You are browsing the archive for 2008 May.

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by tero

Next meeting on the 4th June

16/05/2008 in Events

The next meeting will take place on the 4th June, 6.30pm onwards at the Orange offices in Leeds.

Agenda:

  • Presentation: “User Experience: a definition and discussion” – Food for thought on what are the elements that make up a good user experience to start a discussion. (Tero Väänänen)
  • Blog & mailing list update & discussion
  • Next meeting venue & presentation
  • AOB
  • Pub: The Cross Keys

Venue:

Orange
5th Floor
Marshalls Mill
Marshall Street
Leeds
LS11 9YJ

I will post up walking directions from the train station later.

If you’re planning to attend, please let me know by marking yourself as “I’m Going” on Upcoming (http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/608936/) or emailing tero.vaananen@orange-ftgroup.com, so we can plan ahead for space requirements etc.

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Avatar of Rachel

by Rachel

Ideas for Next Meeting 4th June

08/05/2008 in Events

The next meeting will take place at the Orange offices in Leeds.  A big thanks to Tero for fixing that up.

We haven’t agreed the content yet, but quite a few ideas came out of yesterday’s session.  Looking at my notes we have the following candidates:

  • Problem Solving
  • Personas (Judith?)
  • Something about marketing and its relationship (or lack of) with usability.
  • Automated analytics / metrics (Hugo?)

Problem solving might be a good one because it doesn’t require anyone to write a presentation. 

If you have  a preference, or any further ideas we can pursue, please post.

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Avatar of hugopw

by hugopw

Is Usability Relevant?

07/05/2008 in Usability, User Experience

I saw this on Boxes and Arrows

“- Journey to the Center of Design – Jared Spool
There’s a growing sentiment that spending limited resources on user research takes away from essential design activities. Is it time for user- centered design to evolve into something else? Or is there something else happening in our world of experience design that makes UCD obsolete? Jared Spool gives and entertaining and enlightening key note address at the 2008 IA Summit.(published 05/01/08)(published 04/25/08)”

I think it raises an interesting discussion point, on the business value of User Centred Design.

For a starter, I’ve sold UCD as a way to reduce time-to-market. The theory being – ask the user what they want, then do it, then test it again. The business don’t have to decide “what they think” the user wants, which is when I found a lot of time wasted.

How do other people approach this?

This is the link: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-1

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by hugopw

The future of interfaces

07/05/2008 in Information Architecture, Usability

As some of you already know, I’m a big fan of the idea of minority report style interfaces, and the Nintendo Wii. This guy has done some work with wiimotes to create cheap interfaces such as this Desktop VR display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

I’d like to start a thread on here about how we could approach the usability issues of VR displays like this, and really about how as we move forward what sort of challenges people see coming, and how they might be solved.

For a start, the reason I’m so keen on this idea, is that having had back pain due to sitting in a chair for prolonged periods, I can see a need for an “Active Interface” where I can spend my day moving about to interact with my computer.

I think that one of the interesting problems that the VR displays will pose, apart from the ability to link a point on the screen/in the space in front of you, with your finger/wiimote is that Information Architecture will become even more massively important. However, I think that by Benchmarking some real world solutions – like supermarkets, some of those problems will already have been solved.

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Avatar of Rachel

by Rachel

Agenda, 7th May

01/05/2008 in Events

So far, the agenda is:

  • Next meeting venue – Leeds?
  • Progress of the new blog and mailing list, end-of-life for the yahoo group.
  • Future presentations.
  • The main feature – Chris Collingridge on Usability in an Agile Development Environment.
  • AOB.
  • Pub.

6.30 start.

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by Rachel

Directions to Laterooms

01/05/2008 in Events

The address is:

Unit 1,
Brewery Yard
Deva Centre
Trinity Way
M3 7BB

Video directions:

Walking
Driving

It’s not the easiest place to find – but if you can get to the Lowry hotel you’re pretty much there.

I will be going on foot from the city centre so can loiter in a convenient spot to meet people if that would help.

View Google Map [Added by Mike Little]

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