A few weeks back I posted about the Google localgov event. My thoughts on whether Councils would adopt cloud computing went something like this: I have no doubt that the migration to the cloud won’t be driven so much by business strategy so much as by social needs and expectations. As time goes by our experiences of computing in our personal lives will be drastically mis-matched with our computing experiences at work. Well that’s all [...]

It seems like my best bet at making it to a barcamp this year (having missed a few already) is to help organise one on home turf. So I’m helping Dave Briggs to get LocalGovCamb together. At the moment there are no hard and fast details to speak of, but as soon as we have a date and venue we’ll let you know. The theme is going to be local gov innovation, which could cover [...]

I’ve found some really useful information recently on evaluating online engagement including Dave Brigg’s suggestion for a common framework, Alice Casey’s excellent presentation on evaluating online participation and the Digital Dialogues report. As I’ve been setting up various e-engagement projects at work I have been thinking about methods for both quantitative and qualitative evaluation, in particular the type of metrics and measures we might use for quantitative evaluation. I’ve also recently been reading what Clay [...]

This evening I checked out the new Lancashire County Council website which has adopted a ‘Google’ style home page – just a search box and little other navigation. Unless of course you go to the ‘classic view’, which is a link on the relatively discreet navigation bar at the top (highlighted with blue elipse below). Although it’s a bold move and I applaud any Council willing to step away from the category style navigation enforced [...]

Yesterday I attended an event for LocalGov people at Google’s very plush offices in London. The day was put together by the Google LocalGov team and Dave Briggs helped coordinate arrangements and publicity. The event covered a broad range of Google’s products, some of the new innovations at Google and offered a wealth of advice and insight. I can’t cover all the topics in this post in depth, so I’ll focus on a few that [...]

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, when and what to user test; The different types of user testing and their pro’s and con’s; What’s involved in [...]

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 (UCD) methods with varying degrees of success. But we we are now aiming to use a UCD approach for all [...]

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 MSc research project which is closely related to my day job as Web Development Manager in local government. I’m hoping [...]