Past Meetings
March 20, 2008 ~ Chauncey Wilson
Our chapter was honored to host usability maven (“someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field” according to WordNet) Chauncey Wilson at our March 20th meeting. Open Solutions in Glastonbury was kind enough to host us once again at their beautiful facility (Thank You Michael Rawlins). . . and the pizza was great as usual. Personally I only attend for the pizza.
All kidding aside, Chauncey is one of the true pioneers in our field and is an energetic, knowledgeable, and always entertaining speaker. Original plans for the evening included two short presentations to be provided, with the audience voting on a third. However Chauncey was so engaging, and the audience was so totally involved that we only had time for two of the presentations including Brainstorming, It’s Not as easy as You Think, and The Problem with Problems. The only positive consequence from running out of time so unexpectedly is that we now have the perfect excuse to invite Chauncey back to continue the dialog. Remember to mark your calendar when you see Chauncey Wilson’s name pop up on our Upcoming page!
If you were unable to attend you truly missed an energetic and fun-filled evening. For those unable to attend here is a .pdf of all of Chauncey’s slides, both the talks he delivered and those we have yet to hear. And, by the way, a few pictures taken that evening have been posted here.
November 14, 2007 ~ Dan Lloyd
Dan
Lloyd, the Brownell Professor of Philosophy, Trinity College,
Hartford, and author of Simple Minds and Radiant Cool,
has long been concerned with how to get people interacting
with really big concepts. While consciousness has been his main
focus, he has recently begun working on another concept that
has traditionally been difficult for people to wrap their minds
around: the
city of Hartford. In this talk, Dan discussed his work with
Google “mashups,” the
new technology that integrates data with Google maps, making
the data (and the map) more meaningful for users. He said
this helps to “…[produce] new ways of thinking about Hartford,
cities generally, or places generally …[and] examine the way
places and lives interact.”
For some additional background on Dr. Lloyd you may review the
New York Times (May, 2006) article, and his website at
Trinity College.
October 17, 2007 ~ Carolyn Snyder
Our chapter was pleased and honored to Welcome Carolyn Snyder to our October meeting, graciously hosted by the Hartford at their Simsbury location. Ms. Snyder is a very well known and well respected usability consultant (see Snyder Consulting) in the Greater Boston area, and her topic for this meeting was "Bias in Usability Testing."
In usability testing, we strive to eliminate bias so that the results will be accurate. But what is bias anyway? How does it affect our results? What can we do about it? And are we, as usability specialists,truly objective? Carolyn led a lively discussion about bias in usability testing - something we encounter on a daily basis but may not consciously think about. She touched upon the many sources of bias in usability testing, from users to tasks to reporting. Every testing methodology is biased, and so are we as facilitators. But bias is not something to be shunned. Instead, we need to understand its sources and weigh its effects. Sometimes, bias can even be harnessed to serve our purpose!
Carolyn, always a very engaging speaker, led a very lively discussion about the various sources and affects of bias, and the energetic audience participation was a clear indicator that the information was valuable and enlightening.
Carolyn is the author of the book Paper Prototyping (she gave away a copy at this presentation, but those of us present are convinced the entire process was rigged since the winner was Ruth Frank, our Chapter President!) and co-author of two books on web site usability. She has a BS in Computer Science and an MBA, both of which have biased her perspective.
Carolyn's slides from her presentation can be viewed here.
September 19, 2007 ~ Todd Zaki Warfel
Usability "Renaissance Man" Todd Zaki Warfel addressed our Chapter's September meeting. His talk was entitled, "Creating Data Driven Research Personas." This presentation was a greatly abbreviated version of a full day tutorial session that Todd delivered at the national UPA Conference in Austin this past June. Todd is an extremely entertaining, insightful, and thought-provoking speaker. He engages his audience and keeps his talks lively and participatory. Although most of the Chapter members had a familiarity with the concept of personas, many of us found the concept of basing such personas on actual qualitative/quantitative data original (and maybe obvious in retrospect). Mr. Warfel was a convincing and passionate advocate regarding the utility of personas. Audience participation and questioning was high, a sure sign that we were definitely engaged.
Todd's slides are available at slideshare by following the link:
Todd Zaki Warfel: Data Driven Design Research Personas
Todd also maintains a very interesting blog at toddwarfel.com, where he describes himself thusly, "I work as a Partner, Design Research consultant at Messagefirst. I’m an advocate for standards, patterns, and prototyping. I work on a MacBook Pro, listen to music and watch LOST on my iPod video, motor in a Mini Cooper S Works, and cruise around town on a Triumph Thruxton."
June 20, 2007
Shane Lovellette, Product Manager for TechSmith's
flagship usability testing software, Morae, presented an overview
to the Connecticut Chapter on the evening of June 20th at 700 State
Street in New Haven. The presentation included a detailed description of the product and its capabilities, actual case studies
and also discussion of the exciting new User Vue product for remote
user testing. Shane discussed the power of these valued tools, hinted
at where Morae is going in the future, and also listened to our Chapter
members' input on changes we would like to see. Morae is clearly at the very top of list of usability testing software, and the new Version 2.0 brings even more functionality for designing, recording, analyzing, and reporting on the usability of web sites and PC based applications.
If you want to learn more about Morae
please check out the TechSmith web
site.
If you would like to review Mr. Lovellette's slide deck, it is also available right here.
(If you require the free Adobe Reader it can be downloaded here)
May 30, 2007
Our chapter was honored to have Dr. Deborah J. Mayhew speak
on the evening of May 30, 2007 in Hartford Connecticut.
Her topic for this presentation was “The
Business Case for Usability Engineering” in which
Dr. Mayhew made the case that usability engineers
must learn to present effective business cases to management in order
to win funding and support for usability work and to promote the
discipline in their organizations.
Dr. Mayhew is a very engaging and entertaining speaker, and her presentation
was very well received. All in all it was a very special evening for
the new Connecticut Chapter.
Dr. Mayhew was kind enough to provide us with a copy of her presentation
slides, along with some other excellent resource material. All of
this material is in the Adobe PDF format.
Presentation:The Business Case for Usability Engineering
(If you require the free Adobe Reader it can be downloaded here)
Frequently Raised Objections
Dr. Mayhew draws an analogy to the ubiquitous "Frequently Asked
Questions"
with a list of common objections to usability engineering efforts
and responses to such objections.
Benefits and Responsibilities
Dr. Mayhew provides a valuable overview of the benefits and responsibilities
of all stakeholders in a project development program.
March 22, 2007 ~ How to use Real-Time Experiments to Test VUI Improvement
Phillip Hunter ~ Vice President, Voice Interaction
Design Group
Mr. Hunter presented a discussion on the use of real-time experiments
designed to test Voice User Interface (VUI) improvements.
Phillip Hunter brings broad voice interaction design and usability experience as well as a deep understanding of the development process to his leadership position at SpeechCycle. As the head of design services for Voice Partners, he led the team that won the 2004 SpeechTek Persona of the Year award for Cellular One, and his experience includes international and multi-lingual design. Previously he founded designoutloud, and while at Intervoice Hunter created and managed the professional services practice for speech recognition projects, guiding design and development for Fortune 500 customer applications in the financial, travel, and insurance industries, among others. During that time, he co-invented a method for gauging design effectiveness that was granted a patent in 2004. Hunter is a graduate of Texas A&M University and majored in English with a minor in Psychology.
February 1, 2007 ~ A Case Study of a Work Analysis and User Interface Design Project
Dr. Beth Giurelli ~ President, Giurelli Consulting
Dr. Beth Giurelli presented a case study of a work analysis and
user interface design project. The project was a military software
application to support complex and dynamically changing work
tasks in which ten user groups, with highly specialized skills,
coordinate to plan and execute missions.
Dr. Giurelli is president of Giurelli Consulting. She was manager of a small group of human factors professionals at BBN Technologies when this project took place. She has worked for the past twenty years in software usability for BBN, IBM and AT&T. She is also a clinical psychologist.
September 20, 2006 ~ The role of learning styles and personality profiling in usability: Understanding how to communicate most effectively AND then insuring your success through testing
Todd Follansbee, Vice President, Usability & Design Consulting,
Web Marketing Resources LLC
Todd focused on the user experience; improving usability and
conversion rates on clients' web sites. Todd has developed
techniques combining usability, psychology and a thorough understanding
of the online sales experience. Todd's innovative work with
Psychographic web marketing and profiling had him speaking on
TV and in seminars on converting internet visitors into customers.
He has worked or consulted with a variety of companies including
SNET and The Day Newspaper, (winner of NE Newspaper of the Year
site). Todd's usability study of the impact of colorblindness
on Amazon, Microsoft and IBM''s sites was first published online
in 2001.