Northern User Experience

For our next meeting I’ll be talking about a pet topic of mine. I’ll be looking at the car user’s experience and seeing why it’s so difficult to get people to switch to public transport. Then I’ll be looking at how we might design a public transport system in such a way as to make the experience as good as (or better) than using the car.

I’ll also look at other modes of transport, and see where they fit in a transport policy based heavily on user needs.

Some of the solutions I’ll mention already exist in early form, some are much more futuristic, but most are achievable with current technologies. This isn’t sci-fi, but full implementation would be expensive. So I’ll talk a little bit about how we might afford these systems, and the other social benefits which might arise from moving beyond the car.

Right - now I’m going to drive over to York! See you all next time.

I’m delighted to confirm that I’ve had final clarification from Manchester Digital and Manchester Digital Development Agency that we can use the Portland Street offices (for FREE) for our next 3 monthly meetings. Thanks to John Keys at the MDDA for his assistance on this..

Dates

The dates are confirmed as:

1. Tuesday October 28th
2. Tuesday November 18th
3. Tuesday December 16th

Venue

For people who aren’t familiar with these offices take a look at the location details for MDDA.

I have also been speaking with Shaun Fenson, head of Manchester Digital, and he is keen to explore how the NUX group can be more widely promoted to the Manchester Digital community. Perhaps we can discuss this at the next meeting.

As usual it will be worth someone adding these dates into Upcoming if possible.

See some of you on the 28th October!

Paul

We are going to be able to use Manchester Digital/MDDA offices on Portland Street for our next meetings. -  Thanks for sorting venues Paul.

I’ve set up a poll on Doodle to see what dates are the best for everyone, we are still looking at meeting every month. http://www.doodle.ch/participation.html?pollId=b4ss63xhtx24m8iw

We’ve also had offers to talk on a range of interesting topics so we can set up an agenda for the next six months or so.

Thanks

Judith

I encountered this pop-up notice on a Flash-based T-Shirt editor application last night.

It reads

Loading Error
A loading error occured [sic]. This might negatively influence the use of the application. Please reload the application if this occurs.

Beside the spelling mistake, the euphemism for ‘the application might break’, it’s also not clear after which ‘this’ occurring one should reload the application. And will I lose my work so far?

When we met on thursday, we agreed it would be nice to do something a bit special for world usability day, but it’s not far away so we will need to move quickly.  The plan so far is:

- Try to get an outside speaker.

- Try to get a small sponsorship / donation to fund a speaker / food / drinks - either from a commercial organisation or possibly from a local government / quango source.

If you can help us achieve either of these, please get in touch.

If you have any other ideas for how the event could take shape (bearing in mind the short timescale and our very limited resources), please share. The theme of this year’s day is “Transportation” which is possibly a little bit outside of the box for most of us, but let’s see what we can do with it.

All suggestions gratefully received…

Having just uploaded Judith’s presentation, I remembered that I had forgotten to upload all the others previously sent to the mailing list (current or old) and/or added to the files section of the old list.

Anyway, I’ve done that now and given them all the resources category. You can see them all by clicking the resources category link in the side bar (or here).

Judith asked me to put her presentation from Yesterday’s meeting up on the blog. So, here it is: Personas Presentation (280K).

I had to convert it to PDF to get it uploaded into WordPress. If anyone would prefer it in the original PowerPoint format, just let me know.

It looks like we have (just) enough people to proceed, so following an unplanned summer break NUX is back, back, back.

We will be meeting 6.30  at the Waterhouse pub, just near St. Peter’s Square metrolink (walkable from piccadily station).

http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/pubs/pub-details.php?PubNumber=2103

Judith will be talking about personas and how she uses them in her work.  There’s been a lot of interest from the group on this, so for those that can’t attend, we can put the presentation and any other content here on the blog.

Since the group is currently homeless again,  we can also discuss possible venues (MDDA and so on) and decide whether we prefer meeting a) somewhere with a projector or b) somewhere that serves beer.

See you there.

Wasn’t clear if we had a venue sorted for tomorrow, could someone confirm if we have. Otherwise Wetherspoons on Princess street might be a good option they have a few side rooms that are often empty. http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/pubs/pub-details.php?PubNumber=2103

Judith

I’ve been made aware of a Firefox extension for diagraming/GUI prototyping called Pencil. I’m going to take a look at it, to see how it compares to old stagers like Visio, and newer whizz-bang options like Axure, but I was wondering if anyone else has any experience or opinions on this tool?

http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/