There are no events this month. I'm going ... well ... wherever I can get a last minute deal for. Either that or I'll be spending a week tiling the bathroom.
Anyway, surely you should be out drinking G&Ts in what's left of the sunshine!
Everything you've always wanted to know about card sorting Card sorting is a powerful technique in eliciting users' understanding of a problem domain. It is particularly helpful in navigation design and information architecture. William Hudson describes the basic principles of card sorting and cluster analysis, including more advanced interpretation of results and an innovative approach combining the best features of paper sorting with computer processing. A live card sort will be performed!
William Hudson is a specialist in user-centred design. He has presented papers and tutorials in UCD at a variety of conferences, and teaches UCD techniques in public and in-house courses. William writes a regular column in the ACM's interactions magazine. He founded Syntagm, a small consultancy specializing in interactive system design, in 1985.
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please email Chris McEvoy using swug@usabilityviews.com to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 14 June 2005
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and the UPA.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
There wont be a SWUG event this month, but we do have an excellent one lined up for the 14th June. More details next week.
Ethical Design and Usability : Can we make the small print bigger? by Chris McEvoy
Ethical design is the magical element that can be added to user centred design and usability testing to turn merely good designs into insanely great designs.
Chris McEvoy will talk about ethical design and why it is important.
From internet fridges to mortgage illustrators we will look at designs that look beyond the user and attempt to address the wider social aspects of designing for humans.
We will talk about ethical designers like Henry Dreyfuss, Bill Buxton and Jef Raskin who approach ethical design as a starting place rather than an optional extra.
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please email Chris McEvoy using swug@usabilityviews.com to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 12 April 2005
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
Never Mind the Buzzwords: Intranets for Real Users by Kate Watson (Nationwide Building Society)
Company intranets can be complicated affairs. A curious mix of business-critical information and page after page of irrelevant nonsense that someone used to maintain until they left/moved departments/got bored way back in 2001, they can become vast, poorly structured and difficult to manage.
There is no shortage of whizzy software that promises to solve all your content and navigation problems, but fancy technology is rarely the answer. By asking users what they really need, you can cut through the gadgets and the gizmos and save some serious time and money in the process.
(Helping Members intranet homepage. Copyright Nationwide Building Society)
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please email Chris McEvoy using swug@usabilityviews.com to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 8 March 2005
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and Nationwide Building Society.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
Sleeping with the users: Ethnography in the 21st Century by Louise Ferguson
Ethnography is on a roll, with increasing numbers of articles in mainstream media extolling its merits from the corporate perspective, while companies such as Intel have in recent years been busy hiring anthropologists to inform the design process.
But what exactly is ethnography? Isn't the idea of 'tribes' terribly old fashioned? What can ethnography offer the design community? And how do we do it? Louise Ferguson will talk about the contribution that ethnographic approaches can make to the design and evaluation of 'systems' in their widest sense, and will discuss how to go about 'doing' ethnography, including the pitfalls to avoid.
Louise Ferguson consults on qualitative user research as director of Digital Habitats Ltd. She has conducted ethnography for research, design, evaluation, and strategy in a wide range of contexts, including public sector, blue chip companies and micro firms. Louise has contributed to user experience and technology projects and publications for organisations including the Design Council and The Work Foundation. She has been engaged in systems development since the early 1980s, holds a Master's degree in human-computer interaction, and is currently Vice President of the UK chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association and co-director of the UPA's international Voting and Usability Project.
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please respond to swug@usabilityviews.com to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 8 February 2005
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and Louise Ferguson.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
Tools And Techniques For Great User Experience: Dr Patrick W. Jordan
In order to create compelling products and services which users will really love we have to do three things. These are: understand the user, know what they want, give it to them.
In Pat Jordan's presentation we will look at a number of tools and techniques designed to give us in-depth user insights and to enable us to specify user requirements — both practical requirements and emotional ones.
The application of these tools and methods will be illustrated with a series of case studies. These will cover a wide range of products and services as well as a variety of industries and application areas. Attendees should be able to take away some useful techniques and approaches which they will be able to apply in their own work whatever field they are in.
The approaches described will be based upon a three-level hierarchy of user needs — functionality, usability and pleasure. It will be argued that for products to succeed in the mass market, they need to meet users’ needs on all three of these levels.
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please respond to neil.suffield@environment-agency.gov.uk to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 11 January 2005
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and Pat Jordan.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
Usability and the Organisation: Dr. Sarah Burton-Taylor, Director, Web Usability Partnership
This session will stand back and take a more strategic view of usability, specifically in the context of web site development. Building an effective website is often seen exclusively as the job of the web team, and viewed as a design or technical issue. However, often what inhibits an effective web site is the organisation itself – a lack of strategic clarity and user-focused behaviours. Developing an effective web site requires a culture where people at all levels in the organisation adopt behaviours that make a ‘good user experience’ an important goal. Understanding the user experience, through research methods like usability testing, can be a powerful tool in driving the organisational change needed to develop effective websites.
Sarah will talk about some instances she has encountered of how the organisation affects usability, and how usability research can affect the organisation, in order to provoke a discussion about how you can increase the strategic importance of usability in your environment.
Sarah Burton-Taylor is a director of the Web Usability Partnership (www.webusability.co.uk), which provides research and consultancy services to improve the total user experience on websites including usability testing, user research, and site strategy development. Sarah has been involved for many years in consumer and user research to inform strategic and marketing development, from both client and consultant sides of the fence. She comes from a research led strategic and marketing background – not HCI – and has a doctorate from Cranfield School of Management on managing organisational and tacit knowledge, and enabling sustainable change interventions.
The session will then be followed by drinks in the Watershed.
Please Note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please respond to neil.suffield@environment-agency.gov.uk to reserve a place, indicating if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 14 December 2004
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and the Web Usability Partnership.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
How difficult is it to use a screen reader?
Léonie Watson is the Head of Accessibility at Nomensa and also has a visual impairment. During an informal and interactive session Léonie will explain what can be accomplished with a screen reader when a user finds a web site that uses correct semantic code. Following the presentation there will be an opportunity to mingle and have a few drinks in the Watershed.
Please note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please respond to neil.suffield@environment-agency.gov.uk and indicate if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 9 November 2004
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks
Cost: Free - again, only because of the support from Nesta Futurelab and Nomensa.
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
Gordon Plant from User Analytics will be sharing some experiences gained from recent accessibility work on public sector websites.
He will be showing video of various kinds of assistive technologies in use and looking at the differences between the theory and practice of making a site accessible.
Please note: We have a restricted number of places available, so please respond to neil.suffield@environment-agency.gov.uk and indicate if you require wheelchair access.
Date: 12 October 2004
Venue: NESTA Futurelab, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5UH.
Start Time: 6.15pm for 6.30pm
End Time: Around 7.30pm and then moving on to the Watershed for drinks.
Cost: Free - It's only through the support of Nesta and User Analytics that has enabled us to set this up. Thanks!
How to get there: http://www.nestafuturelab.org/about_us/location.htm
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