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Avatar of Rozanne Driver

by Rozanne Driver

Next Leeds Event Monday 27th February – Accessibility in Practice

24/01/2012 in Accessibility, Usability

This session will be a practical look at Accessibility in action.

Clare Davidson from SimpleUsability will be joined by Barry Hill, who has been using Jaws for the past 15 years. This session will give you the opportunity to see how Barry navigates his way through websites using Jaws assistive technology. We will then discuss how accessible these websites are and what changes should be made to improve the user experience.

Clare Davidson is a User Experience Consultant, working at SimpleUsability. Previous roles have included working at Lloyds Banking Group and Aviva.

The event will be held courtesy of SimpleUsability and will be held in the Round Foundry Media Centre.

To order a free ticket please go to; http://accessibilityinaction.eventbrite.com/

To find us on twitter use #nuxuk or you can find us on facebook by searching ‘Northern User Experience’

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Avatar of Rozanne Driver

by Rozanne Driver

Got an idea? Fill in questionnaire to speak / listen to your preferred topics at future NUX Events

29/11/2011 in Usability, User Experience

As 2011 draws to a close the steering committee for the NUX events has got together and decided that we would like to offer suggestions to the floor on what other people would like to hear about / speak about.

If you have an idea that you feel passionate about or a topic that you think deserves discussion then we want to hear from you. If you are interested in contributing any thoughts then you can do by going to this questionnaire;

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGk2aE1ZWTVxa2JkdG8zel9vU0MxNnc6MQ

If you have expressed an interest in talking then a member of the steering group will be in touch to arrange this.

Thanks.

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Avatar of Mike (Admin)

by Mike (Admin)

Slides from Sarah Thew’s Talk

08/07/2010 in Resources, Usability, User Experience

Here are the slides Sarah Thew kindly provided to accompany her talk on “Does Technology Make Any Difference In Our Social Life?” from the meeting on 5th July 2010.

Sarah Thews slides: exploring users values motivations and emotions

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Avatar of Mike Little

by Mike Little

Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye

09/02/2009 in Accessibility, Information Architecture, News, Usability

There is an interesting eye tracking story over on the Google Blog, covering their results from some usability studies they carried out.

Specifically: eye tracking to test the use of thumbnails in search results.  Though the blog report is fairly brief, they did come to specific conclusion.

Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the result they wanted.

There is a real time eye tracking video and some heat map images in the article too.

Go read the original and let us know what you think in the comments.

– Story from Official Google Blog.

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Avatar of Mike Little

by Mike Little

Slides From Rob Knight’s Talk

27/01/2009 in Resources, Usability

Here are the slides (in PDF) from Rob’s talk on interaction between usability professionals and software developers given on 20th January 2009.

interaction between usability professionals and software developers

Sorry for the delay (Rob did send them promptly)

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Avatar of Paul Rouke

by Paul Rouke

Talk On Interaction Between Usability Professionals and Software Developers

15/01/2009 in Design, Events, Usability

I’m posting on behalf of Rob Knight, our lead technical architect at PRWD.

Rob will be giving a talk at Tuesday 20th Jan’s meeting, on the subject of the interaction between usability professionals and software developers in delivering projects.

The talk will cover the common pitfalls that both sides can make in failing to understand the perspective of the other and how this can be addressed. It will also cover the interaction between common User-Centered Design processes and modern software development processes such as the various types of Agile development.

Rob is hoping to keep it fairly short (15 minutes or so) and cover a few practical points that should be useful to everyone. Hopefully it will be a topic which can stimulate some interesting debate too!

See some of you next Tuesday!

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Avatar of Paul Rouke

by Paul Rouke

Usability Event in Manchester 28th Jan

15/01/2009 in News, Usability

Some people may be interested to know of a free usability event being run by Manchester Digital on the 28th January 2009. I will be speaking at the event along with Judith Garmen and Pete Bagnall.

It’s focused on helping business owners understand the importance of usability for both their internal and external facing websites and systems, with the aim of improving companies bottom line through the likes of improving staff efficiency and the conversion rates from marketing budgets.

A few details below:

  • Title: Usability: What’s The Use?
  • Date: 28th January 2009
  • Time: 6.00pm – 9.00pm
  • Venue: CUBE (Centre for the Urban Built Environment), 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6DW
  • Cost: FREE!
  • Official Event Page: http://usabilitywhatstheuse.eventbrite.com/

Further details and a brief overview are below:

For the digital sector, usability and user experience are more than new fads.

These topics, and their perceived value to businesses, have been talked and written about many times, but lets get it straight: just exactly what is the use of usability to a company looking at improving their performance, ROI and staff efficiency?

In this FREE event Paul Rouke, User Experience Director at PRWD, and 2 guest speakers Judith Garman of AbilityNet and Pete Bagnall of SurfaceEffect, will be providing a range of real-life examples and industry insights which will help reveal some of the tangible benefits businesses can gain by embracing usability and user experience.

Through the course of the evening you will see why usability can play a significant role in the likes of e-commerce websites, B2B websites, lead generation sites, intranets, internal software systems and the development of bespoke web and software applications.

The event will be followed by drinks, some food and networking.

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Avatar of Mike Little

by Mike Little

Negative Influence

16/09/2008 in Usability, User Experience

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

This might negatively influence the application

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?

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Avatar of Mike Little

by Mike Little

Personas Presentation

12/09/2008 in Resources, Usability

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.

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Avatar of Chris Collingridge

by Chris Collingridge

Pencil Project – Any experience/views?

01/09/2008 in Usability, User Experience

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/

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