Collaborative Thinking

Microsoft Cultures Creativity In Unique Lab

From Putting People First, a USA Today story on Microsoft that looks at the research and ethnographic activities behind the technology.   

As an ethnographer for Microsoft (MSFT), Donna Flynn uses her training as a Ph.D. in archeology to analyze how ordinary folks from London to Beijing make daily use of their cellphones.

She feeds results of her field studies to two dozen designers, engineers and strategists toiling in an unusual research lab on the Microsoft campus. Awkwardly dubbed the Mobile and Embedded Devices Experience design center, or MEDX, it is where Microsoft plots strategies to sell souped-up cellphones that act a lot like PCs.

Microsoft cultures creativity in unique lab - USATODAY.com

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Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans

The video is well-worth the time to watch if you are involved in user experience and content delivery or interface design. If you are interested in orchestrating information in a way that maintains reader attention, this information will also be quite valuable. The data from this story could be of interest to vendors in the XML syndication business as well - the tidbits of information could be helpful in how to display streams of feed items  more effectively. Some of the study data points are also relevant to design of blogs and wikis. 

EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans

Poynter unveiled the initial findings of its most recent study of reader behavior at the ASNE convention in Washington, D.C., this morning. Watch, listen and read about them here first.

You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.
And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

Source: Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans