A few notes on OZ IA 2009

I’ve just returned from an engaging 2 days at OZ IA 2009 in Sydney, Australia. Firstly I’d like to thank Eric Scheid for organising the whole thing and being a warm host and having a high standard for the conference catering. Yum.

I very much enjoyed meeting some notable Web talent from all over Australia. I love the networking opportunities at these conferences. It’s such an important sense check for hearing people’s work stories, good and bad which people have had in our industry. Also, it’s a time to make new friends; I hope to see some of you again.

Here are a few points from some of the presentations that really stood out for me.

The evolution of Agile, Matthew Hodgson

Lightweight documentation is the way to go. I am all for this approach and I really want to start adopting this wherever possible. There is also a better chance of the documents being read all the way through too.

Use the ISO 13407 approach. This can be used in all our working methods. I want to check this out.

If you want to find out more about Agile, have a look at Matt and Mia’s blog: zenagile.wordpress.com.

Information design standards and performance, David Sless

A very interesting list of books came out of David’s talk. I’d like to get my paws on some of these. I just need to find the slides and grab the list of books. I’ll update this part in a day or two.

Benchmarking is crucial to understanding just how well a site has done after you have actually finished it. We are all too quick to get on with the project and perhaps lack the time or miss the importance of benchmarking before we start a project.

David discussed a simple framework for assessing the minimum standards of usability, accessibility, and acceptance for designed information. I think with further thought we could use something similar for web as he suggested, it’s an interesting notion.

Tears, tantrums and triumphs; a UX and IA case study, Meghan Hayes & Ladan Wise

Win over stakeholders individually if you are in a large organisation and there are many stakeholders. You stand more of a chance to win them over if you do this. Well done to these two for presenting a hard journey to date discussing their experiences candidly.

Playing Games with Culture, Matt Moore

The Organisational Culture & Knowledge Management Methods Cards from Straits Knowledge, and the Zoo cards were really fun. I would love to get a copy of the zoo cards and try some of the games out – anybody know where I can get them in Sydney?

I don’t know much about the Web but I know what I like, Jonathan Cooper

I’d like to thank Jonathan for his creative presentation and his genius analogy of artistic chaos to illustrate that with order brings meaning, thus helping people create a mental model of your site. I would be very pleased if someone recorded this presentation, as it was so involved you had to be there to appreciate the full enthusiasm and ideas Jonathan presented – so refreshing. Jonathan’s presentation can be found on his site.

Not to Prime is a Crime… Jodie Moule

Jodie elegantly explained a typical usability test from the perspective of how users can feel anxious and consider the usability test a test environment for them. She also discussed how we usually only tap into the left-brain in these situations whereby we only get to see the user logic, the analytical etc. But what about the right-brain where we have all the juicy stuff which can help us understand the user even more, the creativity, the intuition, the motivation? This is the information we are all striving to uncover. To really understand our users and design for these behaviours and motivations. Well, a way in which we can pull out some of these in a usability test, is to set some homework for our respondents. Jodie suggests asking them to prepare a collage representing the project’s topic, be it online banking or buying cinema tickets. This is then used to start the usability session, a way to also break the ice and move away from this testing atmosphere and more of a feedback forum. Jodie says she found this was a great way to start the sessions. I’ll definitely give this a shot if I can get the recruitment agency to forward on this homework prior to the usability day.

So there you have it, my most prudent notes from the 2 days at OZ IA 2009. I’ve pretty quickly summarised this to quickly offload it all from my head, so I hope it’s not too obscure like this. When I find all the presentation links I will update this post. Thanks again to all the proficient speakers for giving us an enlightening 48 hours. Check out twitter for more OZ IA disscusions and links.

See you all this time next year.