Pat’s Point of View

On this most joyous day I’d like to introduce you to Evangeline Kennedy!

Evie was born at 5:50am on the 31st of October, weighing 2.95kg and measuring 47cm. Mum and bubs are doing fine, and dad and big sister Grace are eager to get to know this little bundle of joy.

If the intra-mum activity is anything to go by then Evie is a ball of energy, so I’ll sure she’ll be ready to take on the world soon enough, but for now it’s time for a good sleep.

It’s been a long a frustrating lead-up, with about three weeks of pre-labour! Jenn coped very well, she’s a brave and tremendously strong woman and we are so lucky to have her in our lives.

So, another girl? Yep I’m well and truly outnumbered now. It’s going to be pink, dancing and gossip for the rest of my life. Oh gawd, and dating boys. Paying for weddings. But I love all my girls and wouldn’t change things at all. (But if you know any techniques for ensuring a boy, let me know)

The best experiences customers have with a product or service are when that product or service really nails a particular problem.

But how do you come up with that “killer app”? How do you “innovate”? (I say this with tongue firmly in cheek because simply meeting people’s needs is not innovation, even though that’s the word many people use to describe it).

To come up with a great solution you need to single out a specific problem. Not a whole bunch of issues that affect the experience, just one.
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On Friday I presented with my colleague Alun Machin at the first day of Oz-IA 2009, the 4th Australian Information Architecture conference. It was a great day, with good company to keep us talking and some interesting stuff to keep us thinking. The venue was quite good too, my first time at Star City Convention Centre as it happens.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it for the second day of the conference due to family commitments, which is a shame since the programme looked even better for the Saturday!

Our presentation on our new SuperRacing site (not yet live at the time of writing thissite is now live) went down well considering we had to cram everything we wanted to talk about into 25 minutes. The slides are shown below.

After two conference presentations in one week, it’ll be a while before I make another appearance, not to mention that I’ll be pretty brain dead for a while after the new baby arrives.