Webstock 06 8*5s
Eight people speaking. Five minutes each. Taking place on the first day of the conference. We think it's an exciting way to share some of the combined knowledge at Webstock.
Here are the details about all the presentations.
Philip Fierlinger
Rapid Prototyping Using Flash
Philip will be showing how he uses Flash to develop wireframe prototypes for both Flash based and non-Flash based sites. He will start off quickly showing a finished project, then show the prototypes that were created to define the information architecture, interaction design, and that were even used to conduct lo-fi user testing. He'll explain why he thinks Flash is a good tool for this purpose and show some of the techniques he uses when making the prototypes.
Philip Fierlinger works at Shift as a User Experience Strategist. He's both a designer and a coder and has been with Shift for over four years, working on newzealand.com, New Zealand Now, Te Ara Encyclopedia, among numerous other project. He's originally from San Francisco, where he ran his own digital media agency since 1994, working with clients such as Sony Playstation, Dreamworks, Macromedia, Palm Computing, among numerous others.
Rachel May
Standards and .net?
It's not often that we hear about modern web standard applications running off Microsoft .net. Is .net an area for designers to avoid, or can we now start to use this technology to create web standard applications? In thissession Rachel will briefly talk about the processes and relationships involved in integrating web standard front-end design with .net functionality.
Rachel May has a background in Fine Arts & Design, and has been specialising in Web Design for the past 3 1/2 years. She has been working for Wellington web-development company, Heliocell in the areas of project management, design, and front-end builds. Recently, she has been a key member on large scale .net projects for financial software, market research applications and online-community websites.
Michael Koziarski
A Very Brief Intro to Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails has gained a lot of buzz over the last 18 months, but what *is* rails and why should you care. Michael will cover what rails is, what it isn't, and why you may want to consider it for your next project.
Michael Koziarski is a member of the Ruby on Rails core team and a software developer based in Wellington New Zealand. Prior to working full-time with rails he worked on big java systems for some of New Zealand's largest banks.
Robyn Hunt
All of the Information for all of the people all of the time - What does that mean?
We will hear the views of a variety of users and owners of web sites which will illustrate why accessibility is of value to owners and their organisations as well as users.
Robyn Hunt is acknowledged as one of New Zealand's leading experts in the field of disability. She is an award-winning journalist and communicator and brings extensive experience in those fields to the creation of readable, accessible web sites. Her passion is to create web sites that will engage the widest audience.
She is co-founder of AccEase, a company dedicated to information accessibility on the web and elsewhere.
Mark Zeman
Searchbots.net
Searchbots.net is an experimental search engine that investigates the use of mythology, personification and game theory as motivational strategies in creating a sustainable search community. Searchbots has a rich history and is unique in that it allows you to search using more "human" and entertaining types of information like colour. If you pick the colour red you might get a website about tomatoes, communism or angry people.
Mark Zeman is a Lecturer and Subject Director in Digital Media at Massey University. Mark's research interests lie in the impact new Internet technology has on the collaboration between groups of people and the information they exchange. This research manifests in a wide variety of projects that cover diverse topics such as performance spaces, search engines, game theory, mapping and models of "trust".
Prior to joining Massey he was a founder and director at Morse Media Ltd a Wellington new media design studio.
Steve Dickinson
99% Visual is Good.
The world isn't a flat document, it's a 3 dimensional visual experience (4 if you include time). Conveying the true meaning of things to your users (who don't have time to waste) is difficult when all you have are forms, lists and hyperlinks at your disposal. Text doesn't quickly get across 'context', visual models do (complemented by text if it's requested).
Steve will show you one of number of emerging interfaces which makes use of dynamic visuals to convey content. Centruflow allows your team to make better decisions in less time with more accurate data and with a greater understanding of the consequences.
Steve Dickinson has worked in the IT Industry for the past 20 years, 8 of which for IBM UK Ltd and the past 3 here in New Zealand. Steve formed Abstract Engineering in 2004 with the sole objective of creating a product to combat a communications problem he has encountered time and again on IT projects.
Theresa Cunnington
The Hunting of the User Experience. An Agony in Five Minutes (with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
Then the navigation got mixed with the IA sometimes:
A thing, as the UEx remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When in interface is, so to speak, "snarked."
You would think after all these years of Jakob Nielsen and now the lovely Kathy Sierra reminding us to put users front and centre in our work, that there would be no place for a usability consultant. And yet I'm still encountering interfaces where backwards breadcrumb trails are 'features' and document management systems have 'Static Asset Ingest' buttons.
Is there really a good user experience out there or is it all just a Boojum after all?
Theresa Cunnington has been annoying designers and developers since 1994 in her pursuit of good user experience. She believes passionately in what she does and can occasionally be seen foaming at the mouth at a particularly egregious bit of bad design. She would like to be put out of a job by diligent designers and developers who understand where she is coming from, but reluctantly believes she has a long working life ahead of her, as long as Microsoft still exists.
Bob brought to you by the Provoke Love Lounge
The Web Times, they are a-changin ... And making a special one-off appearance ... Bob
Bob will appeal not only to Web 2.0 fans but to anyone interested in usability, e-government web guidelines, and spirit of a revolutionary period in web culture.
"Bob's the person who puts the style into stylesheets"
Zef Fugaz, UPANZ President
