One suggestion for the agenda is

• Book club – this month looking at Ambient Findability

Any other suggestions, comment here or on the mailing list.

If we get enough people interested this will be going ahead in the usual place, the MDDA offices, so please add a comment if you’d be interested in joining us.

The abstract is here…

This talk will give an overview of the EPSRC/ESRC Foresight project ‘Developing Theory for Evolving Socio-Technical Systems’ (TESS). The project is based on Robin Dunbar’s Social Brain Theory that explains the evolutionary constraints on human relationships and social organisation. With the spread of Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and MySpace, will we be able avoid those constraints to keep up with more friends and be more social, or is the downside, invasion of privacy, stalking, and a less social world ? The TESS project is researching these issues by studying social networks and work-related groups. I will describe current research on social networking sites and how this fits into the wider picture of social mediating technologies such as Twitter, Wikipedia, etc.  Investigating the questions- does technology really change the way we behave in our social life, how do we adapt and use these technologies, and what impact might technology have a social capital?
For more information on the project http://www.mbs.ac.uk/research/DTESS.aspx

About the speaker

Alistair Sutcliffe has been principle investigator on 15 EPSRC and European Union projects on requirements engineering, multimedia user interfaces, safety critical systems and cognitive modelling for information retrieval. His research interests span a wide area within Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. In HCI particular interests are interaction theory, and user interface design methods for the web, multimedia, virtual reality, safety critical systems and methods for usability evaluation. His research also covers application of cognitive theory to design, and design of complex socio-technical systems. In software engineering he specialises in requirements engineering methods and tools, scenario based design, knowledge reuse and theories of domain knowledge. Alistair Sutcliffe is a leading member of both the international HCI and requirements engineering communities and chairs / serves on a number of committees.

This is a half-baked idea so I’m not exactly sure what we’d design just yet. A few of us tonight expressed irritation at banking websites, so some aspect of that might be one idea, but I’m sure we can come up with something more exciting than that. Or some common widget or tool which you always find frustrating that you’ve always wanted to fix.

Ideally it should be something none of us have designed before.

So if people are generally up for this start thinking of things we can revolutionise!

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.

interaction between usability professionals and software developers

Sorry for the delay (Rob did send them promptly)

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!

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.

Unfortuntely for February we will need to meet in a local pub or another free meeting place, as MDDA can’t facilitate all the groups who want to use their meeting rooms on the 17th Feb 2009.

We can choose a suitable venue at January’s meeting on the 20th..
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Following feedback on suitable dates, and the fact that Wednesday’s would be difficult for some of the regulars, the next 3 monthly meetings will be on Tuesday’s on the dates below:

• 20/01/2009
• 17/02/2009
• 17/03/2009

Jon could you add these to Upcoming as offered when you get chance? Cheers

Update: These are now added to Upcoming. See the Upcoming Group. — Mike Little

So the next 3 months dates would be:

• Wednesday 21st January
• Wednesday 18th February
• Wednesday 18thMarch

Can anyone who normally comes along shout up if this causes a problem – I know the last 3 months have been on a Tuesday, but based on us continuing to use the facilities FOC we’ll need to be flexible on the day of the week that we meet.

I plan on confirming to the MDDA wc 5th Jan so I’ll wait till then for any comments.

Merry Christmas one and all!