UX Toolkit for Product Owners - a full-day workshop!

Personas

In October my team and I created the "UX Toolkit" - a collection of 10 UX methods that can be used in a project. In the toolkit we explain the method and give some basic information about it. In addition we provide some links and references at ux.techtalk.at.

Based on the toolkit and my talk at the Agile Tour Vienna 2015 I will do a full-day workshop called "UX Toolkit for Product Owners".  The main goal of the workshop is to learn the basics of 7 UX methods and practice them. In this workshop we will do end-user interviews, contextual inquiry, personas, scenarios and storyboards, wireframes, paper prototyping and some usability testing with end-users (with think-aloud).

This workshop is for everybody working in a project who want to put more focus towards the user: understanding the user and getting feedback early.


Wireframes

Some details:

• Workshop will be in German.
• Date: 7th of April, 9am - 4:30pm
• Location: TechTalk Vienna, Saturn Tower
• More information and registration (German)

Hope to see you :)

September Events: Barcamp.Digital, Playcamp & Innovation Games-Workshop

Next week Luke Hohmann is in Vienna and there are two interesting events you can meet him:

playcamp Vienna

Luke Hohmann

Friday, September 18th, 2015, 9 am to 5 pm

This one-day conference is all about Innovation Games and Gamestorming.

"Playcamps are for anyone with an interest in learning how collaborative play can help individuals and teams collaborate, prioritize and communicate more effectively."

Luke Hohmann will be a keynote speaker. More information and registration can be found here: http://www.playcamp.net/vienna-austria.html

Innovation Games Workshop with Luke Hohman
Saturday, September 19th, 2015, 9.30 am to 5 pm

Luke Hohmann will moderate a one-day workshop about "Innovation Games: Designing for Multidimensional Collaboration" (Certification Course) at the TechTalk Office.
More Information is available on the TechTalk Website.

Barcamp.Digital
Friday to  Sunday, September 11th - 13th

And finally a short-term announcement ... if you have some spare time in Vienna this weekend (September 11th to 13th) - the Barcamp.digital is going on at the Microsoft Office - including the UXcamp - maybe you want to join. This event is free of charge.
More Information is available on the Barcamp.Digital Website.

Have a nice Weekend. Regards, Claudia

Talk: Developing windows store apps - our experiences and learnings (german)

Hi,

together with 2 colleagues (Andreas Willich, TechTalk & Christoph Bach, CPB) I will do a talk next Thursday (June 6th) about our experiences and learnings developing two windows store apps (Windows 8).

We will present these two apps (PROFOS and Kilocoach) and we will talk about the challenges we faced while creating and developing these apps.

Profos - Kundeninformationen

Kilocoach - Startseite

Some facts:

• Free entry
• Please register
• a breakfast
• and 2 cool apps... so join us: http://bit.ly/11f5e8j

Thx.
BR, Claudia

Usability-to-go Workshop: find & fix usability problems

Hi,

together with my colleague Stefan I will run again an one-day workshop in Vienna and Zurich called "Usability-to-Go: Find & fix usability problems".

The workshop is for non-UX-Experts - developers, product owners, project managers, etc. - and will be a hands-on workshop.

The content will be:

• Heuristic evaluation (Usability Review)
• Design Patterns and Best Practices
• Collaborative Design
• Prototyping
• Usability Testing with end users (Think Aloud)

The dates are the 15th of May in Zurich (Switzerland) and the 24th of May in Vienna (Austria).

More information about the workshop can be found on the TechTalk website.

Br, Claudia

UXcamp Vienna - Pics & Links

Hi,
two days ago a great UXcamp took place in Vienna with about 80 participants and several interesting sessions.

My photos can be found here: Fluidr-UXcamp-Set
Sandras photos are here.

One nice outcome of the UXcamp is a MUST-READ List for UX.

Thx to all sponsors - TechTalk, A1, Ströck, bestHeads, GermanUPA - and participants,
br, Claudia

UXcamp Vienna coming up ... are you ready?

Hi!



Personas from the UX workshop in Vienna



In the last weeks I moderated two usability workshops for developers in Vienna and Zurich and I had a great time and interesting discussions with the participants .... and now tomorrow the next highlight will come - the UXcamp in Vienna.

I'm planning to do two sessions if the others are interested in these topics ... and if I'm able to prepare them today :-)

The topics are:

• UX & the agile world (Basic introduction)
• What's going on in our brains? Effects on design decisions. (inspired by Susan Weinschenk) 

And the best thing alright now is that we have 115 registrations for the event tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to meet a lot of nice people.

See you hopefully tomorrow ...

Br, Claudia

EVENT: Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen

Hi,

together with my colleague Stefan I will run a one-day workshop in Vienna and Zurich called "Usability-to-Go für Entwickler: 1x1 Kompaktwissen"
(It's planned to be in german, but we can handle english speaking participants too :-) ).

So the workshop is for developers and will be a hands-on workshop.

The content will be:

• What is user-centered design?
• Personas (representatives for the end-user)
• Wireframes and Sketching to communicate and discuss requirements
• Usability Testing
• What methods are usefull depending on the project environment?

The dates are the 25th of October in Vienna (Austria) and the 3rd of November in Zurich (Switzerland).

More information about the workshop can be found on the TechTalk website.

Br, Claudia

SpecLog is here... the new tool for organizing requirements.

Hi,

I'm very proud to inform you about a cool tool where I'm involved as a Usability Engineer in the development. The tool is called SpecLog and should help to organize requirements for agile projects in a more natural way using story maps for showing the relation between goals and user stories and capturing the acceptance criteria.

The best features in my opinion are the TFS integration, the customization of the requirement cards (language and process independent) and of course the synchronisation of the repository (backlog) from different clients. Useful if you have already a backlog is the Excel import.

SpecLog is free at the moment because this is now the beta phase so you have enough time to have a look and try it out.

We already have a lot of ideas how to improve but we are always looking for new inspiration and ideas so your feedback is highly appreciated.

You can find more information and the download link at http://www.speclog.net/.

Have fun...
Claudia

Web Findings ...

Hi everybody,

today I want to share with you some of the links I found in the last weeks - some of them you probably know because I already posted them in twitter.

A program to simulate colorblindness for Windows, Mac and Linux (in the image below you see the TechTalk-Website with a deuteranopia colorblindness) -> Color Oracle

The first world usability day event in Vienna on 12th of november 2009 -> http://www.worldusabilityday.org/wud09vienna

A nice example that shows the development of a very rough draft to a elaborated wireframe. -> Uwe Thimel's Portfolio on BehanceNetwork

And the last link I want to share is about Personas and how they can be represented ... a lot of different examples -> Fluidproject.org

Br, Claudia

PS: ReMix in Vienna on the 1st of october 2009 > Microsoft

PPS: TechTalk is looking for an creative user interface designer > TechTalk (german text) (or contact me)

Role of Usability in the agile process

Hi,

in the last weeks we often have the discussion @ TT which role should the usability engineer have in the agile/scrum process. Is the usability engineer a member of the team or on the same level as the product owner?

In the article "Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to agile development" on the blog "AgileProductdesign.com" Jeff Patton advises as a main point that the UX practitioners should be part of the customer and product owner team. This has the advantage that the UX expert is in the position to decide and influence what should be build in the next sprint.

In my opinion it's not always clear how this can be handeld during the sprints to keep up the communication between the development team and the UX team - also to get fast feedback and not wait until the end of a sprint.
Another interesting question is how efforts/estimation should be handled? If the UX team is part of the product owner team and not part of the "TEAM" the efforts will not be part of the estimation at the beginning of the sprints. I'm not sure if this is good. Jakob Nielson also mentioned in his blog-article "Agile Development Projects and Usability" that story points should be assigned for the interaction design and usability.

Do you have any opinions and suggestions on this?

Br, Claudia

Event - Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk

Hi,

today in german:

Kundenfrühstück bei TechTalk am 23.4.2009 um 9:00 zum Thema:

"Usability meets Development"
Wie schafft man es den Spagat zwischen Development und Usability optimal zu spannen?
Erfahren Sie auch, wie die Qualität/Userexperience von Applikationen für den Endanwender durch die Zusammenarbeit von Programmierung und Design verbessert werden kann.

Ich würde mich freuen wenn möglichst viele Interessierte dabei wären.

Br, Claudia

Quicktest Center - Usability

Hi all,

today I want inform you about the new Quicktest Center developed by TechTalk. With this tool it's possible to check the quality of your requirements analysis document or the usability of your software.


The Usability QuickCheck consists of 10 questions and is only a small excerpt of a larger criteria catalog (about 60 questions). At the moment the Tool is only available in german and if you don't want to install Silverlight you can find more information about the test here.

Br, Claudia