What you hear is not what you get

This is interesting presentation showing that visual elements affect the sound you think you hear. If you have not seen this before, it's worth watching.

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

We all know that correlation does not equal causation but it's always good to have more examples. When Obama took office Blackberry was the industry giant. Now, barely 42 months later, everyone is wondering if Blackberry can survive against Android (Google) and the iPhone. So, is Obama the cause of RIM's failure? Is there a correlation? Or is there no relationship whatsoever?

Milestones of Failure Line RIM’s Path to Disintegration

New Finding: The less you know - the more you make.

FROM popular culture we know that:
Knowledge = Power
and Time = Money

SINCE P= W/T (Power = Work/Time)
REWRITING THE ABOVE: Knowledge=Work/Money
THEREFORE Money = Work/Knowledge

IN OTHER WORDS: the less you know the more you make.

Higgs Boson Joke, my favorite so far:

A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest stops the particle and says, "We don't allow your kind in here." Undeterred the particle responds: "But without me, you can't have mass."

So now Mind Reading is Possible

Welcome the singularity. It's 2012 and already we're developing commercial applications that involve mind reading. If we can "read minds" we can record thoughts and memories. The penseive of Harry Potter fame may be here before we know it.

Through the use of an algorithm formulated by Low, the iBrain reads brainwave activity and transmits it wirelessly back to a computer. As Dr. Low points out, the iBrain can collect data regardless of where a person is or what they are doing. For this reason it is a welcome alternative to the masses of electrodes and wires that hospitals and sleep labs generally use when assessing a patients brain activity.

[Stephen] Hawking was fitted with the head-band device and asked to “imagine that he was scrunching his right hand into a ball.” While he can’t actually move his hand, the motor cortex in his brain can still issue the command and generate electrical waves in his brain. The algorithm then translates these thoughts into signals, which show up on the monitor as spikes on a grid.

“We were looking for a change in the signal,” says Dr Low. “In January this year, we found it.”

The Francis Crick Memorial Conference, which takes place on July 7, discusses the topic of "Consciousness in humans and non-human animals" and will be the first time Hawking and Low deliver their findings to the public.

While many are hoping to see the famed astrophysicist speaking to us “through his brain” for the first time, it is unlikely that the technology has been refined to the point where this can be easily demonstrated. Instead, much of the research will be presented through video documentation.

While much of the publicity that Neurovigil has gained has been due to its close work with Stephen Hawking, Dr Low is quick to point out that the technology has been developed for everybody. That’s because the concept of “mind-mapping” with the iBrain is not limited to its use as an augmented communication device. In fact, the applications are so varied that it led to Dr Low refusing initial funding from venture capitalists. http://www.gizmag.com/ibrain-stephen-hawking-communicate-brainwaves/23182/

Struggling with HiPPOs Again

How often do I hear that we don't need to test because "We know our customers" or "We've been in the business for 'X' years" or, my personal favorite "We have come to the conclusion ... "

Coming to a conclusion, based on facts is one thing, but coming to a conclusion based upon personal judgment or intuition without direct testing is something else. I completely understand when time or budgetary constraints come in and the development team is "forced to go to war production with the army design they have." That being said the organization understands that mistakes in preparation have been made and that careful re-thinking of the application must be made. (Often times this re-thinking never occurs until the next hurried release is made. But that's another story.)

So, how does one deal with the HiPPO (HIghest Paid Person's Opinion) problem? It certainly can't be based upon your intuition that testing ought to be done. Ideally you would have a series of examples were the HiPPO had previously been surprised with user responses and be able to leverage that experience. Aside from that I have not had success. I have brought up examples from lecturers and articles to no avail. I would love to read about other's success rates.

What is Business Intelligence

A good presentation on business intelligence. For UI designers who think that UI work for financial companies is less demanding than for customer based sites - please take a look at data visualization and dashboard presentations.