This workshop will cover:

• What user experience design is and why it is important to do it in a deliberate way (i.e. people will have an experience no matter what – you want them to have a particular type of experience)
• Understanding people: conducting user research and usability testing
• Communicating about people (personas and other methods)
• Deciding what to design (scenarios, business needs, mental modelling)
• Sketching and iterative design
• Creating prototypes to communicate design
• Making sure what gets built is right

The workshop will be at the level of an ‘advanced intro’, covering the basics and also allowing exploration of key challenges and issues. The format is a combination of short lectures, group discussion and hands-on activities. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for further personal exploration.

Learning objectives

After the workshop, the participants will have:

• An understanding of how to learn about people and communicate about them to others
• Core design principles that can be used for any project and any technology
• Understanding of how to apply principles to a real project
• Hands‐on experience with key techniques
• Shared skills with other practitioners

In the workshop we’ll look at:

• How our visual system works
• Visual and cognitive attention, and how to grab them
• Limitations of memory and how it affects our designs
• Types of errors that people will make, why they make them, and how we can design for them
• How people make decisions, and how we can design for more informed decisions
• Socialness and how to design social interfaces
• Learning about people via user research
• Checking what we’ve designed to make sure it works (usability testing)

This will be a very practical workshop. To learn about the human attributes we’ll play games, look at fun examples of human behaviour, discuss the implications for design and sketch example interfaces. For user research and usability testing, we’ll discuss the principles and run a mini research session and usability test. You’ll leave with tons of practical skills to use on your next project.

You’ll also leave with a detailed workshop booklet, containing slides, additional explanation and follow-up reading.

In the workshop we’ll look at:

• How our visual system works.
• Visual and cognitive attention, and how to grab them.
• The limitations of memory and how that affects our design.
• The types of errors that our users are always going to make.
• How to design intuitive interfaces.

For each of these aspects, we’ll talk about the principles, demonstrate how they work, and discuss the implications for design. You’ll go away with a better understanding of people which will help you make better design decisions.

• What types of projects need (and do not need) to involve users
• Determine the value of involving users or the risks of not involving them
• Methods and techniques appropriate for different situations
• Low-contact, quick methods you can use to learn about users with little effort
• Tips to help other people understand the value of user involvement

I use it to analyse results from open card sorts. I have refined it to the point where I’m happy with it, and have prepared instructions for it. The instructions and spreadsheet are completely free for you to use however you wish.

Files

There are four files available:

• Card sort analysis spreadsheet instructions (PDF, 715KB)
• Empty card sort analysis spreadsheet template for 20 participants (XLS, 4.1MB)
• Example spreadsheet with content (XLS, 2.0MB): based on papers from the IA Summit
• Empty card sort analysis spreadsheet template for 40 participants (ZIP, 1MB)

Notes

Some other random notes:

• I have done everything I know to make the PDF screen-reader friendly, but please let me know if it isn’t
• I use a PC and know it works on a PC. I have had mixed response from friends with Macs – for some it works, some it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, please let me know and I’ll explore further

Screenshots

Entering the card names:

Summary of all cards and standardised categories:

Analysis of categories:

Visualisation of results:

Card sorting book

I am currently writing a book on card sorting – check out the card sorting book website.

• What types of projects need (and do not need) to involve users
• Determine the value of involving users or the risks of not involving them
• Methods and techniques appropriate for different situations
• Low-contact, quick methods you can use to learn about users with little effort
• Tips to help other people understand the value of user involvement

Design games are a fun, technology-neutral way of gathering design insights for your projects. In this presentation, Donna (Maurer) Spencer, an expert information architect, will show you how to take advantage of design games in many situations, with all types of people, including:

• Design Your Ideal Page and Role Playing: Facilitates the brainstorming of design concepts and ideas
• Divide-the Dollar: Prioritizes your site’s features
• Modified Card Sorting: Helps you create content categories and terminology

• What information architecture is and how it can facilitate user experience
• Analysing and sorting content
• Carrying out user research: surveys, focus groups and card sorting
• Classifying, sorting and labelling within your information system
• Using wireframes and site maps: the ‘bread and butter’ tools of IA
• Navigating, indexing and designing page layouts
• Effectively carrying out your IA project: tips, tools, techniques and processes

Workshop description

A hands-on workshop with user experience expert, Donna Maurer, and CSSexpert, Russ Weakley.Over two full days you will build detailed websites layouts from the ground up – starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.

Day 1: Planning and designing the user experience – Donna Maurer

On day one you will plan and design a website – focusing on the user experience: designing the navigation, page layout and forms.You will:

• learn techniques to understand your users, and prepare user scenarios
• understand your content with content analysis methods
• create an effective and usable site structure (information architecture)
• design a range of navigation methods
• create page layouts for content, home, index and special pages
• design simple forms

For each step, Donna will outline the fundamentals and show examples from small and large website projects. But most of the time will be hands-on -you work on your own project, ask questions and discuss with the group.

Day 2: Building beautiful sites using CSS – Russ Weakley

On day two you will build your website from the ground up – starting with structural markup, adding accessible markup and then styling your layout using CSS.You will learn:

• how to create well structured, accessible markup
• the basics of CSS including rule sets, selectors, shorthand rules, inheritance and the cascade.
• how to structure efficient CSS files
• how to create a full CSS layout from a flat graphic mockup
• how to deal with browser issues including specific browsers such as IE5,IE6 and IE7.
• how to create a resolution dependent layout
• how to create CSS for printing and hand held devices

Testimonials

Feedback from participants from these workshops included:

• “Great examples of how I can apply techniques”
• “The comprehensive workbook with further references/books, examples and pictures was great”
• “It was thorough, delivered with regular visual examples, solid knowledge, humour, functional activities”