Cross Post: The ABC interviewed me about being a Usability Specialist

About a year ago the ABC interviewed me about being a Usability Specialist. They came and videoed me up at the usability lab I use, my home office and even speaking at a conference. It was all quite fun.

Anyway, today I accidently found a photo of myself on the ABC Science website with a link to the interview with me. You can read about my job and watch the video interview here

Technorati Tags: customerexperience, hci, idealinterfaces, information architecture, interview, iphone, judge, marketing, mobile, momo, Sydney, thoughts, TV, ui, usability, video

One of my Pet Peeves

One of my pet peeves is technology conferences that have poor, or no, WiFi and no powerpoints for recharging laptops (and phones). It makes blogging, twittering and note-taking a more arduous and sometimes costly (data) process. It was great to see that a week before the conference starts, Apple have communicated that at WWDC, not only will there will be WiFi networks, but they’ve also informed us of their IDs and purposes for quicker better connections, as well as several hundred Ethernet connections. They have even informed us of where to find the battery charging stations.

So you’ll be sure to get a stream of information from me throughout the conference, until I get tired…

Technorati Tags: Apple, conference, customerexperience, industry, iphone, mac, mobile, thoughts

Mobile people who don’t understand mobile

“But if you claim to be [a mobile] professional and haven’t at least read about the iPhone a year after its release you should be shot.”
Stilgherrian on Mobile Content World and the fact that the audience I gave my iPhone User Experience talk too, weren’t familiar with the iPhone.

I obviously agree with him and thus why I proposed the talk.
I see it as an opportunity 🙂

Technorati Tags: conference, customerexperience, idealinterfaces, industry, iphone, mobile, Sydney, thoughts

Tweets from Mobile Content World

Check out a couple of the tweets from Mobile Content World yesterday.
I spoke on the iPhone user experience and it was scary to realise how many people in the audience (at a mobile conference) hadn’t seen the iPhone or the full benefits.

Technorati Tags: Apple, conference, customerexperience, iphone, mobile

WWDC

“The five-day WWDC event, which runs from June 9 to June 13, will feature the first ever iPhone track for mobile developers with in-depth sessions and hands-on labs to fully explore the capabilities of the OS X iPhone 2.0 software, including the iPhone SDK and the App Store, a breakthrough way for developers to wirelessly deliver their applications to iPhone and iPod touch users.”

I’ll be there!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iphone, mobile, travel

Videos and audio recordings from Webstock conference are online

Check ’em out

Technorati Tags: conference, web2.0

The ‘Web Directions South: User Experience’ website is up

Web Directions South: User Experience 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.

Whatever your role – designer, developer, IA, product and project manager all the way to CIO and CTO – this will be an exciting day of informative, stimulating content to send you home even better enabled to build the web.”

There is a great speaker list:
* Andy Budd (Clearleft) – Interaction design and usability
* Robert Hoekman Jr (Miskeeto) – User experience evangelist
* Lisa Herrod – User testing
* Emily Boyd (Remember the Milk) – Ajax techniques for great user experiences
* Cameron Adams – Frontiers of Javascript (workshop)
* Donna Maurer – Getting content right
* Jackie Moyes (News Digital Media) – Turning research into products
* Steve Baty – Analysing research data
* Mathew Patterson (Campaign Monitor) – Designing for email

I will be speaking on the Mobile Web User Experience
“Historically the mobile web has been a terrible experience, but things are starting to change. Really! We are now at the point that the mobile web is becoming easier to access, both on-deck & off-deck, there’s useful & tailored services out there, and killing some time on the train home doesn’t cost more than your weekly train ticket. We’ll check out the latest and greatest in the world of mobile web and what makes them different from the others. We will also cover the important things to keep in mind for making a better mobile web customer experience.”

Early bird pricing is available until April 11!

Technorati Tags: conference, customerexperience, idealinterfaces, mobile, ui, usability

WDS Mobile Workshop

“The iPhone is the first mobile device worthy of being labelled ‘Mobile 2.0′”
Brian Fling (Blue Flavour)

Technorati Tags: Apple, conference, consumerelectronics, customerexperience, design, industry, iphone, mobile, Sydney, ui, usability, web2.0

Pervasive Conference 2008

Sydney is hosting the 2008 Pervasive conference (19-22 May 2008).

“Pervasive 2008, the Sixth International Conference on Pervasive Computing, will be held May 19-22, 2008 in Sydney, Australia.
This annual conference is the premier forum for researchers to present their latest results in all areas related to the design, implementation, application and evaluation of pervasive computing.”
“We welcome submissions that report on innovations in mobile and
pervasive computing, including but not limited to the following topics:

– New technologies and devices for pervasive computing
– New applications of pervasive computing technologies
– New interfaces and modes of interactions between people
and pervasive computing devices, applications or environments
– New models, tools, infrastructures, architectures and techniques for
designing, implementing & deploying pervasive computing applications
– Evaluations and evaluation methods, for assessing the impact of
pervasive computing devices, applications or environments
– Privacy, security, trust & social issues and implications of
pervasive computing”

Should be great 🙂

Technorati Tags: conference, consumerelectronics, customerexperience, design, environment, hci, industry, mobile, software, Sydney, ubicomp, ui, usability

MoCo News on my Voice of the Consumer Panel @ MCW

As part of Mobile Content World Australia I was once again invited to run the Voice of the Consumer Panel, where I interview six consumers in front of the conference. James at MocoNews has some notes

Technorati Tags: conference, customerexperience, idealinterfaces, industry, mobile, Sydney, usability