Human Factors

Open Government New Zealand 2010 – This was the title of an “un-conference” I attended yesterday. It was an event organised by Microsoft, which got me a little confused in the beginning. New Zealand, and Wellington in particular, has a crowd of really good and active people in the Open Government movement – there has been a barcamp last year and great work is underway to make Government data available and usable to the public. Having attended a couple of barcamps and being one of the organisers of Wellington’s Flashcamp (which is technically not really an “un-conference”) I have a pretty clear idea what such an event should look like: an open invitation to contribute and discuss, an exchange of knowledge and experience, and at the end of the day a list of ideas, visions, action points as outcome of the day. All of that in a relaxed environment, with piles of butcher paper, post-its, black-red-green-blue markers and lots of coffee. When I first saw the website for yesterday’s event, it was pretty clear that this wasn’t what the organisers had in mind. Registration was subject to confirmation by the organiser, most parts of the “un-conference” seemed to be pre-organised and opportunity to contribute was limited – also you had to put some effort into proposing a topic or voting on a topic someone else had proposed.

And still I wanted to go. I had missed the first barcamp, but I think it’s important to get involved in the topic. I know that within some Government departments there is no awareness of the need to open up to the public. Neither when it comes to making collected data available for reuse, nor when it comes to changing the way Government communicates from broadcasting messages to getting into real conversations with members of the public. And since this promised to be different from what I know and from how I would run such an event, I was keen to go. My “application” for registration was accepted and there I was.

Funny enough one of the big confusions of the day was which hashtag to use for Twitter. This should have been a no-brainer, since the event’s website displayed a Twitter feed hashtagged with #opengovnz, from my point of view this would have determined which one to use. But since this was pretty close to the previous barcamp’s #opengovtnz it led to some confusion and in the end we had a vote. Strangely enough the choice was between #opengov2010 and #opengovt2010 – I have no idea where these eventually came from, but others were happy to raise their hands in favour of one or the other and finally #opengovt2010 was used.

I don’t want to get too much into detail for the main parts of the conference, others (including Brenda Wallace and Colin Jackson) have done that already. But I’m keen to share some of my observations/things I’ve learnt. They are in no particular order, just a random collections of thoughts:

• FYI.org.nz can be used to make Official Information Act requests
• IRD has built an online consultation forum that can be reused by other Government agencies (I hope they are all aware of this, and not individually building their own online consultation tools)
• Sometimes people are being asked in job interviews to provide their potential employer with access to their personal Facebook account (WTF???)
• Over time, silly things we said online won’t matter anymore, because either everyone else will have sent some drunk Facebook status updates as well, or because they won’t be found in the flood of personal information
• Politicians receive a lot of useless comments on Facebook
• Blocking staff access to social online networks isn’t a good idea
• Government agencies should trust their employees and reward positive online interaction with the public
• It’s time to replace “If you build it they will come” with “If you open it, they will build it”
• Useful + Usable = Used

My personal conclusion: it was actually a good event, if you let go of the idea that this was an un-conference. Those who were there are interested in change and improvement. Not sure if those working for Government agencies will go back and discuss, and if they do, I hope they’ll get listened to. But a seed is planted and over time we might see more openness in Government. If those who attended yesterday could ally with those already working on it, both sides could probably benefit.

I’ve just returned from Sydney, where I attended my favorite conference – webDU. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the conference in general here – others (such as Dale Fraser or Michael Plank) have done that in great way already. But I thought I’d quickly share my main personal take-aways from some of the sessions. Since most of the attendees were hardcore developers, I guess I’ll have a different view on some of the topics covered. Here are my thoughts about selected events/sessions:

Software Requirements without Tears by Robin Hillard

Define your requirements by asking the right questions. A mini-manual to get those requirements right before starting the design/development. Robin finished his presentations with a little quiz, and I teamed up with a friendly chap next to me. Although I paid attention during the talk, we really sucked at identifying some requirements. Certainly something I need to follow up on.

Usability: Thinking about the user, not for them by Richard Turner-Jones

Richard was around when I had the second-scariest experience of my life. Only 3 people witnessed me freaking out on the horrible ferris wheel at Disneyland during the conference party at MAX in Anaheim a couple of years ago. Surely I had to attend his session, especially since it wasn’t solely development focussed. The main take-away for me was the link to www.guimagnets.com for some sort of a prototyping on a fridge (or whiteboard), which I wasn’t aware of before. The talk covered some of the basics only, which was ok since it was advertised for general audience and it was my own choice to still go there…

Wireframes – From Screen Concepts to User Interaction by Mia Horrigan

Mia presented a case study and shared her experience with a project that went wrong in several areas, and she explained how she brought it back on track. I always appreciate a speaker’s personal experience – you can read about the theory behind a topic in books, blogs and magazines. But if someone tells me “That’s what I did and that’s why it worked or didn’t work”, that’s when it gets useful for me.

The Hotness of Agile Software Development by Matthew Hodgson

My favorite of webDU. I fell in love with Matt’s presentation style at last year’s webDU, and he didn’t disappoint me this year either. Unfortunately he gave some insight into how his team works, and that totally made me want to work for them. Look for yourself.

The Mobile User Experience by Rod Farmer

I now have a deep respect for all the designers/developers out there, who manage to deliver a consistent user experience across different mobile platforms, screen sizes, networks, carriers, etc, etc, etc.

The Value of a Ruber Chicken: better team development through shame… and tools by Tim Buntel

Tim just recently moved to Sydney from the US, and it was great so see that he and his family seem to have fully adjusted to life in the southern hemisphere. His talks are always fun and enjoyable – it doesn’t really matter what he’s talking about. I would probably even go and listen to him speaking even if it was about some alien hardcore coding language, but this time I was lucky and I learnt more about different approaches of version control.

After a Round Table session with some of the key speakers (highly entertaining, but no women on the panel) sadly the conference came to an end. On the day after the conference, us Adobe user group managers from New Zealand and Australia held a mini UGM summit (including a surf lesson), and in the evening I interviewed Peter Bell (which is available on createordie.de or interpreted by a robot via Google Translate). The legendary Aftershow-Party at Deamon HQ brought the whole conference experience to an end.

The slogan of the conference is”Like a Rock Concert for Geeks”, and I can totally relate to this statement. And for me it was a “Beach Party with Friends” as well!

* Photos from the webdu2010 Flickr stream

This week is Webstock week. Webstock is a great web conference in Wellington/New Zealand. The main conference days will be Thursday and Friday this week, but the days before that are filled with workshops and networking opportunities. On Monday I’ve attended “Designing and Sustaining Creative Communities” with Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, and I was planning a long blog entry about this workshop. But Dean Stringer from Waikato University was much faster and he did such a good job wrapping up the workshop, that I will simply refer to his blog. A big thanks Dean, for such a great summary!

Finally we’re back home in Wellington. I could write a novel about my travel experience, especially in the US, but I better keep my promise to deliver some more infos from Max… ;-)

A couple of cool new things were presented at the Sneak Peek session. As always everything shown is pre-alpha and there is no guarantee for further development or publication. One of highlights was certainly Thermo, a new tool which allows designers to create Rich Internet Applications in a very visual manner. Artwork can be converted into working components in a single click. Aral Balkan took a video of the sneak peek session, and it’s definitely worth a look. Aral recorded the sneak peek demonstration of Flash Player 10 as well.

The other presentations in a quick overview:
1. Visual Communicator 3
Interesting solution for easily creating video content.
2. “Pacifica – Adobe VoIP-Technologie that can be used with own Flex- and AIR-applications
3. Flash Home for Mobile
Mobile booting directly into a Flash Lite application as a home screen (incl. adaptation of background)
4. Photoshop Express Online
Unbelivably cool consumer version of photoshop as hosted service
5. Fireworks “Next”
6. ColdFusion
7. Web2Print
A combination of InDesign Server and Flex
8. PDF Packaging
Acrobat PDF reader AND Flash Player rolled into one (to embed eg flash videos in a PDF document), PDF goes future proof!
9. Flex Builder Linux
1o. Flash and C/C
11. iSeam
A brilliant tool for manipulating (esp. resizing) photos (the inventor got employed by Adobe within minutes after the video appeared on youtube).

The last session of MAX 2007 and I’m really tempted to skip this one. But being the good girl that I am, I finally decide to go, only to find out that it is at the other far end of the conference centre and it takes me ages to get there. So I’m late and when I sneak in Duane has just begun to show his personal Top 10 list of Bad Form Design. Some designs are really shocking and the following list of how-to and how-not-to do things results out of the forms shown and he not only talks about what’s wrong with examples but shows us how to create better experiences:
- Tabbing order is important
- Avoid Wrong Field and Data Types (eg country codes drop down instead of free text in “country of origin”-fields)

- Don’t make fields too small
- Think about the process, don’t force people to double entry
- Validating multiple fields onBlur()
- Stick to the right order, take care of dependancies (eg ask for “country” first to make sure the country has a state or zip code
- Never script without thinking
- Resetting all field can rarely be justified!
Important: Know the logic and process behind the form, understand the scope and breadth of the users, makes visual appearance so great the users would never have to use a manual!!!

I’m really tired now and getting a headache, so I missed to write down a few things, sorry for this!

That was Adobe MAX 2007 for me. I will add some pictures and comments during the next couple of day as well as a summary of the Sneak Peek session and the big party on Tuesday night.

I’m attending this session mainly to spend my time doing something useful. I couldn’t find any session that really interests me at this time (9.30 am!) and instead of just hanging around I think this is a good compromise. Chris shows some features of InDesign and how it works together with Flash, Acrobat, Photoshop and Dreamweaver by explaining how to create hyperlinks + Flash animations and enhancing + embedding videos. You can see that he really loves Creative Suite 3 and he’s very passionate about his work. It’s good to have a motivated presenter, especially when the contents of the session are currently quite irrelevant for your work… ;-)

The author of the second book that I bought here at MAX, so again expectations are high. After a short introduction he dives deeper into the principles of successfully designing great user experience that is simple and works for people who just want to get things done in a fast and easy way. It’s important to get users uo to speed, as they tend to learn only the most necessary elements they need to know to reach their goals. He brings an example of some of his recent work and presents a sample navigation to show how his ideas develop from the first thought to the launch of the website (including some basic techniques to influence the user). Secondly he talks about supporting mental models and the importance of clear and non-confusing navigation. Third big step in creating great UE is elevating instead of innovating, which he explains by showing the steps in creating a list for online news. Designing for an activity is another important part of great UE and Robert guides the audience through another of his projects. Afterwards he’s talking about the missing third state of an interaction. In general there are three phases of what’s happening on a web page: 1. invitation stage, 2. manipulation phase, 3. completion phase (important indication that a process is done to give user confidence by creating a moment of feedback) and this last phase of completion should never miss in an overall positive user experience. The last point of his presentation is titled “poka-yoke”, which means error proofing (the expression comes from an asian background) and is mainly about saving the user frustration. His example points out the confusion that can come up if there is a character limit in boxes.

To end his presentation he points out a cool project that he thinks needs more support, called www.kiva.org. And he does a little bit of advertisement for one of his upcoming seminars as well as for his company www.miskeetcom, which focuses on socially-conscious sites, products and services that improve the world, in big ways and in small.

My personal conclusion of this session: from all the “famous” user experience experts that I saw so far, Robert Hoekman is the one I like most. His thoughts made sense during the whole presentation, he admits mistakes so others can learn from them and he has an inspiring and fun presentation style – it simply doesn’t get boring to listen to him. I’m really looking forward to reading his book.