Thursday, March 16, 2006 — 5:30 to 7:00pm

Download David’s Presentation [PDF | 276 KB | 23 Pages]
Download Qixing’s Presentation [PDF | 884 KB | 21 Pages]

Presentation One: Market Research: Bringing the ‘Who’ and ‘Why’ into the User Experience

Abstract: Segmentation, mass customization, personalization, and so on have all raised the bar on delivering a great consumer experience. Usability excels at exploring the ‘What’ and the ‘How’. However, the next level of understanding requires market research experience and skills to truly understand the ‘Who’ and the ‘Why‘. David Gray, noted research and business intelligence professional, will provide a quick, practical overview of the benefits, limits, choices and decision trees in building a more complete picture of the user through market research.

Topics covered will include:

• Who is the user, really?
• Attitudes vs. Behaviours
• When to explore, when to measure?
• How to mesh creative and analytical thinking
• How & When to integrate into web decision-making
• Various techniques and when to use them
• DIY vs. Outsourcing
• Budgeting and Timelines
• Research as a verb
• The 3 biggest research mistakes

Presenter: David Gray has over 18 years experience in strategic information and analysis. He has proven through his work the beneficial role of user and customer feedback in organizational and project improvements. He established his firm, Sixth Line Solutions in 1993, as a marketing research and information consultancy conducting strategic studies. With a great team, it serves a range of clients around complex research questions and stakeholder engagement. In addition, Sixth Line is one of the top resources to the Canadian retail industry, with a focus on retail and shopper trends – including multichannel. Clients range from the CBC, to Telus, to Mountain Equipment Co-op, to startup web projects.

David has taken a leadership role in emerging issues in marketing research, including early adoption of a business intelligence philosophy and early use of data-mining, the use web- and kiosk technologies for customer feedback, GIS for advanced trade area analysis, and the benefits of user input to new product development. His latest issue is that of making the research process more enticing for participants. He has a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance & Information Systems and an MBA in Marketing & Strategic Planning. He is a member of the American Marketing Association, Marketing Research & Intelligence Association (MRIA), and Marketing Research Association (USA). David served on the BC Chapter Executive of the MRIA and was recently asked to join the national Board of the Qualitative Research Division, MRIA. He is a past member of Retail Council of Canada and a current member of Retail BC and CBSR. He writes a regular column in Business in Vancouver and is often quoted in the Canadian media on retail and shopper trends.

Presentation Two: Visual IA and the Vodafone Global Intranet

Abstract: CD Evans (nicer.ca) is presenting a poster from the European IA summit. The poster is a case study of the Visual Information Architecture (VIA) process he used when redesigning the Vodafone Global Intranet with Sapient. The VIA design process involved numerous revisions, with input from international focus groups, onsite interviews and presentations to the Vodafone Global Intranet Council. The process communicated design issues quickly and effectively with the clients and users, who were from many different cultural backgrounds. The VIA process also allowed for the time and space in the project timeline needed to determine the appropriate theoretical support for the system, much as an architect needs for a building. The Vodafone intranet, nicknamed Vista, was recently included in the The Best Intranets of 2006 Report by the Nielsen Norman Group, user experience pioneers and experts in usability.

Presenter: CD Evans is a seasoned information architect and user interface designer with experience designing in different countries, for global audiences, including onsite focus groups, heuristic evaluations, testing and remote reviews. His work has been on the design of a large number of systems over the years, including the 1.0 version of LexisNexis legal materials search engine, the Vodafone global intranet, the architecture and text input model for the Gizmondo gaming unit and a number of Uk Governmental Systems. Now back in Canada, he’s worked with Telus on the Rocky Mountaineer bookings system and the Ainsworth accounting system, with Blastradius on a Nike Jordan clothing configurator, and remotely with the Uk on the Bulldog Broadband website and on school booking system for the Catalan Government in Spain.

Presentation Three: Co-Authoring with Structured Annotations

Abstract: Most co-authoring tools support basic annotations, such as edits and comments that are anchored at specific locations in the document. However, they do not support meta-commentary about a document (such as an author’s summary of modifications) which gets separated from the document, often in the body of email messages. This causes unnecessary overhead in the write-review-edit workflow inherent in co-authoring. We present document-embedded structured annotations called “bundles” that incorporate the meta-commentary into a unified annotation model that meets a set of annotation requirements we identified through a small field investigation. A usability study with 20 subjects evaluated the annotation reviewing stage of co-authoring and showed that annotation bundles in our high-fidelity prototype reduced reviewing time and increased accuracy, compared to a system that only supports edits and comments.

Presenter: Qixing Zheng graduated from UBC last December with a Computer Science master’s degree specializing in HCI. She will be talking about her master’s research project. The project has been accepted as a conference paper to be included in the proceeding of SIGCHI 2006 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems).

Location: VFS (Vancouver Film School)

The VFS Digital Design campus is located at 420 Homer Street between Pender and W. Hastings. Enter through the side door on the east side of Homer Street. The event will take place in Theatre 1 accessible from the main foyer. Reception will be in place to assist all guests.

Please arrive before 6pm since building doors lock at 6pm!

You must RSVP for this event!

Positive RSVPs only please: rsvp@vanue.com