RuthEllison.com

The highly anticipated BarCampCanberra event happened yesterday, with a large gathering of smart and passionate folks from around Canberra, Yass, Wollongong and Sydney discussing interesting topics such as Government 2.0, social innovation, collaboration, typography, hackerspaces and more.

For those unfamiliar with the BarCamp concept:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about - either something interesting they’ve been working on, an idea they’d like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people

We had over 150 people registered for the event, 46 pizzas consumed, 72 bottles of water drunk (plus the additional cups and water containers) and 39 sessions including a series of 5 minute lighting talks (I love the 5 minute lighting talk format).

The event was tweeted, flickred, livestreamed and Googled waved. We were even covered in the Canberra Times (page 8 of the Sunday 7th February newspaper).

Some of my favourite quotes about BarCampCanberra comes from @dekrazee1:

Brain is still abuzz from #bcc2010. BarCamp is the techy equivalent of a day spa. Energising and invigorating. #I<3BarCamp

@ozdj:

@RazChorev Yep. Sound ROI. That $50 of fuel (and ~8hrs of travel time) got me about $500 worth of education today. #bcc2010

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Another Oz-IA conference has passed and it was great. There were a lot of familiar faces but also a large number of new faces. The twitter back channel were buzzing with activity for most of the conference, no doubt fuelled by the on-site barista and fruit cocktail maker.

Here’s a rundown of some of the presentations. Not every session is covered.

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21st and 22nd of August was the very excellent inaugural Local Government Web Network Conference 2008. This conference was aimed at those in Local Government, the public sector, community groups, and non-profits, and other tiers of Government. It was put together by Reem Abdelaty and Diana Mounter, from Local Government and Shires Associations of New South Wales.

I really enjoyed the strong sense of community spirit among the 70 (I think it was around 70?) participants. People were eager to chat and share experiences of managing their websites and providing services to their constituents. It was interesting to see the diverse range of roles - some of the participants managed the websites as a full time job, while others balanced the website management along with other duties.

There was a great line-up of speakers, including John Allsopp, Cameron Adams, Ben Buchanan, Brian Hardy, Lachlan Hardy, Matthew Hodgson, Tim Lucas, Russ Weakley… the list goes on :)

As the conference was a dual-track conference, here’s my attempt of one sentence summaries of the sessions I attended:

• John Allsopp - Opening Keynote Speaker: The real and the virtual - closing the circle - John gave an inspirational talk about how the web connects people and devices and the importance of context of use when designing services (rather than web pages).
• Robert Beerworth - Social Media and Online Marketing - Robert’s key messages included the importance of search and how it should drive decisions, and that planning/strategy is critical to a successful website.
• James Robertson - Open Source Web Content Management: are we asking the right questions? - James talked about the different types of open sourced and commercial CMS and that commercial or open source isn’t the question - rather it’s about matching a CMS to your specific business needs.
• Cameron Adams - Working with Design - Cam discussed how web design is about the integration of the look, behaviour and emotion, and provided some design tips to take away.
• Russ Weakley - Efficient, maintainable, modular CSS - Russ gave another great talk on writing efficient and maintainable CSS. What was new to me was the idea of the bridging CSS files which helps to create hack free CSS - very clever!
• Web Standards Panel - Russ, Brian and Kate talked about the NSW Style Guide (which seems to be quite the contentious issue among the conference participants, generating lots of discussion around whether they should be a common look and feel across council and shire websites), accessibility and record keeping requirements.
• Ben Buchanan - Steering the glacier: how does one person have an impact? - Ben gave a great talk about focussing on the things that you can change as well as the importance of coffee in building up and maintaining relationships.
• Matthew Crozier - Online Community Engagement – what are the benefits and how to manage the risks - Matthew talked about a case study which showed the benefits and risks of online consultation and some of the strategies used to successfully manage these consultations.
• Local-e Re-Design Project 2008 - Reem Abdelaty and Joanna Lewis took the audience through the user centred design process of redesigning of the Local-e templates.
• Matthew Hodgson - “The Intranet is dead! Long live the Intranet!” - Using a Doctor Who theme, Matt took the audience on a journey through time where we learned that people were the very first intranets, through to the evolution of intranets today and to the future.
• Lachlan Hardy - Closing Keynote Speaker: Local Government on the Open Web - Lachlan discussed various open web concepts, including web standards, open specifications (OpenID, MicroID, EAUT etc), and open architectures (API etc), and how this may be applied to local Government. I was particularly fascinated by the OmniTI URLs example - very cool!

Used with permission from Ben Buchanan

My co-worker (Adrian Newton) and I did a presentation titled Usability for Government: improving service delivery. We talked about usability, why it’s important, some of the user centred design techniques, and tips for people to take away.

I had a great time at the conference! Many thanks to Reem and Diana for putting together a great conference, and for the wonderful speaker’s gift (which now means I’m not an Apple virgin any more).

To check out what happened at the conference, view the twitter stream and flickr photos. Other presentations should be up on Slideshare over the next few days.

I’ve been neglecting my blog terribly over the past year, thanks to a throng of interesting projects (both web and non web related). I really should have posted the following weeks ago but better late than never!

There’s a number of interesting Aussie web conferences coming up, which I strongly recommend registering for if you get the chance.

Local Government Web Network Conference 2008: We believe in community

The first is the Local Government Web Network Conference 2008, which will be held in Sydney on the 21st and 22nd of August 2008. The conference is aimed at those working in the public sector, community groups, and non-profits, as well as other tiers of Government. Tickets are priced extremely reasonably.

My co-worker and I will be presenting on Usability for Government: improving service delivery.

Oz-IA 2008

Oz-IA 2008 is Australia’s annual Information Architecture conference. It’s intimate in size in terms of the number of people attending, but lots of great topics! This is a great conference if you’re interested in learning more about the information architecture field or if you’re already an experienced practitioner. Check out the great looking program! I just love the chance to catch up with all my IA friends who understand where we’re all coming from!

It’s happening on the 20th and 21st of September in Sydney.

Web Directions South 2008

How do I even start to describe one of my favourite conferences? Web Directions South has heaps of great presenters, fantastic topics and a chance to mix and mingle with heaps of other cool folks who are also passionate about the web.

It’s happening on 25th and 26th of September in Sydney but there’s also a number of great workshops being run on the 23rd and 24th of September (including Designing Interaction in the Age of Ajax by my friend Donna Spencer, and Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp by my friend Stephen Collins).

I’m also presenting one of the sessions - integrating accessibility into design.

Want a discount off your Web Directions South 2008 conference ticket? Use the promo code WDS08-RE to take $50 off the ticket price. Feel free to share the discount code.

Edge of the web

My hometown of Perth seems to be the happening place this year! The excellent Perth web folks have lined up a fantastic bunch of experts to speak about all things web, at the Edge of the web conference. It’s happening on the 6th and 7th of November in Perth, and tickets are very reasonably priced.

Hopefully I’ll get to see you at these conferences!

Photo credit: Nathanael Boehm

Web Directions Government started with a very fresh morning, complete with frost on my car that took ages to defrost! My car told me that it was zero degrees when I left the house… Anyhow, Web Directions Government is the first Web Directions conference to be held in Canberra, targeted specifically at the Government sector. Here’s a quick run down of the day:

• I started the day with Jason Ryan’s breakfast talk about Government 2.0 - The public challenge. I really enjoyed Jason’s talk about the challenges with Government 2.0 with the key themes of Change, Strategy and Control. Key ideas included encouraging everyone to engage, have a good understanding of your people and of the environment. Key quotes from the session, “most importantly, you have to trust your staff”, “when it comes to engagement, mediocrity is not an option” and “just bloody well do it!”.
• eGovernment by José Manuel Alonso - “removing the e from eGovernment”. He talked about the challenges facing Governments doing business online and the need for participation and transparency. Check out eGovernment at W3C.
• Real world web standards by Scott Gledhill - a case study of the redesign of News.com.au and associated websites. Interesting learnings about the need for clear communications and established rules, even in a team full of people who know their stuff.
• One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript by Patrick Lee - Patrick covered lots of examples of using JavaScript in the real world. Love the MacGyver references!
• Usability: more than skin deep by Lisa Herrod - I heard this at last year’s Web Directions South but it’s still as enjoyable the second time round. Lisa is always a great speaker to listen to and I love how we have a very similiar holistic approach to our user experience work!
• ABC’s election site: making the most of dry data by Andrew Kesper - Andrew covered a range of design decisions taken for the ABC election site. Very interesting look at the various technologies involved, especially the interactive maps.
• The essential elements of great web applications by Robert Hoekman Jr - a great presentation to finish the conference. Robert covered his seven key principles for great web design, including my favourite, “reduce, reduce, reduce” (minimalist designs appeal to me both online and in the real world).

Thanks to John and Maxine and their team of helpers for putting on a conference in Canberra! I had a great time and will definitely attend next year.

How many of you are familiar with the infamous Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares tv show? It features the famous chef, Gordon Ramsay, who visits a struggling restaurant and has one week to turn it around. As I started watching the series (the UK version first), I couldn’t help but noticed that there was many similarities between what Gordon Ramsay does and what we do in the user experience field (potentially, minus all the F-words).

I decided to share my thoughts about whether Gordon Ramsay is a guerrilla user experience (UX) consultant at yesterday’s BarCamp Canberra. BarCamp Canberra is the very first of many, I hope, BarCamps to be held in our capital. For those not familiar with BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:

An international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

The Canberra BarCamp covered a wide range of topics, including design, social networking, open source and future technologies topics.

Defining user experience

In my presentation titled Ruth’s UX Nightmares, we briefly covered the meaning of user experience:

All aspects of an individual’s perception and interaction with a company, its services, and its products

Designing a product (whether it is a website, web application, a service, or a physical product) is not just about the actual product. It’s about the broader meaning of design (which was covered nicely in Darren Menachemson’s talk on Broadening design thinking). This means thinking about all aspects of the product, from the look and feel, interaction design, information design, help services (online and offline), the physical interactions that may exist with the organisation and the customer, as well as the context of use.

In Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, some of the UX elements that Ramsay looks at include:

• Amount of choice on the menu - too many choices that are presented to the customer can cause confusion
• Price of food
• Quality of food – is the food sourced locally? Is it fresh or is it frozen/packet food?
• Quality and timing of service
• Staff attitudes
• Décor (visual elements)
• Layout of restaurant
• Brand perception
• Interaction between the front of house service and kitchen

What this shows is that there are many elements that form the user experience. They all need to be considered together in the context to run a successful business or product.

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method is a tongue-in-cheek look at a simplified UX life cycle of research, design, testing and implementation. Ramsay’s methods align with many UX techniques.

Research

The key idea of research is to gain an understanding of the business and the users that will be using the products that you are designing. Gordon Ramsay achieves this by:

• Conducting expert reviews where he always tries the food of the restaurant that he’s helping.
• Running contextual inquiry where he observes the way the chefs are working in the kitchen, as well as how customers are serviced.
• Conducts user interviews to find out what people are thinking about the food and the restaurant. He often does this by walking about the city/town and asking passer bys about the restaurant.
• Doing a competitor analysis to find out about the other restaurants in the area. He’s then able to recommend whether a new direction is needed with the restaurant, such as the recent US episode where Ramsay recommended a move to healthy food to best service the health spa area that the restaurant was located in.
• Researching the business - for example, where to source the freshest products such as fish from local fisherman rather than importing frozen fish from overseas.

Design

Much of Gordon Ramsay’s design methods are about simplifying the product being presented to the customer, while maximising the quality. In the La Parra de Burriana episode, the owner was offering 72 dishes to customers, including his signature dish - prawns in garlic, with chocolate sauce. After a few choice words from Gordon Ramsay, the new menu was simplified to a few key dishes that could be handled by the staff.

Surprisingly, Gordon Ramsay also looks at navigation and orientation. In the Moore Place episode, customers were confused upon entering the restaurant. It wasn’t clear where they had to go next. After a physical restructure of the layout, customers were guided to the dining room with no chance to get side tracked.

The design of the décor is a big factor in every episode. Gordon Ramsay almost always recommends a simple elegant style to fit with the simpler menus on offer.

Testing

User testing is another key factor with Gordon Ramsay hitting the streets with various products on offer. My favourite is the giblets club sandwich user testing from the La Riviera episode. The key message is to offer products that people want, rather than what you think they want.

5 rules

I finished the presentation with five Gordon Ramsay’s rules applied to UX. These are:

1. Keep it f***ing simple
2. Customers, customers, customers - it’s about knowing your users and thinking about the entire user experience
3. Communication is key
4. Know what you’re doing - do your research and make sure that you understand the context and the constraints
5. Be passionate! Gordon says “cook from the heart!”

I’ll probably expand this in a separate post.

The presentation

| View | Upload your own

Note: I’ve been having issues uploading my presentation to slideshare, so you may notice some funny stuff happening. There are a few slides in there which are appearing with a red background and it shouldn’t look that way! It looks fine in the original presentation. Weird….

The verdict

The very first BarCamp Canberra was a success. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein and Nathanael Boehm) and to the generous sponsors.

You can catch many of the great presentations on slideshare and photos on flickr. There’s also the twitter stream and video will be available soon.

Edit 22 April 2008: The podcasts from BarCamp Canberra #1 are now available.

There’s a good range of excellent web events coming up shortly and I’m proud to announce it here (despite being a bit behind the foot, as these events have officially launched some time ago).

Website user experience & CSS workshop

The first is the Website user experience & CSS workshop run by my friends Donna Maurer and Russ Weakley. They are both experienced teachers and trainers - I attended one of Russ’ CSS workshops a few years ago and it was excellent and Donna is one of the most experienced Information Architects in the world.

This is a hands-on workshop where you will will learn to build detailed websites layouts from the ground up - starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.

The workshops will be held in four cities:

• Canberra - Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April
• Melbourne - Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April
• Sydney - Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April
• Brisbane - Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May

More information and registration can be done over at http://www.maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/

Web Directions South Government

Brought to you by the same folks who run the excellent Web Directions conferences, Web Directions South Government (Gov08) will be held in Canberra on 19 and 20 May. Gov08 will be a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment.

The line-up of speakers look great. If the past Web Directions are anything to go by then this is sure to be yet another great conference.

More information is available at http://gov08.webdirections.org/

Web Directions UX08

Also brought to you the same folks who run the Web Directions conferences, Web Directions UX08 is a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on concepts, technologies and techniques for building great user experiences on the web.

More information is available at http://ux08.webdirections.org/

BarCamp Canberra

I’ve announced it in an earlier post - BarCamp Canberra is happening 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008 at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.

More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampCanberra

BarCamp Sydney

BarCamp Sydney is happening 9am-5.30pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 April 2008 (the weekend before School Holidays) at the Roundhouse at UNSW, Anzac Parade.

More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney

Canberra Web Standard Group

Canberra Web Standards Group is happening tomorrow! We have two interesting topics covering GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies, and Wikis at work and it’s FREE.

More information and registration can be done at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=150

IA Cocktail Hour

Another free event for the Information Architects (IA) community and those interested in this space. This will be held tomorrow straight after Web Standards Group meeting.

More information can be found at http://iacanberra.org/2008/03/26/ia-cocktail-hour-27-march-2008/

I’ve always watched the various BarCamps around the world with envy, wishing that I could be part of the exciting unconference environment. So I’m excited that BarCamp Canberra is finally happening! For those new to the concepts of BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:

An international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Here are the details of the event:

• Who? Anyone who is interested in technology, the Internet and related topics. We have room for 60ish people, so bring your colleagues.
• What? A good opportunity to share ideas and projects and to work with like-minded individuals.
• When? 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008
• Where? BarCampCanberra will be held at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.
• Website? The BarCampCanberra blog is located at: www.barcampcanberra.org/blog. Updated information about the event will be posted there.

BarCamps are only as good as those that help to be part of the sharing and collaborative knowledge sharing environment. So don’t be shy. It’s free to register for the event and there’s an Upcoming event for it too.

I’m looking at presenting something related to accessibility and/or along the lines of user experience related subjects (thinking about users when designing a product/website/webapp). We’ll see how it goes with timing of our garage sale and house renovations!