RuthEllison.com

On Friday, I said goodbye to my workmates of 14 months. I was really touched by the effort everyone went into organising a great farewell, in particular Viv who did a lot of baking and organising! I was sent off with a very delicious morning tea (lots of divine homemade goodies), beautiful flowers and a fantastic present. This was followed up with drinks at Old Parliament House. I was humbled by all the comments and gestures from various people through out the day, with emails, phone calls and face-to-face conversations.

I learned a lot over my 14 months and got to work on interesting projects. Met lots of interesting people and made some good friends. I will miss my workmates and hope that people keep thinking about creating great user experiences.

As of tomorrow (Monday), I will be working at Stamford Interactive. I’m looking forward to a set of new challenges!

Tonight, hubby and I watched the hilarious Weird Al Yankovic performance at the Canberra Theatre. Weird Al is a very talented American musician/satirist/parodist who is best known for his parodies of some of the biggest names in the music business - Michael Jackson, Eminem, Nirvana, Madonna, James Blunt, etc.

Some of the songs performed tonight to a very enthusiastic audience included White and Nerdy, I’ll Sue You, You’re Pitiful, Canadian Idiot, Amish Paradise, Pretty Fly For A Rabbi, Fat, and my two absolute favourites, Yoda and The Saga Begins. I also loved the Weird Al TV interviews that played through out the night, inbetween songs.

Despite a slight technical hitch towards the end of the show (involving some device freezing and the projector stopping at a particular frame), the entire show was really fun, really funny and worth the money.

After nearly missing my flight this morning, thanks to Canberra Cabs, I’ve learned a few valuable lessons:

1. Do not book a Canberra Cab using their online form - the cab will never arrive (discovered this one through my hubby, which was also verified by Russel)
2. Do not ring up and book a cab for the future (i.e. at least a day ahead) - that cab will never arrive either
3. What ever time you’ve allocated for the cab to arrive - give yourself at least another half an hour on top of that

So after two phone calls this morning, and a lot of panic attacks, a cab finally showed up. The driver had to significantly speed along the highway to get me to the airport so I could just make it on the plane. The passengers were already boarding when I made it to the airport. I’m entirely grateful to Qantas for their fairly usable self check-in system - I managed to check in for my flight (including my return flight) in under a minute. It took longer going through security (my shoes set off the metal detector) but I finally made it. I was one of the last few passengers on the plane, but I made it!!!

We (Russ and myself) visited both offices in Sydney to conduct our accessibility testing. Discovered lots of interesting stuff about various disabilities, particularly, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) /Occupational overuse syndrome (OOS). It was great to get verification about the issues we thought were occurring, and very importantly, to start building up the relationships with our users of assistive technologies.

A piece of learning from the last few years is that, like usability evaluations, you have to consider the context of the user in terms of their environment, their experience levels (of the assistive tool as well as of the application), the amount of training they have received, whether they undertake other training, the frequency of that training, and the work culture.

It is ideal to conduct the accessibility evaluation with a range of users across different experience levels, and across the different assistive tools. It is also important to note that when analysing the feedback received from the users of assistive technologies, it should be balanced with the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. For example, a user may have been using an assistive tool for many years, but if they were not given the opportunity to do much training (whether it is self training or through a trainer), their experience levels may not match another person with the same number of years experience who had more opportunity to get more familiar with their assistive tool.

I could go on, but ironically enough, my own RSI is playing up…..

So today is my last day (and also a friend’s - Caronne - last day) at one particular organisation where I’ve spent a significant portion of my time over the last few years. In that time:

• I’ve had my eyes opened to political intrigues
• Watched with great interest the myriad of human behaviours and interaction
• Developed into the extremely passionate-about-accessibility-and-usability person that I am today
• Researched, developed and maintained user interface standards (and the associated challenges that the whole process brings)
• Met a lot of interesting people (within and also external to the organisation)
• Run lots of interesting usability sessions
• Facilitated many collaborative design sessions
• Start my Human-Computer Interaction course at University of Queensland
• Helped integrate the user centred design methodology into current practices (still quite a way to go though)
• Lots of relationship building with various people
• Ate lots of cake and sweets (I can’t keep away from team morning teas)
• Did lots of fascinating User Centred Design “stuff”!

I was farewelled with a box of gorgeous flowers, a card with lovely words from many people, and Seasons One and Two of Little Britain (one of my favourite comedy series). Headed out to the B Bar in Kingston with couple of work mates from varying teams. I enjoyed some delicious cocktails (I love cocktails), got enjoyably tipsy and said random mushy stuff to my UCD team mates.

I was really pleased to see the turn out, and really appreciated the effort that people put in to make it (some had to drive out from a different part of Canberra). It gave me lots of warm fuzzies - a good way to end an era.

Good bye old organisation! Hello new organisation!

We’re on the last couple of days of the honeymoon. Didn’t quite make it as far north as anticipated, thanks to Cyclone Hubert. I was highly anticipating getting to Ningaloo Reef, but we only managed to get as far as Carnarvon. Perhaps next time, we’ll make it all the way there, plus further to Broome!

I have been writing up each day of our journey, but will post these entries once we get back to Perth.

In the meantime, I leave you with a photo from our wedding photo shoot:

Photo credits: © 2006 Samm Blake

The above photo was taken on the grounds of the University of Western Australia. It is part of a series shot at that location for our wedding. Our photographer was Samm Blake. See more of her work at www.sammblake.com.

Getting married tomorrow. The last few months have flashed past in such a blur. Currently finalising the last few details for tomorrow, especially with the early start (have to be up before 6am).

Thanks to those of you (you know who you are!) who have provided help, moral support, and providing a ear for my bridezilla moments!

Good bye, and see you on the “other side”!

With all of the bad news about at the moment, this is a totally frivolous post about some of my clothes/accessories finds in Perth, while I’ve been out and about doing various chores for mum.

The first is Back in time, located in The Lakes Shopping Centre, at North Lake Road, South Lake, Western Australia. Don’t be deceived by the discount feel of the shopping centre. It hides this gem of a shop, which stocks beautiful designer clothing, handbags (my favourite Olga berg designer bags), jewellery, gifts etc. There’s such a range of interesting stuff. I could easily have spent more time there, but I had to get mum home to rest.

The other is Ice Accessories. There’s a few branches in Perth, but the one I’ve been to is Shop 45/425, in Perth Forrest Chase. It stocks the latest accessories at very cheap prices (about $5 upwards!). It mostly stocks costume jewellery, but there are some bags, a tiny selection of cheap scents, and various lip glosses etc. I first discovered this store on my last trip to Perth earlier this year.

The final is a clearance outlet named X Dream. It can be found at Shop 4 of the Concourse (Perth central train station, opposite Angus & Robertson bookstore). Lots of the latest fashions at cheap prices. It’s a pity that I don’t like the current gypsy look, else I would have gone nuts in there.

Of course there’s always Harbour Town (why don’t we have anything like this in Canberra?).

I’ve just gotten back from Adelaide where I was running some usability sessions. We had some big issues with the testing environments, but overall the sessions went well.

Just popping through to say thank you to all of you for the good wishes for my mum. My sister has been posting photos of mum’s progress in hospital. It makes me sad seeing mum looking so helpless in the hospital bed.

No matter what kind of disagreements I’ve had with my parents in the past, I love them very much. I tend to think that parents are always strong and nothing will go wrong, so it’s a bit disconcerting and scary seeing a parent being scared and helpless.

I’m off to work today (as it’s past midnight), then Thredbo for a wedding where we (Raw Honey) will be singing, then back to Canberra on Saturday where I’ll be flying into Perth to be with mum for two weeks. I can’t wait to see mum!