When starting at GameStop towards the end of 2010 I posted about all the reasons I was interested in getting into gaming – and while being in the middle of it all at GameStop has been fun, I’ve decided to go back to my first love… Travel.

I’ve met so many people and learned so much since starting at GameStop: retail, merchandising, multichannel, SEO, streaming, social, gamification – just some of the things I’ve been able to gather experience in and be a part of.

I’ve been able to work with gaming’s biggest brands, and have had behind the scenes access to early game info and release information (which for a gamer is really cool!!). I was able to visit IGN’s headquarters, and attend the GameStop Manager Conference, where you hear firsthand from game publishers.

I’ve helped launch a number of changes to gamestop.com, a mobile website, and a couple of mobile apps.

But the allure of the never ending stream of travel innovation is calling me back. When Crunchbase has 429 pages of results for travel – there is obviously something interesting going on – technology companies, designers, and startups – travel is in our fabric – no matter where we’re from or what we do.

It amazes me when almost every day I see a new travel startup that promises better organization, cheaper travel, finding that hidden gem, or getting better, more relevant information about your destination. It doesn’t stop. Google and Microsoft are continually getting deeper into the business – no wonder, it’s hard to say away from a 7 trillion dollar industry.

So I’m returning to Sabre, but in a different role. While before my focus was around mostly B2B and Travel Agent software, this time I’m going to be working at Travelocity. Yes, working with the gnome.

Travelocity just had a sweet 16th birthday… Yes a pure .com is 16 years old (take a look). So you can imagine, a company that has been around for 16 years has some challenges – but they’re poised for some great things, and I’m glad to be part of the team making that happen:

“We weren’t moving as fast as we needed to,” CEO Carl Sparks said about newer, nimbler competitors. “We’re 16 and so sometimes we think of ourselves as one of the elderly companies in the space because we were around since its inception. … Yet 16 is quite young for a multibillion-dollar company.”

Since Sparks took the top job a year ago, he and his executive team have refocused the company on hotel products, build-your-own-vacation packages and mobile devices. In February, the company launched its first iPad app, which allows users to book airline tickets, hotels and rental cars from their tablets and offers hotel deals exclusive to its mobile apps.

While industry analysts say Travelocity is still playing catch-up, they are encouraged by Sparks’ initiatives and the disciplined approach he has brought to the company.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/03/31/3849461/travelocity-works-to-get-its-magic.html#storylink=cpy

And I need some help. This group has some fun and interesting things ahead – and we’re looking for great User Experience Designers – so let me know if you’re interested. Sabre/Travelocity is a great place to work (I should know, it’s my second time!). Great campus, interesting work (both desktop and mobile), and the largest User Experience community in the area, with around 50+ people in various User Experience and Design positions, and a state-of-the-art Usability facility on-site.

Expect more travel related tweets, and posts – and be sure to share your good and bad travel experiences. We’re here to help :-)

So, with that I’ll leave you with a screenshot of GameStop on roughly the day I arrived, and the day I left:

When you think about how people were entertained in their homes in the past, they would usually crowd around a radio or TV – which would be located at some central point in the home. Recently this has changed – with powerful, smaller, connected devices we’re able to fragment this experience. You have a home where everyone is on a different shared device, being more selective about the content they’re consuming – video, websites, games – all up to the individual, but still connected to their circles of family and friends.

And what makes this possible? These new personal devices: phones, tablets, and other mobile devices create these content channels that make it easy to instantly have access to 1,000s of videos, books, games, and more.

And it’s interesting how our homes haven’t really shifted to match this new wave of experiences. Living rooms are still laid out to support a central TV. Power plugs still line the walls, and rarely make it to a convenient place near a sitting area.

Even with our homes not being properly designed for these devices, my kids take to the household mobile devices, and more often than they do our TV, XBOX, or other “couch experiences”.

I believe how our children interact today, with today’s devices will shape and inform the future. If they’re used to this today – they’re going to expect it tomorrow. These “digital natives” will change how we Design the future:

“…those who grew up with mobile tech are restless and emotionally detached consumers, switching between TVs, magazines, tablets, smartphones, or channels within platforms about 27 times an hour…”

“…these adept media navigators take their devices from room to room with them 65 percent of the time, that 54 percent of them prefer texting to talking, and that they subconsciously switch between platforms and can ”pick up different pieces of a story from different mediums in any order.""

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/9/2935966/time-digital-native-media-study

This got me thinking about how our family has shifted, and how we rarely all sit in front of the TV anymore. We’ve moved to a series of distributed devices – picking up one or another depending on the task. Want to read a book? Go grab the Kindle. My two year old wants to watch a cartoon? Grab the nearest Netflix device (I have no less than 10 devices with Netflix, they’re doing something right…).

My seven year old wants to call Grandpa? Grab the iPod Touch and FaceTime him. He wants to play Mario? Go grab the 3DS. My wife needs to work? She grabs her Macbook Air. And so on…

And some of these work almost like channels of yesteryear. Want to play Mario? Grab the 3DS. Want to watch an Amazon streaming show? You need to get the Kindle. Some devices are more open to all types of content, but this content is creating reasons to own specific devices in cases where they want to own (and/or monetize) the entire ecosystem.

How should a modern living area look when this is the reality we live in? Instead of sofas surrounding a large TV, maybe they should be facing each other – and a set of docking stations built into the end tables? I currently have issues around finding places close enough to a power outlet – where’s our wireless power!!! – to dock my devices.

I collected the few things I could find around combining mobile devices (mostly iPads) into living areas and posted them to a pinboard – here are some of the more interesting ones:

And while I’m leaving out the TV, with the addition of something like an Apple TV, you’re able to “flick” over your content to a TV from an iPad or iPhone with one tap. Just like a Microsoft “Future” video. So maybe the TV becomes the shared whiteboard? Something to show shared experiences when friends are around?

So, what are some new Design principles you could apply after seeing how this generation interacts with devices?

• Make sure devices can be shared without overwriting other users preferences.
• Make sure the task can be launched in minimal time.
• Make sure state can be saved quickly.
• Allow multiple instances or an app or a video in the same house.
• Create a system to dock/store/charge your device.
• Allow devices and apps to talk to each other.
• Allow experience to shift between devices.

I suspect we’ll see more and more of this moving forward – because if the kids are doing it today, then we can be sure they’ll expected it out of the experiences we Design tomorrow.

How are you transforming your living areas/routines around these new devices?

As Android gains ground, iOS may not be enough for some brands. And with limited budgets and development constraints, sometimes you can’t give your app the full “Android Treatment” it should deserve. I’ve put together a mini guide to go over some common ways to get your iOS app over to Android, while keeping it consistent (mostly) with today’s Android patterns.

There are roughly five ways to move from iOS to Android without a full redesign:

• Menu Only
• Totally Custom
• Keep everything the same
• Move to the top
• Full Android

I’ve put together a PDF/Presentation that goes over these visually. Go ahead and view or download here.

Menu Only
Where the app basically stays the same, but moves navigation functionally to the Android menu bar.

Totally Custom
Where the design patterns are not common to iOS or Android, and stay the same cross-platform.

Keep everything the same
Specifically break with Android patterns to keep the app the same as the iOS app.

Move to the top
Where the app basically stays the same, but the iOS menu bar is moved to the top of the Android app, while most other options stay within the Android menu bar.

Full Android
Considerations were made to use the Android app patterns to their fullest – sometimes very foreign to a iOS customer.

My experience is that Android can match the iOS experience, and has some interesting enhancements you could use if creating for Android from scratch.

On the downside is the snappiness® that you get from an iOS app that’s hard to replicate on Android (if you’re used to an iOS experience). My experience has been with a series of Android test devices, and my personal Kindle Fire (which is a great secondary iPad ;-).

The last thing to remember is testing. Android is a much more expensive platform to build for. If you’re building a consumer experience (not a B2B device controlled experience) – then getting your app to look right, act right, and feel right across all devices is nothing more than very difficult.

As Android continues to evolve and grow, I feel like it will slowly come into its own, and if it doesn’t alienate people in the meantime, it will be a force to reckon with in the near future.

A good number of people I know have gotten “the text message”. You know, the one that tells you – “Hey you, quit hogging all the bandwidth, why don’t you use more Wi-Fi and stay out of my yard”. Yes, I love to be told by a company that I’m using their services, which I pay for, so much I need to be punished.

Here’s my last 6 months of data usage:

Is this too much? I’m actually on the grandfathered iPhone plan ($30), which was unlimited at the time. But with the data usage growing 20,000% over the last five years (iPhone years), this is something they say they can’t sustain:

But when the year-end numbers show a doubling of wireless data traffic from 2010 to 2011 – and you’ve seen at least a doubling every year since 2007 – the implications are profound.

Over the past five years, AT&T’s wireless data traffic has grown 20,000%.

The growth is now driven primarily by smartphones. Add to that new customer additions and the continuing trend of upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, and you have a wireless data tsunami.

And that’s with throttling:

What’s more, AT&T’s efforts to restrict data usage among its customers seem to be working, reining in its hungriest data users. It introduced throttling on its grandfathered unlimited plans in the fall, which is now kicking in at usage levels as low as 2 GB a month.

http://gigaom.com/mobile/atts-data-traffic-is-actually-doubling-annually/

But if they’re truly trying to restrict data:

If AT&T is so network constrained, if 2 GB of monthly usage is too much for its networks, and if it doesn’t have the spectrum to meet future demands, then why is it opening up the data spigot, actually encouraging its customers to consume more for an extra $5 a month?

http://gigaom.com/mobile/if-2-gb-is-excessive-why-is-att-selling-3-gb-mobile-data-plans/

And now they actually have more data plans:

http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp

Reports say that there are 17 million people on the unlimited plan that’s now being throttled:

AT&T has some 17 million customers with “unlimited data” plans that can be subject to throttling, representing just under half of its smartphone users. It stopped signing up new customers for those plans in 2010, and warned last year that it would start slowing speeds for people who consume the most data.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/13/att-puts-limit-on-unlimited-data-plans-surprising-customers/

That means there are 17 million customers that mid-month their service goes downhill. And I’m sure some of these unsuspecting customers have no idea what this means:

All they know is AT&T service is awful. Which gets them thinking about Sprint or Verizon. It has me thinking about Verizon.

Not that they’re not trying to warn everyone – AT&T even put in their press release:

The amount of data usage of our top 5 percent of heaviest users varies from month to month, based on the usage of others and the ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband services. To rank among the top 5 percent, you have to use an extraordinary amount of data in a single billing period.

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=20535&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=32318&mapcode=

My service has started to CRAW recently. And it’s not that it’s just slower, but it won’t even connect. iMessages are starting not to send, maps won’t load, etc…

Speaking of iMessages – my text usage really dropped since the release:

Of course this just adds to my data, which even though I have a unlimited plan, I’m out of.

I don’t understand how providing awful connectivity for potentially 17 million customers is a good idea.

So I have to decide, pay more? Switch companies? Carry around a backup wi-fi hotspot? I’m not sure yet, but this all has me thinking… What do you do when a company wants to get rid of you, but you have limited options?

This past week I was able to speak to a large room of developers at the Gravity Center, who were all there to learn more about developing for Kinect. Which is really developing for sensors – of course Kinect development is much more exciting than sensor development :-) You could also say it’s designing for NUI – Natural User Interfaces, ways you’d expect to interact with interfaces if we didn’t have things like mice in the way. I was asked to speak, as a Designer (and the only one in the room) on the trends of Kinect interfaces, and give my perspective.

First up to start the day off right was Tim Huckaby – former Microsoft employee and currently the founder/chairman of interknowlogy. Tim has been working with Microsoft for a long time, and in recent years been focusing NUI interfaces around Surface, tablets, and now Kinect.

Tim set the stage with live demos and videos showing how some very interesting things around Kinect are being developed.

If you haven’t been keeping up with how Kinect is transforming from a gaming device to a UI for everything from home to business applications, here’s Microsoft’s official video:

What’s funny about this video is it’s a very gestural view on the future. If you gave a designer a Kinect, and had him/her dream up the future you’d get a world where everything was based on an invisible UI. To contrast, if you gave a designer an iPad, and tasked them with the same thing, you’d end up with a very different world where everything is a touch device. Here are some touch examples from Microsoft (they’re playing both sides!), and Corning – remember they make the glass for the iPhone:

Which direction are we heading? Probably somewhere in-between – or as is should be, whatever technology ends up being best for each specific task and context we’re designing for.

In my presentation I went through the beginning, of how the Kinect came to be – surrounded by a large enterprise company. Then on to how it’s transitioning into business, shopping, and education – with rumors that Kinect may end up in your next Windows laptops, ready to guide Windows 8. And with Microsoft officially opening up the SDK for Kinect, they’re inviting developers and hackers with open arms to create and innovate in this space.

Frog Design has dubbed this new skill of designing for gestures “Interaction Choreography” – how would that look on a business card:

Designing for this new layer of interaction requires new thinking about dexterity, ergonomics, and whether someone might feel silly or offensive with certain gestures. We are so involved in this space right now, that we’ve had to move our design technologists’ desks to create enough room for all the hand waving design.

I went on to show a round of hacks, everything from controlling your home to going full avatar and controlling a robot. Many of the first round business applications are around kiosks, things like trying on clothes, or controlling a TV.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox had this summary when the Kinect was first released:

Inconsistent gestures, invisible commands, overlooked warnings, awkward dialog confirmations. But fun to play.

And there are no patterns to really draw from right now, they went on to say:

That there are no universal standards for gestural interactions yet is a problem in its own right, because the UI cannot rely on learned behavior. The Kinect has a few system-wide standards, however, which do help users.

Kinect does have some good rules they’re using when developing these first in-house applications and games:

Explain what the player can do.

Represent what they are doing.

Make it fun to match the two.

Test your implementation.

I left the large group of developers with some user centered questions to think about:

Distance and Environment?
How far do they need to stand? How far do they think they need to stand? Environment design of the area. Eyesight, size of the UI.?

Ergonomics?
Is it comfortable? Age? People with disabilities? Common movements vs. uncommon. How long will they interact??

Fashion
Do they look silly? Will someone of a certain age/race/gender use this? What’s acceptable for an Avatar??

UI Patterns??
What do they know from click and touch interfaces? Is there something more natural? Try and unlearn, and imagine.?

3D Space?
Is it close or far away? What do we infer from spatial positioning? Can you get people to interact in 3D space on a 2D screen??

Screen Resolution?
What’s the maximum amount of objects you can fit on a screen? What’s the minimum size of an object need to be on the screen??

Privacy?
Can you tailor to age? Race? Gender? What is helpful and what is potentially scary? Can you keep a snapshot for marketing purposes??

Here’s the full presentation:

Afterwards, one developer who had seen one of my earlier presentations on mobile was hoping for some more practical design tips, but designing for Kinect is so wide open right now. Even though we’ve been designing for sensors for some time now, but gestural by itself – how do we interact in space without tactile feedback – that’s new (and interesting!).

User Group TV posted a video of the resulting demos from the event here.

And here are some photos from the event:

All the photos from the event can be found here

I’m looking forward to exploring these interfaces, as I’ve explored touch over the past 5 years – and as always can’t wait to see what mind blowing interactions happen over the next 5 years.

If you like a combination of the following: design, user experience, technology, games, art, travel and the internet let me provide you the news. Yes, I actually enjoy sifting through the news, so that you don’t have to – and I bet I’ll do a better job than your news reader (that is if we have similar interests!).

Let’s take a look at what I can provide. According to Google Reader:
From your 444 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 4,536 items, clicked 48 items, starred 1,156 items, and emailed 1 items. I’ve cut 75% of the fat right off. Let’s take a closer look:

Here’s the number of items posted in the last month vs. number I selected to share:

Here are the number of items posted vs. shared over the days of the week:

And the hourly breakdown – notice the before work, lunch, and after work spikes:

Where do my most shared articles come from? Here’s my top 20:

Since I started using Google Reader on October 7, 2005 I’ve read a total of 184,524 items. That’s around 80 articles a day.

Before Google Reader shut off the sharing feature in the web interface and moved sharing to Google Plus I had a number of people following me – with most of my friends declaring RSS bankruptcy – unable to read it all. But now with some great magazine-style tablet and phone apps, you can browse at your leisure, and enjoy a great selection of curated news.

Here’s my curated content feed – ready for any RSS reader, or magazine app: bit.ly/jeremyfeed – you can preview my feed here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jeremyj

This feed works great with not just RSS readers, but it can be transformed into a magazine, ready to browse:

Using FlipBoard you can add a specific RSS feed (it’s a little tricky). The easiest way is to use a Google Reader account – connect it to Flipboard, then select Google Reader – then select “Jeremy Johnson’s shared items in Google Reader”, then “Add +”. There you go, instant curated news.

(Some Flipboard screenshots around adding specific RSS feeds)

So if you find yourself losing interest in your news, let me sift through and find some interesting stuff. And if you’re on twitter, I also cross-post my curated content there as well.

Enjoy!

To begin, if you’re not a fan – he started in Belgium back in 1929. Hergé, the man behind Tintin has quite a story, and has multiple documentaries surrounding his life. But unlike someone like Walt Disney, he was content with creating new adventures (24 1/2 in all) – and never branched out into theme parks, toys, etc… Although now the estate has a museum, product line, and a large assortment of high-end collectibles (which I have many of – and are just now available on amazon!).

I even have had friends bring me back Tintin in different languages – which there are 88 in all…

With his American debut, we get video games – Console, PC and Mobile. And some collectables, with tie-ins at World Market, Gowalla, and new movie tie-in books at places like Barnes & Noble.

The games are actually really good, which can’t always be said for movie tie-ins. My 7 year old played through the Xbox game, and we’re now working on the secondary co-op campaigns. The game has a mix of genres – some platforming, free-roaming, climbing, flying, driving, and sword fighting (my son’s favorite). Even my two year old enjoyed watching him play.

The iOS version is the same story from the movie and Xbox game, but totally different play, and again my son loved it and played it all the way through. It was another one of those “wow, can’t believe this is on an iPad” kind of games, it looks great.

The movie has been out now for months in Europe, debuting in Belgium – and so far, before opening in the U.S. has made over $230 million. But will American viewers go? I hope so. There is something about the books, and I now see it in my 7 year old. The adventure, the characters, the humor… It’s just that perfect mix that most people can’t get right.

If you want to learn a litte more neatorama has a good post up today that goes into some detail around the history of tintin.

Even if you haven’t read a single book in the series, the movie won’t really spoil anything – this is a combination of a couple books, but has the first meeting of Tintin and the Captain – which make for a good pairing.

So, order a book. Play the game. Go see the movie. It’s sure to be a grand adventure. And while my son enjoys Tintin on our iPad, we’ll be enjoying it together this week in IMAX 3D, who would have thought?

I’m Gowalla user #91. They’re at about 2 million now. But, alas… they are no more. I’ve been easing into the idea for months now – my slow decline in usage started with a series of events: taking away my (yes my) icons, demoting check-ins, and my social graph moving on to other apps/sites. Gowalla is one of my first true “must have services” that have disappeared. Why am I sad, because Gowalla was meaningful to me.

Others are trying to leave me as well, like Google Reader’s removal of sharing (to move to G+), or Flickr’s possible buyouts from a mismanaged Yahoo – I’ve been pretty lucky that my virtual web apps, have for the most part stayed intact over time. There is no track record here. No shelf-life for a beloved app or service. It’s not like film, which we know will last a 100 years if stored properly, it’s something that if you picked up a mobile device in 10 years, I guess I’d be surprised if instagram works – or facebook for that matter.

But like a film, Gowalla had meaning for me. Gowalla’s offices started in Southlake in the shadow of Sabre/Travelocity where I was working at the time. We’d see the guys at lunch, had Josh come present at local events, and ran into Gowalla team members in various meetups around DFW. After they moved to Austin and over the years at SXSW we were luckily enough to attend some of the most sought after Gowalla parties – including last year’s Matt & Kim concert.

As they became a fixture in Austin (one of my favorite cities), you’d see Gowalla stickers on the windows of all our favorite shops and restaurants. We’d know what hangouts were hot via Gowalla, I’d know where my friends were via Gowalla, and more than once would serendipitously run into people I knew well, or wanted to know better.

I had a record of my travels and locations that had meaning for me. My wife called it “the husband tracker” (now who knows where I go during the day). It added interest to mundane tasks such as going to the grocery store – would there be a new icon to add to my collection? I was less than 10 short when they retired the feature… I had over 1,200 checkins, almost 100 pins, and a 100+ friends.

Not only was Gowalla invaluable during SXSW letting me know where everyone was, and where to go, but they’d have promotions running that would get me to go out of my way to check in. NASA, incase, Sweet Leaf Tea, just to name a few.

Then Disney… Which just happened to be weeks before I had a trip planned with my son. I was able to collect stamps virtually, which made it easier to remember which rides we’d gone on, and which we’ve missed. Again, collected memories.

And even as late as last month with Tintin. If you don’t know I’m a Tintin fanatic, and to my delight that Tintin actually chatted me up during my checkins on Gowalla.

Meaning came from: friends, memories, and fun. As well as a smart dose of gamification: limited duration, collecting, delighters, status – the list goes on. This meaning lead to my friends having ceremonies around moving Gowalla off their homescreens. It was like losing something big.

Am I ok with the core Gowalla team going to facebook? Yes, of course – they deserve to be with some of the best designers in the world, effecting many millions. Will SXSW be the same? No. Will I love other app like I loved Gowalla? No. Was creating Gowalla just a long interview for facebook? No, but it just worked out that way.

What do I want now that Gowalla is no more? They’re hinting at two things: 1) letting you access your data (which I hope to be able to import into my facebook timeline), and 2) something is going to happen with the company. Maybe another company will swoop in and keep it going at it’s current trajectory – but it won’t be the same.

What’s really interesting is the speed which my social graph moved – after the latest Gowalla update, there was a bit of a void, until Path showed up with a stunning updated app – now it’s roughly back to similar usage during the height of my graph’s Gowalla usage.

When Path came out, I found that I actually missed checking-in. I like to see where my graph is hanging out, where they’re visiting, what they’re up to. In my busy life, sometimes this is my only connection to people I enjoy.

Path is great, and really combines some of the best services into a single app, be how long before Path gets bought? Can anyone compete with facebook if they decide to get into something? We’ll see where Path goes, and then hopefully have a place to move on to after.

Gowalla, here’s to years of interesting times. Thanks!

P.S. I think Josh should fly the first 100 Gowalla users out to SFO for a tour of facebook ;-)

Last week I gave my Gamification 101 presentation to the local Refresh Dallas meeting. This was the second meeting since bringing Refresh back, and I was glad to see around 40+ Designers, developers, and other creative types attend.

Here was the description for the talk:

Gaming is at a tipping point, never before have games effected our day-to-day lives in such a substantial way. From entertaining yourself on the subway with Angry Birds, to solving the world’s greatest problems – gaming is quickly becoming a mainstream way to explore, communicate, connect, and work. See how these trends are effecting e-commerce, entertainment, and even non-profit organizations.

Jeremy will be presenting the latest trends and news around Gamification – updated from his Big Design presentation earlier this year.

Here’s my presentation:

or view on speakerdeck to download PDF.

And here are some photos from the event:

See all photos of last weeks Refresh Dallas meeting.

When talking about Gamification in regards to UX/UI Design there are two sides: the surface UI view of Gamification – where you add elements to your project to make them more game like, but without the underlying understanding of “why” an element may or may not work. Then there is the very deep psychology understanding of what makes us tick. Why we do what we do, and how to effect us to do something different. You can do one without the other, but you’ll end up with something that fades quickly.

Ready to dive in to the world of Gamification? Stop by Refresh Dallas for some good conversation!

Refresh Dallas

Thursday October 13, 2011
7:00PM to 9:00PM

Improving Enterprises
16633 Dallas Parkway, Suite 100
Addison, Texas 75001

Hope to see you there!