The international UPA conference which is hosted in Munich, Germany, provides a great opportunity to meet and network and to share ideas, visions and innovation strategies across cultures and across countries.

About

• Who At least 700 attendees who work in the user experience field, with a more international crowd than ever before.
• What Tutorials and workshops on Monday and Tuesday, then two and a half days packed with presentations, Idea Markets, and opportunities to network with other user experience professionals.
• When Workshops and Tutorials begin on Monday, May 24, and regular conference sessions begin on Wednesday, May 26.
• Where Munich, Germany at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel.
• Follow #UPA2010 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UPA2010

Registration

Regular registration: open until 15 April. Late registration: 16 April – 17 May. Please register online to secure your place!

The zip-file contains a high resolution wallpaper supporting displays up to 2560×1600 pixels. In addition you will also find a iPod / iPhone-friendly version of the wallpaper. So feel free to download the new, lovely “Heart” wallpaper!

Download Heart Wallpaper (zip-file, 1MB)

It’s about “Making Life Easy” and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first…

The World Usability Day 2009 (WUD) is focused on Designing for a Sustainable World. This year’s theme could not be timelier. With the challenge of rising gas prices, security issues, aging infrastructures and much more, globally, the transportation industry is facing ongoing change. With those changes come many usability opportunities and challenges.

Location
WKO Steiermark
Körblergasse 111-113
A-8021 Graz
Europasaal

Date and Start
November 12, 2009, 04:00 pm

Topics

Following presentations will be one of the main topics of this years WUD in Graz:

• Convincing People in Cyber Space – Argumentation Matrixs
• Let your Customer smile – Usability Management in Product Development!
• We make you love your customer! The challenge of integrating a User eXperience process in the an existing development process

This year the World Usability Day in Graz will be closed by an User Experience Award and a wine tasting! I’m going to post a short summery of the WUD (and maybe the wine tasting too) after November 12nd.

The zip-file contains three high resolution wallpapers supporting displays up to 2560×1600 pixels. So feel free to download the new, mystic “Glow” wallpaper in 3 fancy colors - pink, orange and blue!

Download Glow Wallpaper (zip-file, 1,8MB)

Now it’s time to release “Galaxy”. The zip-file contains a high resolution wallpaper supporting displays up to 2560×1600 pixels. So feel free to download the abstract, colorful and mystic wallpaper!

Download Galaxy Wallpaper (zip-file, 1MB)

To develop a product that best fits to the user’s needs, the context in which the product will be used should be considered from the very beginning of the product development. Even before a working prototype is available, a small team of people with a background in usability testing and / or human factors should be aware of the characteristics of the users, the tasks they will carry out and the circumstances of use.

When to conduct a UCA?

Whenever you want to develop a product that is usable you have to think about its purpose and how it supports its users in their daily work. This analysis is essential for any work on usability and should be performed as early as possible during product development. It helps you defining usability goals and requirements for your product that should continuously be evaluated with typical end users.

How to start?

The method implements the principles of ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability) and has already been applied in a variety of commercial organizations where user experience and the software quality are of concern. In general this method starts with bringing together a range of people who have a stake in the product development (project managers, product managers, designers, users, human factor professionals,…) and focusing their attention on contextual factors relevant to usability. They should have knowledge of the intended users and usage and should know

• what the product is for
• the characteristics of the product
• how the product will support users in their daily work
• in which environment the product will be used

The meeting should be moderated by an experienced usability professional, knowing the method and its process. It is a cost-effective way to elicit the information, but it has to be ensured that everyone has an opportunity to express their views, without being affected by any power relationships that may exists between the participants.

Output

The output of this meeting should represent a description of the context of use and should contain following information:

• Product description
• User types that have been identified and will be considered. User types that are indirectly affected by the product and its output.
• Characteristics of user types, their skills and knowledge, experience with other products, job characteristics and tasks.

Download example of Context Analysis Report

Furthermore this analysis can also be conducted by performing individual interviews by obtaining real users that have been identified within a prior stakeholder meeting. In the course of a participating observation the interviewees are obtained in their context doing their tasks. Based on a structured interview guideline you discover more important facts and opinions held by the potential users of your product.

Today I’m glad to announce the “Sidenotes” plug-in I’ve been working on for quite some time. After some testing and localization work I think it’s ready to be released!

Let’s make some words about this plug-in: My overall goal during development was: Keep it simple and don’t lose sight of the primary goal! I didn’t want to code something that becomes complex and user-unfriendly after a while. Sidenotes should provide the possibility to easily add “advanced links”, showing a title, a brief description of the link target and the date the user has posted the note. Similar to your link list or blog roll, side notes can be displayed e.g. in your sidebar – of course providing an additional RSS feed for easy syndication.

See the result at the bottom of my homepage! If you have any ideas, problems or suggestions, just drop me a note!

Download latest “Sidenotes” release from WordPress Plugin Directory

Installation

• Like many other WordPress plug-ins “Sidenotes” can be easily installed by copying the “sidenotes”-folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
• Copy sidenotes-rss.php from your /wp-content/plugins/ directory to your root directory (where you can also find files like wp-app.php, wp-atom.php,…)
• Activate the plug-in through the “Plugins” menu in your WordPress admin panel and do some additional setup in the “Settings” menu if you want.
• Write your first side note within the “Tools” menu
• Place get_sidenotes() somewhere in your code

FAQ

1. I want to show my sidenotes in a list – as it is defined by default.
   You have to enclose your function call, e.g. <?php get_sidenotes() ?> with <ul> tags

Change log

2009-09-14
v0.9: Initial version

2009-09-21
v0.9.1: Bug Fix: Cyrillic language support

2009-09-22
v0.9.2: Bug Fix: Display date / time in local language

2009-09-24
v.0.9.3: New feature: Output all (or specific number of) Sidenotes via <?php get_sidenotes_archives() ?>

A never-ending project has come to an end. It’s a grain of truth that designing your own website is the most difficult and challenging project. I hope you like my new design! Don’t hesitate to drop a note! And don’t be confused about my previous posts: It’s true, I’ve switched to English!

Bereits die existierende Version von LJ pool baut auf keinem der derzeit erhältlichen Community-Frameworks wie beispielsweise Drupal auf. Zwar habe ich in Erwägung gezogen, eines dieser Frameworks zu verwenden, doch nach umfangreicher Recherche bin ich zu dem Entschluss gekommen, dass es wichtiger ist eine für den Benutzer zugeschnittene und einfach zu bedienende Applikation anbieten zu können, statt einem System von der Stange. Deshalb wird auch die neue Version von LJ pool ein “selbstgestricktes” System sein, was hinsichtlich Design, Performance als auch Sicherheit einen großen Schritt nach vorne machen wird.

Was bietet die neue LJ pool Community-Seite?

1. Landjugendgruppen und Mitglieder kennen lernen!
   LJ pool bietet die Möglichkeit neue Landjugenden und deren Mitglieder kennen zu lernen, sich mit ihnen zu unterhalten oder auch zu verabreden. Eine Umkreissuche ermöglicht dabei Benutzer in der Umgebung zu finden und sich mit ihnen anzufreunden.
2. Termine mit Freunden planen
   Will man mit seinen Freunden etwas unternehmen, kann man private Termine erstellen und an seine Freunde schicken. Sie selbst stimmen dann ab, an welchem Termin sie am ehesten Zeit haben.
3. Was unternehmen andere Mitglieder heute?
   LJ pool zeigt auch Termine, wie Veranstaltungen, Partys oder Messen, die an bestimmten Plätzen stattfinden. Außerdem ist auch ersichtlich, wer alles noch an diesem Termin teilnimmt.
4. Nette Plätze finden
   Neben all diesen Community Features kann man auf LJ pool die nettesten Plätze in der Umgebung finden und selbst bewerten. Egal ob ein Restaurant oder eine Bar, einen Zahnarzt oder eine Autowerkstatt. Somit kann man seine Lieblingsplätze für ein romantisches Essen auch seinen Freunden zeigen.

Natürlich bietet LJ pool neben all diesen Features sämtliche Funktionen, die man sich von einer Community-Seite erwartet, wie eine Nachrichtenzentrale, Fotoalben, eine Chatfunktion oder “Was machst du gerade” um seinen Freunden zu zeigen, was man gerade so treibt. Weiters können Benutzer ihre eigene Landjugendgruppe anlegen und ihre Freunde dazu einladen.

Ende Jänner 2009 ist es soweit und die neue Version von LJ pool wird online gehen. Natürlich kann jeder mitmachen, die Anmeldung ist kostenlos!

Die Veranstalter haben hierfür ein hochkarätiges Team an Vortragenden zusammengestellt, die einen Einblick in Spezialgebiete der Usability geben sollen. Zusätzlich wird heuer ein Workshop zum Thema “Methods of Usability Engineering” von Ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Keith Andrews angeboten.

Die genauen Termin-Details:

Ort: FH JOANNEUM, Alte Poststraße 149 (graues Gebäude), 8010 Graz
Erdgeschoss, Hörsall 14 und 15
Datum: 13. November 2008, 16 bis 19:30 Uhr (Workshop bereits ab 09:30)
Eintritt: frei (Workshop: € 30,-)

Unter www.worldusabilityday.at findet man noch ausführliche Informationen über Zeitplan und Vortragende. Außerdem kann man sich über ein Anmeldeformular zum World-Usability-Tag anmelden.