The Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published a Working Draft of Linked Data Platform Use Cases and Requirements. To foster the development of the Linked Data Platform specification, this document includes a set of user stories, use cases, scenarios and requirements that motivate a simple read-write Linked Data architecture, based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state using RDF. The starting point for the development of these use cases is a collection of user stories that provide realistic examples describing how people may use read-write Linked Data. The use cases themselves are captured in a narrative style that describes a behavior, or set of behaviors based on, and using scenarios from, these user stories. The aim throughout has been to avoid details of protocol (specifically the HTTP protocol), and use of any specific vocabulary that might be introduced by the LDP specification. Learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun

Morgan State University has opened an investigation into a student's allegation that members of a fraternity he wanted to join rejected him because he is gay.

Brian Stewart said he dreamed of joining Morgan's chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and thought members would be impressed by his academic accomplishments — Stewart said he was a White House intern — but he was rejected the day after his interview.

He believes it is because of his sexual orientation, citing social-media messages using an anti-gay slur that someone sent him and told him were between fraternity members.

"I couldn't even be angry because I was so hurt," he said.

Members of the fraternity chapter and the national organization did not respond to requests for comment.

A Morgan State spokesman, Jarrett Carter Sr., said the university opened an investigation into Stewart's allegation after he lodged a complaint last week.

"The university doesn't tolerate or accept any kind of discrimination," Carter said. "It's something that the university takes very very seriously."

Carter said that discrimination — in Greek life or elsewhere — is against university policy and that those found in violation can face disciplinary action after a review by a panel of students, faculty and staff.

Stewart, a 20-year-old senior business major, said he wanted to join Kappa Alpha Psi — Morgan's chapter is called Alpha Iota — because his pastor and mentor from his youth was a member. He said he grew up poor in Annapolis and that his mentor had a major influence on his life.

"What he offered to me, I wanted the ability to offer that to someone else," Stewart said.

Stewart said he is no longer interested in pledging the fraternity but that he filed a complaint because he wanted to raise awareness.

"I didn't know I was going to have no control — that my interview meant nothing, my achievements meant nothing, because they had already made up their minds," Stewart said.

cwells@baltsun.com

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The HTML Working Group has update two Working Drafts and a Working Group Note today:

• A Working Draft of HTML 5.1, which defines the 5th major version, first minor revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
• A Working Draft of HTML Canvas 2D Context, Level 2. This specification defines the 2D Context for the HTML canvas element. The 2D Context provides objects, methods, and properties to draw and manipulate graphics on a canvas drawing surface.
• A Group Note of HTML Microdata, which defines the HTML microdata mechanism. This mechanism allows machine-readable data to be embedded in HTML documents in an easy-to-write manner, with an unambiguous parsing model. It is compatible with numerous other data formats including RDF and JSON.

Learn more about the HTML Activity.

The group of students, who were part of a fall 2012 freshman seminar class on entrepreneurship and innovation, have sold the intellectual property rights for their class creation — a campus navigation mobile application — to Hanover’s Tecore Networks. The goal of the class was for students to work together to develop an idea for a product or service, then work together to bring their idea to market. One of the purposes of the class was to help students develop usable workplace skills, such as teamwork, communication and troubleshooting problems.

“Get out of the building and talk to customers” is wonderful advice because understanding your customers is perhaps the best way to improve your chances of making good product decisions. Knowing what makes people tick enhances your product intuition—your internalized view of how great products should be built. And, honing this intuition enables you to make better decisions, faster because you are utilizing first-hand internalized knowledge of your customers and products instead of outside systems or ways of thinking.

Three E’s of Understanding Customers

Let‘s break down what it means to understand your customers by exploring empathy, experience, and excitement.

Empathy

Empathy is being able to feel what people feel when they use your products. To be able to step into their shoes and see the world as they see it. It is one of the most powerful areas of intuition you can develop. Becoming a more empathetic product maker will make many decisions a lot clearer because you’ll be able to see and, most importantly, feel what matters most to your customers. Anyone can learn to be more empathetic; the main requirement is starting with humility.

• Talk to your customers. This simple act can give you a big boost of empathy if done with humility. This does not have to be complicated or scientifically perfect. Getting just one customer to talk with you is all it takes. Really dig into how your product fits into their life, and ask:
• about their experience with your product,
• open ended questions and truly listen to their responses, without judgment, and
• about why they use your product and what it helps them do or be.
• Use your product. If you want to know how your customers feel, you have to experience what they experience. Use your product on a daily basis. Push it like your customers do. Experience the pain of crashes but also (hopefully!) the delight of what you’ve built.

Experience

What experiences do people like or hate? User experience—UX—has become an entire profession for good reason; the quality of a product’s experience is often tantamount to its success. There are times when you need to make judgment calls or compromises to a product’s experience—how do you know what is the right call (ignoring for a second user research methods)? You can only do this well if you know how to judge what is the best tradeoff to make. Developing empathy also helps.

• Observe your customers. Recruit customers for some hands-on sessions with your product. Like talking with your customers, these do not have to be scientifically perfect, but the simple act of watching people use your product will give you often surprising insight into what they expect or what frustrates them. Ask questions like “what do you expect here?”, “can you talk about this part of the product?”, “you look frustrated, why?” Be careful of leading questions, and look for unspoken desires.
• Watch people in everyday life. People watching, a favorite pastime of the retired, is also helpful for understanding broad expectations that people have from their experiences. Watch as somebody interacts with the objects around them and pay particular attention to what seems to frustrate or delight them. Also pay attention to your own experiences: what experiences do you encounter everyday that are so well designed that they are invisible until you scrutinize them?
• If you make digital products: talk to people that are not up-to-date with the latest technology trends. Ask them questions about why they do or do not like technology. Dig as deep as you can. Ask them about their favorite product and why it is their favorite. People love giving their opinions and all of this can feed into your growing internal storehouse of product intuition.

Excitement

Given two products, can you say which one would be more exciting? Intuitively knowing what makes people excited is a huge competitive advantage. The Kano model is an easy way to categorize excitement features, but there is also an element of excitement that comes from how a feature is implemented.

• If you make mobile applications, download lots and lots of applications, particularly those that are featured. Pay attention to the details and flow of each app. What did they get right? What feels off? Analyze the product decisions made. Keep notes on apps that inspire you or you think did a particularly good job in some way.
• Browse sites like Little Big Details. This blog is a gold mine for getting a feel for the little details that excite people when using digital products. As Dieter Rams said, “My heart belongs to the details. I actually always found them to be more important than the big picture. Nothing works without details. They are everything, the baseline of quality.”
• Pay attention to the products and features that people rave about. What do people glowingly tweet or post on Facebook? These are things that make them excited.

Go With Your Gut

In an age of data-driven decision making, we should not lose our grasp on the place for intuitive thinking. Having a well developed intuition about what makes products appeal to customers is essential for creating great products. Data-driven and scientific methods will not by themselves result in appealing products for humans. Grow your intuition and then use it to make the best products you can!

The post Make Better Product Decisions appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

by Emek Ergun, Satarupa Joardar and Autumn Reed