Sunset in Ilkeston

Usability News - Andrew's Usability in the Real World: Undercover Heuristics

Usability News - Andrew's Usability in the Real World: Undercover Heuristics

A great 10 point reminder as to what you should expect from your website.

HFI-Certified Usability Analyst

I was very pleased yesterday that I passed HFI's CUA exam. This is the closest thing I can get to a professional qualification in this country at this time and I'm delighted to have passed with flying colours.

My weakest area was the area based on current research papers, which was hardly surprising since I hadn't read most of the papers they were referring to. However hopefully I can change that in the near future.

Yippie!
HFI-Certified Usability Analyst

ECDL at Bath

ECDL was interesting. I only attended for the day and because of the journey I did not make the keynote speaker. but the seminars were most interesting. Especially a guy from PARC who gave a talk on graphic icons that was most interesting.

It was amazing that such a good interface talk was given at ECDL rather the HCI. I can only suspect that he was at a conflicting conference.

Leeds Metropolitan University

Which is where I went to the Industry day of HCI2004.
An interesting day an my first ever conference. I managed to get there in time for the keynote speach. But today my youthful appearance really counted against me, everybody else was very academic and I really stood out from the crowd in both being from a company and by looking under 25. I think next time I'll have to go dressed up, just to make myself look older.
Things got better in the afternoon though after I apprroached a chair from the afternoon's talks. Once we got talking i got introduced to a few people, so at least I was stood looking lost :)

I still found the material very academic, for an industry day. The most interesting talk was given by a research student who worked on the accessibility report for the DRC. I even plucked up the question to ask a question. But the answer was really devoid of content. Ah well, it was interesting none the less. I think more could have been done to cover more commercial topics. But since most people were there for the week and were academic I suppose this might leave them uninterested.

Still pleased I went. At least I know what to expect now and hopefully before too long I'll be able to put forward my own papers :)