Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Grant Robinson – Visualising the user experience

Grant Robinson PortraitRapid prototyping. Widely acclaimed as one of the best ways to create great user experiences, it isn’t without its own pitfalls. This session will discuss the pros and cons of different prototyping techniques, and introduce a new technique called “screenflows” that focuses on visualising the user experience. Discover how to combine the best of paper prototyping, wireframes and HTML prototyping into one simple and effective prototyping technique. Learn how using this method can dramatically decrease the need for documentation, while increasing the speed and agility of the development process.

Jeremy Yuille – The social life of visualization

Jeremy Yuille PortraitWhen visualization is coupled with collective intelligence it becomes a very powerful tool for making sense of the data that is now an increasing part of our personal and organizational experience. But how do you design social web applications so they can use visualization effectively?

Tania Lang – Using AJAX to enhance UX

Tania Lang PortraitAJAX is changing the way that users interact with websites – it has the potential to provide richer and more interactive online user experiences but also introduces its own set of usability and accessibility problems. This session will present views from leading usability experts from around the world from an experienced practitioner workshop conducted at the Usability Professionals Conference in USA.

Ruth Ellison – Integrating accessibility into design

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.

Ruth Ellison PortraitWhen developing websites or web applications, we often follow the principles of web standards, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other accessibility guidelines. But is this enough? In this session, Ruth will look at how we can develop accessible web products by taking a holistic approach to web accessibility. She will look at different ways of incorporating accessibility into the design process to produce accessible and useful user experiences. This presentation will focus on the user experience design process by drawing on examples and learnings from Ruth’s work in Government.

Daniel Burka – Changing successfully: Adapting your interface over time

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.

Daniel Burka PortraitUser interface design is an iterative process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evolution and adaptation. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iterations by looking at specific case studies from the two projects as well as previous client work Daniel has tackled.

The case studies will examine specific user interface challenges that have arisen and will chop them up into their various bits. How do I identify a challenge? What is the best approach for getting started? How do I solve the problem conceptually and technically? How will I know if I solved the challenge successfully? Case studies have been selected that are especially pertinent outside of their specific contexts to help you in your everyday UI design.

The presentation will focus on design inspiration, decision-making processes, technical solutions, and learning from missteps as part of a designer’s iterative process.

Jeffrey Veen – Designing our way through data

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 9.10am.

Jeffrey Veen PortraitThe hype around Web 2.0 continues to increase to the point of absurdity. We hear all about a rich web of data, but what can we learn from these trends to actually apply to our designs? You’ll take a tour through the past, present, and future of the web to answer these questions and more:

  • What can we learn from the rich history of data visualization to inform our designs today?
  • How can we do amazing work while battle the constant constraints we find ourselves up against?
  • How do we really incorporate users into our practice of user experience?

August de los Reyes – Predicting the past

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 4.05pm.

August de los Reyes PortraitA new inflection point in human-computer interaction is upon us. Along with other technologies, Microsoft Surface marks a departure from graphical user interface or GUI into the world of Natural User Interface or NUI. This talk begins with discussion of emotional design and its importance in the future of society. The lens shifts to how one design team is thinking about designing for a new era in which emotional intent and intuitive interaction are the imperative. Using theoretical models drawn from a mix of history, science, philosophy, and even video game design, this presentation reveals principles behind experience design for Microsoft Surface and beyond.

Teale Shapcott – From ordered to managed usability in an Agile environment

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.

Teale Shapcott PortraitUsability practice closely resembles the traditional software development approach in its formality and insistence on up-front analysis and design. Usability and design is an iterative process, but not agile. So how can design and usability be effectively embedded into an agile development environment? In this presentation, the tension between agile development and usability is examined and how Suncorp design and development teams overcame the challenges to bridge the gulf between these approaches.

Derek Featherstone – Accessibility beyond compliance

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.

Portrait of Derek Featherstone New technologies for web applications open up interactions to a highly sophisticated level. Learn how these new technologies can help designers move beyond simply complying with accessibility rules to create applications that work for everyone.

Robert Hoekman Jr – The essential elements of great web applications

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008, and Web Direction Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Robert Hoekman, Jr PortraitMost great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet — can you achieve them consistently in your own projects?

In this closing keynote, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders) describes the seven qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve each and every one of them by learning to communicate through design. See why it’s important to build only what’s absolutely essential, apply instructive design, create error-proof interactions, surface commonly-used features, and more in this informative session that will change the way you work and enable your users to walk away from your software feeling productive, respected, and smart.

Oliver Weidlich – The mobile web user experience – we’re starting to get it right!

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Oliver Wiedlich PortraitHistorically the mobile web has been a terrible experience, but things are starting to change. Really! We are now at the point that the mobile web is becoming easier to access, both on-deck & off-deck, there’s useful & tailored services out there, and killing some time on the train home doesn’t cost more than your weekly train ticket. We’ll check out the latest and greatest in the world of mobile web and what makes them different from the others. We will also cover the important things to keep in mind for making a better mobile web customer experience.

Mathew Patterson – Delivering user experience to the inbox: designing for email

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Matthew Patterson PortraitSo you’ve designed a fantastic website for your client, tested in all the major browsers and everything looks great. Now they want to send an email newsletter to all their customers, using the new design.

No problem right? Just need to test in Outlook 07, and 06. Yahoo and Hotmail too, of course. Oh, and Gmail, Lotus Notes, AOL…Of course, the design may not work that well for an email anyway, and isn’t there some kind of anti-spam laws?

Like it or not, HTML email is here to stay and the responsibility for doing it right belongs to web designers. Learn how to plan, design and build an email newsletter that will provide a great user experience to the recipients, and great value to your clients.

Lisa Herrod – User testing for the rest of us

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Lisa Herrod PortraitEveryone knows they should be doing it, but like software testing, it’s one of those things we often don’t get round to. In this presentation, Lisa Herrod looks at some sure fire user testing techniques that produce proven results, don’t cost the earth, and are easy to implement. After this session you won’t have any more excuses for not doing solid user testing of any site or application you develop ever again.

Jackie Moyes – Converting research findings into business speak

A presentation given at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Jackie Moyes PortraitGetting your company to adopt a user-centred design approach can be an uphill struggle. The first stage typically is to get them to agree to incorporate usability testing in to the development process, at a stage early enough to actually implement any design recommendations. The second stage is to convince them to do more ethnographic style research to understand the larger context of the task that the site is trying to support. The biggest challenge comes last – how to help the business owners make the mental leap between the in-depth findings from the research and the implications and opportunities it presents to your core business strategy and product roadmap.

This is the challenge that the User Experience team at News Digital Media have been addressing. In this presentation, Jackie will discuss this issue in more depth and present examples of ‘design tools’ the team have been experimenting with to try and bridge this gap and help the business develop more user-centric strategies.

Donna Spencer – Getting content right

A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Donna Maurer PortraitWe all know that great content is a core part of the website user experience. So why is it so hard to find content that isn’t dull, lifeless and uninteresting – blah, blah, blah?

Web content can be vibrant, interesting and fun. It can draw you in, fill your head and make you learn without having to think. And it’s not really hard to write. Three simple tricks can turn poor content into a great experience – remember that readers care more about themselves than you; write in real words with authentic voice; play show and tell.

This presentation will discuss these principles, with plenty of funny and not-so-funny examples. You’ll go away with practical steps to make your writing kick-ass. And you won’t even have to think.

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Thoroughly enjoyed Web Directions — met some great people, heard some inspiring presenters and added a whole bunch of things to my to-do list.

Joel Roberts Web Developer