I am intrigued by the latest mini site from MySociety. Launched today Brief Encounters is described by MySociety founder Tom Steinberg as: “a technology test-bed to help us crack a new design and data problem: how do you make it as easy as possible for users to pinpoint a specific bus stop, or train route, [...]

I’m pretty lame at blogging bookmarks, but I’ve found a few juicy things recently. Promote the Vote is a fantastic site promoting the vote (obviously) for people with learning disabilities which has been led by Speaking Up in my home town Cambridge. Great design, content and videos. Designed by Easy Read Online. On a similar [...]

A few months back I blogged about getting the teams up to speed with user testing. Since then we’ve tried a few things out and learnt a bit along the way about planning and running the tests. We’ve expended a fair bit of effort in getting some processes up and running, but hopefully next time [...]

I work in a team that manages local government web development projects. We work closely with applications developers in IT and we do most of our development in-house. A couple of years ago we realised noticed a pattern in the way we were working. Some projects had complex requirements and often involved working with new [...]

Social Media and Networking We’re doing a Social Media & Networking project at work. The aim of the project is to develop a ‘toolkit’ for staff. I found this online database of social media policies a starter for 10 – no point re-inventing the wheel. Community Engagement I recently started a project where we’ll be [...]

Earlier this week I attended a workshop in London led by the authors of a new book entitled ‘Social by Social‘, which provides practical guidance about using social web technologies for social good. The workshop brought together a number of people who work in central government, social enterprises or charitable foundations who are developing programmes [...]

Last week I did a session for the web teams on usability testing. Unfortunately I only had one laptop and the room was too small to get people sat in groups of 2 or 3 to try out moderating a usability test first hand. So instead I gave an overview of user testing including: Why, [...]

Having recently finished the taught part of a Masters degree in Human Computer Interaction at UCLIC, I am finally finding the time to formally pass on some of my knowledge and skills to colleagues at work. Since I started in my current role in local government in 2006 we have used some user centred design [...]

So here I am. I finally got round to starting a blog after finishing my MSc modules in May 2009. For the last 3 years I’ve been studying a part-time MSc in Human Computer Interaction whilst working full-time, so spare time has been in short supply! Over the next year I’ll be working on my [...]