Mementoys - usability in product design
with Walid Hassanein
27thJan '10
About the event
Why is it that people have such a strong emotional bond with their childhood toys, many years after they have ceased to have any utilitarian function?
This talks presents the notion of designing to augment a toy's ability to capture and provide memories with its owner for an entire lifetime, and describes a framework for prototyping, implementing and testing this concept.
Toys capture information while they are being used, and then recount their stories many years later. Each story would give the owner a flashback to a particular period of time in their life; connecting these flashbacks together provides an even greater story of their past. The toys use a wide range of embedded sensors that capture information digitally. Using GPS, a toy could capture geographic position and recount the tale of past journeys. Using tiny, wireless cameras and other sensors, the toy could also record audio and visual information, presenting the owner with context cues that would trigger different memories. We experiment with different materials, especially those with good patina such as leather and textiles, as they provide the best visual indication of age. Elements that have a strong possibility of tearing off after a certain period of time, such as buttons are encouraged. The toys would have a valuation model that would prioritize the importance of its captured memories. A long geographic move, or the moment when a new discovery happens during play, would be placed at the top of the memory hierarchy.
More about the speaker(s)
Walid Hassanein is a Usability Consultant at Usability Lab.
As a usability consultant, Walid thrives on immersing himself into new environments to produce useful and creative design solutions. With a bachelor of industrial design from Carleton University (Canada) and international work experience, Walid applies his rigorous strategy, testing and design skills to achieve concise solutions that are usable and meet stakeholder needs.
Before joining The Usability Lab, Walid was an independent usability consultant, with clients & projects ranging from lead UX consultant for Vodafone Egypt's corporate and mobile sites to a toy and UX design project for the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies' Media Lab. As a new arrival to Scotland, Walid currently spends most of his time away from The Lab exploring the regions, landscapes and special malts.
Mobile Usability / iPhone App
with Mark Westwater and Gavin Dutch
17thNov '09
About the event
More event details to follow.
Election Ballot Usability
with Caroline Jarret and Clare Barnett
20thOct '09
About the event
Remember the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, when the ballot paper came in for a lot of criticism for poor usability?
Spurred by this, and concern about other elections, the Electoral Commission commissioned User Vision and Effortmark to conduct usability tests with a range of voters in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Find out about how we approached the project and what we learned about ballots:
- What makes voting hard or easy
- How details of design affect the task success of voting
About what we learned about running a paper testing project across four countries:
- Offline and online testing, differences and similarities
- How we analysed the results
Online Qualitative Research - new ways to find out what consumers really think
with Clare Wade, Mindspace
15thSep '09
About the event
'Online focus groups', 'bulletin boards', 'talking sheds', 'communities', 'research via social media' - these are the new buzzwords in consumer research and it's all exciting stuff. However a lot of people are quite muddled about the format and benefits of each, and when and why they should use them.
The existence of the internet/Web 2.0 has given us a range of fantastic new ways to access consumer points of view, beyond the traditional formats of focus groups and depth interviews. This talk explains and clarifies the different methods of online qualitative research that are emerging, with live examples of how they are being used, focusing in particular on Online Audio Focus Groups which are an exciting new development in this market.
More about the speaker(s)
Clare Wade has been involved in research for a long time in various guises, starting as an account planner with London ad agencies and eventually moving into qualitative research full time as an independent consultant based in Fife. Her main area of interest is with anything to do with marketing communications - ads, design, direct mail, websites, branding - as well as customer satisfaction surveys, concept and product development, staff feedback and stakeholder consultation across B2C and B2B markets. The essence of her work is to find out, interpret and use customer feedback to inform business strategy, using the best available research tools for the job.
Prototyping - the landscape and review of Axure RP Pro
with Alan Trow-Poole and Ritch Macefield
23rdJun '09
About the event
User Centred Design (UCD) intrinsically requires the iterative development and testing of prototypes. Over the years there have been many approaches to prototyping and today a number of different approaches are still in common use throughout our discipline. Tonight's presentation will first provide an overview of the prototyping landscape. It will then provide a review and demonstration of Axure RP Pro, a-state-of-the-art dedicated prototyping tool. This will include explanation of how Axure RP Pro can be used to design wireframes and interactions, produce specification documents, and produce functioning prototypes designed for usability testing. If you have always wanted to learn more about how prototyping can be applied as part of your development design process, tonight's event will be a valuable introduction to this topic.
Downloads
Prototyping - the landscape and review of Axure RP Pro
More about the speaker(s)
Alan Trow-Poole is User Experience Designer and Information Architect at the Icon Studio
Alan has 26 years experience in the IT industry and a blue chip background - working for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), he was promoted to the rank of Senior Consultant. He has 15 years experience as a UX/AI/Usability professional working for e.g., PeopleSoft, nPower and Bank of America. His international experience covers the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and the USA. As a trainer/educator: Alan has been a guest lecturer on Design for the WWW at the University of California. He earned the "President's Award for Excellence" for his training contribution on the launch of Manman/X at ASK computers. Alan also contributed to "HTML publishing on the internet" (2nd edition) - an international best seller.
Ritch Macefield is Director and HCI Consultant at Shannon-Weaver Ltd and Co-founder of AXTrainers.
Ritch has 24 years experience in the IT industry and a blue chip background - working for Data General Corporation, he was promoted to be the UK's youngest ever Senior Consultant. He has 12 years experience as a UX/AI/Usability professional working for e.g., Electronic Data Systems (EDS), UniLever and British Gas. Ritch is also a published author on usability in referred journals/books, and was part of the editorial team for the "Encyclopedia of human computer interaction" (2007). As a trainer/educator: Ritch is a qualified technology teacher (Cert. Ed), European Union (EU) approved "IT trainer-trainer" and has spent 16 years as a part-time Senior University Lecturer (Associate Professor) in IT. He has qualified as a licensed Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (Master/Prac NLP), has a certificate in NLP Techniques for Advanced Learning and Facilitation, and a certificate in Transactional Analysis (TA). Ritch has also published numerous papers on IT education and advanced communications skills in referred journals/books, as well as co-authoring three books on IT and education.
Improving Website Usability Using Google Website Optimiser
with Steve Young and Jim Williams
6thMay '09
About the event
Design is very subjective, one man's meat is another man's poison. A website may look pretty in your opinion, but design is not just about how something looks, it has a job to do - it needs to be usable. If your design is not doing the job it's supposed to do, i.e. making you money, it doesn't matter if it looks nice. Many arguments have been had (and time wasted) choosing one design over another, "I think that one is better!", "why?", "erm... I don't know, it looks better?". To borrow a phrase from Harry Hill, "There's only one way to find out... fight!"
We prefer not to spill blood these days and that's where Google Website Optimiser comes in; science to the rescue. By measuring which page layout is more effective at achieving the desired conversion we can quickly determine which design is best and learn from that to help make design decisions easier in the future. One image or line of copy may mean the difference between being profitable or not. We'll be using lots of case studies to show you how we've started using Google Website Optimizer to run A/B Split and Multivariate Tests in the development of a social networking/gaming site and share some of the mistakes and lessons learned. It would then be good to open the meeting up to discuss how to use optimisation tools to improve website usability.
More about the speaker(s)
Steve Young is Creative Director at WeeWorld. With over 12 years experience in the web-design sphere Steve graduated from Product Design from GSA in '96. He soon became an early adopter of Flash and after an exciting and varied career path was later responsible for the conception of the WeeWorld site and WeeMee avatar engine.
At WeeWorld Steve built a team of talented designers, flash developers, illustrators, animators and coders. He also manages many 3rd party relationships round the world and is responsible for the creative look and feel of the WeeWorld product and its future.
Jim Williams is Web Analyst at WeeWorld. A passionate advocate of using analytics to drive website design - Jim has been working in web analytics since 2002 starting in pharmaceuticals and e-commerce sectors before moving into consultancy. At WeeWorld Jim has introduced innovative data based decision making processes to manage product and marketing strategy. Typically using web analytics and user testing to initially poorly performing areas of the site before employing tools such as Google Website Optimizer to experiment with design improvements and improve website conversions. Jim is also President of the Scottish UPA and an active member of the Web Analytics Association.
Web Accessibility update - new guidelines and standards for web accessibility
with Chris Rourke and Mark Palmer
31stMar '09
About the event
Chris Rourke and Mark Palmer from User Vision talk about two web accessibility documents, WCAG 2.0 and PAS 78.
The guidelines for designing accessible websites, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), have recently changed. The long awaited and fairly controversial WCAG 2.0 were finally released at the end of last year and organisations should be reviewing their sites against these rather than the original WCAG 1.0 which were starting to look a bit outdated as the web developed. Chris will provide a brief overview of the WCAG 2 guidelines, the four POUR principles on which they are based, why they have been controversial, and resources for learning more.
Another landmark document for accessibility, in the UK at least, is the PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites which was launched in 2006. The document is currently in the process of being graduated up to a full Standard available from BSI. Mark will provide an update on that and the potential impact that is likely to have on businesses with a web presence.
Designing for Dyslexia
with Jean Alcock and Paul Griffiths
28thJan '09
About the event
As an introduction and insight into Designing for Dyslexia, Jean Alcock from JARCS discussed usability problems that dyslexia sufferers experience. This was followed by Paul Griffiths from Texthelp Systems Ltd* who spoke about the appropriate legislation, Disability Discrimination Act 1995. He also identified those people who have difficulty in using ICT and highlighted how adding audio to a web site can improve the user experience for people who may have dyslexia, mild visual impairments, English as a second language or low literacy skills.
* Texthelp have been developing software for helping ICT users improve their reading and writing skills for over 12 years. Industry leaders in assisting the 'print disabled community' with literacy and assistive technology solutions.
Downloads
Building the Usability Profession
with Tom McEwan
3rdDec '08
About the event
How do usability consultants build careers and gain seniorirty in their organisations? In more mature organisations, this is by meeting well-defined competency criteria. This evening's presentation is designed to help you plan a career in usability, at a time when the profession gets increasingly defined and organised.
The latest edition of the UK competency framework for the IT sector, Skills Framework for the Information Age is released on 4th December. Over 70 roles are defined in up to 7 levels, with each one having a six-page description that forms the basis of many job contracts.
In SFIA v3, three separate usability roles were added to the pre-existing two in ergonomics/human factors. In SFIA v4 these roles have been refined to give a sense of progression through your career. For example the highest level of the "Human Factors Integration" role includes more strategic objectives in "work activities":
- Is accountable for the "user experience" of deployed IT-enabled products and services
- Monitors the rate of progress in the organisation's capability in user-centred design, and obtains resource
- Studies emerging theory and practice on human factors, identifies opportunities and ensures that measurable business benefits are achieved
Attend this meeting to find out how you can raise the profile of usability in your organisation and enhance your career.
All attendees are welcome to join SUPA for some early Christmas drinks across the road in the Voodoo Rooms after the meeting.
More about the speaker(s)
Tom McEwan
Tom is responsible for the commercialisation of Informatics research at Napier, and is also treasurer of BCS Interaction SG, where his responsibilities include funding usabilitynews.com, which he helped set up. He is also PR Officer for the BCS Edinburgh Branch, a past Director of ScotlandIS and a reviewer for SFIA. In these various roles he seeks to bring together the sperate related communities in user-centred design, human computer interaction, accessibility etc. Over ten years at Napier he has pioneered new degrees in web design, multimedia and e-commerce and worked with industry on many different types of usability-related projects. Before Napier he was Technical Director of an SME and a software engineer with Unisys.
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