User Experience Toolkit

The Fluid project, described as "a collection of rich, reusable, accessible user interface components that can be used across web applications" has announced the release of Fluid 0.1 - The Fluid component library and User Experience (UX) Toolkit.Fluid 0.1 is available for download at:http://fluidproject.org/index.php/downloadsFluid 0.1 contains:The Reorderer, a JavaScript library for sorting DOM

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"Cute" interactive media and other conferences

Ever wondered how Japan seems to have cornered the market on cute? The genius behind the classic Hello Kitty and the multiplicity of Pokemon is no accident. It turns out cute can be deviously calculated and even research-based. If you're still skeptical, check out the "Designing Cute Interactive Media" Workshop being held as part of the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems..."

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Design Questionnaire - Asking the right questions

It's important to remember that generally people don't know what to tell you. This is why it's essential to ask the right questions. If you don't have one already, keep a design questionnaire in order to extract essential information from your clients up front. What do they love, what do they hate, what are they all about and what are they really hoping to get out of this project. How can you

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World Usability Day

Happy World Usability Day! Bet you didn't know Usability had it's own day. Well it's less like acne awareness month and more of an opportunity to host usability themed events all over the world simultaneously. Many of these events and conferences are entirely free. And sometimes they get pretty creative. It's not just usable it's fun...The beauty of it is, you don't have to travel. There's

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Masterful image sizing

Ever wanted to make an image bigger, smaller or better composed, but scaling stretched it out of proportion and cropping cut out the good bits? The answer is in a breakthrough technique called "seam carving", and it's the future of Photoshop and the dynamic Web."Seam carving for content-aware image resizing", by Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan, is like "smart" cropping and it's virtually invisible.

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Affordable Stock Photography

Let's face it, a stunning photograph slapped on the front of a web page or brochure can say professional like nothing else. People are used to seeing high impact imagery and they respond to it. But at $80 bucks a pop it's a hard sell in a low-budget university world. Well, I may finally have the answer...So, my iPhoto library is packed with desperate outdoor adventures snapping hundreds of pics

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Users like pretty sites, research shows.

Anyone who works in design understands the very real importance of the visual, from aesthetics and colour choice, to information design and orderliness. They also know how often these aspects of the user experience are underestimated, neglected, or scoffed at for their lack of quantifiability. The commercial sector, with its dependence on marketing, understands the sometimes, irrational

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Summary: Pitfalls for collaborative learning

If computer-supported communication tools provide so much promise for learning and group collaboration, why are there so many failed attempts? Is technology to blame? Not according to the research. This paper looks at the causes behind why online collaboration and learning don't always go as planned.Below is a summary of key points from the article:"Identifying the pitfalls for social

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Web 3.0? - The Future User Interface

If a web 2.0 interface makes intuitive use of Ajaxian finesse, folksonomies and wikinomics, these wild innovations may be where Web 3.0 will take us. These approaches to interface tools make a mouse and keyboard look like a rock and chisel. Enjoy the time warp....The Wii may be a nascent stepping stone into the future of HCI tools, but with the I/O Brush from the MIT Media Lab (a wooden paint

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Extreme Usability

While usability and open source software has come leaps and bounds with newer developments (Joomla, Alfresco, ruby etc.) sporting squeaky clean UI's, the nature of the OS development pattern has often left usability experts out of the mix, and shiny nav bars don't translate to ease of use. FLOSS is an ongoing attempt to bridge this gap.FLOSS Usability, initiated by the non-profit, Aspiration,

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Sydney elearning conference and workshop

eLearning: Driving Instructional Design with Emerging Technologies Linking design and technology to enhance the potential of online training. This conference will be held in Sydney in June, including the post-conference workshop: "Best Practices in collaborative learning and managing net-based teams". More information at the Ark Group website.The Ark Group regularly pull together industry

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Promoting Collaboration - Horton Summary

Online collaboration tools like email, chat, discussion forums, web conferencing, shared whiteboards and screen sharing can promote collaboration in effective and unique ways. But what are the pros and cons? When do online tools work better for collaboration and when don't they? William Horton provides some answers.In the context of putting together readings for a workshop on collaborative

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Fluid Project - UX for elearning systems

Why is it so many learning management systems seem to be stuck in the tar pits when it comes to the user experience? Let's hear it for the folks at the Fluid project who are attempting to tackle this mammoth problem.As any designer working with elearning software is keenly aware, as technically robust and feature-full a system may be, it always seems to be the interface design and usability that

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Screencast tutorials

Since bandwidth availability has improved, the last few years have seen more videos and screencam/screencast tutorials on websites, for both marketing and training purposes. They're getting easier to make and deliver, with more sophisticated purpose built software, some of which is cheap or even free.
Tutorials featuring a video capture of screen activity, have been a stock elearning item in the

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50 Ways to experience the web - Designing for ALL possibilities

There may be 50 ways to leave your lover and 100 ways to skin a cat, but what web designers are worried about these days is the perpetually increasing number of ways in which users might be viewing their sites...From computer ubergeeks to "12:00 Flashers" (every appliance in their house flashes 12:00*), users are coming at websites in a growing variety of ways. They may be using a screen reader

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Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom

Understanding the difference between data, information, knowledge and even wisdom, and how a designer can participate in the transformation from one to the other, is a critical part of creating learning experiences.Allow me to coin a phrase (originally invented by my endocrinologist, Dr. John O'Dae) -- we're now living in a society characterized by data-rich ignorance. Have you ever spent hours

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Adobe Captivate - job opp

Adobe Captivate (previously Macromedia) is a handy no-programming-required training development tool for creating subtitled/narrated tutorials, simulations and demonstrations. We've used it for simple, try-it-yourself software training tutorials and how-to's to help students use our LMS, CMS and wiki.Here's a contract job opportunity in Sydney for a developer with Captivate experience. This was

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Design Essentials: HCI, User Experience and Usability

HCI, User Expereince, User-centred Design, Usability, Information Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Accessibility and Univesral Design...it gets hard to know where one starts and the other ends. The usability of all this termenology is sorely lacking in good information design. There seems to be so much overlap, and redundancy and is there really difference among them? If so

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Design essentials: Information Architecture

Just because you work in the design field doesn't mean you've had the benefit of formal training in Information Arechitecture. As elearning and visual designers, IA is a critical issue we deal with on every project, tied in with user-experience, HCI and usability. It's also true that despite the undeniable value of having a professional information architect on board (all the more so the larger

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Instructional Design Jobs

Reprinted from an email announcement made by Andrea Barett, member of the Elearning Network of Australasia._______________________*elearning Instructional Designers**RWD Technologies *is expanding its elearning practice in Australia,and is seeking experienced Instructional Design professionals forpermanent and contract roles.We have a number of projects and these roles offer

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Are university students digital natives?

[All the credit for this post should go to the folks at TemplateData for spotting this first!] A team at the University of Melbourne has released a report that looks at just what kind of technology First Year students (Freshman) are using and how they are using it. The aim of First year students' experience with technology: are they really

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Interface 2.0 - The new web interface

With all this talk of AJAX, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and XML, is Web 2.0 just the catch phrase of the day, or is their something elearning visual designers can gleen from all the hype?So the definition is debateable, but for many it's the idea that the web will gradually converge into a platform for web applications. If you develop your own interfaces, the technology side of Web 2.0 is probably

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