Well, this looks interesting: MindCanvas | A research service from Uzanto.
From the website:
“MindCanvas is a rapid research service to gather insights about your customers' thoughts and feelings. Online surveys require users to complete boring html forms. We use Game-like Elicitation Methods (GEMs) to let online users participate in answering the complex questions that you face in designing a product or service. Our Visual Analysis Engine lets us rapidly mine the reams of data and create rich visualizations for you to explore.”
Am I a Luddite or curmudgeon because It creeps me out to (a) probe people's craniums remotely, digitally, in with gamelike "elicitations"; and to (b) possibly use information collected online to validate claims about non-online uses and users? But let's be honest: this type of stuff now goes on all the time, only less efficiently. If MindCanvas reduces errors in understanding customers' wants and needs, even a little, it's got a future.
If you use MindSpace, please let me know about your experience and that of your subjects.
PHICHI, Philly's SIGCHI chapter, is featuring the developers of MindSpace and another online research application, Ethnio, at its August meeting:
PHICHI August Meeting: Remote UX Tools - Ethnio & MindCanvas
Friday, August 18th
Drexel or UPenn campus, TBD
Refreshments & Networking: 6-6:30pm (food and beverages will be provided)
Presentation: 6:30pm-8ish
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior (economics), optimizing interactions (design) and facilitating conversations (markets), are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a 'nice to have'‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
