We released another mobile app today: Sametime Meetings Viewer for iPad. This app is optimized for participants attending a Sametime meeting, although room owners will also find it useful if you've planned ahead and uploaded content to the meeting on your desktop machine.
You can set up and access multiple servers and easily switch between them. In the screen below I've set it up against the Greenhouse environment. We are using a sliding panel design pattern, so when you tap on the blue arrows (the detail disclosure button), a new panel slides in with the room details.
Once you enter a meeting, as the owner you can share content you've already uploaded to the meeting. Below is a screen with the projection controls and meeting room info, which you can copy to the clipboard to send out via email, chat, or sms. One handy tip is that you can use a special stmeetings:// url to send or include in a meeting invite for your ipad users that will open the app and join the meeting. Otherwise, searching by room name or owner is pretty fast.
The arrow at the top left reveals the discussion area as well as the library and participants list.
You can download it now from the Apple App Store here. This is the first release of more to come. What do you think? Besides Android and iPhone clients, what else would you need to make this useful to you?
Enjoy
Chris Reckling
@creckling on Twitter
Chris Reckling | 19 April 2012 12:00:00 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Why, yes, we HAVE been busy since Lotusphere! One of the things we talked about was a new, improved app for IBM Connections. As you know, the Connections apps are available today for Android phones, Blackberry, and iOS phones and iPad. This post discusses that navigation pattern and how it will evolve in the near future.
For the iPad release, we introduced a new navigation pattern, which lets you quickly get to the content you want, by drilling down. For example, the figure below shows going from the list of apps to the Files app, then to the list of files in that view. The left navigation is replaced with each subsequent level and the content detail appears on the right (currently in a webview). Moving back and forth is straightforward and understandable and all of the Connections services behave the same way.
On the phone form factor, in Connections 3.0.x apps, the Home screen was represented as an icon grid. Tapping on an icon brought you directly to that service and navigation from there was internal on that page via a drop down menu.
Early on in our design process, we were going to stick with the tile navigation, but decided to go with something more modern and suitable to how the app will be used. The problem with this style navigation in Connections is that different customers deploy different services; therefore, the number of tiles ranges from 2-9. In addition, we found that on Android, due to different size screens, that the layout was not consistent from device to device. (In fact, in the Lotusphere demo, there were 2 rows of 4 and one row of 1 instead of the desired 3x3 grid.) This presentation on Slideshare even talks about the death of the icon grid. :) Finally, we have a requirement for customers to customize and add their own links to the home page, so that sealed the deal for removing the icons.
If you've been paying attention so far, you can guess where this is going, right? Combine the best that is in the iPad design with the best that is on the phone! On both form factors, we want to use the list as the home navigation of the apps in Connections, but skip the view navigation (as seen above on the iPad) and go straight to the content (as seen above on the phone). To navigate to other views in the app, pull down on the 'windowshade'. Thus, it looks like this (sorry, screenshots got a bit messed up in translation - look better on the device):
You go straight to your content on the device, but still have the option to switch views from within that context. We feel this gives you the best ability to have direct access to your content, understand how to navigate around the app consistently, and get to all of the features available in Connections.
A lot of apps, including some of our own, use tabs to switch views. We started to do that but many of the Connections services have a lot of views, so that did not scale well. Typically, if your app has 4-5 views, it is better to use tabs to switch views. See below, in the Sametime example.
That's it for now - tell us about your mobile app strategies or put links in the comments.
Chris Reckling
twitter
Chris Reckling | 2 April 2012 04:00:00 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Help evaluate the IBM lotuslive.com web site with this short survey.
The IBM User Experience Research team would like your feedback on the lotuslive.com web experience.
You will be asked to complete a maximum of three tasks which should take no more than 20 minutes.
Please start the study here: https://s.userzoom.com/m/MSBDOVM1NTM_
Thank you for helping to improve the user experience!
Chris (for Sonal on our User Research team).
Chris Reckling | 8 February 2012 11:40:08 AM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
Orlando, FL - Finishing up my series on what actually was demo'd at the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session, we conclude with Notes and iNotes, along with xPages applications. You can blame me for putting this section last. I have always felt that you need to keep the show building to a big finish; the downside to this strategy is that people try to derive hidden meaning from the placement in the program. I did see a handful of nervous tweets from backstage so I tried to let those following the stream know that it was coming. To me, one of the most exciting things I saw was the Notes browser plugin, which allows you to run older non-web Notes apps in the browser, so I wanted to put that last. It seemed to work and got the expected applause.
On to the demo flow...
After Brian's demo, Sandy Carter took the stage and talked about a lot of customer examples, such as Royal Bank of Canada, th City of Vrot-sway, Poland, and Lufthansa. Her main point was that clients are transforming themselves into social businesses and you better start today in order to remain competitive. Here are some good quotes, as she reeled off a handful of supporting statistics, driving some the points about real ROI and the importance of a mobile strategy.
McKinsey shows that adding social into your customer service process can drive up client satisfaction by 18% -- and that adding social into marketing and sales processes can boost revenue by up to 15%.
68% of people now access their social network through a mobile device. 38% percent of Smartphone owners have used their device to make a purchase.
Denise Hatzidakis, CTO of Premier Healthcare Alliance, followed Sandy to talk about their journey to become a social business and to transform healthcare delivery and information flow.
Kevin Cavanaugh and Doug Cox introduced Ron Sebastian to show the Notes client. The new Notes home page showed the activity stream from Connections along with a summary of mail and calendar entries. Moving on to the Mail experience, Ron showed a number of embedded experiences (the Open Social standard), which brings applications directly to the user no matter where they prefer to work - in the activity stream or the inbox. The screen below shows a file shared from Connections. The user can download, comment, and share right from the inbox.
Also, notice the mail messages grouped by date, which has been a popular feature request. Ron went on to show other embedded experiences from different applications, such as a business process travel approval, Trilog ProjExec, and a custom xPages application. A custom xPages application and Domino Designer got a cameo appearance to show the new social toolkit objects, which makes it easier to extend Connections into your xPages apps. You can embed an activity stream, a forum, and more.
Moving to another VM image, Ron began in the iNotes inbox to show the integrated Sametime chat and meeting features. He also went through the same open social gadgets that you saw in the Notes client, but now running in a browser. Sometimes when you receive an email notification or a doclink inside of iNotes, following the link can be frustrating - the linked app perhaps is not web-enabled or Notes is not installed on that machine. Now, with the Notes browser plugin, you have access to that application. "It turns your browser into a lightweight
Notes client by simply installing a standard browser plugin."
What you see below is a modified discussion template, running in FIrefox with only the Notes browser plugin.
Doug and Kevin came back to sum up what you just saw:
- Notes Social Edition
- Open Social gadgets
- Embedded experiences
- Notes browser plugin
That concludes the OGS Demo series. We have been getting great feedback on the overall flow of the OGS this year. I think smaller segments that moved quickly, compelling customer stories, and amazing demos showed the way forward.
Now, on to the rest of the year! :)
Chris Reckling
Mobile UX and OGS Demo team.
Chris Reckling | 20 January 2012 10:00:00 AM ET | | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
Continuing my series of blog posts on what actually was demo'd during the Opening General Session at Lotusphere 2012.
Between the "Ron demo" on mobile apps, and the "Brian demo" covering the Customer Experience Suite and inject social everywhere, Kurt De Ruwe from Bayer talked about their experiences in deploying Connections in order to "take advantage of all of their collective knowledge and expertise".
Some other good quote from Mr. De Ruwe:
"We wanted to create a culture where sharing is encouraged and where we have a mindset that stimulates the innovation process."
"Based on the early results of the deployment we expect to see a quick adoption across the organization with immediate benefits coming from the new way of interacting with peers around the globe."
Larry Bowden introduced the next set of demos, done by Mr. Brian Cheng, aka Mr. Energy. Larry's theme can be summed up here: "you need to deliver engaging, seamlessly integrated, experiences -- across all channels ...at all times.....and all devices." The big announcement was for IBM Customer Experience Suite Next beta release.
Brian's demo was section into 2 parts, the first part on the iPad and the second on the desktop. He showed how you could take content and manage it from your device or desktop.
The site shown on the iPad. Customer Experience Suite helps you get the content out to multiple devices. Brian showed how you could add new content (a Mussels Marinara recipe and video). "All the tools I need to create and manage my content are at my fingertips...literally." "All of my digital assets can be stored and versioned in my ECM system."
Brian went from mobile content owner, to line of business user by donning his jacket. He show how you could create a metrics dashboard with integrated sentiment analysis from Cognos Consumer Insight. "This gives a new level of insight using technology driven social analytics." Taking analytic information and then acting on it is the next step.
Moving over the company's external web site, you can see the video that was added from the iPad, also being pushed to this site.
The external Greenwell site with metric overlays showing page views per area.
After showing an e-commerce site, the next major part of the demo showed how to add communities to the site, using a content template. This allows you to link communities directly to the site page.
The community page added to the main site navigation with portlets linked to the Connections community of your choice. In summary, Brian summarized, "The customer experience suite and the intranet experience makes it easy for my mobile employees, business executives, and content owners to easily filter Big Data to gain customer insight, discover problem areas to act upon, and reach and engage customers to develop better products faster."
And that's the end of Brian's demo of Customer Experience Suite. A lot was packed into those 12 minutes!
Chris Reckling
Mobile UX and OGS Demo Team
Chris Reckling | 18 January 2012 10:15:00 AM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
Continuing on with the Opening General Session demo summary. Part 1, which covers Connections, IBM Docs, and Connections Mail is here.
After Suzanne's demos were done, Jeff Schick sums it up and introduces the next section. Because the activity stream and embedded experiences are based on Open Social standards, the expectation is for a broad developer eco-system to build custom applications that extend it beyond what IBM provides out of the box. The call to action is to look for opportunities to bring social context into business applications.
"Content at rest equals cost. Content in motion equals value." "Connections will unlock the content stored in every repository and will 'people-enable' processes." These statements seemed to resonate with the audience. After that Jeff, introduced Ron, who entered stage left with nothing but an iPad.
He started in email and showed how you could take an attachment (for example, a partner sends a proposal to you) and either view it in the Symphony ODF viewers or move it to Connections. "Now, what I really want to do is get this attachment out of my email and put it in my social repository where I can share and manage it easier."
This is the Connections iPad client IBM released in November. Ron did a brief demo of a few of the other parts of the Connections client. You can try it yourself by downloading from the app store and using it with your Greenhouse account. Just use greenhouse.lotus.com as the Connections server name.
Next Ron switch over to the HTC Rezound Android phone for a quick demo of the new, coming in the future, Connections mobile client. He showed how you could access all of Connections function, in particular, the Status Updates and Profiles. In Profiles you can even generate a QR Code for the user, which can be used by other mobile phone QR Readers to easily exchange information.
Back on the iPad, Ron went on to show the new Sametime app. Backstage, Heidi Ambler starting sending him chat messages to talk on the "phone". Using Sametime Unified Telephony and the Polycom video client, the call is made backstage to Heidi. (We did this live, but the screens here are from the backup plan...)
That was the end of this section of the demo. Jeff came back to sum it up and introduce the next speaker.
"From the iPad and iPhone -- to any Android, Blackberry, or Windows -- and today we expanded our Windows support by adding support for Windows phone including the beautiful new Nokia and HTC devices.
You can take it with you."
Some of you have asked how we did the mobile demos. Without going into all the details, we used AppleTV to project the iPad over a private Aruba Networks wifi setup that allowed us to control which devices could access and even see the network. Ron used the iPad to project the Rezound phone too. :)
Next up is Demo 3 from Brian Cheng, as soon as I get a chance to post again!
Chris Reckling
Mobilel UX and OGS Demo Team
Chris Reckling | 17 January 2012 09:45:00 AM ET | | Comments (2) | Permanent Link
Now that the demos are done, here's a summary of what was shown.
8:41 A.M. First demo up. At this point, we had heard from Alistair, Michael J. Fox, Alistair again, Rob Novak to determine Demo Go/No Go decision, and a brief intro by Jeff Schick (3 min). Suzanne takes the stage to show IBM Connections beta activity streams with embedded experiences, including business apps and social apps.
Some quotes from Jeff's script:
"We have broken the boundaries between the silos of collaboration AND business applications. We have brought the things you need to do, into a social experience. A way of interacting with software that people find familiar. Everything from a transaction from an SAP system you need to approve, the notification of an action required in a business process like an insurance claim, a presentation you needed to share with your team before a meeting, editing a document together... at the same time, or simply an email you need to act upon."
What Suzanne showed:
Connections Home page Activity Stream with content from Files, SAP, Trilog, Twitter, images, Silanis, and others. Here's a screen shot showing the SAP entry along with embedded experience, which allows you to interact with business applications in-context with what you are doing.
There was a brief foray into Connections Mail, which Ed Brill talked about over on his blog here.
IBM Docs demo showed launching the web editors from the Files app in Connections, then assigning a section to someone. Ed also blogged more about IBM Docs.
Next she moved over to show some of the new community features, such as community streams, metrics, and the video streams using Sametime integrated with Polycom.
Enterprise Content Mgmt integration into the community came next. "You can take ECM libraries and share those inside a Community, giving your community members access to that content in the familiar experience of Connections while retaining the powerful capabilities available to them in the ECM system, such as custom document types."
Some people may have missed this one, but you have the ability to bridge your internal and external communities. For example, taking a discussion from Facebook and bringing it inside the firewall for further discussion and private resolution.
The demo ended with an experimental UX featuring multiple streams, a magazine-style layout and rich analytics on a tablet.
Next up I'll write up the demos for Mobile, Customer Experience Suite, and Notes.
Chris
(Update: Corrected typo in title.)
Chris Reckling | 16 January 2012 06:00:00 PM ET | | Comments (1) | Permanent Link
Lake Buena Vista, FL. I've been in Florida since last Wednesday, Jan 11, preparing demos for the Lotusphere 2012 Conference. Not just me of course, but a whole team who have been working together for the past few months to define and refine the demo flows. On site, we started on Thursday setting up our private network and making servers happy so we could practice the demos. Things are coming along quite nicely and we even had some time to put in a couple of amusing (at least to us) parts.
Now we're backstage as I write this, where we moved this morning (Saturday) after another run-thru. This year's move was extra fun, too. After packing everything up, we didn't want to shut down our server environment, so we were on the UPS until we went up to the stage level. In order to do that you have to navigate through a slight maze where all the HVAC ducts are. It was a bit of a race to move before the power went down.
Here are a few photos from our exploits so far.
Heidi and Doug Cox working through a script.
A note from our sponsors - yay! (This was my and Denise's responsibility.)
Rolling underground to the freight elevator.
Hold that button, Carl.
Setting up backstage. That's Mike with our server box.
Suzanne and Brian memorizing scripts.
Now we just need to get things running again and then rehearse.
More later,
Chris
Chris Reckling | 16 January 2012 09:00:00 AM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
The UX Lab is a great way to contribute to our product design efforts as well as experience various prototypes and 'in progress' work. We'd love to hear from you and this year it is a bit different from the past few Lotuspheres. Instead of scheduling half hour blocks of time to meet with someone, we're adopting a 'drop-in' model. That means you can come any time and stay for 5 min or 1/2 hour or any time in between. Tyler and I will be manning the Mobile station.
(Offer not valid for competitors. :) )
Participate in activities going on in the User Experience Lab
View the latest product design concepts, experience mobile product designs, talk to our social solutions designers, and provide feedback to improve the information experience. Meet the designers, user researchers, and information architects responsible for the direction of our products. Participate in hands-on activities and tell us what you need.
Lab Hours:
Monday, January 16 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Tuesday, January 17 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Wednesday, January 18 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Thursday, January 19 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Visit these stations in the lab located in Asia 4:
| Station 1: IBM User Research and Future Studies |
| See how we conduct research and sign up for an opportunity to participate in future studies. Discuss with us what you would like to see improved in the products that you use. |
| Station 2: Connections and LotusLive |
| To influence our future design directions, help us prioritize the most important scenarios in which you would use these products to complete daily tasks. Try out the next version of Connections and let us know how you like it. Give us feedback on our new features, including enhanced community functionality and integration of the social business toolkit. |
| Station 3: Editing in the Cloud with IBM Docs |
| Check out IBM's new web editors and tell us what is most important to you in a document editor, a presentation editor, or a spreadsheet editor. |
| Station 4: Design Your Information Experience |
| How do you use information either as a new or an experienced product user? How can the Lotus and WebSphere Portal product wikis be more effective in giving you the information that you need? Help influence the direction that we take with your product information experience. |
| Station 5: Sametime |
| Real-time collaboration is critical to your business. Come to the Sametime UX station to give us input on future designs and to discuss your requirements for online meetings, instant messaging, and using audio and video. |
| Station 6: Making Your Business Solutions Social |
| Learn about the core design principles that make a business solution into a social business. See the common set of patterns and artifacts that we're designing and help influence their design. Tell us about your favorite business solutions, and we can talk about how using social media can enhance the outcome of the solutions. |
| Station 7: Social Mail |
| View and interact with demos of the social mail beta in Connections 4 and help us shape the future user experience design. Provide your feedback and unique insights on how social mail might best be used by your company or organization. |
| Station 8: What's Next for Lotus iNotes and Lotus Notes |
| See a showcase of what we're considering for the next releases. Let us know what you think of these features and provide feedback on potential improvements. |
| Station 9: Lotus Domino Designer and XPages |
| Do you want influence the future direction of your application development tools? Stop by and give us feedback on Lotus Domino Designer, the XPages extension library, XPages templates, and more. |
| Station 10: Mobile Applications |
| Select a device, select a product, and get a first look at the latest mobile products from IBM. This station features Android and iOS phone and tablet apps for Sametime, Connections, and Traveler. Come by and give us your feedback on future designs and prototypes. |
| Station 11: WebSphere Portal, Social Portal with Connections, and IBM Web Content Manager |
| Provide your input on the new and future plans for integrating IBM Connections and IBM Web Content Manager into WebSphere Portal. Come by and give us your feedback on future designs and scenarios. |
| Station 12: Design Your Video Experience |
| Tell us how you find and use product videos, and what you expect from our videos in the future. Preview the videos that were submitted for VideoFest, and help select a new design for the wiki Video Gallery. |
You'll also get one of these handy buttons to be the envy of all.
See you soon,
Chris Reckling
Mobile UX
Chris Reckling | 10 January 2012 12:30:00 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
I wanted to let everyone know about some additional sessions you could attend in the User Experience Lab, in Asia 4. Make sure you put them on your schedule. Space is limited in the lab. We hope you can make it.
| Special Events | |
| Monday 1/16/12 | Date: Monday, January 16, 2012 Time: 5:00pm - 6:00pm Topic: "IBM Collaboration Solutions Future Product Design Direction" Speakers: Chris Paul, Director, User Experience; Ethan Perry, STSM; Brian Utesch, STSM. Abstract: How is the user experience (UX) of IBM Collaboration Solutions products designed? What role does Lotusphere play in ongoing collaboration with customers? The ICS User Experience Director, Chris Paul, and UX Design and User Research Senior Technical Staff Members, Ethan Perry and Brian Utesch, will discuss how design direction is set, the importance of user adoption, and how you are engaged in the design process. Bring your questions to this interactive session. |
| Tuesday 1/17/12 | Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Time: 9:30am - 10:30am Topic: "Mobile User Experience Directions" Speakers: Tyler Walters, Chris Reckling Abstract: Social Business and mobile technology go hand in hand. See where we are going in designing mobile apps for tablets and smartphones in 2012. Provide feedback on the design directions and help prioritize features. |
| Wednesday 1/18/12 | Date: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 Time: 9:30am - 10:30am Topic: "Meet the User Experience Designers" Speakers: Amy Travis, Margo Ezekiel, Ethan Perry, Eric Wilcox Abstract: Join our lead user experience designers and talk with us about our design challenges and future design directions in a fun and lively session. It's your chance to see how we design your favorite products. |
Chris Reckling
Chris Reckling | 9 January 2012 05:30:00 PM ET | | Comments (0) | Permanent Link
