Developing Usable Experiences

Observing user behavior

March 25th, 2008 10:48 pm —  132 views

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This week I have to give a short presentation on an information system in a class on “Fundamentals of Human Behavior.” To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. Continuing with the honesty…I’ve been stressing about it for days. Isn’t that how it goes though?

I have this crazy idea of blogging and reputation systems that was inspired (in part) from the book by Charles Stross called, “Accelerando!”1 At one point in this sci-fi collage, a main character arrives in a city and takes a digital picture (using his glasses) of his whereabouts that is immediately posted to his personal blog so interested persons following his life would know, up to the minute, what he was doing.2 This has stuck with me. Building on the notions of reputation systems outlined in this book3, I was inspired to blog with such disclosure.

Not that I thought I needed motivation to blog…

But then, wait a second. Everyone needs motivation to blog.

Ever since I started this blog I’ve found it interesting reading what I write. After the fact of course…which is when it is most interesting. But over time I found that I was curious about who was visiting my blog and have since wondered what peoples impressions were. But hoping people leave comments isn’t the main reason I blog. When it does happen though, it is like delicious icing on a cake … smashed up with some ice cream and microwaved until melty.

The system sends me an email when someone leaves a comment. And yes, there is a certain thrill to reading comments. Except for when they’re spam. Which is quite often. But I’ve configured the system to be pretty smart about things.

So tomorrow (today actually…since I’m writing this post so I can display it on the big overhead in class) I’ll be giving a presentation on this most fascinating and interesting of information systems, “the blog.”

Thanks for reading. I hope you stop by again and share your thoughts, ideas, opinions, perspectives, experiences, and knowledge. Write on.

Image: Oh this is fun…I took this in the middle of class last week in anticipation of this post and the presentation that I’ll be giving on the information system that is blogging. A couple of my classmates noticed me taking this picture and were like, “what are you doing…??” Well…now you know. :)

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  1. You can read this book for free online here. Thanks Mr. Stross. [↩]
  2. Talk about full disclosure! [↩]
  3. Which was “just okay for me”, Dog. Some of the ideas stuck with me, obviously, but the mood…overall…of this book was…well…read it and see what you think. [↩]

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5 Comments 

Comments

5 Responses to “Observing user behavior”

  1. mom on March 26th, 2008 11:36 am

    Interesting, now about me. ha ha ha.

    Ok, good stuff, my little punkin.

  2. Dawn on March 26th, 2008 3:20 pm

    Have fun tomorrow doing your presentation. As you know…the world needs more bloggers!

  3. Jason on March 26th, 2008 3:25 pm

    Great presentation today Spike! Very interesting. Do you use google analytics at all?

  4. Sebastian on March 26th, 2008 3:29 pm

    You have very handsome classmates

  5. Spike on March 26th, 2008 8:10 pm

    Jason:

    I love Google Analytics and the crazy amount of information it provides. The interface is nicely done and whole implementation very sound. GA rocks.

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