Past events

2008:

2007:

2006 and older:

Prototyping – the landscape and review of Axure RP Pro, 23rd June 2009

User Centred Design (UCD) intrinsically requires the iterative development and testing of prototypes. Over the years there have been many approaches to prototyping and today a number of different approaches are still in common use throughout our discipline. Tonight's presentation will first provide an overview of the prototyping landscape. It will then provide a review and demonstration of Axure RP Pro, a-state-of-the-art dedicated prototyping tool. This will include explanation of how Axure RP Pro can be used to design wireframes and interactions, produce specification documents, and produce functioning prototypes designed for usability testing. If you have always wanted to learn more about how prototyping can be applied as part of your development design process, tonight's event will be a valuable introduction to this topic.

Alan Trow-Poole, User Experience Designer and Information Architect at the Icon Studio

Alan has 26 years experience in the IT industry and a blue chip background - working for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), he was promoted to the rank of Senior Consultant. He has 15 years experience as a UX/AI/Usability professional working for e.g., PeopleSoft, nPower and Bank of America. His international experience covers the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and the USA. As a trainer/educator: Alan has been a guest lecturer on Design for the WWW at the University of California. He earned the "President's Award for Excellence" for his training contribution on the launch of Manman/X at ASK computers. Alan also contributed to "HTML publishing on the internet" (2nd edition) - an international best seller.

Ritch Macefield, Director and HCI Consultant at Shannon-Weaver Ltd and Co-founder of AXTrainers

Ritch has 24 years experience in the IT industry and a blue chip background - working for Data General Corporation, he was promoted to be the UK's youngest ever Senior Consultant. He has 12 years experience as a UX/AI/Usability professional working for e.g., Electronic Data Systems (EDS), UniLever and British Gas. Ritch is also a published author on usability in referred journals/books, and was part of the editorial team for the "Encyclopedia of human computer interaction" (2007). As a trainer/educator: Ritch is a qualified technology teacher (Cert. Ed), European Union (EU) approved "IT trainer-trainer" and has spent 16 years as a part-time Senior University Lecturer (Associate Professor) in IT. He has qualified as a licensed Master Practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming (Master/Prac NLP), has a certificate in NLP Techniques for Advanced Learning and Facilitation, and a certificate in Transactional Analysis (TA). Ritch has also published numerous papers on IT education and advanced communications skills in referred journals/books, as well as co-authoring three books on IT and education.

Improving Website Usability Using Google Website Optimiser, 6th May 2009

Design is very subjective, one man's meat is another man's poison. A website may look ‘pretty' in your opinion, but design is not just about how something looks, it has a job to do – it needs to be usable. If your design is not doing the job it's supposed to do, i.e. making you money, it doesn't matter if it looks nice. Many arguments have been had (and time wasted) choosing one design over another, "I think that one is better!", "why?", "erm… I don't know, it looks better?". To borrow a phrase from Harry Hill, "There's only one way to find out... fight!"

We prefer not to spill blood these days and that's where Google Website Optimiser comes in; science to the rescue. By measuring which page layout is more effective at achieving the desired conversion we can quickly determine which design is best and learn from that to help make design decisions easier in the future. One image or line of copy may mean the difference between being profitable or not. We'll be using lots of case studies to show you how we've started using Google Website Optimizer to run A/B Split and Multivariate Tests in the development of a social networking/gaming site and share some of the mistakes and lessons learned. It would then be good to open the meeting up to discuss how to use optimisation tools to improve website usability.

Steve Young – Creative Director at WeeWorld

With over 12 years experience in the web-design sphere Steve graduated from Product Design from GSA in '96. He soon became an early adopter of Flash and after an exciting and varied career path was later responsible for the conception of the WeeWorld site and WeeMee avatar engine. At WeeWorld Steve built a team of talented designers, flash developers, illustrators, animators and coders. He also manages many 3rd party relationships round the world and is responsible for the creative look and feel of the WeeWorld product and its future.

Jim Williams – Web Analyst at WeeWorld

A passionate advocate of using analytics to drive website design - Jim has been working in web analytics since 2002 starting in pharmaceuticals and e-commerce sectors before moving into consultancy. At WeeWorld Jim has introduced innovative data based decision making processes to manage product and marketing strategy. Typically using web analytics and user testing to initially poorly performing areas of the site before employing tools such as Google Website Optimizer to experiment with design improvements and improve website conversions. Jim is also President of the Scottish UPA and an active member of the Web Analytics Association.

Web Accessibility update - new guidelines and standards for web accessibility, 31st March 2009

Chris Rourke and Mark Palmer from User Vision talk about two web accessibility documents, WCAG 2.0 and PAS 78.

The guidelines for designing accessible websites, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), have recently changed. The long awaited and fairly controversial WCAG 2.0 were finally released at the end of last year and organisations should be reviewing their sites against these rather than the original WCAG 1.0 which were starting to look a bit outdated as the web developed. Chris will provide a brief overview of the WCAG 2 guidelines, the four POUR principles on which they are based, why they have been controversial, and resources for learning more.

Another landmark document for accessibility, in the UK at least, is the PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites which was launched in 2006. The document is currently in the process of being graduated up to a full Standard available from BSI. Mark will provide an update on that and the potential impact that is likely to have on businesses with a web presence.

Designing for Dyslexia, 28th January 2009

As an introduction and insight into Designing for Dyslexia, Jean Alcock from JARCS discussed usability problems that dyslexia sufferers experience. This was followed by Paul Griffiths from Texthelp Systems Ltd* who spoke about the appropriate legislation, Disability Discrimination Act 1995. He also identified those people who have difficulty in using ICT and highlighted how adding audio to a web site can improve the user experience for people who may have dyslexia, mild visual impairments, English as a second language or low literacy skills.

* Texthelp have been developing software for helping ICT users improve their reading and writing skills for over 12 years. Industry leaders in assisting the 'print disabled community' with literacy and assistive technology solutions.

Building the Usability Profession, Microsoft Offices Edinburgh, 3rd December 2008

How do usability consultants build careers and gain seniorirty in their organisations? In more mature organisations, this is by meeting well-defined competency criteria. This evening's presentation is designed to help you plan a career in usability, at a time when the profession gets increasingly defined and organised.

The latest edition of the UK competency framework for the IT sector, Skills Framework for the Information Age is released on 4th December. Over 70 roles are defined in up to 7 levels, with each one having a six-page description that forms the basis of many job contracts.

In SFIA v3, three separate usability roles were added to the pre-existing two in ergonomics/human factors. In SFIA v4 these roles have been refined to give a sense of progression through your career. For example the highest level of the "Human Factors Integration" role includes more strategic objectives in "work activities":

Attend this meeting to find out how you can raise the profile of usability in your organisation and enhance your career.

All attendees are welcome to join SUPA for some early Christmas drinks across the road in the Voodoo Rooms after the meeting.

Tom McEwan

Tom is responsible for the commercialisation of Informatics research at Napier, and is also treasurer of BCS Interaction SG, where his responsibilities include funding usabilitynews.com, which he helped set up. He is also PR Officer for the BCS Edinburgh Branch, a past Director of ScotlandIS and a reviewer for SFIA. In these various roles he seeks to bring together the sperate related communities in user-centred design, human computer interaction, accessibility etc. Over ten years at Napier he has pioneered new degrees in web design, multimedia and e-commerce and worked with industry on many different types of usability-related projects. Before Napier he was Technical Director of an SME and a software engineer with Unisys.

Exchange of Ideas: Agile/XP and User Experience, Edinburgh University Informatics Forum, 12th November 2008

The first of an annual series of expert panels to exchange ideas by exploring recent approaches that aim to ensure better and more cost-effective systems development. Two leading Scottish practitioners, Jim Williams and Adrian Williamson, each present a synopsis of the methods they use to achieve results. We then invite questions from the floor for each of them. This will contrast the two approaches, find their common roots, tease out the differences and give attendees a greater understanding of what methods to deploy and when.

The Agile Manifesto prioritises "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; Responding to change over following a plan". XP (eXtreme Programming) takes best practice in software engineering to extremes and values "Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and  Respect", in order to achieve an Agile process that is responsive to customer needs while creating software of higher quality. 

User Experience approaches draw on ISO standards 9241 (Usability) and 13407 (Human-centred design) , which refer to "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use." and "the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design."

Some find a tension between these two approaches, others see synergy, and yet more see each appropriate at different points in the lifecycle. What do you think?

Adrian Williamson

Adrian Williamson is a people and technology specialist who has worked extensively in engineering, academia and the software industry. He is a Fellow of the BCS, Vice-chair of the Specialist Groups Executive Committee, and sits on Member Services Board and BCS Council. He has published widely in Human Computer Interaction and Information Systems, and most recently specialised in Business Process Management (BPM), Customer Relationship Management and Usability. He has worked for ciboodle (nee Graham Technology) and most recently HBOS on BPM/SOA software and platform development, and retains a focus on innovation, process and enterprise software.

Comparative Usability Evaluations: Usability testing vs Expert evaluation. Chris Rourke, 10th September

Chris Rourke, Managing Director of User Vision and founder and President of the Scottish UPA, talked about two of the main tools in the Usability professional's toolbox: usability testing and expert evaluations (AKA heuristic evaluations, expert reviews etc). He reviewed the comparative merits of these two methods, and also discussed the findings of Rolf Molich's comparative 'CUE' research in which these two methods were applied by international usability experts on the same website, providing interesting insights as to when each method is most appropriate, and when.

Comparative Usability Evaluations: slides (PPT, 199kb)

The 'other' accessibility guidelines - Authoring Tools and Accessibility in a Web 2.0 World. David Sloan, 23rd July 2008

David Sloan, Digital Media Access Group, talked about the growing importance of Web authoring tool accessibility in a Web where it is now easier than ever for users to publish content, and in particular the need for such tools to support non-experts in producing accessible content. He gave an outline of the W3C Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines and encouraged wider adoption of ATAG as a benchmark for authoring tool accessibility.

The 'other' accessibility guidelines: slides (PPT, 300kb)

Scottish Usability Showcase, 18th June 2008

The Scottish Usability Showcase featured a series of presentations from research students at universities around Scotland. These were:

Sub-groups, Deviants and Navigational Alignment: Advanced topics in card sorting. William Hudson, 27th May 2008

William Hudson, Syntagm, provided a deep insight to the world of card sorting and how to deal with the special cases such as choosing which participants' data to include and what to do if they want to put a topic in more than one place. William drew on his extensive experience in card sorting and improving information architectures for sites and intranets. It also provided a useful change to see the deliverables from his highly useful Syncaps software to help in the analysis of card sorting results.

Sub-groups, Deviants and Navigational Alignment: slides (PDF, 408kb)

Design Ethnography - from the Napa Valley to Silicon Glen, presented by Dr Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee, 22nd April 2008

Dr. Catriona Macaulay gave a fascinating and inspiring overview of the world of Design Ethnography and the practical and profitable benefits companies are achieving through gaining a deep understanding of their users during the design process. With a strong following in the US, and increasingly needed in a globalised marketplace, design ethnography is increasingly recognised as a process to achieve a competitive advantage by creating products and services that are truly based around the users' needs, context of use and physical environments. Multinationals such as Microsoft, Nokia, Intel and others have applied it to the technical end of the spectrum, but there are also fascinating examples across other non technical businesses as well, even down to the design of wine boxes. Catriona also described the new Masters Degree programme in Design Ethnography at Dundee University which will help to train the next generation of highly qualified design ethnographers. Catrionas slides provide many useful references and links to resources on Design Ethnography.

The Perpetual Super-Novice, Paul Sherman, 25th March 2008

Paul Sherman, President of the UPA, drew on his extensive experience in developing software for various systems to demonstrate how many software application don't encourage users to progress beyond the 'Super-novice' level where they know the bits that let them do their job, but remain unaware of the many other things that could also help their productivity. Based on his article for the Journal of Usability Studies from UPA, Paul outlined key design principles to allow software to encourage discovery of new functions, without resorting to annoying paper clips. These principles included Awareness, Enjoyability, Mastery Activation, Community, and Traceability.

The Perpetual Super-novice: Slides (PowerPoint, 340kb)

Label placement in forms (and other time-consuming forms controversies): Caroline Jarrett, 26th February 2008

In a well attended SUPA presentation, Caroline provided a detailed overview of best practice for creating usable forms, on aspects such as label placement, what controls to use and when.

Label Placement in Forms: Slides (PDF, 2Mb)

Implementing usability changes on an already successful site: Tamlin Roberts, 29th January 2008

Tamlin Roberts of Mercurytide provided a very interesting case study of the redesign of a site that by most accounts was already quite successful. However by making certain user-centred design changes on the finding and mapping of properties for the GSPC the site usability has improved further.

Implementing usability changes on an already successful site: Slides (PowerPoint, 8Mb)

Games Usability: Alison Walton (Bunnyfoot) and GiGi Demming (Amberlight Partners Ltd), 11th December 2007

With Christmas on the way and toys and games beneath many Christmas trees, we looked at some of the more fun areas of usability applications - computer and interactive games. This event featured talks by two very experienced consultants in this area, showing how research can be applied to achieve that delicate balance between the gaming challenge, player engagement and usability.

Summary and slides coming soon.

Scottish Usability Showcase for World Usability Day 2007, 8th November 2007

The showcase consisted of four short presentations, each describing a Scottish based project focusing on a specific usability challenge:

Summary and slides coming soon.

Interactive TV usability: Is the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) dead? 23rd October 2007

Jonathan Marshall, Zype

Interactive TV usability Slides (PDF).

Choosing the right technique - the right answers to the right questions., 21st September 2007

Whitney Quesenbery, Whitney Interactive Design (US)

Summary and slides coming soon.

An Award Winning Usability Programme, 18th September 2007

Carmel Kammeier, Sage (UK)

Summary and slides coming soon.

Design Led Innovation & New User Experiences in Rich Internet Applications, 14th August 2007

Summary and slides coming soon.

Usability in the travel industry, July 24th 2007

Usability in the travel industry - a case study of usable Travel Planning tools on www.newzealand.com by Miriam Walker of usability consultancy Shift.

Miriam walked us through a case study in which she and her team tackled some of the most challenging online travel planning user experiences. She showed how a complex set of travel entities (locations, could be linked together and personalised by a user who had no prior knowledge of the country).

Their approach to use testing included a mix of paper based and flash based prototypes in order to simulate the proposed rich application interface that underpins the website's Travel Planner (and you really should have a look if you've not seen it already - www.newzealand.com). The talk included insights into some of the limitations of testing rich internet applications, and how a mix of high fidelity prototype and paper based testing can overcome this.

Miriam also described the approach taken to a complex set of site search challenges, weighing up the pros and cons of structured searches versus Google-like searches, and - amongst other things - some handy tips for handling zero search results.

Writing for the Web, June 26th 2007

The cliché phrase 'Content is King' still holds true, perhaps more than ever as more designers choose simple, conventional designs emphasising their written content. Whether your site is for informing or selling to your users, web copywriting is critical and can determine whether your users will understand your online proposition and feel persuaded to follow it to the next step. It certainly will affect how your The speaker, Alan Black of Blackad, showed the group what works – and what doesn’t – in a session packed with examples and practical advice. He covered:

He emphasised that usable text need not be boring and personality-free, and through several examples he showed best practice and also how not to do it.

Designing and Evaluating Mobile Applications for New Social Experiences, May 29th 2007

Dr Lynne Baillie of the Mobile and Ubiquitous Lab at Glasgow Caledonian University and the Human Telecommunications Lab at the Telecommunications Research Center Vienna presented a fascinating glimpse into the future of mobile and ubiquitous computing interactions with two research case studies of the design and evaluation of prototypes in for mobile & remote devices that can potentially expand our social experiences: Point2discover and Amigo TV. Point2Discover - is a Mobile Spatial Awareness system and the research studied how mobile users interacted with the physical environments using different designs for helping users understand their spatial environment. Amigo TV is a Social TV application which aims at providing remote users with a joint TV experience. Many interesting and applicable research findings were revealed regarding the subjects' characterisation and behaviour between the different interaction conditions, and there were several implications for future devices and software to support remote social networking.

Slides will be available soon.

University Showcase – Usability research projects from Scottish Universities, May 2007

Usability and SEO - pulling in the same direction?

Grant Whiteside, Technical Director of Ambergreen Internet Marketing, gave a talk that drew on a wealth of experience from the world of search engine marketing and has addresse the question of SEO and usability facing some of the countries leading brands. He used examples form a variety of site types and businesses and discussed how to apply best practice for search marketing works from a usability perspective and the particular areas for care in aligning these two disciplines.

Slides from Grant's talk.

Scottish Usability Showcase 2006

We had four fantastic talks from different organisations about usability and accessibility research untaken. Details are below and we will have slides from this even soon:

Usability standards, the Usability Maturity Model and what they are good for

Brian Sherwood Jones and Ross Philip provided a valuable overview of the most relevant usability standards and describe their own experience in applying these standards with organisations to create more user-centred systems.  They described how applying standards such as ISO 13407 (Human-Centered Design Process) , and the related ISO18529 and ISO 18152 (Ergonomics of human-system interaction) can give a supplier organisation an advantage, and from the customer point of view in reducing project risk.

Slides for this event will be available soon.

Everything you've always wanted to know about card sorting

If you missed this event, it was a real shame, because we had a brillant evening. First of all we had a fascinating talk from William Hudson on cardsorting and its analysis, including a live card sort! Unfortunatly becuase of 'technical difficulties' we lost the results and William could not feed back to us there about his analysis. However, he has kindly done it since and the results and his slides are posted on his site.

After this event there was a chance to chat over dinner then we went see Rich Hall at the Fringe. It was a fun night and we hope you can join us next time.

How your Content Management System can impact the usability & accessibility of your website or intranet

The CMS is an integral part of maintaining and developing a  large scale web site.  A well designed CMS can also help you improve the user experience of your site visitors by ensuring consistency in presentation, navigation and accessibility while a badly implemented system can affect both internal and external users.  The speakers drew on their experience in managing and developing CMS to talk about how features in a system can help you manage important aspects of usability and accessibility. 

David O’Brien, Web Content Editor for Scottish Enterprise, presentation (PDF, 401 KB)

Finlay Carmichael, Managing Director of C(2) Software, presentation (PDF, 3.25 MB)


Finding a good user experience through Search and Information Retrieval

Search within a site or application is often the Achilles heel in an otherwise usable interface.  When users enter queries into a search engine they pin their hopes on some 'magic' behind the scenes which they hope will give them what they want.  Yet the basis for this magic - the indexing of content and clear presentation of results - often lets them down.  With content volumes growing along with users' expectations (partly due to better experience on web search engines such as Google) there is a real opportunity to delight users by providing them with a good experience on in-site search engines.

At this event Bryan Sivak from InQuira discussed and demonstrated how Natural Language Processing and User Profiling can be applied to determine the user's intent from the search.

Professor David Harper from the School of Computing at The Robert Gordon University described a novel information seeking interface that provides support for multi-faceted information seeking and targeted relevance feedback. 


Web Accessibility Primer on WCAG 2.0 and Including Users with Disabilities

At our most popular event ever, we welcomed speakers from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) , who introduced us to several new resources to help make your Web site accessible. Judy Brewer and Shawn Henry from the WAI talked about the upcoming WCAG 2.0 guidelines and the resources associated with it. Julie Howell from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) gave us an overview of PAS 78, including the role of guidelines and users. The evening was a roaring success and we would like to thank all speakers and those involved in the organisation. Some of the presentations are available below.

Julie Howell's PAS 78 presentation (PDF 1.8MB)
Shawn Henry's WCAG 2.0 presentation will be coming soon. In the meantime here is Shawn's presentation from the WWW2006 conference, which was similar

Presentation on usability testing software

Three leading providers of software, Noldus Observer, MediaCam and Morae, gave interesting overviews and demonstrations of their software products for digitally recording and editing usability testing session. Their presentations are available below:

Closing the Loop: Applying web analytics to improve usability, customer insight and return on your marketing investment

Vicky Brock, Scotland Co-ordinator for the Web Analytics Association and a director of Highland Business Research, and Andrew Hood, General Manager of Lynchpin Analytics - a leading supplier of online marketing analysis and consultancy, gave facinating presentations to an appreciative crowd. They provided practical insight into understanding customer behaviour from web analytics, covering:

Lynchpin presentation (527KB PDF)

Web analystics association presentation (663KB PDF)

Usability in government websites

In this case study based event our two speakers shared their experience of tackling the usability issues withh public sector websites.

The first speaker, Keith Nicholson, Communications and Information Services Division for the Scottish Executive, talk about the results of a benchmarking and usability study comparing the usability of the government websites of nine counties, including that of the Scottish Executive. 

The second speaker, Ross Philip from User Vision presented a case study showing the benefits from researching a local authorities site's usability and making appropriate changes. The Council's new site was designed based on usability testing and information analysis, and they are currently reaping the benefits of greater uptake and use of services online.

Here are copies of the presentations:

Scottish Executive benchmarking project - Keith Nicholson (2MB, PDF)
Aberdeenshire council case study - Ross Philip (540KB, PDF)

Usability & accessibility with tomorrow’s web technologies

In a lively and interactive session, Martin Sadler from Fasterstrongerlighter and Matt Riggott from Mercurytide discussed Web 2.0 and Ajax, the opportunities they present to web developers and how to deploy them with the least risk of introducing usability or accessibility issues.

Martin Sadler's Web 2.0 slides (3.6MB, PDF)
Matt Riggott's AJAX presentation (900KB, PDF)

Martin's Talk Highlights
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
http://www.riya.com/
http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/10/on_the_bbc_annotatable_audio_project.shtml

Martin's Related Links
TechCrunch.com
Mashable.com
Microformats.com
ProgrammableWeb.com

Matt's Related Links
Matt's useful AJAX links

Scottish Usability Showcase on World Usability Day

We had a great evening event for World Usability Day on 3rd November 2005. Six speakers from organisations around Scotland shared their experience of carrying out activities to improve the usability of their product, software, mobile device or websites. We would like to thank everyone who took part and who helped us organise it, especially Standard Life for hosting the event.

Here are copies of all the presentations:

DC Interact presentation (2.1MB PDF) - Turning a complex online application process for a financial product into a simple and intuitive experience for the end user.

The Graphics Company (40KB PDF) - Enhancing the user experience for web users with learning disabilities at Down's Syndrome Scotland.

Graham Technology (300KB PDF) - Improving the user experience of Contact Centre agents through observational studies.

User Vision (130KB PDF)- Integrating usability and industrial design in creating a user-centred programmable thermostat control.

ID8 Design (1.6MB PDF) - Applying user-centred design methodologies in product innovation and development.

Clackmannanshire Council (1.8MB zipped file)- Creating accessible online Local Government with web standards.


Information Visualisation - Jonathan Greenwood of Mediasurface

Heat mapThere is more and more information around us but seemingly less time to interpret it.  How can we convey complex data in an intuitive way, taking advantage of our pattern recognition abilities? Information visualisation is a field of growing importance as more information needs to be interpreted, sometimes dynamically, by the general population.  Many successful examples of information visualisation have been implemented, such as tree-mapping and heat mapping especially in the financial sector.  Jonathan Greenwood guided us through this fascinating area to show how complex information can be conveyed most simply and effectively, showing examples (both good and bad) from various application areas, and guidelines on developing clear visualisations. 

Slides from Jonathan's talk Part 1
Slides from Jonathan's talk Part 2


Conducting International and Cross Cultural User Research - Susan Dray

Dr. Susan Dray, of Dray & Associates, Inc., shared some of her insights into how  you understand the needs and expectations of diverse audiences around the world, a critical step when creating successful products or interfaces. Conducting usability evaluations and field studies internationally or across different cultures presents several challenges, however.  In addition to potential language barriers, user researchers must be aware of the different expectations that participants may have for products from those originally intended, the research must be localised to "fit" the local cultural norms, and the client may need help in understanding and interpreting the findings.  All of this requires significantly more planning than user research in one's own country or culture. View the slildes from Susan's talk for an overview of the talk. If you are interested in conducting international user tests look at the self assessment questions to see if you are the right kind of person for this work.

Slides from Susan's talk (PDF 226KB)

Self assessment questions (Word 243KB)

Web accessibility - presentation and demonstration

In a rerun of last year’s popular event the Scottish UPA, in association with the Digital Media Access Group, are pleased to stage another event on ‘Web accessibility – presentation and demonstration’. This event formed part of the Access in the Digital World conference in Dundee.

The importance of web accessibility is increasingly recognised.  More and more people are referring to the accessibility guidelines from the W3C, but many are not aware of assistive technologies or how computer users apply them.  In this event David Sloan from DMAG gave an introduction to web accessibility and then looked at the benefits of having an accessible website and the importance of usability to users with disabilities.

Craig Mill presenting accessible technologyThen Craig Mill from Assist-IT gave a wideranging demonstration of assistive hardware and software, ranging from adapted keyboards and mice, to voice recognition software and infrared keyboard. Craig explained how he worked with clients to find the best solution to help them access a computer effectively.

Finally Paul Brown, a JAWS user, demonstrated what it was like to browse websites using this popular screen reader. He also talked about some of the common problems he encounters on website and how they can be resolved.


Ethnography in the 21st Century - Louise Ferguson

Ethnography is on a roll, with increasing numbers of articles in mainstream media extolling its merits from the corporate perspective, while companies such as Intel have in recent years been busy hiring anthropologists to inform the design process.

In this brillant talk Louise Ferguson look at several questions - what exactly is ethnography? Isn't the idea of 'tribes' terribly old fashioned? What can ethnography offer the design community? And how do we do it? She explored the contribution that ethnographic approaches can make to the design and evaluation of 'systems' in their widest sense, and will discuss how to go about 'doing' ethnography, including the pitfalls to avoid.

Slide from this talk are coming soon

Child centred design and computer games - Suzanne Waugh and Lucy Joyner

Our two speakers gave a fascinating insight into two specialised areas of usability study - child centred design and computer games.

Suzanne Waugh talked about her research into child-centred design and how she developed her own methodology of designing an educational game for per school children. Her talk outlined the steps she went through working with both the children and the teachers to find out requirements and build a working model to test.

Lucy Joyner presented an overview of her graduate research and the development of a theoretical model of concept and game usability that is based upon findings from commercial usability tests and research in the UK.

Download slides from Suzanne's talk (PDF 227KB)

 Insights into Information Architecture for the web

Information Architect Peter Van Dijck presented an overview of some of the procedures and deliverables that an information architect (IA) contributes to a typical web project.  Drawing on his experience with several multinational companies, he explained the role of an IA throughout the project lifecycle and also the methods that can be applied to understand the user's requirements and ensure a clear, user-centred information structure for a site. 

Slides from this event will be available soon.

Interactive TV usability and accessibility

Jonathan Marshall looked at the creative challenges for usability within interactive TV and offered some solutions based on his experience both within the BBC and externally.  His talk covered the history of the UK iTV platforms, design challenges, usability rules for iTV and a demonstration of iTV services.

Download Jonathan's presentation (PDF, 1MB)

Alex Carmichael’s talk highlighted the diversity of the 'user group' associated with iTV from the perspective of human factors research for older people using various interactive 'systems'. Issues such as the domestic setting and the leisure context (as distinct from a work setting and 'efficiency' context); and the imposition of this technological infrastructure which fundamentally changes the nature of a familiar and 'easy-to-use' social activity, will indicate some of the challenges involved in ensuring that all 'TV viewers' can benefit from digital TV.

Download Alex's presentation (PDF 400KB)

Thinking Big - Creating usable enterprise portals

Mark Wetton and Anne-Marie Scott gave a brillant account of the challenges faced created a 'one stop shop' for several applications for a widely divergent audience. This detailed case study highlighted how they incorporated usability and accessibility throughout the design process for their enterprise portal.

Creating usable enterprise portals presentation (PDF, 500KB).

Eyetracking presentation

Iain Janes from Eyetracker gave an overview of how Eyetracking can be used to show where subjects in usability tests are looking as they use a site or product can be very useful information, particularly for deciding on the placement and design of portions of web sites. Iain's talk featured demonstrations of the output from Eyetracking studies and videos demonstrating it in actions.

Slides from Iain's talk will be coming soon.

The power of hindsight - When application prototyping through simulation and usability analysis combine

Jonathan Kerr gave an interesting talk on us on how VeriSIM work using advanced prototyping to explore user reaction to new applications for large Financial Services clients.

Jonathan's presentation is now available to download:

Application prototyping presentation (Powerpoint show, 1MB)

Delivering a Usable Experience with Rich Internet Applications

Stephen Webster from iteration::two spoke to a packed room on how the Macromedia Flash Platform is no longer just for animation; developers can use the small footprint and high interactivity of the Flash player with enterprise software architectures, to deliver a new breed of enhanced user-experiences called "Rich Internet Applications", using technologies such as the recently launched Macromedia Flex. Stephen demonstrated the business benefits and technological possibilities achievable with RIAs and how usability can be enhanced and accessibility accommodated within these richer user experiences.

Due to the size of the file, this presentation has been broken down into four sections for ease of download.

Section 1 - Usable Rich Internet Applications (PDF, 1.2MB)
Section 2 - Usable Rich Internet Applications (PDF, 2.6MB)
Section 3 - Usable Rich Internet Applications (PDF, 2.5MB)
Section 4 - Usable  Rich Internet Applications (PDF 2MB)

Web accessibility - presentation and demonstration

Tuesday, October 26th, 2004, Edinburgh

The Web Accessibility event was packed to capacity, showing what a high level of interest there is for practical advice on making website accessible for people with disabilities.

The event kicked off with a presentation by David Sloan from DMAG and Ruth Marshall from Standard Life. Their talk introduced web accessibility and then looked at the benefits of having an accessible website and the importance of usability to users with disabilities. You can download a copy of their presentation below.

Next Andy Clarke form AbilityNet got the audience thinking by questioning why their computers were set up they way they were. The majority of the audience used the standard mouse (designed for a woman between 5’4” and 5”6) and a regular sized keyboard. Working at AbilityNet means that Andy is informed about the kinds of options he has when customising his computer set up, so it suits his size and working needs. AbilityNet aims to educate people about what the options are, beyond the standard computer set up, to best serve them. These alternatives need not cost a fortune and AbilityNet are well placed to advise computer users on what is suitable for their needs and budget. They also provide training to help users get the best out of the options they choose. Find out more about AbilityNet.

Following that there were talks and demonstrations from users of assistive technologies. David Dalgety talked about using Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software. David found that he had problems with websites that have some kinds of JavaScript menus, as they sometimes didn’t work with Dragon Naturally Speaking. Another problematic feature was pop ups. Dragon Naturally Speaking doesn’t start working until a web page has loaded entirely. Thus when a pop up appears David has to wait until it has loaded before he can shut it down, slowing down his browsing time.  David then demonstrated browsing some websites with Dragon Naturally Speaking.

After David, Joy Croft talked to us about her experience of being a relative newcomer to the internet and using ZoomText, a screen magnification software. Seeing only about 1/16 of the screen at a time when using ZoomText, Joy has to employ the use of her "mental map" to help her remember how an interface works. Websites are difficult for her to navigate if they are very busy or if the elements of the interface, like the navigation and content, are not consistently positioned. In these situations it is difficult for her to learn the layout of the pages. Another key problem that Joy comes up against is, again, pop ups. For a partially sighted user, having a new window open unexpectedly is very confusing as it is not clear what has happened. Unfortunately due to technical problems Joy was not able to demonstrate using ZoomText for us.

Finally, Jamie Marshall told us about using Home Page Reader, a speaking browser, and JAWS, a screen reader. Some website problems mean that Jamie has difficulty using sites with Home Page Reader. For example, due to Yahoo mail’s recent redesign, Jamie now can’t access any email attachments because the icon used doesn’t have any alternative text and so is ignored by Home Page Reader. Another site that Jamie has had problems with was BeliefNet. On this site some pages periodically refresh. Every time this happened the screen reader focused moved back to the top of the page and began reading from the start again. Therefore, it is difficult for him to get through a single page. Finally, pop ups (that old chestnut) made another appearance. Jamie talked about how confusing it was to get pop ups when you couldn’t see what was happening and you weren’t sure where you were. Finally Jamie gave a demonstration of JAWS reading through the BBC website.

The feedback from this event was very positive and we would like to thank all those involved.

Web accessibility presentation (440kb PDF file, non accessible)

Web accessibility presentation (30kb Word file, accessible)

Handheld Usability - Scott Weiss

Monday 13th September, Glasgow

Scott Weiss, from Usable Products, gave a fascinating talk on Handheld Usability Scott 's book "Handheld Usability" is the state of the art guide to researching and creating usable mobile and handheld products and applications. This talk looked at the a huge variety of handheld products, user-centered development of handheld products, interaction design guidelines, future trends, and the unique challenges faced when designing for handheld devices.


Scott's presentation is now available to download:

Handheld Usability (1.9MB PDF file)

Usability and Public Technology - The complexity behind the simplicity

Tuesday 17th August 6.30pm, Edinburgh.

Lynne Coventry from NCR discussed the consumer issues affecting the usability of public technology such as cash machines. The talk will cover the issues of screen interface design, hardware ergonomics, privacy, security, trust, accessibility and acceptability.

Lynne's presentation is now available to download:

Usability and Public Technology (1.3MB PDF file)

Join the UPA

Join the Usability Professionals' Association through the US UPA site.

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If you can spare five minutes please tell us your suggestions for future SUPA events and speakers and any ways in which we can improve how the SUPA events are run by taking our short survey. Many thanks.