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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

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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!

With only 12 sleeps until Web Directions South 2007 (or less if you count the cool workshops!), it’s only appropriate that I get into gear and do the flickr meme started by Miles Burke. I was tagged by Gary some time ago but have been way too flat out to find the time to do this interesting meme.

The point of this meme is to find and link to as many pictures of yourself on flickr from previous years of Web Directions South. There’s definitely lots of drinking, funny t-shirts, catching up with friends, early morning breakfasts, watching others do a Ben Stiller and partying!

Gary’s right - there’s seems to be a greater amount of cameras than attendees at the conferences!

I’ll like to tag Ben and Donna but I know she’s really flat out at the moment!

What happens when you get a bunch of Information Architects in a room, throw a bunch of technical presentations, case studies, panels, and interactive workshops at them, along with food and wine (or beer if you’re that way inclined)…? That’s right - it’s Oz-IA! There’s heaps of passionate discussions, lots of interesting people to meet and many new and interesting ideas to learn.

I attended the inaugural Oz-IA conference last year and had a great time. I even discovered a fabulous Thai restaurant (thanks to Stephen Hall and Andrew Boyd) which I’m looking forward to visiting again this year.

I’m glad that this year’s Oz-IA conference is held before Web Directions. Last year, I was a bit too exhausted from all the social activities associated with Web Directions and was a bit more introverted than I normally am. Anyhow, I’ve bought my ticket, and told all my friends and workmates about it. It’s a great value so why not check out the program and register for it? If you get in early, before 11th September, you’ll even get the early bird pricing.

Calling all Aussies - If you can only make it to one conference this year, make sure that it’s Web Directions South. The website has just launched, and there’s a great line up of international and local speakers. The venue has moved to the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre as well as the Powerhouse Museum. Very cool! Make sure you get in early for the early bird pricing. Tickets do tend to sell out fast.

So another year of Web Directions is over, as well as the inaugural OzIA conference/retreat, both held in Sydney. Attending the Web Directions conference is a bit like coming ‘home’. It’s such a comfy feeling to be hanging out with like-minded folks.

I love meeting both old and new friends, great to put some faces to the names that I see frequently on the web, plus to meet some of the Perth people.

Highlights from the week (covering both conferences) include:

• Derek Featherstone’s various accessibility talks, in particular the concept that accessibility is personal and that it’s not just about checklists. This one really strike a chord with me - I’ve been talking myself blue about the same issues for a long time, and it was great to see it so well articulated.
• Andy Clarke’s talk about inspired design - it reinforced my conviction in seeking inspiration among everything around me.
• Mark Pesce’s interesting talk about social networks.
• Donna Maurer’s Lakoff’s ‘Women, Fire & Dangerous Things’ - What every IA should know - very interesting topics, not sure where to start!
• Dan Saffer’s beyond wireframes: documenting AJAX and RIA - particularly relevant to the current organisation where I’m at.
• Thomas Vander Wal’s Folksonomy to Improve IA presentation that really highlighted the intricateness (and coolness!) of tagging.

So I’m back in reality, well sated and well energised (mentally) from both conferences. Totally exhausted physically though! Anyhow, I’m really looking forward to Web Directions South 07 (perhaps Web Directions North too?), and OzIA 2007 depending upon how close it is to Web Directions South 07.

After a hard night of very little sleep, I struggled awake at 6am this morning so I could check out of my hotel, check in to the new hotel, and register for day one of the OzIA conference. The lack of sleep wasn’t due to a hard night of partying. I actually left the Web Directions South 06 party early so I could get a good night sleep. Instead, a faint stream of music being pipped non stop into my room kept me dropping in and out of sleep. I called reception at 3am in the morning, asking for help as I couldn’t sleep. Options presented weren’t good - I choose to attempt sleep with a pillow over my head. Not a good option.

But back to the OzIA conference. It was the inaugural OzIA conference with a good turnout of IAs, and other related professions.

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