Volume 17, Issue 31 — August 22, 2019

RavePro — Volume 17, Issue 31 — August 22, 2019

August 22, 2019 | Volume: 17 | Issue: 31

Good technology design does not create conflict between humans and machines, says Mark Coxon in his column about user interface design. How much does the user experience come into consideration when you’re designing or specifying systems? I don’t actually mean the end user who made the decision to buy from you — I mean the actual teacher who has to incorporate interactive collaboration into his/her style, or the accountant who has to present or the moderator who has to lead a discussion via videoconferencing. Is a well-written manual good enough? Good training? Reliable support? Technology is personal, also says Mark, and here he talks about the importance of designing for the user of the technology — and not the technologist.

Dr. Fred Ampel also elaborates on how much acoustical measurement technology has improved — so much so that we have more data than is useful to us. Check it out and let us know what you think.

-Sara Abrons

COLUMNS

+ So Much More Acoustical Data, So Little Improvement in Results [Dr. Frederick Ampel]

A quarter century later and the RTA is considered a low-tech toy found on your cell phone app store. With today’s products we’re getting resolutions three, four and five times as precise, for a quarter of the cost. You can use smart phones or tablets, but regardless of the hardware, the volume of data is so much larger that just post-processing a set of room responses could take days. With that thought in mind-the question should be: What is the goal?

+ The User Interface — It’s Not Business, It’s Personal [Mark Coxon]

We should be putting the user at the center of the technology design process, using a human-centered design approach. This means starting with a blank slate, honoring existing work habits and patterns and creating user interfaces that have a high degree of discoverability.

+ The Isolated Worlds of Video Conferencing [Christopher Jaynes]

If video conferencing were truly interoperable, we’d be in a lot more calls where participants are joining using whatever they want to connect. About one-third of the world’s meetings include remote participants. This explains why my laptop has about four different soft codecs installed. We should do something about this. I know I am going to start thinking about how best to address what may be one of the world’s biggest user-experience technology letdown. Users should be able to enter any room and use the codec that is going to be used for the meeting regardless.