Web Directions User Experience 2008 continues from the morning after a filling lunch in a packed Melbourne town hall.

Jackie Moyes – Converting Research Data into Business Speak

Use of Core personas, compare design ideas, and feature analysis against the personas requirements. Will they use it.

Use of core case studies, short one page, based on emtographic research

Design is about negotiation process.

Use of feature analysis via competitor analysis. Looking at what the audience want of the features the persona wants via

Design is innovation.

Innovation in the wrong area is a waste of time.

Use of mental model or concept models to find things that the site doesn’t support and the frequency of use over the scenario.

Use of research card to promote an the creation of an idea to tie in the information and stimulating new ideas.

Design tools should be standalone, digestible but snappy. Having bag of tools is handy for the design process. Big documents are a waste of time, easy to consume without secondary assistance.

Jeremy Yulile – Web Visualisation

Examples of visualisation bring in different media and data communicated in a simple manner with images. Cross linking on visualisations of metaphors.

Glue together maps for visualisation maps – modest maps. Example history of real estate.

Simile project – structure information over time. use of overview to focus views.

Google visualisation API – easy to prototype

Trend Analyzer – triggered a lot of interest in this technology.

Diputy,com – integrate flickr and twitter without using a flash plugin.

Vistualisation with flash and flex using boot strap on the libraries such are flare,

Use rest, xml-rcp

Book: Concepts of visualisation – Edward Tufle

Book: Visualising Data – Ben Fry, “you can see the forest and the trees at the same time”

Organic information design. Structure of activity over geographic activity. Visualisation interaction and massage the data, people are more connected with data is they can interact with it.

Patterns and Types, user experience visualisation should be related to the aspect of the type of activity that is being observed.

Robert Hoekman Jr – The Essential Elements of Great Web Application

Open with a line from the counting crows.

Best web apps are based on psychology and design principles.

People don’t know why we do what we do. We go with what we known, what we have experienced before. There is a lot of different between the hypothetical scenario and the real life behaviours of people.

Understand users, then ignore them.

Sometimes support for web apps are not from massive customer research. These teams are solving the micro activity problem with a focused simple application. Understand users behaviour, then solve the activity problems.

Tree houses and IxD.. huh! over the top refined treehouses!

We don’t really want more than we need, We think we do, but in reality we don’t. Multiple options for features can get in the way.

Build only what is absolutely necessary, focus on building the 80/20 rule. Focus on the activity of the core feature list not the audience requirements.

Eg Senduit… focus on the core activity. This can be applied to even complex systems.

Implementation model follows the system design. We have to relate the ideas and process. So we have to support the users mental model. Eg deleting a file, use of mental model designs.

Help users to understand the interface, lead them, Help them get up to speed.

Things need to easy, People wan to feel right and press the big red button.

Prevent Errors, and handle the rest gracefully. Task flows and applications, stop errors from occurring or bad experience. Allow a high degree of forgiveness.

Design for consistency, maintain meaning, uniformity.

Reduce, reduce, reduce, refine what it left.

Key to good design is clear communication!

And that wraps Web Directions User Experience 2008.

After a workshop with Andy Budd yesterday and an evening with the WSG, it was time for Web Directions User Experience 2008 conference proper. With a packed out the Melbourne Town Hall with a focused not a the general web process but the user experience.

Andy Budd – Designing the Experience Curve

Initial and end experiences are the ones that are memorable.

Negative experiences stand out more than the positive experiences

We don’t have experiences in a vacuum, they are supplemented by the previous experiences

References to Hierarchy Needs. Online experience is not at as intense and positive as the off line world. Often they are just barely functionally adequate.

First impression really do count. they set the expectations for the experience. It can be easy to get the experience wrong. Visual impressions for attractive people, products will entice the consumer. The same can be said for packaging, for example for an Ipod. This is a little like geek porn. WTF!

Games slowly builds up the game play functionality layer on layer. Show them the functionality to get them excited.

Newbie overlaid help functionality and explanation of the screen items.

Attention to details is important, this makes the experience more seamless. Car door sounds, and smells, are part of the experience.

Personalisation and Customisation can be very powerful in the user experience space.

Game and online world customisation of characters and avatars in the online world. People react to small amount of peronalisation and feel locked into a online community, they will tend not to leave the community as there is a degree or loyalty.

customisation of standardised drinks at Starbucks,

Small details, can be use for a delightful experience. Personality in the experience is important.

Constant feedback on the experience is very important. rewarding that you are progressing in the experience via the use subtle cues

Learn from real world experience and transfer them to the web.

Tell people what point they are up to at an point in time – eg Kayak

Point of failure is the best opportunity to make positive experience.

We are programmed to collect and explorer. People like to collect, but leader boards can produce a negative effect.

Pull holistic experience from the real world into the web experience. Negative experience is just a lack of a positive experience.

Andrew Kesper – ABC Election Site: Making the most of the dry data

Needed to revamp site to latest environmental specification. Resused existing solutions, just restyled them, this allowed focus on not tools for interactivity.

Use video and audio elements, the interactive prediction calculator, live news feed, and interactive focus on changing seats.

7000 hits per second, 10,000 plus connections. Flat files with flat server side includes, quick and simple as possible. High usage of flash and javascript. One css and Javascript file, cached, the allowed for.

Used inner-html to insert a table row and render changes for the house of reps calculator. Used Yahoo JS library.

Used GMap component using Google maps API with Flash. API allowed overlay of Flash movie, allowing for zoom in instead of using the vector coordinates, Flash maps accessing same XML files. Wanted to use Google Geo code, cross scripting problems, finally used scripting tags feed to web page then to flash element.

Animated bar charts. – use javascript with manual onload event firing at end of page, used pre width determination.

Donna Spencer – Getting Content Right

People like to be user centric with in a social. People learn well from a narrative.

Figure out the Whys, who cares, so what of the content.

It’s about focus on the customer not your needs. You are not important.

Content needs to have voice, voice that will engage and promote people to read the information. It has to speak to the audience and feel like there is degree of care.

Ensure that the voice is one real voice. Avoid the content to be written by committee. Write as you speak, make it a conversation with the reader. But to do this you really have to find your voice.

Show and Tell. Now that is not diagramming, images graphic, Writing it, but remember a picture says a thousand words. Illustration can sum up the information within seconds.

Donna then illustrated these principles with the rewording and restricting of the content.
Really focus on writing like you are having a conversation with the person reading the page.

Creation of persona for the web to encapsulate consist voice. Place persona into style guide, words used, examples of content and approach.

Me thinks Donna is become a bit of a Petrol Head with all her TopGear passion.

Technorati Tags: wds, wds08, wdsux, web+directions, conference, US, user+experience