highlighted because it’s the only character I’ve typed after the “open”. That’s all I need!

The rest of the choices, shown above, are ones you can also choose by navigating down the list with the Down arrow key.

Now, what if the thing you want to start isn’t an application but rather a file, folder or a favourite website. Well, why not teach ENSO about so that next time you’ll be able to start it just like we did above. Let me show you how that is done:

1. Navigate to the file, folder or website of your choice.
2. Highlight the address (usually up there on the address bar in Windows Explorer or your browser).
3. Issue the “learn as open …” command.

Next time, it doesn’t matter which application I’m in, all I need is “open r” to start my news reader

I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a brilliant simple way to teach a software something. It’s also natural to think about it. “Learn” or “Open” are all words used by humans and now my computer understands them, now that’s what “humanized” is all about!

There are host of other commands (as of the current version) that you can also play with:

• go {window name}
• close
• maximize
• unmaximize
• minimize
• open with {program}
• quit
• undo unlearn
• unlearn open {command name}

Wait, I can also help you with your writing

This is yet another part of ENSO that can do wonders for you. Ever needed to run a spell check on something you wrote on a website or some application but the functionality just wasn’t there. Perhaps you wanted to do simple calculation on the spot without having to break your concentration by opening external application? Well that’s what ENSO Words is all about.

The way it works is very similar to the Launcher. You select the text and issue the desired command. If it’s a spell check or calculation commands, ENSO Words will replace your text in-place. If the text isn’t replaceable, as if you’re reading off a webpage, ENSO will remember the result and let you put anywhere else where there’s an editable area.

In addition, it can do any of the following things (as of the current version):

1. Define any word you select or give you synonyms for it.
2. Calculate any four-function mathematical formula you have at hand.
3. Count the number of words or characters.
4. Transfer your text into upper or lower case.

Conclusion

While I didn’t cover every command in detail, I hope this quick run-through gave you a good idea of the capabilities of this innovative software. It goes without exaggeration that once you try ENSO and get a good grip of it, you’ll learn to appreciate it so much that it would feel awkward if you have to do the simple things it lets you do without it. For me, I was addicted from day one and now consider it an essential part of my productive computing arsenal.

Still, other people, especially in the publishing industry, use voice, or spoken words, as a means to dictate text as well as to tell the computer what to do. Voice recognition, as a technology, has evolved rapidly in the last decade that it’s now considered a very productive and feasible way for interacting and typing text given the right circumstances. Obviously, using voice is the most natural way for us to interact.

But what about the other popular mechanisms, namely the mouse and the keyboard? The question that inspired this post is: has these two mechanisms reached a point where it seems “natural” for us, as humans, to use them to interact with our computers? If no, then can we add a “human” touch to these devices to make them easier and more natural to use?

The answer is: we certainly can! In this post and the next one, I’ll let you in on some wonderful applications that can dramatically shift the way you use your mouse and keyboard, respectively. The beauty of these applications is that you don’t have to abandon what you’re already used to, you just need to get used to wonderful new interaction techniques that can vastly improve your interaction experience using these devices.

So today, we’ll start with..

The Legendary Mouse

What can you do beside clicking your way around?

Let’s start at the beginning. A computer mouse is the second most natural input mechanism after the voice. Why? Simply because it’s a physical device that we can control, hold, move around and even play with. It was invented in 1964 by Douglas Engelbart who gave it this nickname because of the tail that came out of its end.

There hasn’t been any major changes to the way the mouse works since its invention. Certainly, there were improvements in the design and operation which included:

• More ergonomic designs
• Elimination of the “tail” (cordless mice)
• More buttons
• Scrollwheels
• Higher precision using optical and laser beam instead of tracker ball

Nevertheless, the concept of using the mouse remained the same: you move it around and click on things that appear on your screen. In my opinion, the act of clicking or double-clicking (triple-clicking? give me a break!) on graphical user interface (GUI) elements has some major shortcomings, despite being customary:

1. It forces you to precisely position your mouse cursor on the exact element (e.g., button) that you need to trigger. An offset by as little as 0.5cm could lead to a totally different and undesired action.
2. It is slow, especially with the default OS settings.
3. On the long run, and if used excessively, it can lead to serious health issues, most notably numbness and tingling in the thumb and index finger that may develop into Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS).

Fortunately, there are things you can do to make using the mouse a more productive interaction device. For example, you could:

• Cut the clicking in half! Yes you can do that if you make the middle mouse button, for instance, act as a double clicker. (Cool Mouse can help you do that [Windows only])
• Increase the speed and acceleration of the mouse, so the cursor moves a lot faster with the same physical mouse movement.
• Have the cursor smartly snap to elements you’re likely to move it to, like the stupid “OK”s on dialog boxes.
• Using the scrollwheel on the mouse instead of clicking the scrollbar found on most GUI screens.

However, I’m not satisfied with the above improvements. Remember, my original purpose in this post is to “humanize” my interaction using the mouse. What do humans do when they communicate? They talk right? Cool! Thanks for the info :)

But seriously what else do they do? Along with verbal communication, we also do a lot of gesturing. Formally speaking, A human gesture is a:

a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verbal communication. The language of gesture is rich in ways for individuals to express a variety of feelings and thoughts, from contempt and hostility to approval and affection.

So what happens if we port this exact concept to the world of computing? Well, we could flip a computer off since it was unable to install any updates but insisted that we restart anyway, although that probably won’t be of much use beside letting some steam off.

However, there’s a smarter way. We can fire up mouse gestures!

The Power of Mouse Gestures

A mouse gesture is a way of combining computer mouse movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command.

My bet is that we’ve all been doing mouse gestures without even realizing it. Have you ever done a drag-drop operation (no, not this kind)? That’s a mouse gesture! However, the beauty here is that this idea can be generalized much further to include virtually any application you use and any gesture movement you dream of!

Being able to issue an appropriate gesture for an appropriate action using your mouse doesn’t only make things easier, it makes using your mouse “feel right” again. For example, to delete something, say incoming email, instead of the usual way, why not quickly draw an ‘x’ in any size you prefer:

Cool, huh! Let’s see how you can do the same and much more.

StrokeIt: Free Mouse Gesture Recognition

I’m a PC user so I’m sticking to what I know and I know this: StrokeIt (download) is one of the best, if not the best, free mouse gesture recognition software for Windows. In fact, it’s partially what inspired this post. I wanted to tell everybody about this great little appplication and what it can do for you. The rate of recognition is unbelievably fast and accurate. It runs out of the box with a myriad of gestures and associated actions. And here’s the punch line: you can teach it your own gestures the way you like them and associate these gestures with specific applications or make them global to every application on your system.

To start off, you should recognize the repetitive tasks you usually do with the mouse and define a gesture for them. You can use one of the built-in gestures (which correspond to the English alphabets) or again you can draw your own gesture.

Secondly, you should define the mouse button that triggers the drawing. For me, I’ve set the middle mouse button.

Here is another favourite gesture of mine: a close gesture which closes the current application. It’s drawn exactly like a “C”. Remember, your “C” doesn’t have to be a perfect half-circle, it can of any size and you can also draw it backwards.

Can you already see the benefit of drawing such gestures instead of, say, reaching for the red ‘X’ button or closing the application from the taskbar? I think the benefits lend themselves pretty clearly:

• It’s faster.
• It’s more flexibile.
• Above all, it’s just more natural!

Conclusion

With just little bit of learning and getting used to, mouse gestures can provide the next powerful and intuitive means for us to interact with our desktops. However, they’re not meant to completely replace clicking on various GUI elements, but rather complement them with more human-friendly actions (i.e., drawings) that provide alternative ways to achieve the same thing.

But wait, here’s an idea: Can we completely elminate clicking altogether? Think about it: A desktop-based interface that features the same graphical elements you’re used to (buttons, lists, etc), except you don’t need to click to move around. You can do so with mere gestures, like hovering back and forth over a button once!

The question is: after getting used to, would this kind gesture-based system make its way into mainstream acceptance? Or are we so hooked on clicking that we can’t imagine a world where computer mice are buttonless?