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.

Dapper opens up the web

Dapper is one of the more interesting applications I've used in a while. It is pretty cool.

Essentially, Dapper lets you create an API for any website which you can use to access the content of your choice, without needing to use RSS or programming. Once you choose, group and tag the specific information you want on a web page, it is stored as XML and can be accessed programatically or transformed into many formats including HTML, RSS, Google Maps, Email Alerts and more.

Simple uses include creating an RSS feed for a site that doesn't have one. More advanced is the mash-up site Magg which aggregrates the "latest and greatest movies" (their words - not mine) from various websites including Google, YouTube, MySpace etc. I'm still waiting to see a more commercial use however....

I only tried it yesterday and the UI is reasonably intuitive but the process for creating a Dapper takes a couple of go's to get used to so if you want to try it out - start with the demo on the home page.

Usability Twilight - Part One

Intergen are hosting a Twilight session on Usability circa. March 15th (TBC) and it should be a good one.

I can't confirm all the speakers yet but it's likely to be 1 from a leading NZ website that is at the forefront of putting User Experience first, 1 from arguably the leading Usability Services company and of course the client endorsement from an Intergen project.

I'm assisting Sam Allen and Bryce Scanlen setup and run the Twilight, so if you want more information email me at work - haydn.thomsen@intergen.co.nz

Watch this space...

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...

Why Threadless is cool

You know you've made it when you have a reasonably large fan blog that raves about how cool you are.

If that's the case then the t-shirt design site Threadless.com has more than made it - and "Loves Threadless - The Unofficial Threadless Fan Blog" has no qualms telling us all about it.

Threadless is an online community t-shirt store which has been around since 2000 and is run by a company called SkinnyCorp in the good old USA. I've bought t-shirts from there for about 2 years and seen it evolve into one of the best B2C E-Commerce sites around which epitomises Web 2.0.

The concept is fantastic - Basically it's a t-shirt store with an ongoing design competition. Two or three user-submitted designs are chosen each week to be printed and sold online based on the ranking given by Threadless members.

Here's a bullet point summation of why I think it's so successful and cool.

• The user's are continually involved in the making of the website - they upload designs (Approx. 60,000 to date), rate designs, send in photos of them wearing the shirts, etc Threadless don't pay designers big fees for the t-shirts they print (Approx. 400 to date).



• They have connected with their customers providing feedback on their products, and in part informing their strategy by introducing new product lines such as Threadless Select, Kids Tee's and Type Tees



• The t-shirts they print have already been pre-approved by the target customer - and therefore have a good chance of selling



• The execution of the site is excellent - it's design, ease of use and featureset are fantastic.



• The t-shirts are cool and inexpensive - I own several so they must be.



• Threadless Street Team - Affiliate type program where members get points ($1.50 discounts of their next purchase) for link referrals via websites or email which lead to purchases. Earn me a point by clicking on this link and buying a tee.



• When you're considering a purchase, the site shows photos of real people wearing the shirt, and the odd celebrity such as Michael J. Fox and Zach Braff (Scrubs).

I have some support - Threadless.com won 2nd prize in the Retail category of SEOMOZ's Web 2.0 awards.

What do you think?

Google reader - wow!

I just discovered Google Reader and it is great. It makes it easy to catch up will all the good blogs or feeds I read - and all in 1 place! You can sort by site, add tags and mark posts as read so that lists of posts don't get out of control. It has a great interface using expanded view and list view, and is very easy to use.

And what's even better is that it slots nicely into my Google personalised home page alongside my Gmail - Why would I go anywhere else?

Apparently Microsoft has a RSS aggregator built into Outlook 2007 which will be convenient but until I upgrade from Office 2003 - Googles the one for me.

Check it out.

Web 2.0 - What does it mean anyway?

Good Question!

While I don’t pretend to know what Web 2.0 really is, and I certainly can’t articulate it in a couple of paragraphs - I do have a firm view on what it is not.

Web 2.0 is not AJAX
Web 2.0 is not Ruby on Rails
Web 2.0 is not the Atlas framework
Web 2.0 is not a technology.

As far as what Web 2.0 means for Intergen and our clients, this article on the Boxes and Arrows website does a pretty good job of explaining what Web 2.0 means to the Enterprise - and potentially how we could learn to understand it better, use it within Intergen, and offer better solutions to clients.

A Web 2.0 Tour for the Enterprise

Lastly, it may all be bullshit - but what if it’s not.. Some NZ companies are already adopting Web 2.0 technology and values - TradeMe being a notable example - Do us as Solution Providers want to continue to be leaders? Or watch our competitors pass us by…

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...