The program for the Belgian Usability Day 2008 is finally announced:

• Taking social networks global: design patterns & tips (Peter Van Dijck)

  Social networks are growing all over the world, but how are the IA’s of these networks managing this? What patterns and strategies do they use? What are the challenges? What works and doesn’t? (…)

• Digital identity and self-representation in social networks (Amandine Feix-Villain, Groupe Reflect)

  When one speaks of social networks, we necessarily think about people who interact and try to find a meaning for themselves and the community in which they evolve and structure their digital identity. Having a digital identity means that you deliberately manage several facets that corresponds to specific objectives, needs and self-valorisation (…)

• Travel Experience: Brussels Airlines case study (Audrey benoit, Brussels Airlines & Raphaël de Robiano, Emakina)

  This is the story of a total user experience mission for Brussels Airlines. The mission consisted to live the experience users make with the product of our client (…)

• Traffic congestion. What can the designer do but despair? (Joannes Vandermeulen, Namahn)

(…) A lot of congestion is wholly unnecessary and avoidable, if only the design of the interface was right. Aren’t traffic signs the user interface between the driver and the road infrastructure?

More information can be found at http://usabilityday.be.

This is the translation of yesterday’s post about my dissertation. So, my research is focused on the transmission of electronic rumors and how it evolved from the web “first generation” to the so-called “web2.0”. What I call an “electronic rumor” is any unverified information spreading on the Internet (emails, forums, blogs, microblogging platforms, social networks, social bookmarking sites, video sharing services, mobile web, etc.).

So, It’d like to compare the transmission model from the web1 (mainly through email and BBS/messageboards) with the new model I’ve developed for the web2.0. Afterwards I’ll have to evaluate and test this model on several case studies, and that’s why I need you!

It would help me a lot if you could suggest me some rumors, and tell me why you find them interesting (length, multiple channel used, different versions of the same rumor, use of new channels such at mobile web or microblogging tools, etc.). The theme or topic isn’t relevant for my research, so it can be anything except marketing related rumors (no viral or buzz campaigns).

Those rumors don’t have to be specific to the Internet but MUST be spread and transmitted on the web. You can think of some examples such as the strange things you can find about Barack Obama’s religion, the rumors around the Iphone 3G before it was launched, etc.

Thanks in advance for helping, I really appreciate it! You can leave your rumors in the comments at the bottom of this post, or send them by email at . It would be nice if you could spread the word about this research to your bloggers or microbloggers friends, or any person using social media on a regular basis.

This article could apply to all kinds of events, but I’ll focus on concerts because that’s the field that I know the best. We’ve booked a lot of DIY (Do It Yourself) concerts in the last five years, and we did use every possible way to promote it. From oldschool flyers/stickers/posters to social media, we tried everything we could. MySpace was our first step into social networking sites, until we tried Facebook.

So, this post is about Facebook and why I think it’s good for events promotion.

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I said, months ago, that I should start blogging in English (even if my English skills are very limited), and I think today is the day! I’ve just spotted a new use of Twitter and I want to share it with you.

We’ve seen a lot of new applications, mashups and companies working with Twitter lately, but the Go Media team comes with a fresh use of the n°1 microblogging service: they now offer design help via Twitter.

Have you ever found yourself stuck on a design project with nobody to ask for help? You Google for tutorials and pour over support forums for the answer but nothing seems to solve your specific problem? This is common with freelance designers who work alone. They don’t have the luxury of working next to other designers who just might know a quicker way to achieve the same effect. So Go Media is going to try to help as best we can, using Twitter!

Working with Twitter will give users a more customized service and something more personal than common tutorials. The other great thing is that, no only Go Media can answer your question, but the other followers too. It creates an interaction between the designers and builds a network of users helping each other. Their twitter account already got 297 followers in a couple of hours, and it’s still growing.

I’ll keep an eye on this project because I think it’s a really great idea. If you want to know more about how it works, just take a look at the project page.