Yahnyinlondon

Living in London since 2003

The International Day of Awesome

As part of the International Day of Awesome, they suggested writing a blog post about someone you think epitomizes the ideals of awesomeness. If there was anyone who epitomized awesomeness, it is my soon-to-be husband, Bradley Wright.

Not only is he so awesome, that he even has his own awesome pose — The Awesome Pose of Bradley Wright — he’s one of the most talented web developers out there… he even built this website for me! Plus anyone who can put up living with me, deserves a medal.

I’m sure you’re all retching at this super, sappy post, so I’ll finish it here!

Brad's Uluru Awesome Pose

EUROIA 2009 - Day 1, Copenhagen - Part 2

Stanislaw Skorka - Users do not like any changes

  • Director of Main Library at Pedagogical University of Cracow
  • Talking about task analysis - What their goals are and what they actually do to achieve these goals. How their previous knowledge helps them achieve this.
  • Book to read: Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior (Library and Information Science)
  • 5 examples: Buying products, finding in library, betting on horse races, finding the law, I want to know more about cancer? I am confused…
  • Comparing Amazon display to library catalogue. Seems like we missed a trick to improve the experience!
  • Functions of a Library Catalogue by Charles A. Cutter (1904) from Rules for a Dictionary  - Interesting to see the main goals are still the same over 100 years later.
  • Librarians used to find us physical books, now they are search engines!
  • OPAC = Online Public Access Catalogue. Consistent system across all libraries which allows for integration.
  • Interesting way of checking the navigation labels - Taking a screenshot with these options and allowing people to write what they thought the terms were.
  • Final result was a cleaner, simpler interface with labels that people understood. However they had a negative reaction due to changes in the log-in / account details.

Webnographer - Low Cost Ethnography Techniques

Whilst the presenters, Sabrina Mach & James Page, seemed like lovely people, I didn’t like the selling aspect of this talk. I thought this was about different techniques for ethnography, guess I should read the fine print next time!

  • The debate about whether ethnography conducted over a short period of time is actually ethnography. We want to be applying deeper conceptions and discarding crude and inaccurate assumptions.
  • Film to watch: Kitchen Stories, Swedish Film.
  • Discount Ethnography equals cultural tourism?
  • Ethnography is about participation and immersion in culture. How do we replicate this on the cheap?
  • Ethnography costs dollars and it doesn’t fit in with sped up agile development processes.
  • Webnographer is their tool that they are developing.
  • Like the way they fit in a jolly to a conference with their ethnographic research?
  • Important to use both digital and real life research.
  • Important to get the team involved. Eat your own dog food.
  • Book to read: Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology (740) of Knowledge
  • Fight between Idealists and Utopians.
  • Gurus are less likely to be open to change. They don’t want to be a novice again.
  • People find lab testing boring. As time wears on, they lose interest.

Maria Cristina Lavazza - From shelves to mobile devices

I was particularly interested in this session because it’s not often that you hear about the IA of food. Given it is something that is so central in our lives, it is quite surprising I’ve never really seen it mentioned before.

From shelves to mobile devices, structures change - Euroia09 - M. C. Lavazza
View more presentations from maria cristina lavazza.

  • Time in everyday life is a key factor.
  • The future is cross-channel integration.
  • Another mention of the bridge experience at EUROIA. This is where we are now.
  • Spimes connect experiences of space and time.
  • Grocery shows peculiar features: repetitive, widely used, visual and high touch, developed careful and pervasive marketing tools.
  • 37% of grocery consumption is considered very poor in real life.
  • Carrefour slowed down their online offerings as they weren’t sure of their success.
  • Countries like Italy with a strong food culture have a very low uptake of e-groceries.
  • Maybe mobile / web could enhance experience rather than replace it.
  • How do we replicate the real life experience online? Tesco is a good example but it still doesn’t come close.
  • 1 channel, 3 steps, n services.
  • The pod JOYA looks good but what does it do?
  • Easy Grocery is a 3d shopping experience. Looks like Second Life for shopping.
  • RFID allows better tracking and overcomes issues with out of date barcodes.
  • NFC is the RFID for mobile. Safeway allows people to scan products, find out more and add them to their shopping list, then send ahead their order.
  • Biometric Payments - Paying by touch?
  • Mobile brings intermediacy and urgency. Brings personal ownership. Best to let the customer dictate the appropriate time and place.
  • A digital ecosystem, a combination of balance and coherence.
  • We must move the experience out from it’s original habitat.

Martijn Klompenhouwer & Adam Cox (User Intelligence) - Web Analytics & User Experience

A lot of this was stating the obvious for me but it’s definitely great for anyone unfamiliar with combining these methods. The book sounds like it would be a great primer.

Combining Methods: Web Analytics and User Research
View more documents from User Intelligence.

  • Book to read: The Handbook of Global User Experience Research
  • What is web analytics - Where are they coming from, what are they doing and where and when they are leaving.
  • Web analytics is often seen as boring, their implementation is not always correct, often end up with a huge chunk of data without adequate interpretation.
  • User research has data from only a small number of people, it’s just a snapshot in time, it’s difficult to capture some behaviour and the setting can be artificial (in a lab etc).
  • The two methodologies help each other. User research helps interpret the data, data can focus the research. Improving the pool of information strengthens your argument.
  • The example of an unexpected landing page, is something WA can pick up which UR can investigate.
  • The example of preparing a usability test. Created a scenario based on these entry paths (Google)
  • The example of advanced functionalities. What are people using? There was actually no data on the features.
  • The example of unintended user flows. People not using internal search of a website. User research noticed that the page offered no reasons to stay.
  • Web analytics can validate findings. Only 2/10 test participants experienced this problem. Quantified this issue with the data of thousands of visitors.
  • The combined methods can be used throughout the process. One report without conflicting information.
  • Even basic analysis helps, although the tools do not magically provide the insights. You can measure the impact of your changes. We should have access to this data, as we have information of the how and why.

IA Shuffle - Specialists in Design, do they breed failure?

  • With larger teams things get lost in translation.
  • They just used the “D” word.