Finally I managed to put online the slides from the short presentation I gave 2 weeks ago at CodeBits 2008, it’s in portuguese only and it’s entirely based on Luke Wroblewski latest book – ‘Web Form Design’.
Luke kindly provided a discount code for anyone interested in buying the book or his recent webinar “Modern Web Form Design”, just use the code ‘CUSTODIO‘ -> http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/
I’ll in Copenhagen for Reboot 10, from tomorrow to Saturday, seems I just can’t get enough from this city, so there’s no lame excuse to be there!
Reboot is a unique happening, it has been a personal reboot for the past 4 years, a time off I take to brainwash myself with new and amazing ideas, but also, an opportunity to check back on friends I don’t get to see every as often as I’d like.
Tomorrow afternoon (25th) and just before Pre-Reboot Get Together, Henriette managed to persuade me to join her on workshop entitled “Community Building – Next Level“, so if you’re in Copenhagen and you’re as passionate as us about Social Web and Online Communities, join us there!
This year a bit like Peter Rukavinasuggested I’ve “organically” taken a step further and I submited two proposals for presentations at Reboot. I’ll be presenting some low cost, agile techniques and solutions to the problem of ’sky rocketing costs’ of traditional usability testing. If you’re interested join me for “(Almost) Free Usability Testing”
Still recovery from a tremendous (and the funniest possible) fall down the stairs at SAPO Unplugged 08! To anyone attending (me included) it was one of those memorable moments that it will be hard to forget! Thankfully all I got was some bruises and some pain (which hasn’t yet entirely gone), but other than that I’m ok!
I think it was a nice opportunity to talk about Usability. Some trends, applications and side-effects of it’s use in the development process. Something we don’t get to talk about enough!
SAPO unplugged was an opportunity to see the work in progress of Pedro Branco from the Minho University about facial expression usage as a form of human-machine interaction.
Óscar Mealha and Florim from the hosting University of Aveiro presented their work in progress for a software application aiming to help measure and analyze the underlining structure of websites, a powerful tool i’d say to help correct and perfect user navigation across websites, minimizing critical paths while optimizing the overall user experience with less clicks and choices!
Henning Fischer from Adaptive Path was in charge with the keynote and we give an inspiring presentation entitled “Stop Designing Products” which wasn’t entirely about usability but an important call for action in achieving better and more engaging user experiences with the products and systems we design and develop!
Last but not least! Bruno Figueiredo and Ivo Gomes completed the program and delivered two very interesting presentations, Bruno presented and explained some of the decisions behind the project that produced the latest SAPO Homepage. Ivo showed up the power and easiness of paper prototyping and how easy and power it is for software and products development.
I talked briefly about the undergoing quality and usability project at SAPO for which I’m currently responsible, about it’s goals and how it’s being applied.
I hope those who managed to attend it liked it as much as I did, and might have taken something back to their works other than a good laugh about the falling “star”
É o primeiro de vários eventos que o SAPO irá organizar fora de ‘casa’ e abertos a todos os que desejem participar, que é o mesmo que dizer que a entrada é gratuita.
O primeiro SAPO Unplugged é já na próxima semana em na Reitoria da Universidade de Aveiro e o tema escolhido foi Usabilidade, um tema que consideramos ser hoje um dos mais importantes para o nosso trabalho enquanto portal web.
Por isso convido todos os interessados a juntarem-se a nós, e aproveito para vos deixar algumas referências sobre os respectivos oradores:
Singularity is an amazing idea by Aral Balkan, which many of us know from his open-source project SWX and other amazing works as Flash developer.
The idea is all about active networking and knowledge sharing, but one of Aral intentions will probably really make the difference! Aral wants to engage local groups to setup little singularities happening everywhere around the world at the same time and in parallel with the online event!
I’m so sold out to the idea that I’ve joined the speakers ranks and will be giving a presentation on my Community Design Patterns project:
As a side note, just two very quick and interesting aspects of Singularity: 1) it will represent a screenshot of the Web in 2008 and 2) by saving so many flights it will be a very green conference right?
[pt]
Aqui no blog o silêncio tem sido rei! Enfim, muito por causa do trabalho confesso, em particular pelo facto de desde o mês passado ser o novo responsável no SAPO pela Qualidade e Usabilidade. Não é tarefa fácil e outros houve que já tiveram esta pasta e em boa verdade desbravaram muito do caminho que agora me é proposto percorrer. Sem perder muito tempo em explicações e em termos gerais passa por integrar um processo de qualidade no actual processo de desenvolvimento que já existe dentro do SAPO! Só posso dizer que é de facto uma tarefa monstruosa e não é de longe ‘pêra doce’ como se costuma dizer, mas nada como um desafio, certo?
A apresentação, até por ser um projecto tão recente foi um bocadinho dar a conhecer aquilo em que estamos a trabalhar em termos de usabilidade (já que era de usabilidade que ali estávamos a tratar) e nesse sentido dei o meu testemunho sobre o processo de integração da usabilidade enquanto factor de peso na qualidade e como é que conseguimos integra-la na já complicada ‘equação’ que é o processo de desenvolvimento de software. Isto é tudo novidade, pelo que não vale a pena falar em sucessos garantidos ou regras de ouro ou sequer dizer que no SAPO somos especialistas nestas matérias, não o somos! Mas estamos a trabalhar a sério para o sermos! Por isso a apresentação acaba por ser um resumo e uma apresentação de algumas das ideias que estamos a usar e uma prova que o simples facto de termos iniciado este caminho já é um sinal de mudança no sentido certo! Digo eu, claro!
Sem mais demoras, aqui estão os slides. No final deste post encontram alguns links para os materiais que eu refiro durante a apresentação:
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This blog as been more than quite and the major reason (besides the usual tons of things I get myself involved with) is the project I’m writing about in this post: since last month I’m responsible for Quality and Usability at SAPO, an Herculean task to re-think and integrate Quality on the already existing software development process. Big indeed, but then again, there’s nothing like a challenge, right?
This post is about just this, and taking the fact that yesterday following an invitation from APPU I gave a presentation during the 2008 Usability Seminar on the subject, in particular what we’re trying to achieve with the overall quality process. Being an Usability centered event I focused mainly on the usability part of the overall quality process and gave a testimony on how we’re integrating the U factor on the quality process. Much of this work is just starting so I won’t pretend I’m an expert or that we at SAPO have loads of experience is this matters… as many people would agree there’s a lot of work ahead and even more that desperately need a change. My feeling about it, is that by starting this process and posing the questions we’re already changing in the right direction
So without further due, here’s the slides. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find some links for the materials I mention on the slides:
Following a tip from Mark, this blog is now fully iPhone compatible! All it took was to install a very nifty Wordpress plugin – iWPhone. So if you’re the lucky owner of an iPhone just tried it out, you should see something along this:
As promised, here are the materials from the workshop I gave out yesterday at LIFT 08 about Online Communities Design Patterns. The presentation as I’ve said before is still a work in progress since I’ve started it for Web2Expo Berlin last November, so they share quite a lot in common.
If you’re interested, you can get the FULL VERSION of the presentation in PDF or you can simply watch the Design Patterns part on SlideShare (sorry, but the 30Mb limit on SlideShare wouldn’t let me post it in it’s full extent):
I’ve also prepared a Patterns Matrix that basically categorizes the patterns in four different classes that you can use to test or plan your own community according to the patterns use or misuse:
Community Support Patterns: Registration, Login, Welcome Area , User Profile, Users Lists, Buddy’s List, Exit / Suspend;
Group Support Patterns: Invitations, Shared Artifacts, Reputation, Voting;
Communication Support Patterns: Messaging, Comments, Chat, Forums;
Awareness Support Patterns: Neighbors, Activity Logs, Interactive User Info, TimeLine, Periodic Reports, Aliveness Indicator.
Mark Kuznicki took some pretty extensive notes from the workshop, so you might as well gave them a loon if you’re interested.
One special work to the crowd that actually stood up for the 3 hours the workshop took: Thanks
Just arrived my '#Rework' by Jason Fried & David Hansson, first impression: looks very promissing! Or could just be my corporate exposure! [pedrocustodio]
Still recovery from a tremendous (and the funniest possible) fall down the stairs at 
I'm Pedro Custódio. I'm a Webdeveloper and UserExperience Advocate, I'm organizer of 