BlobFisk.com

This picture (by tp1977) shows the new treatment of the Big 4, outside the Channel 4 building in London. The Big 4 is a large, steel 4 shape that Channel 4 invites artists to use.

The current Big 4 has been covered with umbrellas and I think it looks great! There has been a mixed reaction to it from the people I’ve spoken to it, but, again, I think it looks great!

It’s a work of art. It’s function is to promote Channel 4 and to promote the Channel 4 brand. It does these things in my opinion.

It is also meant to be a think that people stop and look at, a think that people stop and photograph, and a think that people talk about.

I believe it is doing all of these things. It is a perfect piece of branding, reflecting the Channel 4 mantra for experimenting and doing things first.

More

Eye tracking heatmap of the Channel 4 homepage

A couple of weeks ago we carried out some Eye Tacking testing on the Channel 4 website and I posted our initial findings soon afterwards. I’d now like to talk a little about the methodology that we used.

In traditional eye tracking studies the participant is presented with a page (in the case of web testing), given a period of time to look at the page, generally 15 seconds, during which the places that their eyes look is captured. This provides some very valuable feedback in that it shows where users look first, in what order they look at things and how long they look at things for.

However, it is merely a capture of the first look, and not linked to any task. People generally come to a website for a reason – they have a goal. When we carried out our eye tracking, we blended it with qualitative testing also. We carried out the initial gaze capture, but also tacked eye movement during specific task completion.

More

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

New Channel 4 Homepage

Reading Seth Godin’s latest blog post, Beauty as a signaling strategy, I was reminded of this quote from David Gelernter (from his book Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology). Godin  says:

We treat people and products differently when we think they’re beautiful. The reason people and organizations have invested so much in beauty over the years is that beauty pays off. A website that doesn’t cram ads into every single nook and cranny is more beautiful…

The last sentence resonated with me particularly. Here at Channel 4 we’re just about to launch our new homepage. This is part of a major redesign project that has been going on to update the design, usability and user experience of the site (check out the new TV listings page and programme detail page). The new homepage was designed to be a high impact and beautiful page, which shows off the Channel 4 brand.

More

These are my links for December 24th through December 26th:

• Mozilla Labs » Ubiquity –
• Using the crowd to tell us about browser responsiveness on Dion Almaer’s Blog –
• The Rise of Cloud Agents – ReadWriteWeb –
• TwitchBoard –
• Foreign Office says Iranian leader’s address will cause international offence | Media | guardian.co.uk –
• BlobFisk.com › Dashboard — WordPress –

Welcome to blobfisk.com, the online home of Alex Horstmann, a user experience professional of over 10 years experience.

This site is mostly about me blogging about (what I think are) interesting things, posting links (ok, it’s automatically picking them up from my Delicious account!) and generally trying to talk about all things UX, usability and accessibility. So, a little about me…

Alex Horstmann is an Irishman (Irish By Birth, Cork By the Grace of God) living in the city of St. Albans, just a little north of London! I live with my beautiful wife and wonderful little son, and divide my time between enjoying my family and loving my work in user experience. BlobFisk has been my nickname/handle/alias for a long time now, so generally where you see a user called BlobFisk it’s me!

Currently, I’m General Manager for User Experience and Design at TUI Travel plc. TUI is a leading travel and leisure company. Listed on the FTSE 100, TUI owns travel brands like Thomson, First Choice, Simply and Falcon. I look after the UX and Design teams, and my main areas of focus at the moment is TUI’s mobile strategy and a very major redesign of all of our sites.

Before TUI I was a consultant user experience architect at the  Virgin Media, where I consulted on the redesign of their site, adding some exciting new content and some incredible cross-platform features linking the web to their set top boxes.

Previously, I was User Experience Manager for Channel 4,  looking after all things user experience for this leading UK broadcaster. My role here includes managing Information Architects and external agencies, ensuring the usability, UX and accessibility of all the Channel 4 online inventory (Channel4, E4, Film4, More 4, and 4Radio), expert usability and accessibility reviews and playing a key role in the redesign of the Channel4 site.

Before this I was Senior User Experience Engineer at Tideway Systems Limited, looking after the user experience, usability and design of Foundation, Tideway’s enterprise business intelligence solution.

Previous to joining Tideway I worked for DeCare Systems (Ireland) in User Experience and Web Design, a US consultancy specialising in web applications with clients including Avon Cosmetics, MasterCard, Figis and various large US insurance companies (like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Delta Dental).

Previous to this I was Internet Manager for Irelands largest recruitment company, Premier Recuitment, and Irelands largest independent radio station, 96FM, respectively. If you want to know more then my CV / Resume may be of interest to you.