The AppsLab

Noel (@noelportugal), Raymond (@yuhuaxie), Mark (@mvilrokx) and I traveled to sunny Hollywood, Florida last week to attend Kscope15 (#kscope15), the annual conference of the Oracle Development Tools User Group (@odtug). Check out some highlights of our week. If you read here, you probably know that this year, Noel had cooked up something new and different… Read More

Walking into something as a newcomer is always an adventure of reality interacting with expectations. Though I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at the Quantified Self conference, it wasn’t what I expected. But in a good way. The conference was structured around three main activities: talks given on the main stage, breakout sessions, which… Read More

I always thought of myself as a control freak, Type A, self-aware (flaws and all) person but then I attended the Quantified Self Conference last week in San Francisco. There is so much more one can do to learn about one’s self. The possibilities are endless on what I can quantify (measure about myself) and… Read More

A busy June is half over now, but we still have miles to go before July. We’ve been busy, which you know if you read here. Raymond went to Boston. Tony, Thao (@thaobnguyen), Ben and I were in Las Vegas at OHUG 15. John and Thao were in Minneapolis the week before that. Oh, and Anthony was… Read More

Not long ago, Ultan (@ultan) wrote about our framework for wearable, and other, devices. We’re calling it Glance to reflect the OAUX glance-scan-commit design philosophy. Noel (@noelportugal) produced a video highlighting Glance on several smartwatches as well as in the car, on Android Auto. It’s pretty sweet. Check it out: Glance has been in the works for more… Read More

This idea of the glanceable user experience of wearable technology is now everywhere. They’re all at it. There is the OG Misfit Wearables Shine, Apple’s Glances, and of our course the Oracle Applications Cloud User Experience (@usableapps) concept of glance on the smartwatch, part of our Glance, Scan, Commit design philosophy. But, not all glances… Read More

On Monday, we launched Asteroid Explorer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Jeremy (@jrwashley), DJ, Kris Robison and I attended the launch event, which you can watch here. My part of the presentation begins at 36:36. This event was the culmination of NASA’s Asteroid Hackathon event back in October. Remember that? Here’s the event abstract: Abstract: In… Read More

Google I/O 2015 has just ended.  There are lots of aspects regarding to Google I/O.  Lets have a taste of it from the user experience perspective. There are lots of features announced in Google I/O, and you may find a lot of focus have been around user experience this year. First, for the pre-show, there were planets and… Read More

Lots going on here in AppsLab land and in Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps). This here is a recap post. Showing the Oracle Applications User Experience Roadmap to Oracle’s Asia Partners At the beginning of May, Anthony (@anthonyslai) and Raymond joined a large contingent of the OAUX team in an two-stop tour of Asia. The… Read More

Editor’s note: Here’s the first post from Osvaldo Villagrana (@vaini11a), one of our AppsLab Mexico team members. Enjoy. During last week I’ve been playing with Nymi Discovery Kit I got back in our AT&T hackathon participation, and here are my impressions as a developer for Nymi SDK point of view and as a user. For… Read More

I recently ventured down to Mexico to participate in an Internet of Things (IoT) hackathon organized by Laurie Pattison’s (@lsptahoe) Apps UX Innovation Events team with some of my fellow AppsLab members, Luis Galeana, Tony Orciuoli, and Osvaldo Villagrana. Being the lone non-developer, I wasn’t sure how much I would be able to contribute—but I had… Read More

Editor’s note: Mark (@mvilrokx) and Raymond are at it again. Earlier in the week, they each provided a take on last weekend’s Bay Are Maker Faire, and this week, they both attended Twilio’s (@twilio) first developer conference, Signal. Mark’s take is here; now, it’s Raymond’s turn. Enjoy. Twilio is no stranger to us at AppsLab.… Read More

Editor’s note: If you read here, you know we heart Twilio, especially Noel (@noelportugal). Remember the Rock ’em Sock ’em robot build? This week, Twilio (@twilio) held its first Signal conference and Raymond and I were there to see what’s new in the world of web enabled communications and the likes. For those of you not… Read More

Editor’s note: Here’s another Maker Faire 2015 post, this one from Raymond. Check out Mark’s (@mvilrokx) recap too for AppsLab completeness. I went to the Maker Faire 2015 Bay Area show over the weekend. A lot of similarity to last year, but a few new things. In place of our spot last year, it was HP-Sprout… Read More

This weekend the 10th Annual Maker Faire Bay Area took place in my backyard and rather than fighting traffic for 2 days with the +130,000 attendees I decided, as I have for the last 9 years, to join them. Unlike last year, Oracle had no presence at the Maker Faire itself, so I had plenty… Read More

Observations on UX research and road-testing wearable tech in the wild. The vehicle for today’s message is Ultan O’Broin (@usableapps), taking advantage of Oracle Applications User Experience events and outreach to evaluate the fitness and health option on the Apple Watch—and to continue his Fitbit Surge exploration—this time in China. The Watch Ethnography (say what?)… Read More

After three weeks with the Nike+ Fuelband and four weeks with the Basis Peak, I moved on to the Jawbone UP24. The UP24 has been out for quite a while now. Back in January 2014, Noel (@noelportugal) and Luis (@lsgaleana) did cursory evaluation, and not much has changed in the Jawbone lineup since then. At least,… Read More