Presentations

What is usability, and why should it be employed in projects? (54-minute online presentation)

5 March 2007. In late 2006 Intergen invited us to take part in one of their regular Twilight Seminars. We presented in both Auckland and Wellington, and Intergen recorded the Wellington presentation. It's a great quality recording and well worth a look (our part of the session runs from about 22:30 onwards).

 Information architecture - Making it easy to find stuff (25-page PDF, 5.6MB)

1 September 2006. In this one hour breakfast briefing, Trent Mankelow and Donna Maurer covered some of the basics of information architecture, including organisation systems (how we categorise information), labelling systems (what we call things) and navigation systems (how we browse through information). We also discussed the difficulties of card sorting, focusing on how to choose cards and perform analysis.

 Self-Service Usability: Making it easy for people to help themselves (16-page PDF, 7.8MB)

19 July 2006. In this Wellington breakfast session, Trent Mankelow (Optimal Usability) and Paul Munkley (Vodafone) talked all about self-service. We looked particularly at kisoks and phone self-service, but covered issues relating to all channels, such as creating a cross-channel strategy, how to avoid customer backlash, and the future of self-service.

 The Usability Toolbox: Techniques for Understanding Your Users (32-page PDF, 5.6MB)

10 May 2006. In this breakfast session, 90 people heard from Trent Mankelow (Optimal Usability) and Gerry Gaffney (Information & Design, Australia) talk about the most important tools in the usability professional’s toolbox. We discussed the pros and cons of user testing, expert reviews, card sorting, style guide development and persona development.

 World-class customer experience with usability (38-page PDF, 4.2MB)

3 May (Wellington) and 4 May (Auckland) 2006. This breakfast talk was about how to get up close and personal with your customers using usability research. We explained how usability is key to world class customer experiences online and how organisations can apply simple, practical principles to improve the customer experience. You can read what the Marketing Asoociation thought of the presentation by reading their session summary (PDF, 2-pages, 84KB).

 Introduction to Usability (57-page PDF, 3.9MB)

Special Libraries Association (Wellington), 2 March 2006. The aim of this 45-minute presentation was to provoke librarians to think outside the confines of the information industry. Using plenty of examples from pyschology, Nikki Bristol talked about how people interact with the web and use information.

 Walking a Day in Your User’s Shoes - User Testing for Increased Usability (40-page PDF, 1.2MB)

5th Annual Strategic Intranet Management Conference, 15 & 16 August 2005. This Auckland-based two day conference was a "summit on developing, managing and implementing intranet strategy and discovering how your organisation can benefit from a more efficient and effective intranet." No surprise on what our 45-minute presentation covered - how to go about user testing your intranet and common intranet usability problems.

 Reviewing your website for profit, service, and performance (19-page PDF, 1.5MB)

16 June (Wellington) and 17 June (Auckland) 2005. Approximately 80 people attended day-long seminars in Wellington and Auckland, organised by the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand. There were seven speakers and in the morning Optimal Usability ran a half-hour introductory session. In the afternoon we spent just over an hour doing a hands-on audit of attendees' websites using the usability.gov guidelines. Download Session 2 slides (5-page PDF, 195KB).

"Trent's presentations were very informative and he came across as being very professional and knowledgable."
"I found the session on usability both entertaining and immediately applicable to my current projects."
"The hands-on component with Trent Mankelow was by far the most rewarding. To be able to apply the compliancy and best practice guidelines directly to our company website was invaluable."- seminar attendees

 Website Usability - Making Things Easier For Your Audience (33-page PDF, 3MB)

24 May 2005.This breakfast session for the Wellington chapter of Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) was a general introduction on how to improve website usability. Twenty-five people managed to get up for the 7:15am start, where they were told that to improve their websites they should be consistent, provide goal-driven content, and design for wayfinding.

"Very interesting – some great ideas to go away and think about in redevelopment of our site."
"Trent very easy to listen to and informative."
"Very good overall – Trent was very knowledgable."- seminar attendees

Introduction to Usability

29 April 2005. This presentation was for the consulting team at Deloitte in Wellington. It introduced usability, the kinds of activities that normally occur as part of user-centred design and how usability fits into the product development lifecycle.

 Usability Professionals Association inaugural Wellington meeting (13-page PDF, 360KB)

7 September 2004. This talk was a past, present and future look at usability in New Zealand for the first Wellington UPA meeting. It covered how many students are graduating with HCI backgrounds, how many companies have internal usability people and a who's who of usability practitioners in NZ. Comparisons were made with what is happening in Australia.

 Usability Week 2004 Debrief - Wellington and Auckland (22-page PDF, 475KB)

15 June 2004 (Wellington) and 31 August 2004 (Auckland). In late May 2004 we attended the 5-day Nielsen Norman Group Usability Week 2004 in Sydney. This brain dump was an open invite to people interested in usability who weren't able to make it to the conference. It covered what the conference was like, who was there and what was talked about.

Guest lecture to INET101 course at Victoria University: Introduction to Usability

31 March 2004. We were invited to speak to this first-year class at Victoria University that teaches web programming (HTML and PHP). About 70 – 80 students attended and heard about what usability is and how it applies to the web in general, and the Victoria University website specifically.

Institute of Internal Auditors: Usability 101

26 March 2004. This was an introductory presentation made at the 2004 AGM of the Wellington branch of the Institute of Internal Auditors. We sent out the following abstract:

"Usability is about human behaviour. Think about the last time you pushed on a door you were supposed to pull, or struggled to program your VCR. Recent research indicates that up to 50% of your time using a computer is wasted on fiddling, fixing and waiting. Technology needs to be nicer to people. This presentation will introduce usability - the discipline of making technology easier, more useful and more enjoyable. We will start by exploring some of the characteristics of human beings, move onto how people interact with technology and talk about some concrete examples of usability. We will conclude the presentation with a discussion on what this means for internal auditors. "

 GOVIS 2003 conference: Web Usability (25-page PDF, 1.4MB)

13 November 2003.This 45-minute presentation was for the 2003 GOVIS conference. GOVIS is made up of IS managers from the government sector whose goal is to get together and share knowledge. This presentation introduces usability by explaining that humans are analog creatures living in a digital world. It particularly focuses on the usability of e-government, in New Zealand and overseas.

 TUANZ Interactive Series: Defining Web Usability (19-page PDF, 1MB)

15 October (Auckland) and 16 October (Wellington) 2003. This was a fun, 40-minute presentation that introduced usability at the start of a day-long workshop on the topic. It talks about usability as basically designing for people first. It discusses human characteristics, how we interact with technology and what usability is in this context.

 Web Usability (17-page PDF, 390KB)

30 August 2003. This presentation was delivered as part of the Communications stream of the New Zealand Surf Life Saving National Conference, held over a weekend in Rotorua. The presentation talks about designing effective websites for clubs to communicate with their members and has a particular focus on usable web content.

 Usability: Fact or Fiction? A Usability Review of Canterbury of New Zealand (31-page PDF, 2.1MB)

28 August 2003. This hour-long lunchtime presentation was made to 120 members of the Wellington chapter of the New Zealand Computer Society (one of their biggest crowds ever for this type of event). It is a similar presentation to the Victoria University one below, but with more emphasis on using statistics from our work with Canterbury to prove the strong return on investment for usability.

 Mandy, Jerzees and Dental Nurses: A Usability Review of Canterbury Clothing Company (28-page PDF, 2.5MB)

1 August 2003. A presentation made to Victoria University's Elvis group, discussing our findings from a usability review of the official Canterbury of NZ e-commerce site.

 Usability @ Unisys (15-page PDF, 742 KB)

15 May 2003. An introduction to usability to software engineers at the telecommunications group at Unisys. It especially focuses on Internationalization issues, given that the group develops a lot of software for overseas customers.

 Passion @ Usability (8-page PDF, 712 KB)

5 May 2003. A quick, 20-minute presentation that introduced usability to the Assurance team at KPMG in Wellington. It especially focuses on accessibility issues, mainly to get people thinking about what the web would be like if you were blind, colour-blind or had some other form of cognitive or visual disability.