RuthEllison.com

21st and 22nd of August was the very excellent inaugural Local Government Web Network Conference 2008. This conference was aimed at those in Local Government, the public sector, community groups, and non-profits, and other tiers of Government. It was put together by Reem Abdelaty and Diana Mounter, from Local Government and Shires Associations of New South Wales.

I really enjoyed the strong sense of community spirit among the 70 (I think it was around 70?) participants. People were eager to chat and share experiences of managing their websites and providing services to their constituents. It was interesting to see the diverse range of roles - some of the participants managed the websites as a full time job, while others balanced the website management along with other duties.

There was a great line-up of speakers, including John Allsopp, Cameron Adams, Ben Buchanan, Brian Hardy, Lachlan Hardy, Matthew Hodgson, Tim Lucas, Russ Weakley… the list goes on :)

As the conference was a dual-track conference, here’s my attempt of one sentence summaries of the sessions I attended:

• John Allsopp - Opening Keynote Speaker: The real and the virtual - closing the circle - John gave an inspirational talk about how the web connects people and devices and the importance of context of use when designing services (rather than web pages).
• Robert Beerworth - Social Media and Online Marketing - Robert’s key messages included the importance of search and how it should drive decisions, and that planning/strategy is critical to a successful website.
• James Robertson - Open Source Web Content Management: are we asking the right questions? - James talked about the different types of open sourced and commercial CMS and that commercial or open source isn’t the question - rather it’s about matching a CMS to your specific business needs.
• Cameron Adams - Working with Design - Cam discussed how web design is about the integration of the look, behaviour and emotion, and provided some design tips to take away.
• Russ Weakley - Efficient, maintainable, modular CSS - Russ gave another great talk on writing efficient and maintainable CSS. What was new to me was the idea of the bridging CSS files which helps to create hack free CSS - very clever!
• Web Standards Panel - Russ, Brian and Kate talked about the NSW Style Guide (which seems to be quite the contentious issue among the conference participants, generating lots of discussion around whether they should be a common look and feel across council and shire websites), accessibility and record keeping requirements.
• Ben Buchanan - Steering the glacier: how does one person have an impact? - Ben gave a great talk about focussing on the things that you can change as well as the importance of coffee in building up and maintaining relationships.
• Matthew Crozier - Online Community Engagement – what are the benefits and how to manage the risks - Matthew talked about a case study which showed the benefits and risks of online consultation and some of the strategies used to successfully manage these consultations.
• Local-e Re-Design Project 2008 - Reem Abdelaty and Joanna Lewis took the audience through the user centred design process of redesigning of the Local-e templates.
• Matthew Hodgson - “The Intranet is dead! Long live the Intranet!” - Using a Doctor Who theme, Matt took the audience on a journey through time where we learned that people were the very first intranets, through to the evolution of intranets today and to the future.
• Lachlan Hardy - Closing Keynote Speaker: Local Government on the Open Web - Lachlan discussed various open web concepts, including web standards, open specifications (OpenID, MicroID, EAUT etc), and open architectures (API etc), and how this may be applied to local Government. I was particularly fascinated by the OmniTI URLs example - very cool!

Used with permission from Ben Buchanan

My co-worker (Adrian Newton) and I did a presentation titled Usability for Government: improving service delivery. We talked about usability, why it’s important, some of the user centred design techniques, and tips for people to take away.

I had a great time at the conference! Many thanks to Reem and Diana for putting together a great conference, and for the wonderful speaker’s gift (which now means I’m not an Apple virgin any more).

To check out what happened at the conference, view the twitter stream and flickr photos. Other presentations should be up on Slideshare over the next few days.

I’ve been neglecting my blog terribly over the past year, thanks to a throng of interesting projects (both web and non web related). I really should have posted the following weeks ago but better late than never!

There’s a number of interesting Aussie web conferences coming up, which I strongly recommend registering for if you get the chance.

Local Government Web Network Conference 2008: We believe in community

The first is the Local Government Web Network Conference 2008, which will be held in Sydney on the 21st and 22nd of August 2008. The conference is aimed at those working in the public sector, community groups, and non-profits, as well as other tiers of Government. Tickets are priced extremely reasonably.

My co-worker and I will be presenting on Usability for Government: improving service delivery.

Oz-IA 2008

Oz-IA 2008 is Australia’s annual Information Architecture conference. It’s intimate in size in terms of the number of people attending, but lots of great topics! This is a great conference if you’re interested in learning more about the information architecture field or if you’re already an experienced practitioner. Check out the great looking program! I just love the chance to catch up with all my IA friends who understand where we’re all coming from!

It’s happening on the 20th and 21st of September in Sydney.

Web Directions South 2008

How do I even start to describe one of my favourite conferences? Web Directions South has heaps of great presenters, fantastic topics and a chance to mix and mingle with heaps of other cool folks who are also passionate about the web.

It’s happening on 25th and 26th of September in Sydney but there’s also a number of great workshops being run on the 23rd and 24th of September (including Designing Interaction in the Age of Ajax by my friend Donna Spencer, and Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp by my friend Stephen Collins).

I’m also presenting one of the sessions - integrating accessibility into design.

Want a discount off your Web Directions South 2008 conference ticket? Use the promo code WDS08-RE to take $50 off the ticket price. Feel free to share the discount code.

Edge of the web

My hometown of Perth seems to be the happening place this year! The excellent Perth web folks have lined up a fantastic bunch of experts to speak about all things web, at the Edge of the web conference. It’s happening on the 6th and 7th of November in Perth, and tickets are very reasonably priced.

Hopefully I’ll get to see you at these conferences!

My friend Ben tagged me for the cool My Way Home meme. I’m a curious person by nature and I, like Ben, wonder what fascinating scenes do all my friends see and experience on their ways home.

The rules are simple:

• Use a simple camera, the simpler the better
• Upload them to flickr or whatever your preference is, but as long as they can be seen through the web
• Tag them if you can with “onmywayhomeme”
• Blog it and tell the story
• Tag your mates.

I tag (I know a few of the people have been tagged already):

• Donna
• Vicki
• Nick Cowie
• Lisa Herrod
• Andrew Boyd
• Nathanael Boehm
• Robert(Gurdonark)

So here’s my story…

It’s about ten past five on Friday. I’m leaving work early as I promised to meet a friend for coffee on the way home. I’m already running late…I dash out of the client’s building but have a few traffic lights to content with. I entertain myself my grabbing a shot of the interesting red sculpture near the intersection (it doesn’t look very red here as the sun was setting fast).

The light is still red…so I tried a different angle of the same sculpture.

I love textures and colours. This abstract wall sculpture on the Commonwealth Bank building catches my eye every time.

I like the look of Canberra Centre at dusk.

Continue reading →

I’ve posted about computer recycling options in Canberra before and how we ended up going with the excellent Lioncom. The good news is that Lioncom is launching a Canberra Green Day on the 13th and 14th of June where you can recycle your PCs for free. This is part of Lioncom’s initiative to tackle the growing e-Waste problem.

Here’s the news article from Lioncom:

Canberra’s first technology recycling company (service established year 2000) is holding a free PC Recycling Day on the 13th and 14th of June 2008 for the Canberra community. Visitors to Lioncom in Fyshwick on the 14th of June 2008 will be able to drop off their unwanted and excess computer equipment at no further cost. Canberra business and government departments are also encourage to take advantage of the Lioncom offer with Friday the 13th of June 2008 available exclusively for the Canberra business community.

Unwanted computers and electronic goods are one of the fastest-growing types of waste in the world (five times normal waste rates) and is likely to reach 40 million tonnes a year. It is estimated that there are more that nine million computers, five million printers and two million scanners in Australian households and businesses. Over the next few years millions of computers will be turned off and disposed. It is imperative that we protect our local environment by ensuring all e-Waste is disposed off correctly.

PCs contain materials like metal, glass and plastic which can be recycled and reused. Computers harbour noxious chemicals and heavy metals that can leech into the environment if not recycled correctly. CRT computer monitors can include up to a kilogram of lead, while batteries are loaded with cadmium.

Sealed up, the devices are safe. But once thrown away and left to rot in landfill, chemicals and heavy metals can leech out into groundwater, posing serious health risks. Sufficient exposure to lead alone can damage the central nervous system – particularly in children – causing long term blood disorders and mental retardation.

Taking advantage of the Free PC Recycling Day

Simply drop off surplus computer equipment at the Fyshwick Collection Centre, located at 8 Pirie St, Fyshwick.

• For Businesses and Government Departments: Friday, 13th June 2008, 9:00am – 5:00pm
• For General Public: Saturday, 14th June 2008, 9:00am – 5:00pm

For further information:

Ph. 02 6239 3444

Fax. 02 6239 3445

Email. disposals@lioncom.com.au

Web. www.lioncom.com.au

Good on you Lioncom! I really appreciate local businesses who take the initiative to help green our city.

Photo credit: Nathanael Boehm

Web Directions Government started with a very fresh morning, complete with frost on my car that took ages to defrost! My car told me that it was zero degrees when I left the house… Anyhow, Web Directions Government is the first Web Directions conference to be held in Canberra, targeted specifically at the Government sector. Here’s a quick run down of the day:

• I started the day with Jason Ryan’s breakfast talk about Government 2.0 - The public challenge. I really enjoyed Jason’s talk about the challenges with Government 2.0 with the key themes of Change, Strategy and Control. Key ideas included encouraging everyone to engage, have a good understanding of your people and of the environment. Key quotes from the session, “most importantly, you have to trust your staff”, “when it comes to engagement, mediocrity is not an option” and “just bloody well do it!”.
• eGovernment by José Manuel Alonso - “removing the e from eGovernment”. He talked about the challenges facing Governments doing business online and the need for participation and transparency. Check out eGovernment at W3C.
• Real world web standards by Scott Gledhill - a case study of the redesign of News.com.au and associated websites. Interesting learnings about the need for clear communications and established rules, even in a team full of people who know their stuff.
• One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript by Patrick Lee - Patrick covered lots of examples of using JavaScript in the real world. Love the MacGyver references!
• Usability: more than skin deep by Lisa Herrod - I heard this at last year’s Web Directions South but it’s still as enjoyable the second time round. Lisa is always a great speaker to listen to and I love how we have a very similiar holistic approach to our user experience work!
• ABC’s election site: making the most of dry data by Andrew Kesper - Andrew covered a range of design decisions taken for the ABC election site. Very interesting look at the various technologies involved, especially the interactive maps.
• The essential elements of great web applications by Robert Hoekman Jr - a great presentation to finish the conference. Robert covered his seven key principles for great web design, including my favourite, “reduce, reduce, reduce” (minimalist designs appeal to me both online and in the real world).

Thanks to John and Maxine and their team of helpers for putting on a conference in Canberra! I had a great time and will definitely attend next year.

I’ve been a fan of the Nintendo Wii every since we managed to get one in the initial rush of the Australian launch. When hubby and I found out about Wii Fit, we pre-ordered it and picked it up yesterday. As this is the second day since we’ve had it, we’ve managed to spend a bit of time checking it out.

For those not familiar with Wii Fit, Nintendo describes it as “the first step to a healthier lifestyle”. The Wii Fit uses a very cool Wii Balance Board that can measure your weight, centre of gravity and can also calculate your body mass index. The game has over 40 exercises ranging over the following categories: yoga, muscle workouts, aerobic exercise and balance games. Specific exercises include, jogging, step aerobics, hula hoop, ski jumping, ski slaloms, etc. What’s particularly cool is that it helps you to keep track of any exercise that you do outside of the game, which is added to the log.

My initial impressions of the Wii Fit has been generally very positive. The set-up and calibration of the game has been very easy with clear step-by-step instructions accompanied by the appropriate visuals on screen. There’s been a few areas where some improvements could be made but it’s all very minor. Once set-up is completed, you pick a trainer (male or female) who will guide you through a range of exercises. The exercise tutorials are clear with the trainer taking you through each step before you actually do the exercise. Hubby has spent more time playing Wii Fit so he has unlocked a range of games/exercise that I have not yet gotten to. From what I can see, they tend to follow a similar follow-the-leader format for many of the exercises. There’s a few cute and fun games including penguin slide where you have to catch fish whilst balanced on a piece of ice.

The only negative thing I have to say at this stage is that the graphics, while clear and useful when used as a step-by-step guide through the game, aren’t overly flash. The yoga exercises and muscle workouts are overly simple. I would have liked to have seen a more human-realistic feel to the graphics rather than the line drawings (with simple block fill) used. The rest of the game utilises the normal Wii styled graphics which is pretty much the same as from Wii Sports.

The interaction with the Wii Balance Board is on the whole, pretty good. It seems to be fairly accurate at determining what you’re doing. The jogging on the spot was quite challenging as my instinct is to run forward. That was probably the most awkard interaction out of the exercises I tried, but I think I burned the most calories with that one!

On the whole, I’m loving the Wii Fit so far. I’m very unfit and I don’t do any exercise. In light of that, the Wii Fit is perfect for me. I get guided through a range of quite fun exercises which means that I can slowly work on getting fit and hopefully lose a few of those extra kilos that I put on in the last seven months. It’s also making me more aware of my balance points which affects the posture. If you’re a hard core exercising type of person, this probably isn’t suitable for you. But on the whole, both thumbs up from me!

How many of you are familiar with the infamous Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares tv show? It features the famous chef, Gordon Ramsay, who visits a struggling restaurant and has one week to turn it around. As I started watching the series (the UK version first), I couldn’t help but noticed that there was many similarities between what Gordon Ramsay does and what we do in the user experience field (potentially, minus all the F-words).

I decided to share my thoughts about whether Gordon Ramsay is a guerrilla user experience (UX) consultant at yesterday’s BarCamp Canberra. BarCamp Canberra is the very first of many, I hope, BarCamps to be held in our capital. For those not familiar with BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:

An international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

The Canberra BarCamp covered a wide range of topics, including design, social networking, open source and future technologies topics.

Defining user experience

In my presentation titled Ruth’s UX Nightmares, we briefly covered the meaning of user experience:

All aspects of an individual’s perception and interaction with a company, its services, and its products

Designing a product (whether it is a website, web application, a service, or a physical product) is not just about the actual product. It’s about the broader meaning of design (which was covered nicely in Darren Menachemson’s talk on Broadening design thinking). This means thinking about all aspects of the product, from the look and feel, interaction design, information design, help services (online and offline), the physical interactions that may exist with the organisation and the customer, as well as the context of use.

In Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, some of the UX elements that Ramsay looks at include:

• Amount of choice on the menu - too many choices that are presented to the customer can cause confusion
• Price of food
• Quality of food – is the food sourced locally? Is it fresh or is it frozen/packet food?
• Quality and timing of service
• Staff attitudes
• Décor (visual elements)
• Layout of restaurant
• Brand perception
• Interaction between the front of house service and kitchen

What this shows is that there are many elements that form the user experience. They all need to be considered together in the context to run a successful business or product.

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method is a tongue-in-cheek look at a simplified UX life cycle of research, design, testing and implementation. Ramsay’s methods align with many UX techniques.

Research

The key idea of research is to gain an understanding of the business and the users that will be using the products that you are designing. Gordon Ramsay achieves this by:

• Conducting expert reviews where he always tries the food of the restaurant that he’s helping.
• Running contextual inquiry where he observes the way the chefs are working in the kitchen, as well as how customers are serviced.
• Conducts user interviews to find out what people are thinking about the food and the restaurant. He often does this by walking about the city/town and asking passer bys about the restaurant.
• Doing a competitor analysis to find out about the other restaurants in the area. He’s then able to recommend whether a new direction is needed with the restaurant, such as the recent US episode where Ramsay recommended a move to healthy food to best service the health spa area that the restaurant was located in.
• Researching the business - for example, where to source the freshest products such as fish from local fisherman rather than importing frozen fish from overseas.

Design

Much of Gordon Ramsay’s design methods are about simplifying the product being presented to the customer, while maximising the quality. In the La Parra de Burriana episode, the owner was offering 72 dishes to customers, including his signature dish - prawns in garlic, with chocolate sauce. After a few choice words from Gordon Ramsay, the new menu was simplified to a few key dishes that could be handled by the staff.

Surprisingly, Gordon Ramsay also looks at navigation and orientation. In the Moore Place episode, customers were confused upon entering the restaurant. It wasn’t clear where they had to go next. After a physical restructure of the layout, customers were guided to the dining room with no chance to get side tracked.

The design of the décor is a big factor in every episode. Gordon Ramsay almost always recommends a simple elegant style to fit with the simpler menus on offer.

Testing

User testing is another key factor with Gordon Ramsay hitting the streets with various products on offer. My favourite is the giblets club sandwich user testing from the La Riviera episode. The key message is to offer products that people want, rather than what you think they want.

5 rules

I finished the presentation with five Gordon Ramsay’s rules applied to UX. These are:

1. Keep it f***ing simple
2. Customers, customers, customers - it’s about knowing your users and thinking about the entire user experience
3. Communication is key
4. Know what you’re doing - do your research and make sure that you understand the context and the constraints
5. Be passionate! Gordon says “cook from the heart!”

I’ll probably expand this in a separate post.

The presentation

| View | Upload your own

Note: I’ve been having issues uploading my presentation to slideshare, so you may notice some funny stuff happening. There are a few slides in there which are appearing with a red background and it shouldn’t look that way! It looks fine in the original presentation. Weird….

The verdict

The very first BarCamp Canberra was a success. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein and Nathanael Boehm) and to the generous sponsors.

You can catch many of the great presentations on slideshare and photos on flickr. There’s also the twitter stream and video will be available soon.

Edit 22 April 2008: The podcasts from BarCamp Canberra #1 are now available.

One of the challenges in regards to living in a Geek Household is what do we do with our computers once they become obsolete. My hubby’s workplace recently wanted to recycle many old computer items (computer cases, CRT monitors, power supplies, printers, old servers). We decided to hop on the band wagon and recycle some of our old servers and other computer bits and pieces.

One of the things to be aware of is the difference between end-of-use versus end-of-life products. The first can be reused while the latter requires environmentally sound disposal.

Due to his enthusiasm for recycling and other green matters, my hubby was tasked with recycling these “e-waste”. What he quickly found was that it can be extremely difficult and expensive to recycle e-waste in Canberra, in particular, bulk loads of computer items. From a quick look through the items, I’m guessing that some of the items were end-of-life while others were end-of-use for their business (including good quality working 21″ CRT monitors that were surplus to their requirements as staff had upgraded to 30″ LCD monitors).

So if you’re in a similar situation of recycling bulk loads of computer gear, what are your options for getting rid of your unwanted computer gear legally (dumping of computer items is illegal in the ACT)?

Mitchell Resource Management Centre and Mugga Lane Landfill and Resource Management Centre

The Mitchell and Mugga Lane Resource Management Centres are located in Flemington Road, Mitchell ACT and Mugga Lane, Symonston ACT. You can drop your unwanted computer gear there. The computers are sent to Melbourne for recycling where plastics and other easily recycle materials are extracted.

Disposal fees apply as follows: computer box $15, monitor $22.50. Note that with bulk loads, the website states that it’s $30 per 10 kg. When hubby brought a trailer load full of computer items to Mugga Lane, they refuse to charge per 10kg. He was told that it was charged by the tonne. The Mitchell centre said that they didn’t do bulk loads.

More information over at www.nowaste.act.gov.au

Charity Computers

Charity Computers is a not for profit organisation and registered charity run by Canberra Christian Life Centre. Charity Computers receive donated computers in both working and non-working order. They don’t seem to accept bulk loads, unless it’s all computers than can be reused in a home situation (rather than the mix of business computer gear from hubby’s workplace).

For the donated computers that are working, these are repaired and reused. These computers are sent to individuals in need or not-for-profit organisations. Charity Computers are involved in training the unemployed for jobs and are also involved in charitable activities locally and overseas.

Disposal fees of $25 apply to Apple items, 14″ monitors, faulty monitors and monitors without stands. Disposal fees of $5 apply to printers requiring ink or are faulty, and dot matrix printers.

More information at www.charitycomputers.com/

Dell recycling

Dell offers recycling for any brand of computer, keyboard, mouse, monitor or printer. Dell will arrange to pick up the equipment at your home for a flat fee of $10 plus $13 per item in metropolitan areas or $15.50 if you are more than 40 km from your capital city. You can also take your PC to one of two drop off points in Sydney and Melbourne for $8.50 per unit. Contact Dell Recycling on 1800 465 890 or email recycling_dell_au@dell.com for more information.

Dell also offers free recycling for Dell branded products.

I’m not sure about bulk loads but it’s likely the same as the costs for the home recycling (i.e. paying for each item to be disposed).

More information at www.dell.com.au/recycle

Green PC

Green PC is located in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT. It is a not-for-profit organisation that states its dedication to “breaking down the digital divide” that separates the information rich from the information poor. They refurbishes donated computers and make them available, at a price, to those that may not be able to afford a new computer system. They also provide IT services at affordable rates to registered charities and community groups.

At this point in time, they will only accept Pentium 4 desktops and laptops and LCD monitors.

More information at www.greenpc.com.au

Lioncom

Lioncom is located at 8 Pirie Street in Fyshwick ACT. They handle recycling and disposal of computers and are committed to a 100% No Land-fill policy.

They handle bulk loads (call to make an appointment). Disposal costs are $8 per computer, $18 for small monitors (can’t remember the price for 20″ and above monitors), and $1 for miscellaneous items like keyboard, mouse, cables etc.

More information at www.lioncom.com.au

Freecycle

An anonymous reader kindly provided the following suggestion:

On freecycle act (a yahoo group) working monitors are snapped up very quickly.

You can try the ACT Freecycle group or check the Freecycle website for other Freecycle groups around Australia.

The verdict

Hubby ended up going with Lioncom as they seemed to be the only organisation that would accept bulk loads of computers. I was really surprised to find out how difficult it is to dispose of bulk loads at the Mitchell and Mugga Lane Resource Management Centres. They would have been my first choice for bulk loads, but it seems that it’s only worth going to the Mitchell and Mugga Lane Resource Management Centres if you have at least a tonne of items.

We’ll have to do another computer recycle and disposal run in a few weeks. Looks like Lioncom will be the choice again.

If you’re aware of any schools or other organisations that can make use of old unwanted computer gear (probably a mix of working and non working items and will possibly include server gear as well), please drop me a comment. I would have thought that there are schools out there who may want to have the opportunity to strip down a computer. Anyhow, drop me a comment if you have any other recycling/disposal suggestions or resources that I can add to this post.

DISCLAIMER: The prices above are provided as a guide. Please ensure that you check the websites mentioned for the latest prices.

Edit: Added Freecycle to the list.