The RHC

Experience Architect - UTS Student - Aston Villa Supporter

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The Five Obstructions Trailer

Source: YouTube

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IxDA Sydney!

I entered the world of IxDA (Interaction Design Association) today and I must say I am impressed. A free catered event with great speakers in a fantastic office space.

In case you don’t know, IxDA is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2003 with more than 30,000 members and over 120 local groups around the world. The network focus on interaction design issues for all levels of experience. A former colleague from News Limited is a co-founder of the Sydney chapter and often encouraged me to attend the event.

This month’s meet up was held at Atlassian's office on George Street in the city. Creative spaces are usually inspiring places and the Atlassian office certainly delivered, from the stocked fridge through to the pool room, the venue unquestionably ticked all the boxes. 

The principal topic of the event was the intersection of Interaction Design, Service Design, and Design Thinking. Each of the speakers on the night had their merits but my personal favourite talk was skilful presented by Anthony Quinn. Anthony’s time is split between being the Customer Experience Principal at Westpac and a visual artist. I especially enjoyed his unorthodox approach to presenting, whereby Anthony revealed the headings of his talk and invited the audience to select the order in which he would present. 

The event concluded with a snippet from a Danish a film by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, “The Five Obstructions”, demonstrating creative work can be a success regardless of what restrictions are placed upon it.

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Audience engagement! A very important element especially if you want to be heard!

Source: Compete Pulse

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The UX book club

Delivering on a promise from a previous post I recently attended the Sydney UX Book Club. The event was conveniently held at the News Limited offices in Liverpool Street, where I am currently based. I believed the event would be a great opportunity to meet  seasoned UX professionals and absorb their views and theories. The book to be discussed was ‘Content Strategy for the web’ by Kristina Halverson. 

During the early stages I discovered the discussion may take a different path than I originally expected. Contrary to my earlier assumption, the group comprised of an eclectic mix of people and backgrounds ranging from university academics to business entrepreneurs, fortunately a number of User Experience professionals also made up the mix.

With the blend of different backgrounds the discussion was constantly zestful and captivating. However, after a member delivered a brief synopsis, the content of the book was rarely touched upon. Conversions drifted between different topics and discussed primarily subjectively. All the correct indigents for a engaging debate but occasionally lacking in the substantiation which a greenhorn like myself would have benefited from.

Despite the fact the discussion covered many topics which were not exclusively UX related I throughly enjoyed listening and contributing during the gathering. I plan to pay the UX Book Club another visit in the future, perhaps after I have finished my own personal reading list.

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Why I Tumblr?

When I first considered creating a blog I thought about my primary and secondary audiences. Who do I want to read my blog? Naturally, as a post graduate university student, I expect that my course tutor will access it to keep an eye on my internship progress. As a professional blog of my work it is aimed at prospective employers and fellow UX colleagues. I wanted the blog to appeal to my secondary audience - relatives and friends and provide a social networking function. Therefore, the tone and content of my blog will need to be appropriate and appealing to all my prospective audiences. 

Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress are all blogging platforms that are extensively used by bloggers all around the world but I wanted to try something new. Tumblr has become one of the fastest-growing social networking and blogging websites with presently 89.3 million blogs and 40.4 billion posts. (http://www.tumblr.com/about) 

Tumblr allows me to publicise my blog to be instantly shared with a range of social and professional networks such as; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thus I can create the ability for a huge audience to see my work very quickly. 

A further consideration was that tumblr, without diminishing the credibility of the content, encourages simple posts. Tumblr allows you to tag your posts and then they are seen by Tag Editors. If your piece is of great quality, they can choose to promote it to everyone following that tag. 

Some bloggers will find Blogging on Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress relatively easy but others may find them confusing, you can drag and drop widgets, changes to page widths, and heights, essentially alter practically anything. The same can be said about Tumblr. Although Tumblr does not allow you to change the locations too easily, you can still customise them so you are different from anyone else using your theme.

While Tumblr’s simplicity is one of the major reasons for it’s popularity, their are probably more reasons why the platform continues to grow in spite of rivals mimicking their features.

Darnell Clayton, Blogging Pro 2011

Principally, I selected tumblr because I have already had exposure to WordPress and Blogger and therefore, wanted to try something new. Also from the data, Tumblr appears to be an up and coming platform in terms of user’s engagement. On researching the various blogging sites, I came to the conclusion that the Tumblr interface is simple and stylish Tumblr is more fun and it is easier to follow people with the same interests as myself. 

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Working The Room

Looked at the possibility of joining a number of Sydney based UX groups. This will assist my career development enabling me to develop relationships, promote the exchange of ideas and create a positive impression with people which may assist my career in the future.

“Networking is becoming increasingly more strategic and sophisticated. A skilled networker is recognised as a more ‘rounded’ employee – someone who can tap into their network for specialist knowledge, pursue new business leads, gather market intelligence, source new strategic alliances and raise the profile of their organisation.'

http://www.londonhr.org/networking-tips.php

Networking internally will help to raise my profile and strengthen relationships. External networking will allow me to exchange best practice and latest ideas with colleagues in the digital industry, benchmark my performance and hopefully, give me inspiration. 

Networking is often referred to as ‘working the room’ but for me it is about mutual gain and developing a long term dialogue with colleagues. I have done some research to ensure that I join the most appropriate group(s). As I anticipate that such a venture will also assist in building my confidence with my verbal skills, I will prepare some conversation opening lines.

After much consideration I have decided to join the following associations/groups:

IxDA Sydney UX Book Club

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BST

Just experienced my first summer in England for five years! The weather was good (not too much rain). The day of my friend’s wedding was glorious wall to wall sunshine and a great time was had by all. It was good to meet up with friends that I had not seen for some time. Now back at my desk a little jet lagged but the two week space from work, and long flight, has given me time to reflect and the opportunity to do some reading.

I think that it is now the time to invite my university course supervisors to meet me in the workplace to discuss my experiences to date.

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The new redesigned Vogue website launches today! 

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Bon Voyage

Busy preparing for a short break back to the UK to attend a friend’s wedding. Minus point – the long flight and jet lag. Plus points – seeing the family and friends, a decent cup of Yorkshire tea and the church of Aston Villa FC.

The first nine weeks at News Ltd have passed quickly and I have had a huge learning experience. The Vogue website goes live at the end of the month. Feedback on the work I have completed during this period had been positive. Meetings with my direct report in the department has been valuable in discussing my learning and development needs.  To date I have identified the need to improve my public speaking and presentation skills and I have asked for help. Hopefully my confidence in these areas will improve with experience.

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Newsletter

A small job arrived in my inbox this morning, a newsletter sign up review. It may sound slightly geeky but I have always been captivated by web forms and their best practices. Web forms are a prominent form of interaction with a clearly defined goal between users and the web. A web form is often the last and perhaps the key interaction of a user’s journey on a site. Therefore, getting the process right is pivotal to the success or failure of a web venture. As you would expect there is not a lack of opinions and articles on the subject:

http://uxmovement.com/forms/8-reasons-users-arent-filling-out-your-sign-up-form/ http://www.uxforthemasses.com/forms-usability/ http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/getting-a-forms98 http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/20-great-sign-up-form-examples-to-learn-from/

Before I dived deep into the plethora of information of the subject my thoughts were focused on how should I complete a heuristic review of the current sign in. My initial exposure to a heuristic reviews through the literature from Jakob Nielsen was a rewarding experience. Therefore I decided to conduct a small search to uncover any alternative methods. I decided to proceed with the below article from Smashing Magazine, principally due to the contemporary approach taken by the author.

http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/16/guide-heuristic-website-reviews/

Even though the evaluation is based on a review of a website I felt the basic principles were transferable. Devising a scoring system and then representing the data visually in a radar diagram was an interesting concept. Presenting the data visually also allowed me to create a direct comparison with a competitor deemed to be employing good practices. The results revealed a startling issue, the trust and credibility pillar scored very poorly!  As a form could potentially be collecting sensitive personal information, earning a users trust and being transparent is paramount. Fortunately the level of trust can be established between a user and web site/form with the careful placement of text. This copy should clearly outline how the users data will be used and pacify any concerns regarding receiving spam emails.

Finishing the project, although a gratifying experience, highlighted the necessity to continue studying the topic. With such an abundance of material available, online and offline, my appetite should satisfied comfortably. To facilitate my learning objectives I plan to read  Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski foreseeable futur

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User Experience Honeycomb

Source: Semantic Studios

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What Do You Know?

On 16 August attended conference for 250 delegates organised by Web Directions entitled “What do you know?” Eleven contributors each gave five minute keynote presentations on such subjects as:

Designing information feedback in mobile apps Moving to a 3D Web in CSS Creative Coworking Why working together is better

The comprehensive list of subjects and contributors is on: http://whatdoyouknow.webdirections.org/sydney

The most relevant presentation from my point of view was “Improving the Web EX by Biometrics” by Martin Tomitsch because of its relevance to UX. The presentation explored how elements of nature can be used in the design of interfaces. Martin kindly uploaded his presentation to Slideshare. The points raised on the divine proportion were of great interest, a simple but exceptionally powerful concept. 

http://www.slideshare.net/martintomitsch/improving-the-web-experience-through-biomimetics

Jared Wyles contributed with another standout talk, a totally irrelevant speech but nevertheless a funny one...

This was my first experience of such a gathering, where concise updating of current progress in web development was offered and also the opportunity for networking with a broad spectrum of colleagues in the industry. On reflection with four colleagues from USiT it was agreed that such events are essential elements of a UX professional. Reiterating a previous comment from a colleague  “Its not what you learn before 5pm, its what you learn after”. Also it provides an opportunity for space and time to run through ideas and thoughts away from the normal workplace.

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Hush Hush

For the past week or so I have predominately been engaged on a major project with the Principal Experience Architect – due to company confidentiality I cannot go into a great amount of detail. However, this work reminded me of the necessity for this type of work to be well structured, relevant and accurate. I was generally engaged in creating and amending wireframes ready for delivery to visual design. The work accomplished by the visual designers was fascinating, a good designer can enhance a site so that it forms a personality of its own and I do not believe I will ever tire of witnessing the evolution - especially with my own wireframes : )

During the later part of this week I gained my first exposure to an online survey and observed the live results. It is very intriguing to learn how professional surveys built and how the data is interpreted.  By my own admission, I am still relatively inexperienced to research techniques, for example, why and when to use quantitative methods over a qualitative approach. The UX matters article Strengths and Weaknesses of Quantitative and Qualitative Research provides an analyses of the techniques and illustrates how both techniques can be harmonized. Nevertheless, I understand quantitative research completed via an online survey can be cost efficient, faster to deliver and a capture a large segment of your audience.

Due to an impending holiday I unfortunately will not see the final result of the teams hard work. Hopefully I can reengage with the project when I return.

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1. Visibility of system status 2. Match between system and the real world 3. User control and freedom 4. Consistency and standards 5. Error prevention 6. Recognition rather than recall 7. Flexibility and efficiency of use 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design 9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors 10. Help and documentation

Jakob Nielsen

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Microsite

This week I completed my first project individually, all be it a small project, still an accomplishment. The venture involved a complete a user interface review then redesign of page advertising a frequent event in Sydney. My first objective was to read any relevant literature on the subject of  UI evaluations, fortunately a colleague recommended the following superb resources from Jakob Nielsen:

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/severityrating.html

Overall I found the UI review a straight forward exercise, most of the issues present on the page could confidently be fixed by applying practical judgment. However, I discovered articulating these problems, without sounding condescending, more problematic. A colleague suggested it can be easy to sound like the ‘UX Police’ when conducting a review, therefore it is good practice to also praise the site/page when appropriate. This advice helped tremendously and the stakeholder was receptive to my appraisal.

Before commencing the redesign I decided to study design patterns to gain a further understanding on user behavior.  There are a variety of different resources on the topic, below is a small selection:

http://quince.infragistics.com/UX-Design-Patterns.aspx  http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/ Don't Make Me Think (review to follow)

Equipped with this fresh knowledge  I enthusiastically began the redesign in Axure, a prototyping tool. Fortunately during my masters degree I had a sizable amount of exposure to Axure. The software allows wireframes or prototypes to be generated with some easy, libraries containing common screen elements, such as carousels, calendars etc can also be downloaded and then positioned into a page.

The opportunity to work on a task independently was fantastic learning experience, especially on a live project with real deadlines and stakeholders. Although the project was completed autonomously the support and guidelines provided colleagues was invaluable, especially during the genesis of the project.

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Vogue & Beyond

For the past couple of weeks I have been relocated to the Vogue offices within News Life Media to support the relaunch of the new Vogue website. This immense project has been skilfully undertaken by a colleague and a past UTS intern. My tasks principally focused on the creation of various different components to placed in the right hand column on a number of pages within the site. As I had joined the project team close to its anticipated launch, time was of the essence and a fast pace required. ‘Stand up’ meetings occurred at the start of each day with each person giving a daily report of progress to date.

This project was extremely stimulating experience and informative as the components I worked on would come to fruition on a live site! The project dealt with a number of different stakeholders and their feedback made me appreciate how much there is to take into account on a site of this magnitude. The process allowed me to reflect on the different facets of developing a digital product and restrictions that must be considered, being either technical or time based. I also discovered for a project to be successful a close working relationship between the visual designers, developers and UX practitioners should be continually maintained.

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The Spectrum of User Experience

C'mon everyone loves a good Venn diagram

Source: iA