Presentations about interaction design

Podcasts, slides, videos and more

Christian Crumlish — Designing social interfaces

Christian Crumlish PortraitDesigning for social inter­ac­tion is hard. People are unpre­dictable, con­sis­tency is a mixed bless­ing, and co-​​creation with your users requires a dizzy­ing flir­ta­tion with loss of con­trol. Christian will present the dos and don’ts of social web design using a sam­pling of inter­ac­tion pat­terns, design prin­ci­ples and best prac­tices to help you improve the design of your dig­i­tal social environments.

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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.

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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.

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Hurol Inan — Informing experience architecture with quantitative insights

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 1.40pm.

Hurol Inan PortraitQuantitative insights gath­ered through online ana­lyt­ics can con­tribute greatly to the design and opti­mi­sa­tion of online expe­ri­ence architectures.

The suc­cess of an Experience Architect depends on the busi­ness impact of their archi­tec­ture. Quantitative tech­niques can be used in bench­mark­ing before and after per­for­mances of a web­site demon­strat­ing the impact of the new architecture.

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Lisa Herrod — Usability: more than skin deep

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Lisa Herrod PortraitWeb Usability is far more com­plex than user test­ing and inter­ac­tion design alone. And while inter­face design is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the surface.

We all know the impor­tance of acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards, so let’s take that knowl­edge one step fur­ther and into the realm of usabil­ity. In this ses­sion Lisa Herrod will rede­fine the com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of usabil­ity by intro­duc­ing a greater focus on acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards. By tak­ing a more holis­tic approach you will soon see why usabil­ity is more than skin deep.

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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.

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Andy Budd — Designing the experience curve

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

Andy Budd PortraitThese days peo­ple expect more from a web­site than a handy set of tools and a pretty inter­face — they want an expe­ri­ence. From the moment some­body enters your site they’ll be judg­ing you on every­thing from the way the site looks to the tone of your error mes­sages. And they won’t just be judg­ing you against other sites. They will be judg­ing you on every cus­tomer expe­ri­ence they have ever had, from the rude man at the train sta­tion to the lovely hotel clerk that checked them in on hol­i­day. So in order to com­pete, we need to up our game and look at expe­ri­ences both on and off-​​line.

In this ses­sion Andy Budd will look at the 9 key fac­tors that go into design­ing the per­fect cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. By tak­ing exam­ples from the world around us, Andy will dis­cuss how we can turn util­i­tar­ian expe­ri­ences into some­thing wonderful.

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Andrew Kesper — ABC’s election site: making the most of dry data

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

Andrew Kesper PortraitWhile elec­tions can be excit­ing times, the under­ly­ing data — swings, booth counts, and the like is prob­a­bly only riv­et­ing to psepho­log­i­cal trag­ics. Yet the ABC’s elec­tion web site man­aged to take this raw data and make it attrac­tive, com­pelling and interactive.

In this ses­sion, the ABC’s Andrew Kesper takes us through the elec­tion site, look­ing at the design deci­sions, and uses of tech­nol­ogy like Ajax, Flash, and inter­ac­tive maps — tools which have wide applic­a­bil­ity for gov­ern­ment sites look­ing to present data in more user-​​friendly and attrac­tive ways.

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Matt Webb — Movement (Web Directions North Closing Keynote)

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.

Matt Webb PortraitWe’ve always had metaphors to under­stand and design for the Web.

The orig­i­nal con­cep­tion of the Web was as a library of doc­u­ments. Our build­ing blocks were derived from spa­tial ideas: “bread­crumbs,” “vis­its” and “home­pages” were used to under­stand the medium.

Website-​​as-​​application was a new and novel metaphor in the late 1990s. The spa­tial con­cept of nav­i­ga­tion was replaced by con­cepts derived from tools: but­tons per­formed actions on data.

These metaphors inspire sep­a­rate but com­ple­men­tary mod­els of the Web. But the Web in 2008 has some entirely new qual­i­ties: more than ever it’s an ecol­ogy of sep­a­rate but highly inter­con­nected ser­vices. Its fiercely com­pet­i­tive, rapid devel­op­ment means dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing inno­va­tions are quickly copied and spread. Attention from users is scarce. The fittest web­sites sur­vive. In this world, what metaphors can be most suc­cess­fully wielded?

Matt takes as a start­ing point inter­ac­tion and prod­uct design, with ideas from cyber­net­ics and Getting Things Done. He offers as a metaphor the con­cept of the Web as expe­ri­ence. That is, treat­ing a web­site as a dynamic entity — a flow­chart of moti­va­tions that both pro­vides a con­tin­u­ously sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence for the user… and helps the web­site grow.

From see­ing what kind of web­sites this model pro­vokes, we’ll see whether it also helps illu­mi­nate some of the Web’s com­ing design chal­lenges: the blend­ing of the Web with desk­top soft­ware and phys­i­cal devices; the par­tic­u­lar con­cerns of small groups; and what the next move­ment might bring.

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Cameron Adams — The future of web interfaces

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Cameron Adams PortraitAjax brought about a host of new pos­si­bil­i­ties in online inter­faces, but where are we going next? Cameron Adams will look at the evo­lu­tion of dynamic inter­faces; inter­faces that truly meet the needs of all their users. Through the care­ful use of Web Standards, client-​​side script­ing, and server-​​side intel­li­gence, it’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate inter­faces that shape, adapt to, and pre­dict a user’s needs.

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Lisa Herrod — Usability: more than skin deep

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Lisa Herrod PortraitWeb Usability is far more com­plex than User Testing and Interaction Design alone. And while inter­face design is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the sur­face. We all know the impor­tance of acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards, so let’s take that knowl­edge one step fur­ther and into the realm of usabil­ity. In this ses­sion Lisa Herrod will rede­fine the com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of usabil­ity by intro­duc­ing a greater focus on acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards. By tak­ing a more holis­tic approach you will soon see why usabil­ity is more than skin deep.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

Jonathan Boutelle — Ajax or Flash: what’s right for you?

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Jonathan Boutelle PortraitThe web is finally mov­ing beyond sim­ple html. How can you make rich web-​​based user expe­ri­ences that don’t sur­prise or aggra­vate your users? When should you use AJAX, when should you use Flash, and when should you mix the two? What are the oppor­tu­ni­ties and pit­falls when cre­at­ing richer web inter­faces? In this talk, Jonathan will argue that Flash and AJAX are com­ple­men­tary tools in the web devel­op­ers’ tool­box, and that build­ing effec­tive web expe­ri­ences often requires a blend­ing of the two technologies.

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Kelly Goto — Designing for Lifestyle

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.

Kelly Goto Portrait

Interaction design is no longer lim­ited to the web. The con­cept of user expe­ri­ence is being rede­fined as mul­ti­ple deliv­ery meth­ods of social and busi­ness inter­ac­tion merge into our lifestyles. As design migrates from the web to mobile devices we carry and inter­act with on a daily basis, our approach must also shift into cycles of design and research cen­tered around the way peo­ple actu­ally live. In this enlight­en­ing ses­sion, design ethno­g­ra­pher and web vet­eran Kelly Goto dis­cusses the evo­lu­tion of Web, hand­held, and prod­uct inter­faces and their cul­tural impact. Learn how com­pa­nies are uti­liz­ing ethnographic-​​based research to con­duct rapid, immer­sive stud­ies of peo­ple and their lifestyles to inform the use­ful­ness and via­bil­ity of inter­faces both online and offline. See the slides and hear the podcast »

Mark Pesce — Youbiquity

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 29 2006.

Mark Pesce Portrait

The col­lec­tion of social and infor­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies infor­mally known as Web2.0 have cre­ated a rich uni­verse of appli­ca­tions — but a scat­ter­shot one. We plug lots of our infor­ma­tion into web­sites every­where — MySpace and Digg, Friendster and Yahoo!, and every­where, Google, Google, Google. Yet it’s as if we’re spend­ing all of our time build­ing infor­ma­tion silos; piles of data which are essen­tially uncon­nected. It’s get­ting dull. How many times do I need to list my friends, or my con­tact infor­ma­tion, or my favorite bands?

We know why it’s hap­pen­ing: com­mer­cial inter­ests are over­rul­ing the nat­ural pool­ing and shar­ing of infor­ma­tion that would actu­ally bring some util­ity to this moun­tain of data we’re gen­er­at­ing about our­selves. Yet the pres­sure to share is build­ing up: the recent explo­sive emer­gence of mash-​​ups, which jux­ta­pose two or three or more ser­vices in unique and valu­able ways shows us that the hybrid always trumps the thor­ough­bred. And that’s just on inter­net ser­vices. Very few of us con­trol the moun­tain of data we gen­er­ate as we pass through this world — every­one wants it (for their own pur­poses), yet we — who are cre­at­ing it — never have access to it.

It’s time to revisit the entire phi­los­o­phy of inter­ac­tion design on the Web, time to move the focus away from the site-​​as-​​resource, toward an idea of the site-​​as-​​personal-​​enabler. What we each bring to a web­site — or rather, what we should bring to a web­site — is a wealth of infor­ma­tion about our­selves. This is the real resource of Web2.0, and the next place the Web is going. The exu­ber­ance around social net­works shows us that peo­ple want to con­nect — it’s time for design­ers to build the tools which will truly enable that con­nec­tion. See the slides and hear the podcast »