Usability Twilight - Part Two

The Intergen User Experience & Usability Twilight was great, and the most successful in terms of attendees that Intergen has ever hosted. Approximately 100 attendees came to the Grande Plaza in Auckland and feedback collected on the night was excellent.

Thanks to all the speakers who did a fantastic job...

• Natasha Hall – TradeMe User Experience: Speaking on the importance of creating a good user experience
• Shailesh Manga – Optimal Usability: What is Usability and why should it be employed in projects
• Henry Poppelwell - AMP: How AMP engaged usability in their last project, and perspectives on the benefits of doing so.
• Miriam Walker - Usability Professional Association (UPA): Introduction and summary of what they do.

Intergen have started a blog to continue the discussion - I'll let you know when the presentation materials are available.

UPA "Interactionary" Event

At the latest Usability Professionals Association meeting, I had the chance to team up with Sahilesh Manga, Blake Lough from Optimal Usability, and Sam Allen from Intergen in a "Interactionary Session". We had 10 minutes to solve a design problem revealed on the night and design a solution. You are judged on teamwork, process, user focus and the final design.

The problem was to design a dump truck remote control for a child - with a broken right arm. It was fun and I thought we kicked ass but unfortunately the judges didn't :-) We lost by 16 to 15 1/2 out of 20 to a Ninetend Wii like controller (which I hate to admit - was quite cool).

Anyways lot's of fun, and the UPA meetings are definitely worthwhile. If there's one in your neighbourhood I recommend you go check one out. You don't have to be a member to attend.

Apple launches iPhone

So Apple has finally launched the iPhone... and what a phone it is!

Even though I've worked with Microsoft products, for Microsoft aligned companies and now for a Microsoft Gold Partner I am continually impressed by the innovation shown by Apple. From the iPod to the lovely new iMacs which are as close as a computer will get to a design classic Apple continually seem to be the 1st movers in user interface design, building products that people actually want, and doing really smart things with already existing technologies. The soft keyboard on the new iPhone is a classic example - touchscreens have been around for donkey's but by using it on the phone they have removed any constraints on the software placed by the hard keyboard. E.g. Too small, impossible to update. iPhone is all about the software.

Rod Drury has an interesting article on "Why Apple wins" with some great comments by his readers. He's even gone as far as buying some Apple shares which looks like a great investment!

Not to take the shine off the launch but it seems as if Apple didn't do everything in the right order and Cisco are suing them for Trademark infringement because they apparently acquired the Trademark for the "iPhone" name when they purchased Linksys. Here's the original iPhone - doesn't quite measure up does it...

World Usability Day 2006

World Usability Day 2006 is on Tuesday 14th November and New Zealand will be the first country to kick it off.

World Usability Day promotes the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better.

The party is coming to Auckland on Tuesday 14th November and to 'celebrate', the Auckland UPA (Usability Professionals Association) Cluster has Natasha Hall from Trade Me and Shona Bishop from BNZ speaking. It will be interesting to see what these two have to say.

For more info on the event see the "Usability at Trade Me and the Bank of New Zealand" Event Details and the UPA New Zealand website

Card Sorting and Usability Testing - Part One

In the past couple of weeks, I've taken part in two practical exercises which have really hit home the importance of involving real users to improve the information architecture and usability of a website - and how the two are linked.

The 1st was a Card Sorting exercise while at a UPANZ seminar on Information Architecture by David Pomeroy, and the 2nd was sitting in on some Usability Testing sessions run by Optimal Usability. I'll cover Card Sorting today and the Usability Testing later.

There is plenty written about cart sorting in IA books and websites but I had never read a good definitive article, nor had the chance to take part in it. Although the exercise was really simple my take on it is that it is an exercise using a series of cards, each labelled with a piece of content that make sense to particpants (users). It would be great when creating a site map and helps identify the following:

1. How users see the information
2. How different groups of users react to the content
3. How many categories of information are there
4. What the categories should be called

I think it is an easy exercise to sell to clients because it is Simple (Hey - if I can do it... it must be), Cheap, Quick and involves real live users.

Since then, I've looked for good articles and this is one of the best on the Boxes and Arrows site. Card sorting: a definitive guide

I'd love to hear others thoughts or experiences...