Pat’s Point of View

I’ve just returned from a week in Cairns, a trip which was meant to be partly for the OZCHI 2008 conference and partly for holiday. Not the best trip.

Last Sunday we flew up to Cairns. When we arrived the Qantas check-in staff didn’t provide an infant boarding pass for my daughter, and I didn’t such a thing even existed, so when we went to board there was a bit of dilemma. Thankfully the staff at the gate were very helpful and gave us an upgrade to business class! (Although I think this result had more to do with another family of four who were giving them a hard time about wanting to sit together so our two ‘spare’ economy seats were a welcome relief). It was a great start to the holiday, and not a bad flight to get upgraded for: it’s 3 hours to Cairns.

Then we arrived in Cairns. Hot. Humid. Ouch. I’m not built for hot weather, but I soldiered on and tried to find the cab we had booked online the night before, with a special request for baby seat. A lot of cabs in Cairns are now based on the eco-friendly Toyota Prius, so I was thinking hey they are pretty high tech up here. Sadly no. After asking some people and having no luck I called the cab company. They told me two things: a) they don’t accept bookings from the airport and b) “in Queensland public transport vehicles are exempt from having to carry baby capsules” (a phrase we were to hear over and over again) so they can’t do that either. FAIL! Why does your website allow you to request both those things if you can’t deliver?

So now I know why you see so many baby seats/capsules on the luggage conveyors at the airport, it’s because you can’t rely on anyone you just have to bring your own. Seriously, I don’t give a crap if the Queensland government have deemed “it’s perfectly legal to just hold the baby on your lap”, it’s not safe! How can they feel it’s unnecessary for essential safety equipment for babies to be available? I would happily have waited and/or paid more to secure a safe mode of transport for Grace. We had few choices, the best of which seemed to be catching a cab with Grace on Jenn’s lap in the back seat. We discussed the lack of baby seats in Queensland cabs with the driver, as well as how using a hybrid vehicle for a taxi is really just a PR stunt and not yet economically viable (nor environmentally friendly at the end of the day).

Monday. A day of relaxing and acclimatisation in preparation for my OZCHI tutorial on Tuesday. Possibly even more hot and humid. Yuck. It’s not glamorous, but we spent most of the day in Smithfield shopping centre because we had to get some groceries for Grace and it was air conditioned! (not something there is a lot of in Palm Cove). In the spirit of the tropical theme I bought a lovely knock-off ‘Aloha shirt’. Cool in that absurd kind of way.

Tuesday. Went off to James Cook University for my tutorial. Still hot. Got into the room the tutorial would be in…urrgh not much cooler. Lovely. The tutorial went well, although almost everyone there was not exactly at the right level for an introductory course, but I got good feedback and I think we all got something out of the half day.

Wednesday. Can’t remember what we did in the morning, but I remember the heat hadn’t relented. We went for a late lunch at Pepper’s Beach Club on the esplanade at Palm Cove, we’d been there many times when we last stayed there and it was always nice. I had a ham focaccia and a light beer. Big mistake. I remember thinking our order arrived quite quickly, Jenn only got a salad so I was wondering if my sandwich was fresh. It turns out it probably wasn’t and given the hot and humid conditions something was off. To cut a long and painful story short I spent the next 8 hours witnessing my body performing a complete evacuation of its digestive system by any and all means possible. I’ve not been struck by any major illness in my life, and I’m sure this is nothing in comparison, but this bout of food poisoning was the worst such thing I’ve ever experienced.

By midnight I was completely wrecked, severely dehydrated and in need of medical assistance. I was worried, about me but also about my family, what if this was viral? At this point I was also pondering, in my barely lucid state, how vulnerable we are when on holiday. Without your normal support network, local knowledge and even transport, you kinda feel on your own. But we managed to get an ambulance to the resort which was harder than expected. The paramedics agreed it was food poisoning, possibly with a bit of heat stroke to boot. I opted not to take them up on the offer of hospitalisation because I had a wife and baby to consider. Besides, the mass evacuation seemed to have slowed by the time the paramedics arrived, so I thought I would ride it out and see how I was in the morning. It was a rough night.

After the ‘purge’ had finished the ‘reboot’ began, as my digestive system was rebuilt, a process that ultimately went on for about 60 hours. I was trying to rehydrate myself but Mr Stomach wasn’t playing nicely. I couldn’t digest anything for a while, so eating and drinking were very difficult.

Thursday. Why does it always seem to be overcast in Palm Cove? It makes is more humid and it’s depressing rather than a tropical paradise. But on this day I think the sun was out all day. It might have been hotter but at least not as humid, but I wouldn’t know since I spent the entire day in bed. Made a break for it at dinner time and chanced a trip to the restaurant. Saw OZCHI folks going off to the conference dinner, but I was in a daze. Didn’t last long, had to return to the room.

Friday. Started to get better, I even ventured out for breakfast and lunch. Arranged to meet James Breeze and some others for dinner, but as the sun started to set the humidity rose and as we couldn’t find any restaurants with air-conditioning I quickly wilted and had to make a very early exit. The heat, sweat and thought of food just made me ill. Why no restaurants in Palm Cove have A/C is beyond me.

Saturday. Feeling much better. Packing, breakfast then transfer to airport (and guess what? no baby seats available, because “in Queensland…” grrrr!). At the airport things were looking up, we managed to all get on the same flight (long story) and even got moved to a bulkhead row with a bassinet so we could put the baby down for a sleep during the flight. Back home in Sydney. Dry heat. Hmmmm.

Man, I need a holiday.

I recently blogged about facilitating a discussion session on the topic of “Documenting for Interactive Websites” as part of Ark Group’s two day conference on Enhancing Online User Experiences. The event was held last Friday (it took me a week to blog it?!) and it went very well. In order to document the session and allow further discussion I have blogged my thoughts over on the USiT blog. Feel free to leave feedback or continue the conversation.

The conference was quite enlightening, with a good mix of presentations on a variety of subjects. I was only able to attend the second day, but what I saw was good food for thought.

I particularly liked Rod Farmer‘s presentation on managing a UX team. Very interesting stuff on choosing your team members, including looking beyond technical skills to personality types (please post your slides on SlideShare Rod!slides are now on Slideshare).

Jodie Moule had some great case studies of the use of personas for Telstra projects. Check out her slideshow.

James Breeze‘s discussion on using social media for user research was also great. Wish I had had a wifi connection so I could have participated in his Twitter demo :)

I have one guest pass for Enhancing Online User Experience in Melbourne on the 13th/14th of November (that’s next Thursday/Friday). If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll be there on Friday only, for my interactive discussion on “Documenting for interactive websites”.

In November I’ll be appearing at the Ark Group conference Enhancing Online User Experience in Melbourne. My contribution will be an interactive discussion on “Documenting for interactive websites”.

Since it’s an interactive discussion, the most crucial part of the session will be input from the audience and the discussion that emerges. To that end I’ve launched a special forum to allow conference attendees (or anyone for that matter) to suggest the topics they would like discussed:

(If you can’t see the widget above, you can go to patrickkennedy.uservoice.com)

You can suggest a question, or vote for an existing question. I’ll try to cover as many as I can in the time available during the session.

I see two broad aspects to ‘documenting for interactive wesbites’, the first being design documentation and the second being project documentation. By design documentation I mean the sketches, wireframes, storyboards, flow charts or whatever other form of documentation that is used to document what is it that being developed. And by project documentation I mean those documents such as SOWs and project plans that assist with project management and logistics.

I’ll attempt to cover both aspects but ultimately the session will be run by audience participation, so get voting on the topics you want discussed!

The conference details are:

Enhancing Online User Experience

Developing and executing user experience strategies that will provide business benefits

• Date: 12 – 14 Nov 2008
• Location: Melbourne, Australia

More details on their website

My interactive discussion is on the last day, just after lunch.

A few people asked why I only blogged about day one of the conference, and the simple answer is I didn’t get around to it. I’m desperately trying to make my weekends computer-free and spend quality time with family. I failed in that I did spend quite a bit of time in front of a monitor but I wasn’t online :)

Anyway back to the conference. The second day was as good as the first, with some great content being presented. Jeff Veen, as always, was entertaining and insightful. Daniel Burka was honest and enthusiastic in his depiction of design mistakes at Digg. Ruth Ellison offered a great discussion on real-world accessibility, showing her depth of experience in the subject, and showing that there are some things we don’t have answers to—you just need to do your best. Laurel Papworth made me think really new things about the commercialisation of social networking. Diana Mounter also offered an honest and practical discussion regarding whether to use a CMS or do a custom build (although I strongly suggest that the core problem in her case was a poorly chosen CMS).

Then there was the closing discussion from Mark Pesce, as thought provoking as ever. But you know what, I’m glad he’s stepping aside to let someone else take the reigns of chief thought provoker for WDS. Not only because he makes my brain hurt sometimes, but also because I think the local techies can’t take much more anti-establishment provocation (my how they love to get anarchisticly excited and dump all over Telstra, Microsoft and any other “evil empire”). And even more so because I suspect Mark is getting over it too. As he said, it’s time for people to take some responsibility for the things they demand; everyone wants free broadband, but very few want to actually make it happen.

Looking forward to next year.

[8:15am] Web Directions South is here again for another year. And I have to reiterate my comments from last year, this is the best conference in Australia—in the web industry anyway. John, Maxine and the other organisers must be congratulated on yet another fine performance. And the first speaker hasn’t even taken to the stage yet.

The level of professionalism and attention to detail impresses me, as does the excellent swag. You may well call me a cheap date and accuse me of being distracted by the bells and whistles, but I think this stuff matters. I think the atmosphere created for this conference makes not only for an enjoyable time for attendees, but also makes us as a community look and feel legitimate and professional. Nothing could be better for shaking off the last scraps of that image of our industry as being a bunch of nerds and cowboys flying by the seat of their pants, cowering over a computer monitor in some garage come office.

Of course you have to have great content too, and only time will tell if they have nailed that also.

[1:30pm] This morning was a great start to the conference. I must admit I wasn’t blown away by the opening keynote by Lynne D Johnson. The future of print and online media, where they might converge and where they won’t, is fairly interesting but I don’t know if I left that session with any greater understanding of any of the debate. That aside, I found it interesting how people equate user contributions and the “wisdom of crowds” with a more “pure” truth, and that big bad media organisations can’t be trusted to report the truth. Having seen the comments made by ‘the average Joe’ on news articles and other types of content, I’m not really convinced that’s the answer. There are lots of idiots out there. I think there’s still a big role for good journalism and the authoritative voice of established media organisations. How they continue to deliver that to their audience may change, but I’d rather listen to that than any fool with a keyboard.

Next I listened to Accessibility Beyond Compliance by Derek Featherstone. This was a great session, Derek is always very knowledgeable and entertaining, and I was pleased that a presentation such as this was included in the conference. All too often accessibility is seen (by those who don’t just dismiss it entirely) as either something that the code takes care of or an all of nothing proposition, but neither of these are true. Derek showed excellent examples of how true accessibility requires special attention in terms of how and where we provides users with feedback as well as showing that accessibility can be delivered within the one site—no text-only or special accessible versions here.

Next up was From Disordered to Managed Usability in an Agile Environment presented by Teale Shapcott. I was pleasantly surprised by this enlightened and practical discussion of user experience practice within an agile web application development methodology. Teale gave us good insight into how SunCorp operate as well as some good tips for those trying to sort out their own project methodologies, but one thing that seemed to be missing was user research. She mentioned using personas to get the team to think about the needs of users when writing, prioritising and estimating “story cards” but where do these personas come from? Are there parallel processes in place to research user needs and maintain these personas?

[8:05pm] After a very nice lunch it was off to Context in Mobile Design by Gabriel White. The thing that sparked my interest was how social context—such as knowing where your friends or colleagues are and what their status is—effects how we might choose to communication or interact with them, be it via IM, SMS, twitter or a phone call.

I stuck around for Elegant Web Typography presented by Jeff Croft. I must admit I already knew about a lot of what Jeff discussed, but it was an entertaining and informative session nonetheless. Some of his comments were a little at odds with modern views on accessibility, for example the use of absolute font sizes as opposed to relative, but overall there were plenty of good tips on creating better web design through elegant use of typography.

After a coffee break, we all regrouped for Predicting the Past by August de Los Reyes. I must admit this lightning paced presentation lost me a few times (I guess it was the trailing end of three-thirty-itis) and some of the videos really weren’t much more than Microsoft marketing. Or perhaps I’m just not much for this future gazing stuff…although I did prefer the Nokia design concept that Steve Baty showed us at OZ-IA. But, people that I hold in high regard have a lot of respect for August, so I’m quite willing to assume he was talking good stuff and that I just wasn’t that receptive this afternoon.

I decided not to hang around for drinks but rather to take advantage of this rare glimpse of the sun on the way home, and head off to spend a bit of time with Jenn and Grace. All in all it was a great first day, although I was a little put off by not being able to get an internet connection to work. Probably for the best anyway :)

I’m pleased to announce I’ll be running another pre-conference workshop, this time it’s Demystifying Information Architecture at OZCHI 2008 in sunny Cairns on the afternoon of December 9th.

There has been much confusion and misinformation regarding information architecture (IA) and its relationship with the longer established areas of user-centred design (UCD). Many experienced HCI people don’t feel well-equipped to take on the practical side of UCD in relation to web design. Likewise, web designers and developers are often in the dark regarding the principles behind what some “usability guy” tells them to do.

In this half-day tutorial, Patrick Kennedy will present the fundamentals of IA, which in essence is focussed on ensuring that information systems are structured in a way that makes sense to users. Specifically, the tutorial will be conducted in the context of organising and designing information systems such as websites, intranets and software applications.

This tutorial will introduce IA, explain the fundamental principles and teach some simple techniques. The aim is to give participants a heads-up on the subject and point them in the right direction so they can integrate IA into their own work or just better collaborate with those already practicing IA.

It will be short, sharp and focussed on just the essential bits of IA. So if you’re up that way in December, check it out.

The conference itself starts a few days later on the 10th of December. OZCHI is Australia’s leading forum for work in all areas of Human-Computer Interaction and CHISIG’s (www.chisig.org) annual non-profit conference. OZCHI attracts an international community of practitioners, researchers, academics and students from a wide range of disciplines including user experience designers, information architects, software engineers, human factors experts, information systems analysts, social scientists and managers. While OZCHI’08 represents aspects of the Australian Interaction Design community that have not been emphasized in recent conferences our organizing team is committed to serving the range of interests.

I’m happy to announce I’ll be running a half-day workshop entitled Research methods for information architecture at this year’s OZ-IA conference (actually the workshop is on Thursday the 18th of September).

This is an important part of successful IA, and I intend to give practical insight into some key techniques that will allow IA practitioners, or other disciplines doing some IA, to gain valuable insight into their audience. Here’s my blurb:

Information architecture (IA) is a form of user-centred design (UCD) which requires an understanding of users and their needs and designing with those needs in mind – balanced by factors such as business objectives and available or necessary content. Without a solid understanding of these inputs into the process, design is blind.

Design research is the process of uncovering and understanding those needs, whether it be direct user research or other means of gathering requirements.

Yet, many experienced web designers, developers and IA practitioners don’t feel well-equipped to take on design research in their projects.

In this half-day workshop, Patrick Kennedy will present the fundamentals of design research from the perspective of IA. Specifically, the workshop will be conducted in the context of organising and designing information systems such as websites, intranets and software applications.

This workshop will introduce design research, explain the fundamental principles and teach some simple techniques. The aim is to give the audience a heads-up on the subject and point them in the right direction so they can integrate research into their own work or just better collaborate with design researchers.

You can register for the conference at www.oz-ia.org/2008/register.shtml and don’t forget to quote the discount code PK0265!

I eagerly await more details on how Singularity will actually work. Here’s what their [quite nicely designed] website says:

Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world.

On October 24-26, join 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities for three days of talks at this seminal web event.

Attend from home or from a real-world local conference hub near you. Catch up with old friends (you can find them from your existing social networks) and meet new ones. And you don’t even have to take time off work.

Sounds interesting. Even though the list of speakers is fairly geeky, and I use that term with the utmost respect, I anticipate there being some good user experience design discussions.

Could this be a better way forward for traditional conferences, rather than going down the path of an un-conference (something which I’m not that fond of)?

It’s on again, Web Directions South will hit Sydney in September.

From past experience, particularly last year, I’d say WDS is the best web industry conference held in Australia—and I’m not just saying that to win an iPhone :)

There’s a great line-up and a healthy dose of user experience discussion for what is a general web gathering. It’s definitely a sign that usability and the like have been embraced by your average web designer and developer. In particular I’m looking forward to, and recommend to you, sessions by Ruth Ellison, Donna Spencer, Jeff Veen and Mark Pesce (I mean who wouldn’t after last year’s closing keynote?).

If you need more convincing, check out the executive summary what might get your boss to send you.