On Friday I attended a fascinating series of keynote talks, followed by a panel discussion, about the opportunities for entrepreneurs to use open data. The talk was part of a series of events organised by the group Silicon Valley comes to the UK (#svc2uk). The panel was moderated by local angel investor Sherry Coutu and included: Andrew McLaughlin, Former deputy CTO for US Gov’t and head of ‘Code for America’ Hans-Peter Brondmo: Head of Social at Nokia DJ Patil: [...]

In my current role I’ve spent the last 5 years getting usability and User Experience (UX) principles and methods embedded in the organisation. It’s been hard work and there have been lots of small victories and battles on the way. We’ve progressed from an annual usability survey to having a dedicated UX Architect role and standardised methods and tools. I spoke about our journey at a Software East event earlier this year. I’ll soon be [...]

Most local gov webbies will probably already be aware that the focus of Socitm’s 2012 Better Connected review will be on managing top tasks and improving the user experience of Council websites. As a dyed-in-the-wool user experience fanatic I fully support this direction. Whether your web team takes the Better Connected report with a pinch of salt, or work painstakingly to address all the reviewers’ findings, is neither here nor there, in my opinion. What [...]

Recently someone asked me what websites I like from a user experience design perspective. I couldn’t think. My mind went blank! Which struck me as weird, given that I use websites all the time and I’ve worked in web design and development for around 15 years. Surely some websites should stand out as being well designed, as being inspirational for having a great user experience? Reflecting on why nothing stood out in my mind when [...]

I’ve often felt that there is a lack of focus on user needs in open data development. But recently I came across a really interesting post that demonstrates a more user-centred approach to open data development. Tim Davies has blogged about how personas are being used to help developers of open data applications understand the type of people who might use their applications and typical user scenarios. In Tim’s words: We’re creating a set of ‘open [...]

Last week I was at the Building a Perfect Council Website 11 conference. When you manage a website with a wide range of content and services it’s crucial to focus on the main customer tasks and journeys. I did a workshop on ‘top tasks’ with my colleague Matt Godfrey and Conor Moody from Liverpool Direct. Conor shared some excellent insights on how Liverpool City Council’s website has been turned around by focusing on top tasks [...]

Last week the Cambridge Usability Group were lucky enough to have Mike Atherton come talk about information architecture (IA). As a freelance IA, Mike has been working with the BBC for some time to help them tame a huge amount of useful content. This talk was of particular interest to me. I’ve always had a fascination with how IA’s make complex information structures understandable and easy to navigate. I oversee the management of a large [...]

The Cambridge Usability Group was delighted to welcome Cennydd Bowles to talk on Monday 6 June. Cennydd is well known for his UX work at the agency Clearleft in Brighton, his involvement in organising events like dConstruct and UX London and his book Undercover User Experience Design, which he co-wrote with his colleague James Box. The topic of Cennydd’s talk was ‘Designing for the wider web’. Cennydd felt that the focus on designing for mobile [...]

I’m one of those people who can’t sit twiddling my fingers for long. So when I finished my MSc last year, I jumped at the chance to get involved in organising some local UX events. The Cambridge Usability Group has been around since 2005 and was set up as a regional off shoot of the UK UPA. Over the years the group has organised a variety of talks, featuring speakers from the local UX scene [...]

Yesterday I spoke at a Software East user experience (UX) event. I’ve not attended any Software East events before, so didn’t know quite what to expect. But the event was expertly organised by Mark Dalgarno and generously hosted by Redgate Software in their swanky offices (which reminded me a bit of Google HQ in London!). Almost 100 people attended, which is quite something for a mid-week event in Cambridge. I was particularly impressed to find [...]