Fast keyboard-free writing with Dasher

The researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge developed a usable system called Dasher that allows the the insertion of text in situations wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used . For example, Dasher can be used:

• when operating a computer one-handed, by joystick, touchscreen, trackball, or mouse;
• when operating a computer with zero hands (i.e., by head-mouse or by eyetracker);
• on a palmtop computer;
• on a wearable computer.

Dasher is a zooming interface and it contains a vertical line of letters from A to Z. To start typing, you simply point towards the letter you want to start your sentence with and the display zooms in wherever you point. The more you zoom in, the longer the piece of text you have written.

Dasher runs on Microsoft Windows and UNIX systems, it has text predicting functionality and is available in many languages. In addition, just by typing away you can easily train Dasher on using your preferred writing style. So, keep tightly onto your seat and test the usefulness of Dasher in your browser here.

An expert user of Dasher with a mouse as the input device has a writing speed of about 34 words per minute, whereas a novice user writes over 20 words per minute. Furthermore, users of Dasher make fewer errors than people using a conventional keyboard.

Dasher is highly appropriate for computer users with lower ranges of physical capability. It can be driven using a mouse, a trackpad, a touchscreen, a rollerball, or a joystick – any two-dimensional pointing device that can take over the role of a mouse. A foot mouse and a head mouse are additional options. Apparently, the functionality of Dasher has been discussed with Stephen Hawking’s assistant, however, it is yet not known how Stephen Hawking rates the usability and usefulness of this system.

The Kent House Design and Technology Seminar

Throughout the year Kent House run a series of events on various topics including SEO, Design, Website Development and Internet Marketing. On 22 June we will be holding a free seminar on Design and Technology and how getting the balance right can improve your online presence. The event will take place at Keele Hall, Staffordshire.

Download the PDF Invitation for more information.

For this upcoming event we have secured the services of Julius Wiedemann – author of Guidelines for Online Success and one of the World’s leading experts on design and marketing. Julius will be giving the keynote presentation and plans to focus on the evolution of design online and take a look at how design has changed how we do business from branding to emails to mobile marketing.

Our very own Kevin Holdridge, will discuss ways in which design, technology, and marketing can work harmoniously together online. He will show examples of how many companies get this badly wrong, thus wasting their money and damaging their market position.

The seminar aims to help local businesses and organisations understand how to get the best return from investment in online channels such as the Web and email. It will do this by focusing on how to get the relationship right between the technology, design and marketing of a site.

The event would be suited to anyone with an interest in marketing, design and websites and more critically people interested in making their website work harder for them by achieving better results in the Search Engines. I have included the event program below.

If you are interested in attending, please register online or alternatively send me an email with all of your details.

Event Program

Session 1
How we got here – A brief on the evolution of media, communication and design.

Session 2
Your site – Design and Usability – How to integrate great design into your site without compromising on usability.

Session 3
Return on Investment – How to maximise your investment in the online world.

Session 4
Design, usability and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – How to design an effective, easily navigated site yet still do well in Google.

Guidelines for Online Success

One of the best, if not the best, surfer of the web is back with yet another inspiring book on website technologies. Julius Wiedemann from Taschen has recently published “Guidelines for Online Success” (co-written with Rob Ford).

This book brings together the expertise and experience of the most highly acclaimed designers and developers from every corner of the world and in a step-by-step approach gives you advice on how to get a competitive edge over the websites of your competitors. I have read this book and really recommend it to everyone who wants to match up the success of their websites to the success of websites created by the world class designers.

The book is divided into 6 sections that discuss the dos and don’ts on the following topics:

1. Interface & Design, examples including:

• Do: “Use colours that add something to your work and give the design the right balance” (p. 24)
• Don’t: “Copy others – your work is much more valuable as the original” (p. 24)

2. Marketing & Communication, examples including:

• Do: “Clearly display a Contact link at all times” (p. 78)
• Don’t: “Fail to explain what makes your company special” (p. 82)

3. Technology & Programming, examples including:

• Do: “Test! Test! Test! Nothing is really done until it’s tested online in as many variations as possible” (p. 152)
• Don’t: “Make your flash navigation file size so large that it takes too long to download” (p. 168)

4. Technical Advice, examples including:

• Do: “Make smart design to display photographs to fit different screen resolutions” (p. 210)
• Don’t: “Make the interface too complex – simplicity is the key for users to access integrated content” (p. 202)

5. Content/Content Management, examples including:

• Do: “Keep the animated sequences short and sweet” (p. 240)
• Don’t: “Overload the layout” (p. 252)

6. E-Commerce, examples including:

• Do: “Keep it simple. Customers need to feel comfortable with a cart as soon as possible, or they will be discouraged from browsing through the products on offer” (p. 290)
• Don’t: “Use long questionnaires or surveys to gain information from the user” (p. 286)

If you want to have a quick look at what this book is all about, and you don’t really feel like rushing to the bookshop or filling up the mail order forms on Amazon, then you have the option of looking up the first 50 pages of the book at Taschen online.

Some of the other inspiring books created by Julius Wiedemann can be viewed here.

Designing more inclusive websites

About 10 years ago Professor John Clarkson from the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Cambridge and Professor Roger Coleman from the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art realised the importance of designing more accessible, usable and desirable products and the value such products bring to the market, and as a result they collaboratively set up 2 Inclusive Design research groups in the UK: one in Cambridge and one in London. Since then, a lot of other UK-based academic and business institutions, including Kent House, recognised the benefit of inclusively-designed products and started they own inclusive design ventures. All these institutions operate from the belief that inclusively-designed products not only minimise the exclusion of less capable users, but they are also easier for everyone else to use.

Inclusive Design Background

Inclusive design is a general approach to designing in which designers ensure that their products and services address the needs of the widest possible audience, irrespective of age or ability. The concept of inclusive design is similar to Universal Design, which is popular in the United States and Japan. However, it is widely accepted in the inclusive design discourse that designing ‘one product for all’ is implausible because people of different ages, capabilities and social and cultural backgrounds prefer different products.

Kent House and Inclusive Design Websites

Kent House believes in the power of inclusive products and services and we have always been stressing the importance of accessible and easy-to-use websites to our clients. In 2006, we conducted an extensive usability study on 303 Primary Care Trust (PCT) websites in the UK and found them to be of poor quality in terms of design, content and effectiveness of communication. As a solution to the problem with PCT websites, we developed the 3C Compliance Model. The results of the study were published in the British Journal of Healthcare Computing & Information Management in February 2007.

Kent House and the University of Cambridge

In the pursuit of even more understanding on inclusive design and the need to further develop guidance on how to design more  accessible and usable products and services, I joined the Inclusive Design research group at the University of Cambridge as a PhD student in October 2007. My work focuses on modelling interaction between product features and human capabilities. I am particularly interested in finding out whether product designers really consider heterogeneous users during their designs, and if so, whether they use any models or frameworks to ensure that their products meet the needs and wants of  users with varied capability. I am also interested in finding out more about the goals and actions of heterogenous users when they interact with daily living products.

Since I have been working with the Inclusive Design group, I have introduced the vision impairment simulator to the Kent House team in order to help our graphic designers understand how declined vision affects the ability to interact with our websites and as way of testing if our websites can be seen by people with reduced capability.

Branding

Branding is not just about your company logo but it’s also about your business values and every interaction you have with your customers and suppliers. Branding can become an essential part of your business, create and maintain your company reputation and reflect your customers’ experience. It can also help you to maintain employee motivation and increase your sales.

So… do you want your product or service to become a customer’s first choice?

Well… Kent House can help you make this happen by building your brand identity and giving you advice on how to focus on what your customers want and how you can guarantee to deliver it.

If you have any queries regarding our Products and Services, please feel free to contact us at info@kenthouse.com or 0845 638 0700.

Kent House in 48-Hour Design Challenge

In November 2008, I was asked to take part in the 48-Hour Inclusive Design Challenge in Tokyo. The Challenge was collaboratively organised by the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, Nikkei Design and Tokyo University, and its theme was disaster related. All participants were divided in 3 design team consisting of, among others, in-house designers from leading Japanese companies, engineering graduates from the University of Cambridge and the University of Tokyo, and a member of the Kent House family. Each team worked with one disabled person and one survivor of the Niigata or Kobe earthquakes and was led by an experienced designer from the UK. The aim of the Challenge was to develop innovative mainstream products, services or environments that would be assistance in disaster and would include the needs of disabled people. The results of the competition were then presented to Design Innovation Forum delegates from industry and academia on November 25 and published in “Nikkei Design” and in “Challenge” published by Helen Hamlyn Centre.

I was a member of the third team (Team C) and our main contribution to the Design Innovation Forum 2008 was the proposition of the ‘Know Your Way’ campaign, which stressed the importance of preparing and establishing a mental image of where the exits in a building are and how to get to them before a disaster strikes. My team created a logo for the campaign, which was represented in Japanese kanji characters and in direct translation it meant that ‘knowledge leads your way out’. We used international signage iconography as the basis of the logo’s design, with the additional depth of meaning in the character itself. Moreover, the fact that the kanji character looked like a person allowed the logo to work across languages. Since one of the crucial actions to take during the times of a disaster is to remain calm, our logo was represented in blue, which signifies calmness in Japanese.

The campaign developed by my team was warmly accepted by the panel of 3 disaster experts and over 300 delegates, and as a result awarded for the “Best Solution” project. So, yet another trophy has been added to the Kent House cabinet of fame.

The participation in the Inclusive Design Challenge was a truly insightful and mind-broadening experience as Kent House has always been in favour of the Inclusive Design philosophy and adopted the user centric approach to the creation of our products and services. It was also a very valuable experience to work directly with Japanese designers and engineers and observe their views, work ethics and decision-making processes.