Northern User Experience

Dates for Jan/Feb/March Meetings

Paul Rouke — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:42:19 +0000

I’ve had confirmation from MDDA regarding the use of their facilities in the early part of 2009. To fit with their schedule of staff and other user groups using the offices, they have suggested the 3rd Wednesday of each month.

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!

Possible Subjects For Future Meetings

Paul Rouke — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:32:42 +0000

I though it would be useful to make available the list of subjects which we came up with at October’s meeting, where lots of ideas where brought forward.

Perhaps this list will be useful in getting people to consider doing a mini presentation as part of one of the 2009 monthly meetings.

Complex business / manufacturing systems
Rapid prototyping
Pragmatic / shoestring usability
Design evangelism / internal communication
ROI and selling the benefits of usability
Testing and observation techniques
Engagement and organisational culture
Open source / agile development
Heuristics - do we need a rethink?
Ethnography
Non-standard design (mobile / accessible etc)
Accessibility / WCAG 2
Information architecture
Words and language
Interaction design
Usability in news media
Internal business systems
Perceived vs. “actual” usability
Attractiveness and visual design
Employee engagement & involvement (internal comms)
Personas
Internationalisation
Talking the language of business

In particular, subjects around ROI and commercial benefits of usability, complex business/manufacturing systems (MRP, ERP), usability for internal business systems, employee engagement, talking the language of business and open source, agile development methods are the type of things that are very close to our hearts at PRWD. We could therefore provide some presentations on these types of topics in due course.

Its a comprehensive list, but shout up if there are more suggestions for topics!

Assistive Technology videos

judithg — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:47:14 +0000

All,

Good to see some new people at the last meeting.

Following our discussion here is a link to some AbilityNet videos of assistive technology users

http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3CD45E862B50C925

Some of these are also available on Easy Youtube which was developed by Chris Heilmann

http://scriptingenabed.pbwiki.com/AbilityNet-Videos

Judith

Transport: Can public transport be a better experience than the car?

petebagnall — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:12:47 +0000

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.

October, November and December Meetings - Confirmation of Dates and Venues

Paul Rouke — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:17:06 +0000

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:

Tuesday October 28th
Tuesday November 18th
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

next few meetings

judithg — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:48:58 +0000

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

Negative Influence

Mike Little — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:22:38 +0000

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?

World Usability Day - November 13th 2008

Rachel — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:41:49 +0000

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…

Resources

Mike Little — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:27:24 +0000

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).

Personas Presentation

Mike Little — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:12:11 +0000

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.