The AppsLab

In September 2014, Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps) opened a brand new lab that showcases Oracle’s Cloud Applications, specifically the many innovations that our organization has made to and around Cloud Applications in the past handful of year. We call it the Cloud User Experience Lab, or affectionately, the Cloud Lab. Our team has several… Read More

Editor’s note: Here’s the first post from our new-ish researcher, Tawny. She joined us back in September, just in time for OpenWorld. After her trip to Disney World, she talked eagerly about the MagicBand experience, and if you read here, you know I’m a fan of Disney’s innovative spirit. Enjoy. Planning a Disney World trip… Read More

SafeDrop is a secure box for receiving a physical package delivery, without the need of recipient to be present. If you recall, it was my team’s project at the AT&T Developer Summit Hackathon earlier this month. SafeDrop is implemented with Intel Edison board at its core, coordinating various peripheral devices to produce a secure receiving product,… Read More

I love data, always have. To feed this love and to compile data sets for my quantified self research, I recently added the Netatmo Weather Station to the other nifty devices that monitor and quantify my everyday life, including Fitbit Aria, Automatic and Nest. I’ve been meaning to restart my fitness data collection too, after spending most of… Read More

Worn Out With Wearables That well-worn maxim about keeping it simple, stupid (KISS) now applies as much to wearable tech (see what I did there?) user experience as it does to mobile or web apps. The challenge is to keep on keeping “it” simple as product managers and nervous C-types push for more bells and… Read More

It has become tradition now for us, AppsLab, the OAUX emerging technologies team, that the first thing in a New Year is to fly to Las Vegas, not solely testing our luck on the casino floor (though some guys did get lucky), but also attending to the real business–participating in the AT&T Developer Summit Hackathon to build… Read More

Before Christmas, I ran out of gas for the first time. All things considered, I was very lucky. It was just me in the car, and the engine died in a covered parking structure, in a remote corner with few cars. Plus, it was the middle of the day, during the week before Christmas, so not… Read More

From Antiques to Apple “I don’t own a watch myself,” a great parting shot by Kevin of Timepiece Antique Clocks in the Liberties, Dublin. I had popped in one rainy day in November to discover more about clock making and to get an old school perspective on smartwatches. Kevin’s comment made sense. “Why would he… Read More

As we exit 2015 and enter 2016, I’m reflecting on all that happened in AppsLab and looking forward to the future. Our 2015 research spanned the spectrum – from attitudinal to behavioral, domestic to international, controlled to ad hoc, low to high tech, and many more research tactics. I won’t bore you with stats and… Read More

It’s been nearly three weeks, and I’m finally getting around to sharing the highlights of our OpenWorld 2015. Enjoy. Keynotes Last year, Steve Miranda showed some of our project work in his keynote. This year, our Glance framework on the Apple Watch, made an appearance in Larry Ellison’s first keynote in a video showcasing the evolution… Read More

Editor’s note: Maybe you got a chance to check out our IoT Smart Office demo at the OAUX Exchange during OpenWorld. If not, don’t fret, we’ll describe its many cool bits here, beginning with this post from Raymond (@yuhuaxie) on his smart badge build. A Smart Office needs an equally smart badge. We showcased the Smart… Read More

Introduction In the first part of this series, I showed you how to mod a Nerf gun so it can connect to the internet, and you can electronically trigger it.  In this second part, I will show you some software I created to actually remotely control the Nerf gun over the internet using various input devices.… Read More

Introduction As part of my foray into the Internet of Things (IoT) I was looking for a project I could sink my teeth in because I find it easier to learn something by doing it rather than just reading about it. It just happened to be that at JavaOne this year they will have a… Read More

A while back, I told you about Glance, a framework for wearables and other devices. Quick history review, Glance was born out of our frustration with rebuilding basic Oracle Cloud Applications notification functionality each time a hot new wearable device dropped, e.g. Google Glass, Pebble, Android Wear, etc. So, by the time the Apple Watch launched,… Read More