34 of 365 - entry point design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
34 of 365 – entry point design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
The entry point design principle is about making your entry point a place for your user to get past, then enter the deeper space of your place, product, or site. There are a few things to keep in mind in designing a good entry point: Low barriers to entry, incentives to drive users past the entry point, and strong clues about intended navigation or navigation options. A prime example of a great physical entry point is a store that does not interrupt your entry with any sensory interruption, like high traffic between users and the space, or lemonade-stand style interruptions as you enter. Navigation cues should be especially easy to figure out in a store or web site, and should not compete with advertisements or other distractions. There should be incentives for the user to go deeper, such as reminders of popular products or services, and invitations to use them.
In my illustration, I decided to show how entry point theory is applied at lemasney.com.
Brand is not a logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Brand is not a logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Today, I had the pleasure of a return visit to Rossmoor, a gated community near Monroe, NJ. In the past I’ve talked about the Chromebook, Social Media, and graphic design at this 55 plus Computer Users Group, but today I talked about something more akin to Psychology or Business meetups than computer groups: Organizational and personal branding. I was a bit worried about how it would be received because I have only given the talk to more brand minded groups, but figured that if I really believe that brand is universal, which I do, that the talk would be appropriate.
It was received very well. The people there talked about their communication methods, their platforms, their keywords, and discovered their brand. We discussed abstraction and concretia in branding, such as the idea of loving as a keyword versus technology as a keyword. We talked about how everyday meetups and conversations are opportunities for branding, and that even though not everyone is familiar with their brand, that everyone has one and that it is beneficial to become familiar with it, shape it, and strengthen it.
Thanks very much to Rossmoor, Paul, and Gano for the kind reception, patient ear, and engaged responses.
I’ll be teaching a class on the ubiquitous and useful note capturing tool called Evernote tonight, 1/15/2014 at 7-8:30 at Princeton Public Library. I’ll explain how to capture voice, photo, web and text notes, share them, and have them with you everywhere you go. You might like it because it’s:
Free
Available on most major platforms, desktop and mobile
Easy to learn and use
Versatile in its abilities to capture different kinds of media.
Searchable
From their own site, they list the benefits:
“Keep everything in sync. With Evernote, all of your notes, web clips, files and images are made available on every device and computer you use.
Remember things you like. Save everything cool and exciting you see online and in the real world. Snap a photo, record some audio and save it.
Save favorite webpages. Save entire webpages to your Evernote account with our nifty web clipper browser extensions. You get the whole page: text, images and links.
Research better. Collect information from anywhere into a single place. From text notes to web pages to files to snapshots, everything is always at your fingertips.
Work with friends and colleagues. Share your notes and collaborate on projects with friends, colleagues and classmates.
Plan your next trip. Keep all of your itineraries, confirmations, scanned travel documents, maps, and plans in Evernote, so you’ll have them when you need them.” ~ Evernote | Evernote – https://evernote.com/
To see upcoming tech offerings at PPL, please visit:
To see this and other presentations that I’m actively giving, please visit:
I was fortunate to be asked by Sophie Brookover and Library Link NJ (visit them at http://librarylinknj.org/ for great Library resources, insight, and help, especially for New Jersey Libraries) to co-host a Facebook Forum on effective Social Media for Libraries, and in the post-show we had a discussion about other topics for future events. We discussed a few things, but one interesting topic that came about was the idea of the ways that we had worked together to plan and collaborate for the Forum. In case you want to see the record of the forum, please visit the status update where that discussion lives.
Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Français : Logo de Facebook Tiếng Việt: Logo Facebook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At any rate, in planning for the event, we used five communication/collaboration channels, all interesting and useful in their own right. I’m writing this to organize my thoughts for the potential future products we talked about, and to give you some insight into our process. I talk about each of these in increasing order of communication channel richness. In other words, as we progress in this document, the capabilities for more sensory information increases.
Facebook discussion
In Facebook, each status update has a discussion attached to it. There, we can have a social gathering complete with links, pictures, video, text and other media types. If you can digitize it and produce a link to it, it’s fair game, though Facebook does a very good job of presenting the visuals right inline in the discussion. The key reason that we used it was because we wanted it to be open, sharable, publicized, fairly rich, archived for posterity, easy to use and join, and able to join people from all over. One unexpected benefit was that Sophie and I were both kind of sick with colds, coughing and sniffling, but no one had to suffer through our potentially contagious presence!
Since the forum is run on inquiry and discussion, we needed a planning document, and Google Drive provided a perfect platform for us to write our questions, rules, and reminders together both synchronously and asynchronously. Since Sophie and I both have and use our Google accounts, it was no effort or question. Plus, we got to see what each other was writing as we wrote it, discuss the changes by phone, add links, quotes, formatting, and photos. We would have lost the ability to format properly or keep easy track of the document if we used Facebook messaging or statuses, for instance, and the privacy settings of the document are quite flexible.
by-Phone
Car Telephone (Photo credit: bjosefowicz)
Because writing in text makes it very difficult to emote, and writing planning documents and discussions can easily trigger miscommunication, missed messages, and general confusion, we opted to talk by phone as we planned our Forum. Even though our voice based communication was sparse as we typed, it allowed for easy and quick clarification, justification, and suggestion with the added benefit of those temporary notes not being archived and cluttering our documents. We also had the ability to smile, laugh, end our sentences in a question tone, and show other emotions to underline our feelings as we spoke.
Google Hangouts
During the Forum itself on Facebook, Sophie and I used Google Hangouts as a rich backchannel to add all the benefits of phone communication with a video layer on top. Seeing a raised eyebrow, a smile, or a shake of the head during discussion added yet another layer of communicative understanding to our backstage work. I noted that it was a bit strange for us to use such a rich method for our backchannel of two participants while using a relatively thin channel in Facebook for the real event, when typically thin channels like Twitter are used for backchanneling while the main event is fairly rich. In this particular case, though, it was absolutely perfect. She and I were able to note changes to each other, clarify responses before typing, and give insights into the participants’ history and experience without anyone hearing our chatter in the public facing Forum.
In-Person
Before the first planning event, Sophie and I happened to both be presenting at the NJLA Adult Services forum and we got to see each other, greet each other, reinforce our in-person friendship and camaraderie, and have a rich discussion in real space. It was convenient that we both happened to be scheduled to speak and had the time to talk for a few minutes, because although this is by far the richest collaboration and communication channel it also represents the most effort. She and I probably both had to drive for 40 minutes to get there, spending time, gas, money, and planning, and if we hadn’t been going to this event anyway, we likely would not have had the opportunity to meet. In fact, while I list Sophie among my most valuable and respected colleagues, I have probably only been in the same physical space with her a handful of times. This shows the value of our other methods here, for sure.
How about you and your collaborators?
What methods do you use for communication and collaboration, and what benefits do they bring? Are you using email, Facebook messaging, Twitter DMs, or other methods to work together? What has worked best for you and what was the context of that success? What might Sophie and I have done instead of this and still get all the benefits of these various channels? List your answers, feedback and experiences in the discussion below!
Arduino Five Ten Egg Timer circuit – John LeMasney
Arduino simple circuit by lemasney
Arduino Duemilanove
Arduino starter project 09: Motorized pinwheel
Introduction to Arduino
Last night I gave a talk on Introduction to Arduino at Princeton Public Library as part of their technology class offerings. I thought I might recap the talk here and invite you to come and visit the next time we offer it. For more information about their free and public classes, please click here:
Getting started with Arduino is the presentation I gave, complete with links, videos, photos, and other information.
What is Arduino?
Arduino microcontroller / Arduino Uno microcontroller ATmega328 / Arduino Mega 2560 / Arduino Nano ATmega328 / Arduino Pro Mini ver.3.3V ATmega328 / Photo by Arkadiusz Sikorski https://www.arq.pl/ (Photo credit: Arkadiusz Sikorski vel ArakuS)
Arduino is an open source hardware platform for learning and prototyping electronics projects. It’s open source in that the design of the board itself is shared so that you can build your own if you are so inclined. The software and scripts used to program it are also open source. It benefits from a strong worldwide community of developers, programs, and resources, including books, videos, and classes. It is an Italian project, co-founded by Massimo Banzi and others, and is designed to help people learn easily, even from a very young age. http://www.arduino.cc is the homepage for the project. You can get an Arduino Uno, one version of many good for getting started, for around $30.
Where can you get an Arduino and Learn more?
You can buy Arduino products in many places, including online on Amazon.com, element14.com, and in brick and mortar stores like Radio Shack.
http://makezine.com is a champion of projects using Arduinos and other open platforms.
What are inputs and Outputs?
Inputs are ways for the Arduino to get information. These include sensors like motion detectors, cameras, compasses, GPS, touchscreens, buttons, and many of the same kinds of sensors typically found on a contemporary phone. You use pins on the Arduino to connect them, and use scripts, called sketches, to tell the Arduino what to do with the signals.
Outputs are ways for the Arduino to send back information or do actions. Examples include Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), speakers, motors, and fans.
You can use inputs, outputs and sketches to scratch your own itches, often for a very low price. If you want a station that feeds your cat once every twelve hours but only if it hears a meow or when the cat comes near, you might use an arduino, an RFID (proximity) sensor, and a motor or latch to make it so that if the cat’s collar with an RFID chip in it comes close enough to the station, once in 12 hours time, the container of food has a door that opens for 3 seconds and closes again.
How do I get started with Arduino?
Cover via Amazon
There are many fantastic books, websites, videos, and communities of practice that focus on Arduino. Here’s one video that tells you how to get started with an Arduino. If you search for ‘Arduino tutorial’ on Google, YouTube, Element 14, or Adafruit.net, you’ll find many more.
How do I work with an Arduino?
The key to working with Arduino is writing sketches. You can use the Arduino program (an IDE or integrated development environment) based on an open source application called Processing to write sketches. Get it from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
The most common starting example, with very simple capabilities is the Blink example. You can open the Blink example from file/examples/basics in the application.
“/* Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
This example code is in the public domain. */
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards.
// give it a name:
int led = 13;
// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {
// initialize the digital pin as an output.
pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
// turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
digitalWrite(led, LOW);
// turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
}”
~ Arduino – Blink –
What kinds of things can you do with an Arduino?
Here is a fun example that shows what you can do with the Arduino, with others in the presentation linked above:
Is Arduino related to Raspberry Pi?
Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are often talked about together, but they are very different devices. The Raspberry Pi and Arduino are both open source hardware, but aside from that they have very little to do with one another. While the Raspberry Pi has pins that you can use to manage electronics, the main purpose of the Pi is to have a $35 computer that you can use to connect to a TV or monitor via HDMI or composite jack and to a keyboard and mouse with USB. The Arduino would need to be very heavily modded to allow for anything like that. The Arduino is primarily an electronics prototyping platform.
John LeMasney speaks tonight to BCUG about the Make movement
“Once again, we are happy to announce a visit from our friend and active open source and social networking guru, John LeMasney, who has again offered a totally unique, new and innovative line of thought for our users group. It was no surprise when we contacted John for an idea and he responded with the current topic. I’m saying that, because here is a new, unheard of (by me at least) way to use technology. I am sure our group will be intrigued, even become potential users. As you know, we like to learn, and this is a chance to see something new and interesting. But, will it be comprehensible for non-programmers, like me, and those who are there for the first time checking us out.
According to John,
·“Scratch is a low-threshold-of-entry programming tool that even eight-year olds can master, though adults find it a great platform for developing games, animations, stories and more.
·Arduino is a programmable integrated circuit with lots of community support and low or no cost development tools that allow you to create anything from a Twitter account that shares when your dog eats from her food bowl to an always-on GPS reporter that tells a spreadsheet where it is every 30 seconds.
·Raspberry Pi is a $35 computer that you can use to do everything your desktop computer does, but because of the very low price, people tend to use them for more interesting dedicated projects, like an art project where lights and sound are affected by the presence of people. Come and learn where and how to get started with this exciting international movement away from consumerism and towards creation.” (slightly edited)
A little about John (from his web pages) – John LeMasney is a father who lives and works in and around Princeton, NJ. He now offers consulting in technology, design, communication, branding, and nutrition. He was the Manager of Educational Technology Training and Outreach at Princeton University from March 2011 to March 2013. He had worked from 1998-2011 at Rider University as the Manager of Technology Training. He was recently awarded a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership with honors from Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture with honors from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA .
John is a designer, artist, writer, poet, technologist, consultant, open web advocate and open source evangelist. He is most interested in helping people to use technology to make their lives, work, and world better.
I think we all agree that we would enjoy this presentation, as it’s outside of the box for us, and will give us plenty to think about. Jo Grazide” ~ BCUG Guest Speaker – http://goo.gl/wbL5N7
