Five steps to a successful m-learning app

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Originally posted on the LINE Blog. Posted by Katie Hart - April 25, 2012

Katie Hart, LINE’s Information and Usability Architect, lays out the five steps you should follow in designing a mobile learning application that gets results.

Our clients are already using mobile in a myriad of different ways. Approaches taken range from productivity apps and tools that improve immediate performance, to programmes designed for more reflective learning and immersive engagement. And all points in between! But whatever it is that you want to achieve, bringing mobile into your learning mix is something that requires careful consideration and planning. Continue reading →

You need to fail in order to suceed?

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It seems like everything I am reading and listening to at the minute is telling me that in order to succeed we need to fail. And the more spectacular the failure the more successful you will be. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have experienced my fair share of failure. I know that feeling when all you want is the world to open up and take you away from the situation until it goes away. Continue reading →

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the court of Milan

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I visited the spectacular, once in a lifetime exhibition at The National Gallery on Sunday. We were lucky enough to avoid the ques and walk straight in courtesy of my boyfriend’s workplace Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank gave us yet another treat this evening, bringing us an audience with the exhibition’s curator Luke Syson. This was a unique and truly inspirational evening, as apparently Syson will only be giving two talks about the exhibition.

The exhibition focuses on one of the most productive periods in da Vinci’s career in Milan working as the court painter to the city’s ruler, Ludovico Sforza (also known as Ludovico il Moro – “The Moor”). Continue reading →

Progressing to success

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I’m a big fan of the progress bar. It’s just nice to know where you are with things, it gives you a goal to work towards and it tells you exactly how far you’ve come. I bring this up, because it suddenly dawned on me today that I have completely changed my reading behaviour because I’ve started using a kindle. This may just be a little bit too much information into the obsessive compulsive tendencies of Katie Hart but, hey ho, it makes me happy and that’s what counts. Continue reading →

Portals “popping” back into the corporate conscience

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The buzz word of my first week and half back at LINE is most definitely ”portals”. By no means a new concept, Nielsen made the statement that “enterprise portals are popping” three years ago. Today however, they are a response to a fragmented intranet structure and a desire to move towards a more stabilised and robust framework for managing and segmenting content more efficiently. We are also seeing community modules featuring heavily in the portal’s repertoire helping internal teams get to know each other and share ideas easily.

Continue reading →

iPad UX – the basics

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So after a rather long break gallivanting around North America for the past few weeks, I’m back at work and now starting in a brand new role as Information and Usability Architect. One of the first things I have been looking at is the iPad. I came across a fantastic free report from Nielsen Norman Group which gave some very simple points to remember when designing iPad apps to ensure they are usable and intuitive for users. Continue reading →

What’s the problem?

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I have been looking at Problem Solving, as I’ve already mentioned I am passionate about solving existing problems rather than creating something novel and new. Identifying the problem to solve, however, is often the biggest part of the battle. I recently came across an article by Joshua Brewer in 52 Weeks of UX which explains that quite often eliminating ones own assumptions and applying problem solving techniques are a good recipe to identify the problem-area. Often the most interesting – or obvious – problems are not necessarily the right problems to solve. To deliver a solution that holds real value, we must hold a deeper understanding of the issues involved and a clear vision of how to tackle them. Continue reading →

Elements of user experience

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I have just read The Elements of User Experience: User Centred Design for the Web by Jesse James Garrett. It provides a fantastic introduction to User Experience and a great basis to prepare me in my further research, Garrett says that -

This book will tell you what you need to know before you go read those other books. If you need the big picture, if you need to understand the context for the decisions that user experience practitioners make, this book is for you.

And it did just that, allowing me to read the entire book in just a few hours, and whetting my appetite to find out more. I wanted to jot down what I’ve learnt in this post for reference later. Continue reading →