More information and registration at the Optimal Usability website.
The Auckland 2-day workshop is on Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th of October.
The Wellington 1-day workshop is on Wednesday the 1st of November.
]]>As part of World Usability Day, we would like to encourage you to bring your boss, colleagues and friends along to our next UPA meeting and celebration on Tuesday 14th November.
This will be a great networking opportunity and experts will be on hand to answer any questions you and your guests may have about usability and user-centred design. We are thrilled to have the following special speakers.
Shona is the GM of Marketing & Business Development at BNZ and has been instrumental in introducing user-centred design processes to the BNZ. Shona has recently returned from Creative Good’s Customer Experience Council in San Francisco. She will talk about developing a comprehensive customer experience discipline and the importance of a robust usability methodology within this wider context.
The Customer Experience Council, organised by Mark Hurst of Creative Good, is a leadership organization of executives at non-competing players across a range of industries, including retail, media and entertainment, financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, travel, automotive, and professional services.
With over 2.5 million unique visitors each month, Trade Me has a large number of users to cater for. Natasha spends her days conducting usability sessions with a wide range of Trade Me users, identifying common problems and behavioural oddities. She will share some of what she’s learnt along the way.
Natasha has had her hand in the web pie for over 6 years: a dollop of design + development, a handful of content editing and usability and accessibility analysis, and a pinch of training and project management thrown in. She’s also one of the key instigators behind Webstock.
We will also have a 3D photo exhibit of good and poor usability experiences from our MakingLifeEasy.org adventures. Read on....
]]>Confusing cash machines, parking meters, unclear signs, frustrating websites - poor usability is everywhere and it gets in the way of life. Sometimes it is just annoying. At other times it stops us doing what we need to do. Sometimes it can even be dangerous.
On World Usability Day (and in the lead up), we will be going out on the streets of Auckland to document some of the worst offenders and the best examples of usability and user experience.
As we come across examples of good and bad design, we will tie our balloons to them, photograph them and post them to the Making Life Easy website to ensure that the statements continue to be made long after the balloons disappear.
World Usability Day and Making Life Easy are initiatives to let people know that they shouldn’t be putting up with average or bad design and poor usability. If they’ve ever asked themselves “Why doesn’t this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?””, they should know that they are not alone. Come and join us in this initiative!
Here’s how:
1. Join us! We’ll be heading out from Vulcan Lane at 12pm on Tuesday 14th November for a lunchtime ‘urban safari’. You won’t miss us: we’ll be the ones with the red balloons. Contact justine[at]userfaction.com to register your interest.
This is a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness about usability in our everyday lives – AND a great team exercise for any development team – highlighting that poor design is all around us, but that good design principles are easy to apply... Check out Flow’s (the initiators of this project) experience…
2. Help get more people involved! If you have a blog, point them to the MakingLifeEasy.org website. If you have a Flickr account, come join our group and invite all your friends!
3. If you can’t join us on the day, feel free to share your examples of the best and the worst of usability where you live (or visit or holiday!). Add photos to the Flickr group or drop us an email and we’ll add your submission to the website and potentially to the Hall of Fame or Shame.
4. Cast your vote! Take a look at the MakingLifeEasy.org website and have your say in what *really* drives you crazy and what you really love.
]]>Mark Wednesday 6 December in your diaries for Russ Weakley presenting an all-day CSS workshop and Natasha Hall, Russell Brown and Nat Torkington speaking on a range of wonderous topics. Registrations are now open.
]]>March is all about Usability and User Experience : Why it is important to businesses online.
People lined up to speak so far are:
And the kicker – Free drinks for everyone attending.
Time : 16:30 till 17:30
Where?
Update: Please note that the venue has changed due to the high number of registrations:
Crowne Plaza Auckland
Ballroom 1, Mezzanine Level
128 Albert St
Auckland City
We're going to be testing a New Zealand e-commerce website and YOU (our lovely attendees) get to define tasks, watch the testing and identify usability issues.
Miriam Walker and Stephanie Creasy are going to be running the evening. Miriam is a usability consultant with Shift and Steph is a very talented designer who's returned to the NZ job market after leading a team of designers in London and freelancing in New Zealand.
We hope to have a guest speaker to top things off so keep tuned for updates.
* RSVP: Please RSVP to auckland@upa.org.nz by 5pm Monday 26th March
* Time: 6pm onwards for drinks and nibbles.
* Talks start at 6.30pm. Finishes at approximately 8pm
* Cost: $10 cash at the door. Please bring correct change.
* Location: Bank of New Zealand, 3rd floor, 125 Queen Street, Auckland
* Late entry: Call Mark McLay on 029 222 00 16 if you have difficulty getting in or arrive after 6.30pm
To kick things off, their next meeting is Tuesday April 3rd and will be about prototyping tools for web design.
A rapid iterative prototyping process is often used with user centred design (UCD) methodologies.
With web based UCD designs interaction designers use a variety of tools to create, refine and test prototypes. With so much to learn about each tools’ advantages/disadvantages, it can sometimes be helpful to simply talk to someone who has used the tool.
Come along to the next Wellington UPA meeting to listen to six speakers talk for 10 minutes each on a tool that they have used for prototyping. The speakers are:
1. Dave O’Brien, Optimal Usability, talking about Microsoft Visio
2. Lulu Pachuau, Hansel, talking about Omnigraffle
3. Nicole Kaufmann, Optimal Usability talking about Axure
4. Isha Hartono, Provoke talking about Microsoft Expression Suite
5. Tim Norton and Natalie Ferguson, Plan HQ talking about Adobe Flash
6. Mary Sue Severn, Effacy, talking about their own tool Simplar Studio
* RSVP: kat@hansel to confirm your attendance.
* When: Tuesday April 3rd, 12 noon to 1.30pm
* Where: Hansel, Meeting Room, Level 3, 56 Victoria Street, Wellington
Dr Vanessa Lim from the University of Auckland’s Psychology Department is going to provide you with a Psychology 101 level toolkit of knowledge about human memory, cognition and attention. During her talk we’re going to discuss how human vision, attention and memory work and how this knowledge can be applied to design of software and websites. Vanessa will also talk about experimental methods briefly, while recognising that few people in our industries conduct rigorous, tightly controlled experiments.
Dr Vanessa Lim completed her PhD (2003) in Psychology from The University of Melbourne. Her main research interests are in movement disorders (Parkinson’s disease and Focal Dystonia) and music processing. Currently working at the Psychology Department as the Neuroimaging manager and Researcher. The main techniques used in the lab are Electroencephalography (EEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and behavioural techniques.
Registration details at the UPA NZ website
]]>1. Making pathways: using mindsets to redesign http://www.statistics.govt.nz/
Mindsets were more useful than personas for redesigning the information architecture of the Statistics New Zealand website. While personas focus on what users need, mindsets focuses on how they do something (eg, seek information). Jocelyn Morrison, product developer, talks about why mindsets instead of personas were used to improve the pathways to information on a complex site.
2. Easier uploads: redesign of an administration tool for http://www.nzlive.com/
Jared Gulian, web editor, on creating a better behind-the-scenes interface for people wanting to contribute events to the site.
3. Show and tell: visual information on http://www.teara.govt.nz/ Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Tessa Copland, web editor and Helene Coulson, designer, give examples of converting complicated ideas into user-friendly diagrams and interactives.
* When: 12–1.30 pm, Tuesday 1 May 2007
* Where: Ground floor conference room, Statistics House, The Boulevard, Harbour Quays. You need to sign in at reception, then head left through the library.
* RSVP: Tessa.Copland [at] mch.govt.nz
To get to Statistics House: Access by road is from Aotea Quay at the traffic lights near the stadium. There is also a footpath beside the sheds and construction site on the harbour side of Aotea Quay, and a bridge walkway from the railway station and stadium. Get to the walkway from the north end of several rail platforms, and from the steps opposite East Day Spa on Thorndon Quay.
]]>Full day workshop: Tuesday 8 May 2007, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm, includes morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.
Our one-day intensive workshop teaches you how to incorporate user goals and agency needs into the web design process. You'll develop a detailed understanding of users through user research, usage scenarios and conceptual models. You'll help create a user-centric government website that meets both agency and user needs. You'll learn how to conduct simple in-house usability tests. You'll learn about the impact on your design decisions in context of government web standards, the search experience and 'web 2.0' concepts. Be prepared to be engaged while gaining practical, actionable knowledge! This workshop is for website managers, business analysts, interaction designers, information
architects and anyone interested in the user experience.
Power to the People! workshop fees:
GOVIS member early bird $395.00
GOVIS member standard $495.00
Non-member early bird $495.00
Non-member standard $595.00
Full Conference Details: http://www.govis.org.nz/conference2007/
Register online: https://www.secureregistrations.com/GOVIS07/
]]>This tutorial distills thirty years’ of his experience with human-computer interaction (HCI) into straightforward principles, processes, and techniques that covered the entire product life cycle. The talk will be a a brief summary of this 3-day tutorial. It may not contain anything new for experienced interaction designers, or those who have read Tog's articles and books, but will definitely be of interest to those less familiar with the field. It has an emphasis on practical use of techniques within commercial development, rather than on theory.
* RSVP: Please RSVP to auckland@upa.org.nz by 5pm Monday 31st April
* Time: 6pm onwards for drinks and nibbles.
* Talks start at 6.30pm. Finishes at approximately 8pm
* Cost: $10 cash at the door. Please bring correct change.
* Location: Bank of New Zealand, 3rd floor, 125 Queen Street, Auckland
* Late entry: Call Mark McLay on 029 222 00 16 if you have difficulty getting in or arrive after 6.30pm
There will be plenty of snacks and refreshments put on (Thanks Statistics New Zealand!) so come early and grab something to eat before listening to the speakers.
1. Dave O’Brien – How much does NOT user-testing your project cost? Dave presents examples of minor flaws that lose major revenue.
2. Bob Medcalf – Analysing usage patterns with blobs. Bob presents ‘blob-charts’ – a tool he developed for analyzing people’s usage and behavior patterns.
3. Claire Sheerington – Hell Pizza Usability Showdown. Clare talks us through the making of a “Thinking Orange” video podcast.
4. Sam Ng – Building and launching a web application in 8 weeks. Sam talks about what it’s like to ‘walk the talk’ in the development of an online card sorting tool.
5. Nicky McCreanor – The elderly and usability.Nicky talks about supporting her 83-year-old father as he learns to use a computer and how it has improved her own awareness of usability issues.
6. You. Yes, you. If you have something interesting to share or a good story to tell about usability – email sam [at] optimalusability.com. We’d love to hear from you.
More details at www.upa.org.nz
Miriam will also bring along the CD proceedings and a copy of the schedule to help you decide if you want to order a copy.
The UPA meetings cover a wide range of topics and we try to have something for those who are new and those with experience in usability. For a list of previous topics see http://www.upa.org.nz/category/auckland/
* RSVP: Please RSVP to auckland [at] upa.org.nz by 5pm Monday 25th June
* Time: 6pm onwards for drinks and nibbles.
* Talks start at 6.30pm. Finishes at approximately 8pm
* Cost: $10 cash at the door. Please bring correct change.
* Location: Bank of New Zealand, 3rd floor, 125 Queen Street, Auckland
* Late entry: Call Don Gibbons on 029 241 3804 if you have difficulty getting in or arrive after 6.30pm