Awesome Usability Test

We ran a usability test of the new freshbrain.org on Friday at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara, CA. We had 13 high school age students participate. The usability test ran for just over an hour. The structure was:

• 8 laptops in a conference room
• One or mostly two to a laptop
• Complete three scenarios
• Register
• Explore
• Create a predefined project, their own project and do an activity
• Provide us feedback after each scenario
• Provide us with written feedback at the end
  

The students were AWESOME!! They jumped right in, appeared to totally enjoy the experience and provided us with loads of verbal and non-verbal feedback.

It was amazing how spot on we were. The fact that we built freshbrain.org on a social networking platform was exactly the right choice. They were quick to take advantage of all of the capabilities to share with friends, work together on projects and so on. We also nailed it with the look and feel of the site, the types of technology areas, the types of activities and projects and how we intend to use Advisors.

We did walk away with a number of important enhancement requests. These are mostly building on what we have We will make a couple of changes for this release and the rest on the one planned for March.

• Enhance search - it is how the students want to find everything.
• Make tools easier to find and better connected to activities and projects.
• Provide an internal system (as opposed to email used today) to make and accept friend requests, additions to projects, etc.
• Improve usability of forums.
• Extend capabilities of My FreshBrain to show more about friends, their activities, projects and forum entries.
• Look at adding more non-techie options maybe under Lifestyles (eg. cooking, writing).
• Provide a more in depth set of steps for projects.
  

This was all very validating :)

OLPC Bickering

I am shocked by the bickering that is going on around One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). This all seems more like a political and commercial battle rather than a focus on the kids.

Backing up. OLPC is about trying to provide kids in developing countries with the technology that we all live with every day. It is attempting to level the playing field, give kids in these countries with the tools to learn. To develop. And to hopefully bring along with their generation new opportunity. All a very noble goal.

My fundamental problem with it (separate from whether they picked the right technology - laptop vs cell phone) is that it feels more like a big PR and marketing effort rather than a genuine effort to solve the problem. People that are trying to do something good are not out to make a name for themselves. Not out to get as much press as possible. And not out to win with "their" technological solution. They instead work behind the scenes to make something happen. They lead with solutions and grow it from there. They don't lead with promises.

I have just spent a few minutes and read what is going on with Intel. I have read the comments from Bill Gates on how Microsoft sees it. It looks like what could have been a good thing is coming tumbling down!

Thanks to All - Winners Soon

Thanks to everyone who either participated or visited freshbrain.org during the Video Contest. As you know if you have followed my blog - this is a step along the path to delivering the full site planned for the end of the month.

We have learned a lot with the Graphics and Video Contests.

• The best way to reach folks is in the communities where they spend their time. This is far better than purchasing advertisements on sites such as facebook.
• google analytics is an excellent tool for monitoring the anonymous activity on your site down to where people come from (physical and virtual), how many pages they look at and how long they stay.
• Drupal was the right choice for our platform, as was Solaris and Network.com
• There is a LOT of creativity out there looking for a venue to share it!
• And there is an amazing amount of interest in enhancing the education that our kids get in the area of technology - schools are just not providing enough

We will be announcing the winners of the contest shortly. And we are very busy finishing up the work on the new site!!

Down to the Wire - Video Contest!

Ok, we are down to the wire with our FreshBrain Video Contest. We have a few good submissions but need some more. You have until 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Sunday 1/6.

Lets see some creativity!!!

freshbrain.org

Twas Three Days after Christmas

Just checking my watch and it is three days after Christmas ... for those who celebrate such things. For the rest, maybe back to work or more than a week to go of vacation before school starts back up. In any case, I have been working on our next release and thinking about the new year.

This will be a very exciting year for FreshBrain. We will be making our Beta release in late January. As I have already said, lots to do to get ready. But the work is pretty fun. The new website is coming together. We get to see an update every couple of days. The activities, projects, tools and training are starting to come together. We WILL go live with at least three technology areas and hopefully four or five!!

But that is the immediate future. What about the rest of the year. Well - let me preview a blog posting that I will make in a few days. It will be my FreshBrain new years resolutions. Or maybe better the big things that we plan to do next year. I will then see how we did at the end of the year, kind of the year in review. Here are some first thoughts:

• Release a Beta update on March
• General availability in maybe June
• Something significant that ties freshbrain.org to schools and afterschool programs late in the year
• Surpass what, maybe 50,000 visitors for the year?!?!
• And how about five or six interesting partners!!

Ok, let me work more on this.

Contest and Next Release!

We have been really busy over the last couple of weeks - and the next month will be even more so ...

We updated the freshbrain.org PREVIEW site with a new video contest. This is pretty cool. We are giving away an AWESOME video camera. High quality, high definition memory stick based Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. We are just now starting to see the first submission. I expect that we will see a large number of them over the holiday break.

And we are working our tails off on the BETA release. The target for this is January. It will be late in the month, but it is really coming together. We are continuing to work with our partner Image X Media. Here is what we have completed thus far.

• Defined the scope
• Created wireframes (simple visual descriptions of the website pages)
• Created the mockups (nonfunctional graphical versions of the website pages)
• Development started (on the BETA release of the website0
  
• First snapshots available (work in progress)
• First versions of website content (activities, projects, tools and training)
  

Lots left to do, but this is getting pretty exciting!

Video Contest - Join In!!

We are LIVE with our Video Contest.

This contest is to create the best "Day in the Life of a FreshBrain." What we would like to see is some creativity applied to explaining the kinds of things that a FreshBrain might do ... using freshbrain.org to do an activity, enter a contest or maybe work with some friends on a project. All of this in between 30 seconds and 2 minutes!

First prize is an AMAZING video camera - a Sony Handycam HDR-CX7. This thing can do high definition recording and uses a memory stick so that you don't have to mess with tapes or DVDs. There are two second prizes - pretty cool Flip Video Ultra 60-minute Camcorders.

If you like the idea, please enter. If you know of someone who might be interested, please let them know. The contest runs through 1/6/08.

freshbrain.org