Macadamian Blog
Choosing a Cross-Platform Mobile Framework: Analysis and Advice
Engineering your mobile application for only one mobile platform can be a risky endeavor, given the tight race between iOS, Android, Blackberry and even Windows Phone 7. Managers are feeling pressure to release their product on as many of these platforms and form factors and possible.
To meet this challenge, does it make sense for your team to adopt one of the emerging cross-platform mobile frameworks like PhoneGap or Sencha Touch? And if so, which is the best and least risky choice? In our new whitepaper, we’ve done some homework to help you sort out the options and make an informed decision.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing: Poor research and its cost to EMR redesign.
We've talked in the past about the importance of research in improving a product's user experience and usability. In the healthcare field this is especially critical. Thankfully we see more and more companies engaging in getting user feedback. Unfortunately, since research is a highly specialized skill set, we are also seeing a proliferation of mistakes and misinterpretations in some of the more technical aspects of research, being made by people who don't have specific training in usability research or a general foundation in experimental practices. Here are 3 of the most common.
Misunderstanding Statistical Significance
We often come across clients who either ask for more data points, so its "statistically significant" or believe they have a meaningful result because it is "statistically significant". While research methods like surveys demand a certain amount of rigor with regards to statistical significance, when it comes to usability testing or observation of specific behaviours, it is not at all a sufficient criteria (although can be related) for meaningful or "proper" research. So how many research participants are enough? Well, that depends...on the range of target user groups, scope of activities or tasks you want to observe, how the results will be used and how many rounds/iterations of research you will be conducting. If you are iteratively testing an application or web application and only have to worry about one or two user groups, several iterations with 5-6 users each time will detect most of the usability issues. However, if you are doing a benchmark study, you'll want to run a greater number of users, across all user groups, to ensure the results are comparable.
Framing a Culture Discussion
Earlier this week I wrote about the progress we made around our culture evolution during our Annual Operating Plan (AOP) review. We set a solid half day at that review to have a great discussion on the evolution of our culture. Our goal was to get our strategic team to engage, just like the rest of the organization is engaged now. We wanted them to participate in the definition exercise.
Why Google+ is Going to Succeed
It's official, I'm making a call: Google+ is going to work out just fine.
I know there are plenty of skeptics out there, so let's go ahead and address the most common concerns:
Culture Evolution: Getting More and More People on the Train
Our Culture Evolution is progressing well. Just over a week ago, we met a major milestone when we presented our material to our strategic team during our Annual Operating Planning session. I am really enjoying the opportunities the evolution is giving me to be in meetings with people from all groups in the company.