Usability – lecturing at The University of Huddersfield

I was a co (guest) lecturer recently with research director Simon Shaw, both talking at The University of Huddersfield.
We got invited in by Dr John Bonner (the man with the plan at LiveLab to talk all things Usability with his 2nd year students. A great group and I enjoyed the afternoon.

usability workshop at U0H
usability workshop at U0H – image from Simon Shaw’s blog (see link in this article. That’s me in the distance looking like everyone’s Dad.

Simon has just written about the visit herehttp://cmym.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/usability-in-practice-guest-lecture/. This post is mostly a signpost to his piece.

What I found interesting (both on the day and in prepping the joint presentation) was the different angles we came from in the use of tools to explore usability (for websites).

My natural reaction would be to reach for tools / platforms like Tobii and / or Morae , Simon as a researcher is less ‘about’ the tools and more about the ethnography (I think I’m right in saying) and context of how / where people engage with those websites.
Both approaches can be used (in some instances .. we talked about the parameters or constraints of real life client timescales, budgets etc) and are aiming towards the same goal of course – to inform and / or improve a website design (design of interface / content / functionality..) that meets the business objectives

Anyway – Simon’s says it all far more pithily! Have a look.
And thanks to The University, Dr John and the students we met (a really engaged bunch) for an interesting afternoon.

 

3 thoughts on “Usability – lecturing at The University of Huddersfield”

  1. Hello Mark, long time no speak/see, hope all goes well. We host many web usability sessions here at The Talking Shop and have been looking to upgrade our software, we have been recommended to use Camtasia I would appreciate your thoughts? thanks k

    Reply
    • Hi Katherine, nice to hear from you!

      I don’t know that much about Camtasia itself but from what I know, I think it is more geared to making product demo / training session type of videos.
      If you are looking for actual usability (screen recording and analytics) software then the same company makes Morae.. that might be a better solution for usability sessions?

      http://www.techsmith.com/morae.html

      Reply

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