Advanced usability testing

Overview

Most usability professionals learned their skills by reading books on usability testing or by watching someone else prepare and conduct tests. But how do we know that the particular way we learned to do usability testing is still the best way? Until the Comparative Usability Evaluation (CUE) project, there was little opportunity for usability professionals to objectively compare their various approaches. As it turns out, there are some striking differences in effectiveness.

This talk gives rare insights into the practical doings of usability professionals, normally shrouded behind walls of confidentiality. This tutorial is not based on the personal opinions of one or two instructors but on the practical accumulated experience – both good and bad – of the more than 120 professional usability teams who participated in the CUE projects, conducting controlled usability tests in realistic, industrial settings.

If you’re a usability professional who has conducted a number of tests, here is an opportunity to assess and improve your skills in the key areas of task creation and communicating usability test results. Invest two hours in this great tune-up!

Biography

Rolf Molich owns and manages DialogDesign, a small Danish usability consultancy. Rolf conceived and coordinated the comparative usability evaluation studies CUE-1 through CUE-9 where a total of more than 120 professional usability teams tested or reviewed the same applications. Rolf has worked with usability since 1984. Rolf is the co-inventor of the heuristic inspection method (with Jakob Nielsen). Rolf is an experienced speaker, who regularly gets high ratings from participants for his useful and frank presentation style.

Sensory UX

Overview

A workshop on ideas and issues of post screen UX – the opportunities of Sensory UX and neuroplasticity and the problems of shared meaning and content.  Workshopping both academic research, project work with a couple of practical exercises to get participants to understand more about their own senses and their personal assumptions about language and meaning. It’d only be a start as the issues are very broad and it’s also a new area that combines research and practical work I do.

Biography

Alastair Somerville is a specialist in information accessibility for people with visual and/or cognitive impairments. Working with clients and users, he designs maps, diagrams and books that convert visual information into tactile or high contrast formats.

Designing Better Experiences

Overview

This workshop delves into the core principles of user centred design and how it can help designers, developers and product owners build better experiences for their users. Through hands-on activities we will explore techniques for implementing a better and more agile UCD process from researching and gathering requirements to evaluating and refining your designs.

By putting our user at the centre of our design process we can create better and more delightful, empathic experiences. Many organisations are waking up to the benefits of user research driven interaction and interface design. In this workshop, through practical activities and real-world examples we will teach you techniques for effectively gathering requirements and prototyping, testing and refining designs when faced with constraints such as budget and time.

You’ll learn:

• The importance of user research driven design
• Striking a balance between user and client needs
• Techniques for understanding and gathering user requirements
• Participatory design techniques and tips for running design workshops and critiques
• Evaluating designs through effective usability testing

Matt Gibson Bio

Matt is Production Director at Cyber-Duck where he spearheads all design work from the early research and planning stages, to sketching and designing interfaces, right through to helping deliver HTML/CSS code.  Matt regularly speaks at leading conferences and meet-ups, as well as mentoring students at his alma mater, UEL. He is passionate about making things better and more delightful to use and will be sharing his experiences and tips from the front-line in his workshop on putting the user at the centre of design process.

Danny Bluestone Bio

Danny is a self-taught designer and created Cyber-Duck in 2005 out of his love for his favorite rubber duck and passion to fuse design, usability and technology into a superior user experience. Since 2005 Danny has been heavily investing in perfecting Cyber-Duck’s user centred design (UCD) process. During 2013, Danny was voted by BIMA as one of the UK’s hot 100 digital professionals. He works with young communities such as the Coding Club, Young Rewired State (YRS) on initiatives to help educate the young. Danny is also with the University of Hertfordshire and helps educate students on lean project management.