Presentations about user experience
Podcasts, slides, videos and more
Donna Spencer — Information seeking behaviours
Each information seeking behaviour needs very different approaches to information architecture, information design and page layout. During this presentation, Donna will talk about each information behaviour, its key attributes, key design needs, and show good and bad examples of each.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Suze Ingram — Would you like service design with that?
Service design is well established in Europe and North America and there’s already a handful of Australian businesses offering service design. What is it? Does experience in designing for screen interaction translate to designing services too? Will service design be the next big thing? Suze offers insight by drawing on her years of experience as a UX designer and researcher. She shows how service design might fit into your business in the future, who you might pitch it to, and what sort of skills you might need to deliver service design.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Grant Robinson — Visualising the user experience
Rapid 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Jeremy Yuille — The social life of visualization
When 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?
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Tania Lang — Using AJAX to enhance UX
AJAX 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Ruth Ellison — Integrating accessibility into design
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.
When 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Daniel Burka — Changing successfully: Adapting your interface over time
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.
User 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Jeffrey Veen — Designing our way through data
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 9.10am.
The 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?
See the slides and hear the podcast »
August de los Reyes — Predicting the past
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 4.05pm.
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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Teale Shapcott — From ordered to managed usability in an Agile environment
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 11.45am.
Usability 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Derek Featherstone — Accessibility beyond compliance
Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 25 10.45am.
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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
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.
Most 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
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.
Historically 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
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.
So 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Lisa Herrod — User testing for the rest of us
A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.
Everyone 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Jackie Moyes — Converting research findings into business speak
A presentation given at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.
Getting 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Donna Spencer — Getting content right
A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.
We 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Andy Budd — Designing the experience curve
A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.
These 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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Jeremy Yuille — Web visualisation: do you see what I see?
A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.
In this session Jeremy Yuille from ACID looks at information visualisation from a user experience perspective, overviewing new and old examples and how they can help (or hinder) the experience of using the web. You’ll see what kinds of amazing things you can do within the browser platform these days. More importantly you’ll learn why (and when) you’d want to use visualisation at all.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Matt Webb — Movement (Web Directions North Closing Keynote)
A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.
We’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.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Derek Featherstone – Real World Accessibility For Real World People
A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 30 2008.
When we follow the principles of web standards, we write valid HTML and CSS, unobtrusive JavaScript and follow WCAG and other accessibility guidelines. This simple act goes a long way to creating an accessible web site, application or service. At the same time, many sites that don’t utilize all that is good and wholesome about web standards perform surprisingly well when they are used by people with disabilities.
How can we get the best of both worlds to create standards-based solutions that are highly usable for real people (including those with disabilities) in the real world?
In this session, we’ll dissect several examples from real sites and apps to learn about accessibility problems that arise from design and development decisions and what we can do to create a more accessible user experience for all people, regardless of their ability.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
John Allsopp & Dave Shea – Where’s Your Web At? Designing for the Web Beyond the Desktop
A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.
Since the advent of personal computing, we’ve been tied to one place — typically sitting at a desk, with a keyboard and mouse, and in isolation. Even the advent of the web and the wifi-enabled laptop hasn’t much changed this quarter century old paradigm. But with the rise of mobile phones and devices like the Nintendo Wii and PSP featuring first class web browsing, our experience of the web will change dramatically over the coming years. In this context, which design and user experience patterns and techniques we’ve developed over the last 15 years hold up? And… which break?
In this session, Dave Shea and John Allsopp consider the challenges we’ll face as the web devolves onto a myriad devices, and the web is “always on” wherever we are.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Jared Spool — The Dawning of the Age of Experience
A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 8, 2007.
Experience Design is no longer a nice-to-have luxury of a few organizations with tons of money and exceptional visionary management. It’s become commonplace for organizations that build products and web sites. Experience Design is a centerpiece of boardroom discussions and quickly becoming a key performance indicator for many businesses.
However, you can’t just hire a couple of “experience designers” and tell them, “Go do that voodoo that you do so well.” Today’s business environment forces us to build multidisciplinary teams, compiling a diverse group of skills and experiences to handle the many facets of the technical, business, and user requirements. In his usual entertaining and insightful manner, Jared will talk about what it takes to build a design team that meets today’s needs.
He’ll demonstrate how successful Experience Design:
- Must integrate the needs of the users with the requirements of the business
- Is learned, but not available through introspection
- Must be invisible to succeed
- Is cultural
- Is multidisciplinary
- Thrives best in an “educate and administrate” environment
You’ll see examples of designs from Apple’s iPod, Netflix, the Mayo Clinic, and Southwest Airlines, to name a few.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Kelly Goto — Designing for Lifestyle
A presentation given at at Web Directions North, Vancouver, February 8, 2007.
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 »
Stephen Cox — Building ethnography into the design process
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Working in usability and user experience can give you some great insights into the product design process. Yet few organisations know how to take advantage of this information silo. As a user experience expert do you sometimes wish you could have more input into product ideas handed down from above? Ever wanted to have the ear of business strategists? Even be best friends with marketers and sales people? Stephen Cox explores some of the exciting things that can happen when the disciplines of usability and user experience are allowed to seep out into the realms of strategic and tactical design innovation. He approaches the field of ethnographic design research in practical terms illustrating how News Digital Media has come to embrace the idea of extensive customer research, and the benefits that this has brought to different levels of the organisation.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
George Oates — Human traffic
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
If there’s one thing about Web 2.0, it’s that we’re realising that there are actually people using the internet. It’s no longer about Human to Computer interaction, but rather Human to Human. Discover some of the user experience ideas and strategies behind the design of flickr.com, one of the richest Human to Human places on the web today.
See the slides and hear the podcast »
Andy Clarke — Creating Inspired Design
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 29 2006.
Designers are more than mere pixel pushers. The role of the creative designer working on the web has changed and will continue to change faster than ever before. In this session, Andy Clarke will discuss how designers should now play the pivotal part in the creation of engaging user experiences, binding together the roles of information architects, content authors and technical developers. It’s time to put designers in the hot seat. See the slides and hear the podcast »
Kelly Goto — Designing for Lifestyle
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2006.
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 »