Casey Glass

Oz-IA Conference Student Prices (Sydney, Australia)

If you’re a full time student then you can now attend the Oz-IA 2008 conference for the very affordable rate of $198.

Additionally, Oz-IA  are offering full time students workshops for just $77. Workshop places are limited however and this offer is only on a stand-by basis ..  but not to worry most of the workshops have plenty of spaces left at this time.

If you are a full-time student just register as normal using discount code: “student”

http://www.oz-ia.org/2008/register.shtml

Posted in Conferences | Sydney, Australia
Tags: conference | oz-ia | students | workshop
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UPA Meeting and Chapter Council Election Nominations (Sydney, Australia)

It’s been a while since UPA Sydney has met. Now that the days are getting longer, the temperature is finally getting warmer, and World Usability Day is just around the corner, it’s definitely time to get UPA Sydney rolling once again.

The September event will be as follows:

Clarendon Hotel   156 Devonshire Street (cnr Waterloo), Surry Hills   9319 6881 (Map)

6:00 - 6:30pm:   Drinks, socializing, networking, joining UPA Sydney
6:30 - 7:00pm:   Designing Mobile Wayfinding Applications:  Carolin Plate, The Hiser Group
7:00 - 7:15pm:   Nomination and election of 2008-2009 Chapter Council
7:15 - 8:00pm:   Planning for World Usability Day and networking

About the presentation
Carolin Plate will present her results from a recent comparative study in pedestrian navigation, where she investigated whether users find visual or text-based interfaces more efficient and effective on mobile devices for visual-spatial tasks such as finding your way in an unfamiliar environment.   The results of this research are surprising, and they have potential implications for the user interface design of lots of different types of navigation aids.

This is a great kick-off to launch our efforts for World Usability Day in Sydney, where the theme is transportation.

About Carolin Plate
Carolin joined The Hiser Group as a usability consultant at the beginning of 2008.  With a background in mathematics, computer science, computational linguistics and cognitive psychology, Carolin can approach the design of user interfaces from both the developer’s perspective and the end user’s point of view.

Prior to joining Hiser, Carolin worked in the Computer-Human Adapted Interaction Group at the University of Sydney assisting its team of developers with initial design and usability testing.  Previous to that, Carolin held internships with IBM Research Germany and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

Carolin received her Bachelors and Masters of Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabrueck. Her Masters research (the subject of this talk) was carried out in cooperation with the Computer Human Adapted Interaction Group of the University of Sydney under the supervision of Professor Judy Kay.

Call for Nominations and Upcoming Election

The September meeting will also be an opportunity to nominate and elect the 2008-2009 Chapter Council.
There are four positions to be filled, as follows:

1. President
2. Vice President
3. Secretary
4. Treasurer

General responsibilities for each of these are described below (of course, subject to change as our chapter evolves).  Any member of the parent UPA organisation is eligible to hold office and vote in the election.  As a reminder, to be a voting member of UPA Sydney, you will need to be a member of the parent UPA organisation, however, we also offering associate membership in UPA Sydney to those who choose not to become members of UPA.  However, we need to have a quorum of voting members at the meeting in order to hold the election.
This is your chance to get involved.  Please consider nominating yourself (or someone else who accepts the nomination!) for one of these roles.  And please come to vote.  Hope to see you there.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

President
The Chapter President heads the Chapter Council and is responsible for all operations of the Chapter. The Chapter President:

• conducts regular meetings of the Chapter Council (at least three to five meetings per year are recommended)
• assigns duties to other officers soon after their election
• suggests schedules for ongoing Chapter programs both within the Association and in collaboration with other professional groups
• explores topics for the coming year’s meetings with the Program Committee and other officers
• appoints special assistants or committees for specific tasks not easily managed by standing committees
• applies and maintains controls for budgets, expenditures, and other fiscal activities and, together with the Treasurer, signs all Chapter checks
• reviews contents of Chapter website prior to posting
• writes articles and columns for the Chapter website
• leads in the formulation of goals and policies for the Chapter
• contacts committee managers periodically to obtain status/activity reports, which are then submitted to the Chapter officers
• submits a report describing Chapter activities to the Chapter Sponsor prior to each UPA Board of Directors meeting
• submits informal reports frequently to keep the Chapter Sponsor informed about the general condition of the Chapter
• ensures that procedures for Chapter elections are carried out properly

Vice President
The Vice President:

• maintains a special awareness of all Chapter operations and confers frequently with the Chapter President, not only to advise and assist, but also to gain knowledge that could prove useful if the Vice President becomes President
• helps formulate policy and establish the Chapter’s long-term and short-term goals
• monitors the Chapter’s finances on a continuing basis
• assumes the duties of Chapter President when the President is unavailable
• performs other duties as defined by the President

Secretary
The Secretary:

• takes minutes at Chapter Council and other Chapter meetings (or arranges for a substitute)
• prepares and distributes copies of meeting minutes to officers within ten days
• prepares correspondence related to Chapter business at the direction of the Chapter President
• ensures that the annual Elections are managed in accordance with UPA by-laws

Treasurer
The Treasurer:

• prepares a budget at the beginning of the Chapter year
• establishes and maintains any bank accounts
• prepares periodic reports of Chapter income and expenditures for review by the Chapter President
• develops a detailed year-end report (as of December 31) of all financial transactions; grouping income and expenses for each major activity

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | Sydney, Australia | UPA
Tags: sydney | upa
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Predicting the Past: Emotional Design and a Vision for Microsoft Surface (Melbourne, Australia)

A 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.

August de los Reyes
User Experience Director for Microsoft Surface

August de los Reyes joined Microsoft Surface Computing in December 2007. In his role as principal experience architect, de los Reyes is responsible for mapping out the strategic design, industrial design and design vision that users will experience with Surface. What interests de los Reyes the most about Surface is the fact that the innovation behind the technology is intuitive to anyone. That innovation, and the fact that Microsoft Corp. has the backing and the resources to bring surface computing to life, is a combination he finds exciting.

de los Reyes has worked at Microsoft for more than five years. Before working for Surface, he worked as a brand design lead for MSN and a user experience manager for MSN Search, and was a creative director for the Hardware Innovation Group within the Windows Hardware and Emerging Markets Group.

Before joining Microsoft, de los Reyes worked at Philips Design in the Netherlands, as well as Eastman Kodak Co. and iCast. He is a board member of the Cambridge Institute of Design in Cambridge, Mass., was a visiting associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford from 2007 to 2008, and is a Ph.D. candidate in industrial design from the Technische Universiteit Delft in the Netherlands. de los Reyes holds a master of design studies from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in design and literature from Bennington College in Vermont.

Location
University of Melbourne
111 Barry Street, Carlton
ICT building - Lecture Theatre 1
(Map)

Food and drinks provided.
Thanks to Shane Morris and Microsoft for sponsoring the event.

Entry Fee: Gold coin donation.

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | Melbourne, Australia
Tags: Melbourne, Australia | microsoft surface
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Mobile Monday: Mobile Future Part 2: Interfaces Matter (Sydney, Australia)

• The Privilege Bar, Sydney CBD (part of the Blacket Hotel)
• Entry on George St., (corner George and King.) Map.

The second part of Mobile Monday Sydney’s series on Mobile Futures - this time focusing on what we all know to be true : user experience is absolutely vital to humanising technology.

At the very beginning of what may well come to be known as the era of multi-touch, we’re going to be examining some different aspects of the user experience with some of Australia’s stars in the field.

iPhone Usage Analysis
James Cleary from groundbreaking Australian mobile company Amethon will speak to this topic, presenting some of their analysis of iPhone usage.

Defining Perceived Value in Mobile Media
Mobile expert Mac Walker will be discussing a new model for understanding customer perceived value in mobile services, drawing on his years as a manager of 3G mobile portals.

Mobile User Experience
Finally, Sheen Yap - Head of User Experience and Creative Services at 3 Mobile will be talking about the critical elements of the user experience on mobile.

Bring your mobile !
Should be a fascinating night with plenty of real-world insights and lots of opportunities to meet new people, make personal and professional contacts, and be inspired. Come along and meet your peers in the Sydney mobile and wireless industry!

RSVP now

Pictures from last month’s show.

Posted in Calendar | Local meeting | Sydney, Australia
Tags: mobile | sydney | UX
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Slides from the Web Standard Group Meeting, August 19th (Sydney, Australia)

The WSG meeting last week was a great night with over 150 people in attendance.

There were three excellent presentations - and slides are now online for two (the third had a lot of video):

Presentation 1: “Findability: going beyond SEO”

Presenter: Radica Raeves

Search engine optimisation is usually the first subject that comes to mind when thinking about ways to improve the visibility of your organisation online. But it’s only a piece of the puzzle. In order to help the intended audience find, use and reuse your information, we need to look beyond SEO. Findability could help complete the puzzle. It’s a much broader concept, touching on almost every aspect of the web design and development process, where specialist fields intersect and overlap. We need to try and identify these elements of findability and “plug” them into the user-centred design workflow. It’s a big challenge… Can we connect the dots and bridge the gaps?”

http://www.slideshare.net/RRaeves/findability-going-beyond-seo-presentation/

Presentation 2: “One Web, No Go”

Presenter: Oliver Weidlich

With the improvements in mobile browsers and in the overall mobile user experience, what do we expect will change for mobile web users? Will we see a ‘one web’ approach? Oliver will talk about why the mobile and PC web experiences will increase in similarity, but still remain very different.

http://www.slideshare.net/oliverweidlich/wsg-august-2008-one-web-presentatio
n/

Presentation 3: “Building web apps for iPhones”

Presenters: Tim Lucas & Pete Ottery

Where to start when making a website targetted at iPhone users, including “Should you be?”. Frameworks…Javascript…Dev environments… and more. Tim Lucas & Pete Ottery share some experiences about creating iphone.news.com.au.

Slides: Coming, as soon as the 300mb file can be reduced

Posted in Sydney, Australia
Tags: australia | présentation | slides | sydney | wsg
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Oz-IA/2008 Pre-Conference Workshops (Sydney, Australia)

Oz-IA have seven pre-conference workshops scheduled for the Thursday 18th and Friday 19th preceding the Oz-IA/2008 conference proper, and are competitively priced: the half day workshops are $300 each (inc GST), or $240 to conference attendees, and the full day workshop is $550 (inc GST), or $440 to conference attendees. (UXnet.org readers are eligible for a discount on conference tickets)

Designing the Search Experience

Rebecca Rodgers

Half Day Workshop

Thursday 18th September, 8.30am-12.30pm

Poor search is one of the greatest sources of user frustration with websites and intranets. Worse yet, the inadequacies of search may be consigning these sites as a whole to failure. If users can’t find information when they need it, will they even come to the site?

Research methods for Information Architecture

Patrick Kennedy

Half Day Workshop

Thursday 18th September, 1.30pm-5.30pm

Learn the fundamentals of “design research” from the perspective of IA, including hands-on activities based around key techniques for understanding users and their needs.

Accessible forms with WCAG 2.0

Roger Hudson

Half Day Workshop

Thursday 18th September, 8.30am-12.30pm

When it comes to forms, WCAG 2.0 offers considerable accessibility benefits. This workshop will outline how to make WCAG 2.0 compliant forms that are more accessible and usable for everyone.

Styling WCAG 2.0 accessible forms with CSS

Russ Weakley

Half Day Workshop

Thursday 18th September, 1.30pm-5.30pm

Forms are possibly the hardest aspect of page layouts to style. This workshop will outline how to take WCAG 2.0 compliant forms and lay them out them using CSS.

Eye Tracking: Actionable lessons for improved website design

James Breeze

Half Day Workshop

Thursday 18th September, 1.30pm-5.30pm

A hands-on and highly practical workshop examining how Eye Tracking provides insights and learnings which can improve your website designs.

IA: Theory & practice

Donna Spencer

Full Day Workshop

Friday 19th September, 8.30am-5.30pm

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and understanding of information architecture theory & practice.

Interaction Design Studio

Shane Morris

Half Day Workshop

Friday 19th September, 8.30am-12.30pm

Half your skills as an interaction designer come from books, the other half from practice. In established design disciplines, the ‘studio’ is where designers hone their skills, rationale and intuition. Most people working in Interaction Design haven’t had the benefit of being able to explore design outside of ‘real’ work projects – hence this mini ”Interaction Design Studio”.

Posted in Calendar | Conference | Sydney, Australia | Training
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Oz-IA/2008: Australia’s Information Architecture Conference (Sydney, Australia)

Oz-IA invites your participation to this premier Australian event on Information Architecture for the web. Join them in Sydney, Australia on the weekend of September 20th-21st, 2008, for two incredible days of presentations, panels, and networking with information architects from across Australia and beyond.

Who should attend?

• Designers of navigation, organization, labeling, and search systems that help people find and manage information more successfully,
• Librarians, webmasters, and content owners responsible for creating taxonomies and information architectures,
• Application developers who design web and software solutions and select the technologies and staff to support them,
• Project and business managers needing to understand the benefits and challenges of information architectures in electronic information spaces.

Conference Program

The call for short and advanced conference sessions has closed and was very successful. With more than 70 very interesting proposals on many great topics, and whittling the list down to just 22 sessions on the program was not an enviable task.

View the conference program…

Early bird registrations are $660, or $550 with discount code “uxnet08″.
Regular registrations are $770, or $660 with discount code “uxnet08″.

Posted in Calendar | Conference | Sydney, Australia
Tags: australia | ia | information architecture | sydney
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Survey: IA in the real world

Patrick Kennedy is is running an online survey on how people go about practicing Information Architecture in the real world, in particular how agencies “do IA”.

Pat wants to both confirm and challenge his own understandings of:

• the way agencies work and how IA fits into their processes
• who it gets done by
• how it might be possible to give agencies the skills they need to perform better in this regard

The survey will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete and he’s giving away prizes to boot.

You’ll find the survey at: http://www.gurtle.com/survey/index.php?sid=61824

If you don’t work in an agency, you can still help me out by forwarding it on to your clients, peers and friends who do work in agencies.

The survey will run until the end of September.

Posted in Announcements
Tags: ia | survey
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Demystifying Information Architecture (WebDU Conference, Sydney, Australia)

Speaker: Patrick Kennedy
There is much confusion and ignorance regarding information architecture
(IA) and it’s place in web design. Many developers, like their design
counterparts, are operating under misconceptions, hearsay and indeed
disinformation. Because of this, many feel threatened by some ‘usability
guy’ telling them what to do.
http://www.webdu.com.au/go/session/demystifying-information-architecture

Posted in Calendar | Conference session | Sydney, Australia
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User Testing for the Rest of Us (WebDU Conference, Sydney, Australia)

Speaker: Lisa Herrod
We’ll look at some practical tools, tips and tricks that designers and
developers can integrate into their typical work flow. Whatever your role is
on the team, there’s a place for you in usability! And if it’s a job you’d
prefer to leave for a professional consultant, the presentation will give
you a better understanding of some of the fundamental techniques we use.
http://www.webdu.com.au/go/session/usability-for-designers-and-developers

Posted in Calendar | Conference session | Sydney, Australia
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