| February 3, 2009 | ||
| 6:00 pm |
The first meeting of the UX Book Club Sydney will be held at the offices of News Digital Media at 175 Liverpool Street, Sydney, on 3rd February, 2009.
The Book: Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton.
See UX Book Club Sydney for more information.
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”
| September 11, 2008 | ||
| 6:00 pm | to | 8:00 pm |
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:
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:
Vice President
The Vice President:
Secretary
The Secretary:
Treasurer
The Treasurer:
| September 1, 2008 | ||
| 6:30 pm | to | 8:30 pm |
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!
Pictures from last month’s show.
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):
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/
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/
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
| September 18, 2008 | to | September 19, 2008 |
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)
| September 20, 2008 | to | September 21, 2008 |
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?
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.
Early bird registrations are $660, or $550 with discount code “uxnet08″.
Regular registrations are $770, or $660 with discount code “uxnet08″.
| September 23, 2008 | to | September 26, 2008 |
Covering the technologies, techniques and strategies you need to build the best possible web sites and applications. Sample user experience sessions:
See south08.webdirections.org for more information.
| June 13, 2008 | ||
| 3:00 pm | to | 4:00 pm |
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
| June 12, 2008 | ||
| 3:00 pm | to | 4:00 pm |
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
