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BarCamp Miami 2009

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BarCamp Miami

Yesterday I attended my first tech event in over 3 months. BarCamp Miami. What is BarCamp you ask? No, it’s not a school for learning how to become a bartender. According to Wikipedia — BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.

When I first arrived at the event I was not sure what to expect. Getting in was a breeze, and they immediately provided a free t-shirt upon arrival. I created a name tag for myself, and was told that if I wanted to present something that I needed to sign up asap as it was supposed to begin in about 15 minutes and slots were probably no longer available.

This was the sign-up board:

BarCampMiami sign-up board and agenda

BarCampMiami sign-up board and agenda

Fortunately I was not interested in giving a presentation, since the time slots were full. It was a bit chaotic to get close enough to the board to find out what would be available, and it was extremely hard to determine at what skill level each session was going to be just based on the title.

The first session that I attended was called Scaling Websites — Everything You Need to Know by Gregg Pollack. http://www.railsenvy.com/ Gregg was an excellent speaker, and this was by far the most technical of the sessions that I sat in, you can view a copy of the screencast here.

At the next time slot, I should have been in a class called Configuration Management, with Chef, but someone misinformed me that it was about arranging kitchens. It was probably the closest class that would have pertained to something I may have contact with at work, and I was later told that Chef is a software application. Instead I went to a session on using AdWords to generate blog revenue. This was probably the most ineffective session, as most of the conversation was gear towards user behavior, and not very technical. I am also 90% sure that the guy who was sitting next to me was homeless, and he was very stinky.

Derek Bender presenting his Typography session

Derek Bender presenting his Typography session

The next session I attended was called Web Typography with Derek Bender. I could tell he was very knowledgeable about his subject matter, but I was expecting his presentation to be a little more technical. The first 2/3’s of the presentation was going over the different types of font attributes. I was expecting a little bit more of a tips and tricks session where he showed how to do some complex things in CSS. For more information you can read his blog here. He mentioned that in CSS 3, designers would be able to distribute fonts through their designs, without the user needing to have the font on their system. This concept is awesome, however I believe that it would generate some licensing issues for Applications that require installation.

After the 3rd session, I took a break for lunch and networking. I got to see some of the gang that I knew from speaking at Refresh, Brian Breslin, Alex de Carvalho, and Alex Harris, and I met a few new people, like Robert Dempsey the CEO and Founder of adsdevshop.com, and  and Nick Pettit Co-founder and designer from done21.com. Robert gave a presentation on getting things done, and Nick’s company just launched http://www.belongsto.me/

After the break I went a session on Creating Websites Your Users Will Love by WUFoo.com. Some of the main points of this session was about establishing relationships with customers and users. To spend extra detail on items that the user will see when they first use an application. The presenter also discussed using tone and language to enhance user experience. Unfortunately the applications that I develop need to stay away from colloquial language because it doesn’t usually translate well during localization.

Next I watched a presentation on Managing Customer Expectations. In this presentation he discusses how a Japanese restaurant explored the idea of taking orders over Twitter. They talked about how they experience backlash from the Social Media community who believed they should have a screen that had the orders displayed to patrons at the restaurant. They did a cost analysis on executing this plan, and discovered it would cost approximately $1200 to execute the solution that would only generate about $30 a month in revenue. I was surprised that this was the major deterrent, as the hardware could always be financed over time. One thing that wasn’t brought up in the presentation was the liability of letting the restaurant patrons view random twitter posts directed to the restaurant on a screen. I mean, how many shots of Saki would it take before people you knew would start ordering hot tuna or bearded clams over twitter  just to see it on the large screen tv?

The final presentation I attended was called Web App Design to Capturing Value from Every user by Adaptive Blue. I thought this was going to be about collecting customer data however, it was about the 80, 19, 1 rule or the Pareto principle, the simple definition is that for many phenomena 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.  .. This discusses that for every 1% of user submitted data, 19% other people interact with it, and 80% more people will view it.

happyhourAfter the presentation we went to the Cabana bar on the roof of the Mayfair House to enjoy the perfect weather and lovely view.

Tips for Healthy Lifestyle Changes in the New Year

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In September of this year I was informed by a health care professional that I had high blood pressure. To me this was a sure sign that I needed to make some changes in my life. The first of which was to lose weight. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of going on a fad diet, instead I wanted to do make some lifestyle changes that would last a lifetime. This blog entry is about the changes I made in my life that resulted in me losing 15 lbs in about 2 months. Not only did I lose the initial weight, but I also did not gain any weight over the holidays, even though I did not watch what I ate.

Anyway, I recommend speaking to your doctor before you engage in any of the activities to make sure that they are the right choices for you, as this program is also not for pregnant or nursing mothers. Here is how I started living a healthier lifestyle in the 4th quarter of 2008.

First you will need a few things.

#1 a Cell phone that allows you to set reoccurring reminders, preferably one that you can sync with your Outlook if you are on the computer all day at work.

#2 a Magic Bullet Blender.

#3 a Detox system. I used Dr Natura’s 3 month Toxinout and Colonix system available online at DrNatura.com

#4 healthy groceries consisting of the following: frozen or fresh fruit, vanilla soy milk, fresh OJ (I prefer not from concentrate), 1 55 count variety box of flavored Quaker Oatmeal (from BJ’s), organic non-fat milk, soups (I like Wolfgang Puck), salads, or low-fat frozen entrees. 

#5 I also recommend perhaps disposing of any “temptations” you may have laying around the house for those late night munchies.

The first step to this process is to set cell phone reminders when it’s time to participate in the system, and then supplementing that with a few basic healthy food choices. At no point was I hungry or craving food. My goal is to instill good healthy habits that I don’t even have to think about for the long term. I don’t always follow the program on the weekends, however I do recommend that you begin it on a Saturday, as you may find yourself spending some quality time in the bathroom during the first 24-48 hours of the detox.

This is my regimine during the week:

When I wake up in the morning, first thing I do in the kitchen is I drink a glass of water, and I take the Dr Natura Paranil (Liver and Colon Purifying Complex) pills. These pills are not consistently taken out throughout the process, you would have  to refer to the Dr. Natura instructions for the complete schedule.

After I make breakfast for my son, I make a delicous fiber smoothie drink in my Magic bullet blender:

1 cup of frozen mixed fruit (available at Publix for about $7.99, lasts about 2 weeks) 
microwave it for 1 minute to partially defrost, fill the rest of the magic bullet with:
2/3’s vanilla soy milk
1/2 banana
and the rest OJ

I add the fiber to this smoothie, and it is delicious. This takes about 2 minutes to make, and it makes enough for both myself and my husband. This drink starts my metabolism, and it keeps me full for at least an hour.

When I get to work, I dock and turn on my laptop. I then grab a packet of flavored oatmeal, and some decaffeinated tea (I’m sure some people would insist on coffee). I make a packet of oatmeal with fat free milk. Then I get working.

At 11:45 my phone reminder tells me to take the Dr Natural Toxinout Pills (Heavy metal/Toxin removal and liver detox support). At 12 I go to the gym and do 25 minutes of cardio and some Nautilous machines. However the first 3 weeks of this program I did not work out at all and I still lost the most weight.

Sometimes on my way back to work I grab a salad, or I keep soups at my desk. I also have healthy microwave dinners in the freezer at work (I recommend Healthy Choice or Amy’s). After I eat I take my DetoxiGreen pills to replenish  Antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes that may have been removed with the detox system.

When I get home, I make a sensible low-carb dinner. There are a few things that I try to completely avoid: sodas, pastas, white rice, white breads, and potatoes. Instead I use Flatout low-carb wraps, brown or wild rice, flatbreads (BJ’s has awesome artisian flatbreads that i make pizzas with), and sweet potatoes. Pieces of meat should be kept to smaller than the palm of the hand. I also use low-fat sour cream, and yogurt for sauces. Greek yogurt is awesome, you can mix it with 1/4 packet of powdered ranch dressing and it has a ton of uses. The goal at dinner is to think low-carb, a little carbs, and a little fat is ok.

I also started to keep a record of recipies that I’ve made that are easy, delicious and healthy. Sometimes when I get home I’m too brain-dead to come up with an original meal, so it helps to have a record of things that I know have been a success to use as a resource.

At night, I wrap up my detox system by taking my Dr Natura Pro-biotic, this replenishes your bodies good bacteria which research also links to body metabolism. Before bed there is a drink called Kleratea, which I think is very tasty, but I’m not always the best about remembering to make it.

I hope sharing my experiences with choosing a healthier lifestyle can be an inspiration to what ever path you decide if you are making resoultions for 2009 and beyond.

Slaving away in the icon mines…

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December has been relatively slow on the  human factors front. Not to say I’m not busy. I’ve been working on converting over 440 icons to a more contemporary version. I think I’m about 3/4 of the way done. I’ve never really liked making icons that much, but recently I’ve started having a fun time with it. There’s definitely a challenge in trying to convey a message or an idea in an 18×18 pixel square. And the thing about icons is that usually less is more. You don’t need to have all of the complex details that you would show in say a 64×64 pixel space. I think the most important thing to do is to keep your ideas simple.

In January I hope to go on a Contextual Inquiry visit with a customer. In this visit I will do an interview while watching the user perform tasks that they do in their everyday work flow. This is a discovery visit where I will collect user information so that I can use it for future personas, and/or mental models. Until then I will continue to work on my icons, and try to enjoy the holidays. The good news is that I finally got my Holiday cards out!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… 2008

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I read the blog of my friend designer Brenda Kato, and she did a touching piece on good things that happened to her in 2008. This inspired me to contemplate all of the good things that happened in 2008 that I have to be thankful for:

  • Taking my son William to the park on beautiful days.
  • Watching William learn how to sit up, crawl, walk & talk.
  • Celebrating my husband Damion’s 34th birthday with family and friends.
  • Getting to see my friends Scott and Korey visit from Wisconsin in February, we had a great time!
  • Having fun at Tracey’s BBQ over memorial day weekend.
  • All of the fantastic times we spent at the beach.
  • Starting my blog.
  • Getting in touch with old friends I haven’t spoken to in over 15 years on Facebook.
  • Visits from my mom.
  • Enjoying great times with great neighbors, the Symes, Jaci & Sean, Arelis and Will, & the Troops.
  • Going to Web Summit 08 in Coronado California, and learning about Mental Models, and Twitter.
  • Celebrating my sons first birthday with about 80 friends at William’s Island.
  • Going on bike rides with William, and Damion.
  • Visiting our family in Ohio over father’s day.
  • William recovering fully from his knee surgery over the 4th of July.
  • Having a BBQ with my brother and his family, and Brooks, Linda and Graysen.
  • Celebrating Krystal, Kelvin’ and Auria’s birthday, and getting to see old friends together.
  • William recieving better care and making new friends at his new day care.
  • Going to Arelis and Will’s fantastic engagement party.
  • The nights we got to go out at night because Grandma was able to baby sit.
  • Watching William ride a carnival ride with his daddy for the first time.
  • Going on my first customer visits for work to NYC, and getting to spend time with Brenda.
  • Delicious dinners cooked by Chef Daveo.
  • Getting the new iPhone 3g.
  • Dancing with William and having a great time at Patty and Jose’s wedding reception.
  • Bowling with my coworkers, and getting to know them better.
  • Going to Orlando with Jaime, and Matthew, and getting to see Carolina and her family.
  • Losing 18 pounds and counting!
  • I’m thankful that Barak Obama won the Presidential Election!
  • Getting to see Amanda visit from Oklahoma, and seeing the great transformation she’s undergone.
  • Getting to meet for the first time my extended family on my husband’s father’s side for Thanksgiving.
  • Learning about User Centered Design and the crash coarse in  Human Factors I experienced this year.
  • Really enjoying my job and coming into work every day, and enjoying working out at lunch.
  • Eating healthy delicous food.

I feel truely blessed, as 2008 was a great year.

To Sort? Or not to Sort? That is the question.

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Have you ever been confused as to where to find an item on a website? Does the primary navigation always make sense? Are things hidden in sub-levels that are confusing? Do you know where something should be located on a website?

I have recently been tasked with creating the navigation for a complex web enabled application. I started by creating a list of Activities that the user should be able to perform on the site. From that I created a knowledge map of all of the areas, and I derived the Information Architecture from the map that I created. Technically Information Architecture should be based on the data collected from performing a Card Sorting Exercise.

What is card sorting? According to Jed Wood and Larry wood’s article from the Journal of Usability Studies, “Card sorting was originally developed by psychologists as a method to the study of how people organize and categorize their knowledge. As the name implies, the method originally consisted of researchers writing labels representing concepts (either or concrete) on cards, and then asking participants to sort (categorize) the cards into piles that were simliar in some way.”

As you may be able to guess, this could be very useful for finding out where users think things should be located on a website, or in a web enabled application. So I wonder, should I be able to use the information architecture that I generated from my own experience, or should this order be dictated by the users. I will look at the results of my validation exercise, and if I am not happy with the results, then I may have to look into performing a card sorting exercise of my own.

Tips for designing a web site on a tight budget

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I think all designers at one point did moonlighting on the side, or worked for themselves. My primary function is to do the analysis and design for front-end web based applications for a medium sized business, however there was a time when I used to design web sites when I came home for work every night. I have a feeling that due to the economy the moonlighting and self-employment trend is going to become popular again. With a surplus in the workforce, and everyone trying to save money, I see small business owners reaching out to individuals to handle their website, or their web marketing instead of hiring larger businesses.

I personally learn the best from doing, so I will occasionally build a website from start to finish just to keep my tack sharp, or to learn a new technology that I haven’t tried before. I also continually upkeep my own personal website which I use as an outlet for expression, and so I don’t become a slave to all of the social networking websites.

So today I put out there on Twitter, “what is the #1 piece of advice you see yourself giving to people about their website?” I was not bombarded with a slew of responses, however  snoebiz responded:Today it would be “consider your end user, not your sales team”. I personally think that is some great advice. I think the biggest piece of advice that I give to people about their websites is to create a “creative brief”. It’s really important to make sure that the message of your website is on mark.

I learned about using a creative brief when I worked at Office Depot. You can find templates for them on line. A creative brief is usually a one page paper that gives you the following: a paragraph about the project, who is the target audience, information about perception, tone and goals, a communication strategy, competitive positioning, and a single-minded message. A single-minded message is a word, phrase or sentence to describe the site. OK, so it might be a little longer that one page. The important thing is that you get these items defined and on paper, and then use this as a guide throughout the design process.

Not everyone can afford the time or money to do extensive human factors related work, user interviews, mental models, and personas, but as long as you do a creative brief you should be able to be on a good start with your website design. It’s also helpful to do a Information Architecture, or a site map of what content will go where. Then of course it’s important that you follow good design practices, like being consistent with navigation, and typography.

If you can’t afford to do full-blown user testing with a one-way mirror, or recording devices, just recruit a few people to go through the website. Take some notes with pencil and paper. Talk to some users to see if you effectively communicate the feeling that you were looking for in your creative brief to make sure your message is on target.

Ironing out these details can help save time and money further down the line.

Knowledge Mapping.. the New Frontier

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I experienced a sudden shift in gears on my work. I spent about a month putting together my Affinity Diagram on Power in the Data Center, when all of the sudden, I was given a new assignment. This was slightly overwhelming at first because I spent so much time focusing on Power, and I wasn’t going to have the same amount of time to research my new subject. Fortunately the work I did is not going to be thrown out, I am just going to work on this new project first.

mpauxIn order to get my bearings on this new assignment. I decided to look into creating a Knowledge Map of the functionality that needed to be incorporated into a new framework. I had downloaded Cmap tools ages ago, and never really took the time to figure out how to use it. I have to admit that I was a little overwhelmed by this task also. Strangely enough I figured out how to use Cmap tools in about 5-10 minutes, so I have no idea why I was so intimidated by it. Once I figured out what I was doing, it was actually a lot of fun.

 

The concept of creating a concept or knowledge map is very easy. You just put all of your nouns in circles, and connect them by verbs. Pretty soon you will have a tree of information sprouting, and it can help you figure out how things should work.  I hope to use this new knowledge map that I created to help me figure out the information architecture, the new navigation for this project, and to figure out how all of the products in the product line will integrate together.

On another frontier I finally recieved my copy of Adobe CS4. I’m very excited to get to work using it. I had to upgrade my OS with the latest service patch. I intend to have some feedback on that after I start using it. I hope everyone has a great weekend, over and out!

Lessons Learned From the Affinity Exercise

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Although the affinity exercise was supported by the people who attended, the actual execution of the exercise was not as organized as I had hoped.

 

Affinity Diagram

Affinity Diagram

 

Lessons Learned:

 

·         Apparently most of the people who came to the exercise did not read the information in the meeting request, and therefore did not really know what was going on beforehand. I did not learn of this until AFTER the exercise was done (although I would say it became apparent during the exercise). Next time I do one of these exercises I would give a more robust overview of the purpose of the exercise and the tasks at hand before we start.

 

·         Several of the key architects that were supposed to attend the exercise were not able to attend at the last minute. Management added additional people to attend. About a dozen people ended up attended the exercise. This group was slightly unmanageable, and there was probably too many people at once. Next time I would either invite a smaller group to participate, or split the groups up into teams, and split the tasks into groups. I might create a competitive challenge out of the activity to help get the participants more excited about the exercise.

 

·         A number of people who attended the exercise did not understand the affinity concept. I feel I should have prepared the team better by giving an overview of this before the exercise started.

 

·         The groups that were created in the affinity project still needed to be broken down into smaller groups.

 

·         Engineers organized the tasks in ways that were not expected.

 

After the affinity exercise I created a mental model of the information that was collected. This process was a little harder than I anticipated. Over-all I believe that the project was a success, and I think creating my first mental model was a great exercise. Now I need to distribute the mental model to development and implement it’s use. Hopefully the development team will see the added value of using this process for future projects.

Preparing for Affinity Exercise

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I’ve spent the last few days recording customer data, and getting ready for the Team Building Affinity exercise that I have planned for Nov 3rd. The steps for this exercise are the following:

1. Define the topic to be brainstormed. I will provide an overview to the team on the problem for which ideas will be generated. Here I will discuss our goals, and the scope of our discussion.

2. Next I will give 15 minutes for the team to familiarize themselves with the 200+ Post-it® notes that I will have tacked up to a wall. These will actually be faux notes, because they will be generated from an excel spreadsheet that I typed up.

3. Next I will task the team with finding the relationships between ideas and categorize the ideas together. This will take probably 15+ minutes. The actual notes are called “Atomic Tasks”. This is data that was collected from multiple customers in a Verb + Noun format. The notes will then be grouped into “Tasks”. These are Atomic tasks that are extremely similar from different users, those tasks will be chunked together into “Towers”, and towers can be grouped together into “Mental Spaces”. This is supposed to convey our Customer Needs to Development, and Architecture, and Product Marketing. This will help us prioritize our product features based on customer needs.

These Atomic Tasks, Tasks, Towers, and Mental Spaces are the pieces that comprise up a Mental Model. Once they are all organized, the group will discuss themes and ideas that come out of this Mental Model to make sure that everyone has a general understanding.

I have also put the pieces of the Marketing Requirements into an excel spreadsheet. I will then distribute those to the group, and see if we have correlating requirements for each of the items in the mental model. This can help us see if we have any gaps in our software product design.

October – Customer Data Analysis Month

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It’s been a while since I have written a new blog entry. Being emerged in the Scrum process has definitely kept me busy. I have also been working on some personal development. I’ve started a new eating lifestyle that will hopefully result in losing some weight. And I’ve started writing down a lot of recipes that I may turn into a healthy cookbook one day. I also went to Orlando for two days last week to see my best friend who was visiting from Hawaii.  I haven’t been recording this information because my Blog is generally focused on UX related topics, but it explains the lapse since my latest update.

I stated previously that when I started the Scrum process for my latest project, that I felt more like I was in the role of a business analyst and interaction designer than a Human Factors Engineer.  I spent the last week updating our new Employee Orientation to reflect the new Scrum project management methodology, and I have a new project on the horizon. This is very exciting for me because the last project I worked on was for UI enhancements to an existing application, whereas this project will be building a new application from the bottom up. Therefore I hope to be able to do more real Human Factors work such as building personas, and creating mental models. And basically contributing more towards the to the requirements, and functionality, and more original design than what I had the opportunity to do previously. This is exciting because it means I will be in uncharted territory and doing some things for the first time. I expect this will be a huge learning opportunity for me as well.

Today I cracked open my Mental Models workbook from training that I attended by instructor Indy Young. I brushed-up on customer data analysis techniques before going through data collected through customer visits. This consists of summarizing content by using a verb + noun = atomic task. This will be used in an affinity or mental model diagram that I will create. I am recording the users behaviors, philosophies and feelings and leaving out the tools/medium, statements of fact, explanations, circumstance and complaints. In a nutshell I’m getting back to doing Human Factors related work and I’m loving it!  Yippie!