The ultimate longitudinal review, five years in the making. Sennheiser has changed their once-terrific PX-100 headphones for the worse. We don’t often do negative reviews on Design Critique, but it’s useful to analyze how a great user experience can disappoint after several years ownership. Reliability is the Achilles heel of the PX-100 and now it’s even worse with brittle plastic, reduced cushioning, and wickedly tight pressure through the headband.
In other news, Tim has a chapter in the new UX Storytellers book, which is free for download, and a blog post for Altitude Inc. We have email from two, count ’em TWO, listeners. All this in under 30 minutes.

Interesting PX-100 reviews for the PX-100 and PX-100 MkII can be found at
http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-100-Lightweight-Collapsible/dp/B000089GN3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293124224&sr=8-1

http://www.headphone.com/product_review.php?icn=0020081010

Tim’s chapter in UX Storytellers, UX Professional Buys a Car, can be found at
http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.com/

Download the whole book and enjoy!

Tim’s “How User Experience Research Saved the Chevrolet Corvette” post on Altitude Inc.’s blog can be read at

http://altimeter_blog.altitudeinc.com/bid/33288/How-User-Experience-Research-Saved-the-Chevrolet-Corvette

Mark Phillips from Vertabase joins Tim Keirnan at Internet User Experience 2010 to talk about project management’s effects on design. Mark’s session at IUE was called “Connecting Pixels, Bytes, and Dollars: How Designers, Developers, and Clients Can Work Together.”

You can find Mark, and his blog, at www.vertabase.com and his email address is mark@vertabase.com

Mark recommends The PM Podcast at
www.project-management-podcast.com

Tim Keirnan interviews the design & development team for TechSmith’s upcoming Snagit for Macintosh. Items discussed include:

* How and why did TechSmith decide to do a version of their popular Snagit for the Mac OSX platform?

* What is the design process of Snagit for Mac?

* How is Snagit for Mac related to Snagit for Windows?

* Why did TechSmith decide to try an open beta process and how is it helping their design process?

So check it out before you listen, or while you listen. You can find the Snagit for Macintosh free beta at the following addresses:

www.techsmith.com/snagitmac/

www.snagit.com

www.techsmith.com

Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering joins Tim Keirnan for Design Critique’s 5th anniversary episode. That’s FIVE years, folks!

The guys discuss some favorite UX-related new media audio and video shows, debate the effectiveness of advertisements in new media shows, and generally engage in freewheeling talk that never takes itself too seriously.

We close with a promo for UIE’s User Interface 15 conference to be held in Cambridge, MA this November. Links:

www.uxpod.com

http://johnnyholland.org/category/radio-johnny/

http://iatelevision.blogspot.com/

http://www.ted.com/

http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow/1

http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2010/

Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus joins Tim Keirnan for a quick promo of the upcoming Internet User Experience 2010 conference, to be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from July 24 – 28, 2010. To learn more about IUE2010 and to register, please visit www.iue2010.com

Jeff Smith of IBM’s Hardware Experience Design Group presents part two of our “director’s cut” of the presentation he gave at the 2009 HFES conference, “Gathering User Feedback from Internal Sources to Supplement Formal Usability Studies”.

In part two, Jeff details the ways in which the following internal departments of employers and clients can help us get informal user feedback to supplement our primary data:

* Marketing

* Sales

* Support

* Test Engineers (QA)

* Manufacturing

Each of these areas can supply a user experience professional with invaluable insights and observations of customers/end users. Jeff tells us the promise and the limitations of using their data in our own work. Jeff’s coauthors on the presentation were Daniel P. Kelaher and David T. Windell.

Jeff Smith of IBM’s Hardware Experience Design Group presents a “director’s cut” of the presentation he gave at the 2009 HFES conference. Tim liked it so much in San Antonio that he wanted to hear an expanded version on Design Critique so here it is, titled “Gathering User Feedback from Internal Sources to Supplement Formal Usability Studies”.

In part one, Jeff

* Describes his job as a human factors engineer with IBM,

* Tells his interpretation of the field combined with IBM’s corporate values,

* Discusses the essential nature of communication to both clients and coworkers

* Shares his “elevator speech” of what he does for a living, and

* Emphasizes the importance of field research if you’re able to do it on a project.

In part 2, Jeff will explain the methods of using internal sources to supplement formal user research. Jeff’s coauthors on the presentation were Daniel P. Kelaher and David T. Windell.

If we were a commercial show, we’d sing something like “All we are saying is give Zune a chance.” Computer programmer (and rumored private detective) Matt Hard joins Tim for a discussion of the user experience of Microsoft’s Zune media players, Zune 4.0 software, and the Zune Pass music rental service. Born in ridicule, the Zune ecosystem has matured into something so good that Tim did not want to return Matt’s kindly lent Zune8GB and ZuneHD players. Intrigued? Read on…

* Both guys preferred the Zune flash player to their old iPod Nanos. Listen to find out why.

* The ZuneHD has a terrific screen and touch user interface that Matt likes, but that Tim isn’t so keen on. Listen to the reasons for their widely differing perspectives.

* The Zune 4.0 software is terrific for music, but stinks for podcasts. Hear how a dreadful installation experience almost made Tim give up on even trying the Zune.

* The Zune Pass service is more rent-to-own than rent, a great idea that was almost ruined by a terrible trial experience that Tim rants about.

You can find out more about the Zune at www.Zune.net. You can try the software for free to see what we’re oohing and ahhing about.

Instructions are an integral part of the user experience of products and services. Anne Gentle from JustWriteClick joins Tim to talk about the social Web’s impact on creating technical communication in the 21st century.

You can download a free chapter from Anne’s new book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, at

http://justwriteclick.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/free_chapter_conversation_and_community.pdf

Anne’s blog is at www.JustWriteClick.com.