6 Elements of Great Usability

Usability is a word that is often heard, yet is not often understood. What is usability? Why spend so much time on usability? How is it measured? When done right, usability can increase user productivity, provide a higher retention of information, and raise user satisfaction by creating and providing a stronger experience. Understanding what makes something usable or intuitive is never clearly defined. There are many factors that should go into the design of a usable solution. Usability is a component of user centered design, and is based on the goals, objectives, and even the limitations of you and your audience. Usability can be broken down into six elements that overlap each other to provide one cohesive experience. These six elemental groups are defined as: goal solving, intuitive, efficient, functional, satisfying, and memorable.
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Illumen’s David Charney Speaks at CD2

David Charney, Chief Creative Officer at Illumen, speaks at CD2 about the user experience and design. CD2 (Chicago Designers and Developers User Group) is focused on nurturing the collaboration between designers & developers and the importance of the user experience and how it relates to creativity and technology. Read more >>

Higher Education turns to Interactive

Purdue University continually explores the future of interactive learning in an effort to find effective and engaging content delivery methods for it’s faculty and students. On August 28th Purdue’s Vet School invited Illumen Group along with Dr. James “Butch” Rosser of The Stealth Learning Company to present the topic of Experiential Learning and how it’s shaping both academic and corporate learning environments. Over three sessions, the trio provided insight on Experiential Learning’s past, present, and future. Audience members consisted of faculty from Purdue’s Vet Sciences, Nursing, Engineering and Agriculture Departments.
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TED - Do Schools Kill Creativity?

A well presented look at creativity in the classroom by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson:

The New Illumen - Illumen Group

All of our business analysts and consultants said “focus on one thing and do it better than anyone else.” Normally we would have taken their advice, but the reality was that Illumen Studios often found itself part of a three-legged stool with at least one of the other two legs weak and frequently missing.

The problem? We were designing and producing tactical learning programs (leg 2) that had limited strategic foundations (leg 1) and almost never an effective measurement and analysis component (leg 3).

The solution? Become a really good stool maker, not just a really good stool leg maker. We added some of the sharpest strategic minds in learning, to help develop sound, successful learning strategies; and, some of the most analytic minds in Web analytics to help measure program and participant performance.

Under our new name, Illumen Group, we partner with corporate and academic entities involved in knowledge transfer through learning, training and marketing initiatives, by providing services along three core and contiguous channels:

Illumen Consulting - provides CPLP certified and experienced, strategic planning, instructional design and creative system design to help client’s optimize their use of technology in learning and information transfer.

Illumen Studios - brings award winning and comprehensive content, design and production talent to the creation and implementation of interactive digital and print platforms.

Illumen Analytics - provides the means and the metrics required to accurately assess the performance of a Program and/or a Program’s Participants and to visualize the analysis.

It’s a complete approach to learning that helps clients find stability while building a solid foundation from which ultimately efficient learning systems can grow.

Can we still provide just one leg if that’s all that’s needed? Sure, and with our custom approach to projects, that leg should look and feel just like the other two. In the end though, we think our clients’ lives will be simpler and their businesses stronger if they can find a really good stool, not just a really good leg, to stand on.

Illumen at Gartner Healthcare Summit

Chris Okamoto co-presented the Gartner keynote with Dr. James “Butch” Rosser at the Gartner Healthcare 2007 Summit in Miami. The keynote topic was “Video Games and Simulation of Safe Surgery”. Chris walked through real-world medical projects that blended gaming and simulation components, providing a glimpse into today’s challenges and tomorrow’s solutions. The Gartner Healthcare Summit is widely regarded as the industry’s most comprehensive healthcare IT and business conference.

Illumen Presents at Learning 2007

Illumen’s, Chris Okamoto, helped run the Top Gun 4 Surgeon training event at the 92nd Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. This Laparo-scopic Skill and Suturing program integrates simulations with gaming methodology to train laparoscopic surgeons around the world. The Top Gun Training program was recently featured on ABC’s hit show, Grey’s Anatomy. Chris also helped run a Top Gun 4 Kids event as part of the conference, an event that aims to draw attention to career choices in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM). This  event uses video games, reality based simulation challenges, pop culture icons, and interactive media to hit a grassroot level of awareness around STEMM.