UX Australia 2010

How good should your wireframes look? (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:08:53 +0000

In recent projects, some key stakeholders have preferred the look of my wireframes to the look of the visual design guide. The visuals looked great, but what was it about the wireframes? Should I stick to sketchy style in future? Make them deliberately look less finished? But then how do I get honest feedback on my work?

My name is Chris. I am a Designer. I first started playing around with design in high school where I found my first Mac. At first it was just a flyer, a pretty graphic. But then it grew. What really hooked me, what really got under my skin, was when I started designing software. So addictive. So hard to get right.

Portals: The dinosaur in the room (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:07:59 +0000

I’ve worked in media company portal design for 10 years and have decided they the enemy of the users. Portals are monsters that exist for their own benefit and provide little to no enhancement to the user’s online experience. Using examples and drawing on what we know about users, we will take a look at why the era of the portal needs to end.

With close to 20 years experience as a user experience and interface designer (freelance, at Yahoo! and now the ABC), Hilary has worked across a range of high profile website and intranet designs, tutorial products, online stores, kiosks and media portals and IPTV. She has a couple of odd hobbies and lives in a giant cubby house in inner western Sydney.

Strategic interaction design (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:07:12 +0000

Interaction design is often focused at the interface between a person and a system in the form of a series of request-response actions. But interaction design can be positioned at the strategic level when the interaction designer looks at the transition between interactions & touchpoints; and the aggregate effect of these interactions on the overall service experience.

Steve Baty is Principal of Meld Studios, a Sydney-based design studio. He is a strategist with over 14 years of commercial experience; serves as the VP of IxDA, Chair of Interaction 12; editor of Johnny Holland; contributor to UX Matters; and founder of UX Book Club. He likes to fish, but doesn’t get to very often.

Championing UX to the non-UX crowd (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:06:18 +0000

Developing a compelling UX strategy and presenting it in a form & format your business stakeholders can related to is a good way to get traction for user-centred design, especially with stakeholders who don’t fully understand or appreciate the value of great UX.

Stuart Partridge is a User Experience designer for SEEK, Australia’s #1 jobs website, working specifically on SEEK Learning. He’s spent the last twelve years championing the needs of the user to commercial and academic audiences. He feels he’s making some headway.

Working with clients to get better solutions (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:03:58 +0000

As UX practitioners we focus heavily on the user, but this can cause us to undervalue what can be the most crucial input into a design solution – the client. A great client has excellent domain knowledge, harbours years worth of ideas and is able to clearly articulate their goals. This talk will provide tips to make every client a great client as you work together towards a better solution.

Daniel has always been interested in why and how things work, including people – just ask his family, the subjects of many ‘what if’ experiments. So it didn’t take long before Daniel merged and focused his interests on designing things for people to use. He has been designing software for people for about 10 years and currently works as a Senior Experience Designer at Symplicit.

Using participatory design internally (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:03:11 +0000

How can you

quickly ramp up your knowledge in a new domain?
engage stakeholders in the design process and vision?
ensure the project runs smoothly?

In this talk we will share our experience in using participatory design techniques for tapping into internal IP to unearth ideas through problem-solving brainstorming and prototyping, and to ensure engagement and buy-ins from the stakeholders.

Larissa Azevedo has 12 years’ experience in design and design leadership in Australia and the UK. Her currently position is Senior Customer Experience Manager at Westpac Online & ATM. Prior to Westpac, Larissa worked as Head of User Experience at ninemsn.

Users don’t always help (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:02:17 +0000

We all know that usability testing can sometimes miss the mark, no matter what we do the test subject can never be completely unaffected by the situation they are asked to take part in. This was never more obvious than our first usability tests on a multi-touch, multi-person device. What then?

Sally Bieleny leads the User Experience team at Object Consulting. She is fascinated by people and the way they interact with technology and has been involved in designing websites, web applications and intranets. More recently multi-touch interactions for Microsoft Surface, multi-touch screens, mobile phones and the new iPad are stretching her design capabilities in new directions.

Evidence-based design (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:01:18 +0000

At SEEK, we value insights supported by evidence that provide a deep understanding of the utility and usage of our products. This helps us prioritise enhancements that will result in the biggest improvement to experiences. I’ll discuss a couple of case studies from the past year.

Rob is a SEEK veteran. Over 10 years he has worked in sales, service, UI dev and most recently UX. Rob is passionate about measuring the impact of design changes and using analytics to increase uptake and performance of online products and features.

Rumble in the jungle – Flash v HTML5 (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:00:26 +0000

In the red corner, the reigning champion of video on the web: Flash! In the blue corner, a new rising star – HTML5! Will Flash continue its winning run or has it met its match? Who should UX practitioners cheer for and why? How will this affect how we design sites with video? Should we even care?

Agile acceptance tests (10-minute talk)

donna — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:57:27 +0000

This talk is about how we use Agile Acceptance Tests. These tests are a mix of a function test and an acceptance test. First the developers complete the UI layouts from the UI Guidelines and Wireframes. Then the UI is tested using the test scripts that have been created from the user stories.

I am a technical communicator and user experience designer, so I have seen the good and the bad. I love working with people, sorting out large content, and putting the user experience first in web design.