UXnet provides coordination and leadership on a local level, thanks to the hard work of our Local Ambassadors: a passionate group dedicated to facilitating collaboration between people, organizations, and resources. Below are the most recent postings from our Local Ambassadors. If your locale is not listed (on the right), then check out the local chapter directories of various UX-related professional organizations to find UX professionals near you.
Details TBA
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
dConstruct 2008 is the affordable one day conference for people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications. It takes place on September 5th, 2008 at Brighton Dome, Church Street, Brighton, UK
Speaking from personal experience, dConstruct is one of the UK’s best web conferences. I’m really looking forward to this years event.
This year’s topic is Designing the Social Web, the line-up is as follows:
I do not have final details, but wanted to get the word out as soon as possible so you can start planning. Subject to change.
Who: Scott McCloud, Cartoonist and Theorist
What: Comics: A Medium in Transition
When: Friday, October 24, 2008, 6:30 pm
Where: 206 Bowen-Thompson Student Union, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio
One of the sponsoring organizations appears to be the BGSU student chapter of SIGGRAPH / Computer Arts Club. The School of Art may also be funding part of this (Todd Childers is the one who gave me the basic info - thanks Todd!).
Poking around some more, I found "The Comic Book in Popular Culture" scheduled in many rooms in the same building at the same time. Which led me to this call for participation from the Popular Culture Department. So I assume Scott's visit is part of the conference.
And checking out "Comics: A Medium in Transition" by Scott, I see these other performances:
Stay tuned for more info...
There is a student SIGGRAPH chapter at Bowling Green State University. Also known as the Computer Arts Club, it looks like it was started in 2006.
This fall a presentation by Scott McCloud is being planned. Once I learn more I will add his talk to the calendar.
The Western PA Chapter IDSA now has its own spot on the internet! http://westernpaidsa.blogspot.com
Not content to offer their skills to blue chip clients such as Barclays and eBay, Userfocus also provides training courses in areas including user experience design, intranet usability and usability testing. The person behind Userfocus is psychologist David Travis who shares his thoughts in this month’s interview.
How did you get into this field and what sorts of things had you done previously?
Between 1979 and 1986, I earned a degree and a Ph.D in psychology (from the universities of London and Cambridge) and then embarked on an academic career of post-doc research. My interest was in human colour vision and Andrew Monk at the University of York encouraged me to write a cross-over book to help HCI people use colour effectively on displays (called, predictably, “Effective Color Displays”). At the time, designing for colour displays was like designing for Web 2.0: it was seen as a real paradigm shift from the previous technology (even though, in reality, all the old rules still apply). The book got me on the agenda of some people at BT’s research labs in Ipswich who headhunted me for a job in their graphical user interfaces team in 1989 (sadly, it’s the only time I’ve ever been headhunted). I quickly realised that colour was just one element of interface design and BT gave me the opportunity to design usability labs and mock-up future HCI concepts, like telepresence. This gave me the urge to do more applied work, so in 1995 I moved to System Concepts and built up their practice in usability consultancy. I founded Userfocus in 2002.
What are some things (or people) that inspire how you think about and then develop digital experiences for users?
At the University of York in 1986 Andrew Monk introduced me to the Mac. Before that I’d been programming PDP-11s to support my research activities and this was the first graphical user interface I’d ever seen. It was an epiphany. Andrew had a post-doc working with him at the time who insisted on giving me a tutorial on how to use a Mac, as if this was some untamed beast I was about to be let loose on, but I was dying just to play with it. So I’d get into work at 8am before anyone else (this doesn’t seem early to me now but this was at a University) to spend time playing around with MacDraw and Cricket Graph, two wonderful Mac applications. I was blown away by the possibilities. It was like Adam’s first words to Eve: “Stand back, I don’t know how big this thing is going to get.”
From a practitioner’s perspective, the two biggest influences on me have been Bill Buxton and Tom Stewart. I’ve worked with both of them and learnt the importance of a pragmatic approach to design problems and to avoid “analysis paralysis”.
There are various definitions of UX out there depending on who you talk to… What does UX mean to you?
I like the quote from Whitney Quesenbery: “User Experience v. User Interaction v. User Interface v. Information Architecture v. Information Design v. Human Factors v. User-Centered Design v. Performance Centered Design v. … As far as I can tell, a choice of title says more about “where you got on the bus” than any real distinction of goals.”
To me, user centred design means three things: 1. Early and continual focus on users and their tasks. 2. Empirical measurement of user behaviour. 3. Iterative design. You may be doing design, but if you’re not doing all of these things then you’re not user centred.
How does London influence you when it comes to creating and refining interactive experiences?
I’m a Londoner by birth, so I’m not sure how to distinguish the way it influences my work from the influence of just being born here. For example, I’ve borrowed Transport for London’s “red routes” as a metaphor for critical tasks with a product (http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/redroutes.html). I’d also point to the sheer number of people in London as an influence. The number of different people that you see every day makes you realise that you can’t do design without some kind of audience research.
Thinking about past or current projects, in what ways, if any, have the expectations changed in terms of the type of UX that is sought (or expected) by users?
In my experience of running hundreds of usability sessions, users tend to have fairly low expectations and are delighted to discover that someone values their opinion. Intranets in particular show woeful levels of usability even though Intranet users are exposed to good web sites every day. So I’m not sure that user expectations have altered much. Clients, on the other hand, are now much more clued up about usability and will approach us with a specific plan of action that they want us to implement. Sometimes this is well thought out, and sometimes it’s poorly thought out, but it shows clearly that the notion of usability is now high on the agenda.
If you were asked to share a book, either fiction or non-fiction, with a colleague in your field, what would it be and why?
Am I allowed to recommend my own book, “E-Commerce Usability”? If not, I’d choose “Strangers to Ourselves” by Timothy D. Wilson. Wilson’s book describes study after study proving that we have very little insight into the motivations behind our behaviour. When designing new products, this means you can’t just ask people what they like or don’t like. You must focus on observable behaviour using techniques like contextual inquiry and “proper” usability testing (i.e. not the kind of usability tests that are run like a 1-1 focus group that spotlight user opinions).
What advice would you give to students interested in this profession?
Having the right technical skills and the right experience will get you only so far. We interview many new graduates and a common problem with many of them is a lack of passion. If you look at some of the best, most inspirational practitioners in our field you’ll see that they think of their work, not as a job, but as a calling. They see the impact of technology on people’s lives as important. They feel that good design makes the world a better place — and that bad design can make life miserable (as anyone who’s worked in a badly designed work environment, like a call centre, would agree). So my advice is: find your passion, pursue it and your career will take care of itself.
What trend(s) do you see advancing that will influence the UX of interactive systems?
I think a key trend is towards really measuring usability, not just testing a product to find usability problems. This means assigning a number to say how usable a product or web site actually is. Unfortunately, many people seem to think that usability measurement means stuff like eye tracking, simply because eye tracking generates lots of numbers and plots pretty graphs. A better example is the usability standard, ISO 20282 (“Ease of operation of everyday products”) which I think will prove to have a huge influence on our field. ISO 20282 includes test methods for quantifying the usability of consumer products to ensure they meet a pre-defined quality level. This development is exciting because it reflects a sea change in the evolving practice of usability. In the old world, usability specialists just found usability problems with a design. In the new world, usability specialists will also answer the question: “How usable is this design?”
Across Cultures, the most recent Website of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). In collaboration with Ideactif Conseil.
D’une culture à l’autre de l’ONF : Un design centré utilisateur en contexte multiculturel.
Le plus récent site Web de l’Office national du film du Canada (ONF) portant sur la diversité culturelle au Canada. En collaboration avec Idéactif Conseil.
Voici un aperçu de la conférence que j’ai présenté dans le cadre d’Intracom 2008, 8e conférence internationale de l’Association des professionnels professionnels en intranet, Internet et extranet (API).
Les ingrédients clés de la démarche ont été dévoilés et illustrés lors de cette présentation du making-of de la création du plus récent site Web de l’ONF portant sur la diversité culturelle au Canada. Un site qui retrace une histoire étonnante à travers des documents d’archives vidéos, audios et photos des années 40 à aujourd’hui, ainsi que des entrevues et vox populi spécialement conçus pour ce site.
Utilisabilité, accessibilité, standards Web, respect des normes et standards ouverts, SEO, et mesure sont au rendez-vous.
Vous pouvez consulter ci-dessous le fichier powerpoint de ma présentation. Il ne rend compte évidemment que d’une partie de ma communication, mais ça donne tout de même un bon aperçu.
Dans le cadre de la 8e conférence internationale Intracom Québec 2008, présentée par l’Association des professionnels en intranet, Internet et extranet (API), plusieurs membres de notre regroupement de professionnels en utilisabilité - Utilisabilité Québec - présenteront une conférence ou une étude de cas, participeront à un panel, ou tiendront une clinique d’évaluation. Cet événement, devenu incontournable au Québec, est susceptible d’intéresser les professionnels - et les non spécialistes intéressés au domaine - de l’expérience utilisateur, incluant l’ergonomie cognitive et l’utilisabilité, ainsi que les gestionnaires et développeurs Internet en général.
J’y présenterai l’étude de cas D’une culture à l’autre de l’ONF : Un design centré utilisateur en contexte multiculturel, dans la piste «Communication et société», en continuité avec la conférence d’ouverture du renommé Aaron Marcus, Le design Web lié aux expériences multiculturelles.
Je participerai également au panel Amélioration de la qualité des réalisations Web, en compagnie de 4 autres panelistes : Benoit Piette de W3Québec, Jean-François Renaud d’Adviso, Guillaume Séguin d’Okiok et Samuel Lavoie de NVI Solution.
D’autres membres d’Utilisabilité Québec y participeront :
La conférence Les séniors sont-ils devenus technos ?, Utilisabilité Québec et Impact Recherche dévoilent les résultats d’une vaste étude sur l’utilisation d’Internet par les personnes de plus de 50 ans, avec Stéphanie Le Rouzic et Sandrine Prom Tep d’Utilisabilité Québec
Utilisabilité Québec accueillera également les quelques 300 participants à leur kiosque afin de les informer, échanger avec eux et répondre à leurs questions.
Au plaisir de vous y rencontrer les 29-30 avril et 1er mai au Centre des congrès de la ville de Québec.
On Wednesday, April 2, we held a local user experience networking meeting in Ann Arbor. We invited leaders of local professional chapters related to user experience, university representatives, and anyone else who was interested in spending the evening meeting new people who are interested in UX. After letting everyone meet each other individually, we had dinner and then went around the room, learning about what each person was involved in. (See some photos.) The attendees:
There were several opportunities for cooperation and collaboration mentioned, such as organizing World Usability Day, joint HCI researcher/practitioner speaker series, monthly meeting information sharing, game design talks, and so on. As opportunities arise, we will leverage the contacts made at this meeting.
We asked several people if they wanted a mailing list or online group to stay in touch, and almost everyone said they were already on too many lists. We think instead it is better to leverage the existing lists, groups, social networks and so on. For example, the UXnet group on Facebook is something to join.
We think while we are using the existing tools to stay in touch and look for opportunities to work together, we should start planning our next meeting of local leaders with a passion for user experience. There are several representatives from local groups that could not make it this time, there are new groups of people to invite (such as advertising professionals or managers of local user experience teams), there is more brainstorming and planning we can do for specific UX projects, and there are other areas of the region we can reach out to.
As UXnet local ambassadors, we think that the biggest value we can add to the local user experience community is to focus on organizing these face-to-face networking events, and then let others take it from there on how they want to cooperate and collaborate.
We look forward to organizing more user experience networking events in the future.
Anthony, Dan, Keith
If you live in Brighton (UK), you might be interested in attending the 1st meeting of the UX Brighton group tomorrow (15th April).
The idea of this initial meeting is to
There are (at time of writing), 3 places still available.
Keep up with UX Brighton
Hello and welcome to the DFW locale of UXnet. I am Jim Machajewski, the co-ambassador for the DFW locale. Along with my counterpart, Elisa Miller, we will be providing the relevant UX goings on for the the Dallas/Fort Worth region. Elisa and I have worked together on a couple of occasions now. Together we have a large reach into the DFW UX community.
So what qualifies me for this position you ask? Well, it was the dawn of the Internet age when I graduated from college, and my early positions had me building some of the very first Internet and intranet applications. As a consultant, I taught myself HTML, JavaScript and CSS to become a Front-End Technology Engineer and User Interface Designer at the height of the Dot-Com boom. Throughout this time my focus was on ease of use and simplicity of implementation; a definite less is more approach. My list of clients includes Verizon, Kinko’s, Hewitt Associates, Boots Pharmacy, Tenet Healthcare and a large number of Fortune 500 organizations. My work has been recognized by CIO magazine’s CIO100 award for innovation. I just recently left a position with Perot Systems where I spent four years as their Manager of Information Architecture. I am currently the Director of UX for Coremetrics, Inc. My role includes user research, user interface design, interaction design, information architecture, usability analysis, as well as managing and staffing a team of UX folks. In my spare time I try to keep up with my 2 kids activities (currently t-ball, soccer & piano lessons), I play trumpet in the Southlake Swing Band, and I waste a whole lot of time as a semi-pro photographer.
The UX community in DFW is a large and diverse one. We have an active UPA chapter (http://dfw-upa.org) as well and active STC chapter (http://www.stc-dfw.org).
Thanks, and I look forward to my role as co-Ambassador for UXnet
UX Cocktail Hours Amsterdam is a group for User Experience practitioners in and around Amsterdam who would like to attend (one or more) UX Cocktail Hours in the neighborhood. The goal of the cocktail hours is to get together informally, share news and ideas through short presentations, meet other UX practitioners, chat about work, the weather, “koetjes en kalfjes” (chit-chat), and have a drink (or two). Most Cocktail Hours these days are held at the offices of a local UX department and the drinks and some snacks are usually sponsored.
If you feel your work is related to User Experience, but your business card says Information Architect, Interaction Designer, User Interface Engineer, Concept Designer, Usability Consultant, or similar, you’re welcome too.
The owner of this list is Peter Boersma.
Greetings, Los Angeles!
As you are probably aware, the User Experience/Interaction Design community in Los Angeles is growing everyday. If you are already in the field or are interested in learning more about it then attending local UX related events around the area is a great place to start. I’ll be posting events as I hear about them as well as any other interesting Los Angeles UX related things I come across.
Let me take a brief moment to introduce myself - My name is Kenny Chen and I’m a User Experience Designer in Southern California having worked with everything from websites, enterprise software, consumer electronics, social networks, and mobile devices. I’ll be serving as a local ambassador for the Los Angeles area. The position was previously occupied by Jessyca Frederick and from what I hear, she did a wonderful job, so I hope I can do the same.
If you have any events or news that you think may be of interest to Los Angeles (or even Orange County), feel free to contact me and let me know.
There’s a growing UX community in Maine–that’s bringing together people interested in conversations with peers, convening around fun and skills-quickening professional events, and basically knowing who’s who and what’s going on in the great state of Maine. In service to that goal, an informal group called MaineUX is getting off the ground.
MaineUX is a community reflecting the “big-tent” of UX, usability, information architecture, design of many stripes — visual, interaction, UI, web, games, software, intranets, graphic, industrial — stretching across the frontiers of social networking, new media, collaborative tech, web 2.0, user-centric IT, search, findability, taxonomy/ontology, information design, creative content strategizy, SEO/SEM, online marketing and advertising, agile and nimble programming, library & information science, elearning, and more.
MaineUX welcomes everyone designing dynamic, memorable, and meaningful user experiences in Maine!
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KEY MAINEUX RESOURCES
maineux.org is a calendar of events in Maine and NH. Since we’re just beginning to think of ourselves in this way, there aren’t that many UX-specific events in Maine. The UX events we do have are awesome. The others are too: a hodge-podge of events we think may be of interest to the MaineUX community. We appreciate people throughout the state sending along events that should be on the calendar. In the future maineux.org may be one-stop shopping for events, job postings, announcements, discussions.
But in the meantime, we rely on its companion MaineUX Google Group as a forum for people to pose questions, compare notes, broach design conundrums, add 2cents to discussions, share cool articles and blog posts. Promote events, post, and hear about, job openings. Meet new people who actually get what we do for a living!
Every fall TechMaine (formerly the Maine Software Developers Association) holds an annual statewide IT conference. For the past several years, a track has been dedicated to Usability & User Experience—often featuring UX experts from Maine as speakers. In 2006 and 2007, as a volunteer to TechMaine, I organized the UX Track, and was wicked excited to bring in amazing speakers like Steve Krug and Carolyn Snyder, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing and John McGrath of wordie (both Maine start-ups), Gessica Silverstein from Molecular, Kyle Pero Soucy, esteemed luminary from NH, Beth Loring from Bentley Design & Usability Center, Sarah Bloomer, Cay Lodine, Ann Marie McCarthy, and more! (To promote the event, MaineUX created a separate mini-site for the UX Track)
Finally, the last Tuesday of every month is TechMaine’s UUUG meeting (User Experience & Usability Users Group). Held at TechMaine’s headquarters in Westbrook, it’s been a terrific focal point of UX activity in Maine! The meetings feature top-notch local UX practitioners and peers presenting on a topic of interest and relevance to the group, including:
You don’t need to be a TechMaine member to attend — and the meetings draw anywhere from an intimate 10 to 30+. Note: Registering ahead of time will get you entered into a drawing for an awesome O’Reilly book–given away at the end of every single meeting!
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Who knew that getting involved with MaineUX could mean building your professional library, building your contacts list, and building community in Maine! Join the discussion list, consult and populate the events calendar, come to UUUG meetings, check out MaineUX events, soon to appear in your part of the state — and stay in touch!
I am the new UXnet Local Ambassador for Brisbane, Australia.
I have over 12 years experience across a wide range of corporate areas including: intranets, delivery of large scale IT projects, business analysis, change management, user centered design, IA, project management, learning and development, online education and HR.
User experience and accessibility is something I am passionate about. I am currently working for Step Two Designs, an Information Management consultancy based out of Sydney and Brisbane.
If you have an event coming up or you know of something that is going on in Brisbane that relates to UX, let me know.
Rebecca Rodgers
This is the first in a series of brief, monthly interviews with UX professionals based in London. The aim is to hear some of their thoughts, experiences and inspirations that are a part of their user experience practice.
Darrell Wilkins is Founder and Head of User Experience Design at Special Moves which offers high-end production for the interactive industry. Special Moves has created everything from games for MTV’s the Osbournes to interative experiences for Volkswagen, the Guardian and British Gas. Here’s what he had to say…
How did you get into this field and what sorts of things had you done previously?
I started at University. I studied MediaLabArts at Plymouth and was introduced to HCI there. It was a marriage of Art and Computing and we didn’t go into lots of technical details, but I soon realised that if you make something easy to use, you get a higher mark.
What are some things (or people) that inspire how you think about and then develop digital experiences for users?
Shigeru Miyamoto is my hero. His amazing attention to detail and ability to guide users effortlessly through complex and challenging interfaces is unsurpassed.
Everyone can learn lessons from game design.
There are various definitions of UX out there depending on who you talk to… What does UX mean to you?
It’s the experience that the user has when interacting with your product or service. There are many facets to this experience and all are valid.
Some of the main ones :
How does London influence you when it comes to creating and refining interactive experiences?
I’m not sure it’s London that influences me. It the people that are here. There is a lively and very talented community of people in London that are doing interesting things. It’s a kind of proximity effect, everyone is driven upwards by being in the presence of other smart people.
Genius never happens in isolation. It requires a stimulus from others.
Thinking about past or current projects, in what ways, if any, have the expectations changed in terms of the type of UX that is sought (or expected) by users?
Clients are starting to understand what User Experience means. In that respect things are changing. It is being mentioned earlier and earlier in the process and therefore the types of activity we are doing change. More research, more prototyping and more lo-fi testing.
If you were asked to share a book, either fiction or non-fiction, with a colleague in your field, what would it be and why?
That’s easy. ‘Universal Principles of Design’ - William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler. It the most beautifully conceived and executed book. Anyone who works in the creative industries should have a copy.
What advice would you give to students interested in this profession?
Get some real world experience. Get a placement or internship. Even if you don’t get any cash for it, the pay off in the future will be worth it.
What trend(s) do you see advancing that will influence the UX of interactive systems?
Enjoyment as well as ease of use will dramatically increase in importance. The iPhone shows us this. It’s actually harder (takes longer) to do several things with the iPhone, but people love using it. Efficiency in an interface is not everything.
Darrell can be reached at darrell.wilkins@specialmoves.co.uk.
It just keeps getting bigger and better - Internet User Experience, the "local" conference with "national" quality. It will be in nearby Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 31 - April 3.
IUE, in its 4th year, has expanded to 4 days. The first day has 2 all-day tutorials to choose from. The second day is the beginning of the main conference with 7 presentations and a night out-on-the-town. The third day has 2 morning panels, a presentation and 2 half-day afternoon tutorials. The last day is an interactive workshop.
You will see how web sites have been effectively designed for many different markets and target groups, ranging from 3-year olds to adult consumers to specialized professionals. You will see dramatic before-and-after improvements to established web sites. You will learn from experts in fields such as search engine optimization, online communities, and user experience management as they explain and debate the current state, future destiny, and current opportunities that exist for businesses with these evolving technologies and professions.
We are blessed to have such a high quality program for a locally-organized event. Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus, a Michigan UPA officer, is the main force behind this, but he gets volunteers from other local groups like MOCHI, STC/SM and Refresh Detroit, to help. It is a great example of how local User Experience Network collaboration can help pull off something "local" that is comparable to the other UX conferences.
Check out the schedule and register if you are interested. I have gone every year and it has been great. I will be there for at least part of the 4 days - see you there.
Video & PowerPoint Presentations are available here (in French) : www.utilisabilitequebec.org/evenements
Utilisabilité Québec (the local Chapter of the Usability Professional Association) organized an event to celebrate the third annual World Usability Day. Featuring Eric Brangier - Director of the ETIC Research Center and Professor at the Paul Verlaine University of Metz, the conference has been presented simultaneously in Montréal & Quebec cities to academics and usability professionals.
Titled “To consume with moderation - for an ergonomical approach of wine”, the conference discussed how it is possible, useful and necessary to integrate usability studies to the development of information labels used on many products including wine. It described how usability principles can be used to design better wine labels and compared it to usability applied to internet design. For a wine to sell, it must meet many criterias like price, quality, aesthetics and usefulness. Though many products fulfill those qualities, it does not mean wine use is easily understood. It must be chosen to fit many constraints like social context, harmony with meals, pragmatic and cultural rituals ? No one wants to lose face because of an inapproriate choice of wine. How can the information relative to wine qualities be efficiently communicated to consumers.
Initially developped to help design computer interaction, and more recently Web sites virtual consumption, usability studies and their principles have been applied to the design of every day things. The conference presented a research on how attitudes towards wine can be improved, by bettering information on labels, making the various specific dimensions of a wine easier to read, understand and use in different social contexts.
Partners of the event were CITÉ (Université de Montréal), Idéactif and Impact Recherche.
—– [En français] —–
Dans le cadre de la 3e édition de la Journée mondiale de l’utilisabilité, Utilisabilité Québec (l’association des professionnels de l’utilisabilité du Québec) a reçu en conférence Eric Brangier, Directeur du centre de recherche ETIC de l’Université Paul Verlaine de Metz, et Docteur en Psychologie.
Pour qu’un produit se « vende », il doit remplir plusieurs propriétés parmi lesquelles on trouve le prix (bon marché), la qualité (bonne à excellente), le design (agréable), l’esthétique (beau) et l’ergonomie (facile à utiliser). Sur les premiers critères, il ne fait nul doute que de nombreux vins les remplissent, mais pour autant, le vin demeure un produit pas facile à utiliser… Qui comprend facilement un produit dont les conditions d’utilisation varient en fonction des contextes sociaux, des appariements culinaires, des pratiques et des rites culturels ? Qui souhaiterait se faire ridiculiser par l’usage inapproprié ou maladroit d’une bouteille mal choisie ou servie ? On voit bien que l’usage du vin dépend de très nombreuses variables que le consommateur a bien du mal à comprendre. Alors pourquoi les concepteurs de la divine bouteille ne font-ils pas d’efforts pour comprendre l’usage réel et actuel du vin ? Pourquoi ne feraient-ils pas un peu d’utilisabilité de leurs produits ?
Principalement développée dans le secteur des technologies numériques, l’utilisabilité ne s’est pas vraiment préoccupée des produits de la vie courante. Aussi, notre communication, sous la forme de clins d’œil à l’ergonomie, tentera de montrer qu’il est possible, utile et nécessaire d’intégrer l’utilisabilité à tous les produits y compris au vin.
Les partenaires de l’événement étaient le Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les technologies émergentes (CITÉ) de l’Université de Montréal, Idéactif Conseil et Impact Recherche.
La présentation en format Video et PowerPoint est disponible ici : www.utilisabilitequebec.org/evenements
Thanks to Susan Rector (Web Applications Manager, Library Information Systems | VCU Libraries), there’s a monthly informal meeting of IAs, UXDs, librarians, and other UXish folks. We had the first event in January and hope to meet the fourth Thursday of the month.
Putting People First recently suggested it, and coincidentally it just came true: Interactions is now available online. At least, the January-February issue is, at the moment.
According to Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher:
ACM is pleased to announce a new innovation for subscribers to interactions, the leading magazine publication for the Human Computer Interactions community. As from the January-February 2008 issue, ACM will be offering a digital edition of each issue of the magazine as an added benefit to subscribers. This new offering is provided in addition to the current print edition of the magazine and articles posted in the ACM Digital Library. The magazine’s new digital edition will serve as an additional service that will enable members to view a true digital representation of the entire print magazine from cover to cover in an easy to use digital format.
The “added benefit to subscribers” part may be an indication that ACM plans or at least reserves the right to pull the online version under the account firewall. For the time being, the images and navigation are a nice way to read the content assembled by editors Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko.
I was particularly interested in Steve Portigal’s rant on personas, a continual point of debate in HCI. A very diverse range of global perspectives, including a rather insightful Gary Marsden.
