CSS 3 on the way for mobile and gaming web

John Allsopp gave an impassioned talk about CSS 3 at the March Canberra WSG meeting at the National Library of Australia. This talk, the approach John suggests and the technology it was about , could change the way the Australian Government does web pages and save lives.

This was impromptu talk due to the unavailability of the planned speaker. It had never occurred to me that anyone could be that passionate about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a highly complex and frustrating piece of web technology (the CSS standards are much bigger than the HTML one). CSS 3 is the newest and least supported of the CSS standards. Until this talk I had dismissed CSS 3 as something which would be good to have, but so little supported by web browsers that it was not worth looking at, and may never be supported.

John argued that new versions of browsers, particularly Firefox, Safari and Opera, had some useful CSS 3 features. The not so subtle subtext of his presentation was that web designers should give up trying to make web pages look identical on every web browser. Even if this were possible on desktop versions of browsers, it will make less and less sense as the web is accessed on hand held devices (such as the iPhone and Google Andriod smart phones) and games machines (such as the Wii). New devices will have very different size screens and user interfaces, so the desktop metaphor will not suit these.

John argued for designing web sites which will use advanced features on advanced browsers but still be compatible with old browsers. He argued that with new CSS features this can be done without lots of Javascript and CSS hacks, as used in the past.

All of that would have made an interesting academic argument, with a little more passion than usual, but hardly significant for day to day web design. However, John then went on to demonstrate some CSS features available now on newer browsers which can be used to create very elegant Apple Mac and iPhone type effects. The point he emphasised was these techniques were available now, did not require a large amount of code and were backward compatible.

What particularly struck me was how these features could be used for efficient hand held appliciaitons. CSS can be used to create elegantly shaded and curved buttons, without the use of any images. Such buttons will suit smart phones, without the need for large image downloads. Also animation techniques where the item selected changes size and colour can make maximum use of a small screen. At the same time the application will still be compatible with a desktop computer.

A few days ago I criticised the ABC for launching their "ABC Mobile" service with an interface which did not meet accessibility standards. Chris Winter, from ABC Innovation, responded to say they had fixed that problem. The ABC might like to direct their innovation at using some of these new CSS features. It should be kept in mind that the ABC provides information, not just entertainment and in particular the ABC provides emergency information during natural disasters. The techniques John was showing with CSS3 promise a way to provide visually appealing interfaces which are efficient and so would suit web pages designed for emergencies. I will be talking about this at a seminar on a "National Bushfire Warning System" in Canberra, 16 April 2009.

Web 2.0 in Government, Canberra, 27 November 2008

The November Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting is on the topic of Web 2.0 and the Australian Government:

When: Thursday, 27 November 2008 Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free
RSVP: Essential for catering

First presentation: Matthew Hodgson, SMS Management & Technology Topic 1: Government 2.0 - trends and adoption strategies

With AGIMO soon to release Web 2.0 guidelines for the Federal Government what impact will this have on the way agencies are likely to conduct their online operations? What role will government play in a Web 2.0 environment?

Matthew will look at examples from around Australia and the rest of the world in how governments are starting interact with citizens in online environments. He will draw from his recent experience with a government department in planning and scoping a web 2.0-style project to show how easy it is to move into a government 2.0 world.

Matthew Hodgson is the Regional lead for Web and Information Management at SMS Management & Technology in Canberra. He has 15 years experience in eGovernment, information architecture, information management and knowledge management, working with the government and commercial sector to deliver innovative solutions to difficult web problems. Matthew has published papers in the areas of social psychology, has lectured at the University of Canberra on social computing, and has quickly gained a reputation as one of the most engaging speakers on information architecture, social change, communication and knowledge sharing in Australia.

Matthew blogs at Matt's Musings and is a contributing author at The AppGap

Second presentation: Stephen Zafir, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Web 2.0 in Government - Buzzwords and Opportunities

Whilst Web 2.0 offers new possibilities in the ways that government can engage with its users, much of the thinking around this is enshrined in terms of existing brands and models.

Stephen will take a look at some of the basic components of this change and how these can be applied to the requirements and opportunities of the government space online.

Since thinking of using cards to reorganise Melbourne Airport's website in 1996, Stephen has worked at the forefront of interaction design in the UK Germany and the USA. With a focus on innovation and humanising digital experiences, major global players such as British Telecom, Yahoo and Siemens have entrusted Stephen with design leadership on a range of key products and future design initiatives.

Service Sciences and Semantics

The next Web Standards group Canberra meeting is 22 May 2008. The topics are Service Science technologies and GRDDL. You will have to come along to find out what these are, because I haven't a clue and can;'t work it out from the supplied descriptions. ;-)

First speaker: Dr Darrell Williamson, Deputy Director for the CSIRO ICT Centre
Topic 1: Service Science technologies and architectures in the ICT Centre

Darrell will be discussing the science, technologies and architectures that CSIRO ICT Centre has been developing in the area of Service Sciences. He will describe the role of Services in general, then follow it up with work that has been done in the area of Service Platforms, Semantic services, Web services and what the future holds in these areas.

Dr Darrell Williamson has undergraduate degrees in Science and Electrical Engineering, a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Newcastle and a Doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Darrell was Head of Department of Engineering, and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University, and later Director of the Telecommunications and Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Wollongong. Darrell was also Chief Executive Officer for the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) in Advanced Computational Systems, and in February 2003, he became Chief Executive Officer for the Smart Internet Technology CRC. Darrell has served on various industries advisory committees including the Information Industries Development Board of the ACT Government and the National Advisory Committee of Item3 Pty Ltd. Darrell is currently the Deputy Director for the CSIRO ICT Centre.

Second speaker: David Ratcliffe, CSIRO e-Services Integration group
Topic 2: GRDDL - an explanation and demonstration

One of the recent recommendations that has come out of the W3C is the GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages). David will be explaining what it is and also its application. More than that he will be walking you through a demonstration so that you can get hand's on experience with semantic technologies.

David Ratcliffe joined the e-Services Integration (eSI) group at CSIRO in 2004 as a software engineer working on data and web service composition planning for the Wedgetail (DFDMSA) and EDKMS2 projects. David was concurrently involved in upgrades to the Australian Plant Pest Database (APPD), a live information integration system, and the Boeing RFID1 project. Since 2005, David has continued work on the EDKMS projects, focusing on further developing the semantic data and web service integration capabilities of the eSI group.

Secure Web Collaboration Across Government and Industry

The March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting, today discussed government use of web based collaboration, including for sensitive matters at Cabinet level.

Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge talked about how to invest in ICT facilities which did not need to be kept adding to respond to government policy. The particular example was GovDex. A five nation collaboration workspace was demonstrated. This provides support for meetings between governments. Another example was support for the Australian Government ICT Standrads Group. One hot topic this is being used for is to establish the Australian Government position on OOXML (a position has been decided, but not released). Another demonstration was for communicating to new graduate staff. GovDex is secured to IN-CONFIDENCE level of security (PROTECTED cabinet level security and video is planned for GovDex 2).

My first thought was that the tools demonstrated would appear primitive to a group of teenagers organizing their social lives: Surely the Australian Government has something more advanced? Some of the discussion seemed very quaint and last century, for example pointing out that not all graduates may be working in Canberra and the Internet could be used to contact them. In the 21st Century the assumption that staff would be in a particular city, seems an odd one. I would have thought that a 21st century organization would make no assumptions as to where in the world there staff were working from. But the use of such tools need to be learned and also the government's security and public policy issues are difficult ones which most users do not face.

AGIMO is taking a gradual approach of fitting the tools into the usual bureaucratic processes. Ultimately this approach will not work: the processes will need to be changed to improve productivity. The main value of GovDex and similar tools will ultimately come from facilitating the change in these processes.

While I have been a registered GovDex user for some time (they let government consultants in), this talk was still very useful for me. I had the impression that GovDex was just for computer projects. Brian pointed out it can be used for any government project which needs secure collaboration. An example of this is that in the morning I was asked how a wiki could be provided to support the Australian Government's Review of the National Innovation System. My immediate reaction was to say "you can't do that, bureaucrats are not allowed to use wikis" (altought I teach them how to in an ANU course). But GovDex should be ideal for this providing the needed collaboration, but within a structure which supports the needs of government policy development.

Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston talked about how wikis work in practice, with people initially experimenting and then settling down to organize their information. She discussed problems with the technology, including the editor. She suggested the simple editor has advantages in encouraging people to use simple designs (and at least having to work with wiki markup).

She pointed out a wiki is not intended as an archive, publishing work flow, secure documents or for blogging. These should rightly be done with other tools, although they can be interfaced.

Web collaboration for government

The March Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra features talks on the use of web technology for online collaboration in government agencies. Recommended:

March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting

RSVP for this event below. 28 people have registered

Date: Thursday 27 March, 2008

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge is Director of the Collaborative Services Team in the Department of Finance and Deregulation. He has worked for a number of years to develop collaborative tools aimed at promoting a more harmonised approach to the delivery of government services. Brian is also active in the standards space and participates in a range of international standards fora. He represents Australia at the United Nations Committee for the Facilitation of Commerce and Trade.

Brian will talk about the opportunities for government agencies to use GovDex. GovDex is a resource developed to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios and administrative jurisdictions. GovDex promotes effective and efficient information sharing, providing governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms.

Second speaker: Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston is the Director of Web Publishing at the National Library of Australia. Her group undertakes web design for the main web site, authoring support for staff and develops the interfaces for complex web-based systems for the management and delivery of the Library's collections. Michele has been working with the Internet for 15 years and is particularly interested in exploring ways that the Library can benefit from popular Internet applications. In addition to the wiki project that is the topic of this presentation, she has championed a collaboration that allows Flickr users to add photos to Picture Australia and a new catalogue that includes book reviews from Amazon and allows Library card holders to leave comments.

Michele will talk about her experience implementing a wiki at the National Library of Australia. This talk may be of interest to you if you are considering incorporating a wiki at your work place to support various forms of collaborative activity. This is not a talk about the process of implementing a wiki, but is a case study on using a wiki to support the Library's extensive and varied collaboration activities. This wiki exercise did not start with a value proposition explained in business terms nor the assumption that users knew precisely what they wanted out of these tools. The wiki experience was a learning experience both for IT support and for the users. Michele is lucky enough to work at an organisation that isn't afraid of making a few (educational) mistakes!

Web collaboration for government

The March Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra features talks on the use of web technology for online collaboration in government agencies.The first talk features GovDex, a tool specifically developed for Australian Government ICT projects, and the second: the use of wikis in organizations. Recommended:

March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting

RSVP for this event below. 28 people have registered

Date: Thursday 27 March, 2008

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge is Director of the Collaborative Services Team in the Department of Finance and Deregulation. He has worked for a number of years to develop collaborative tools aimed at promoting a more harmonised approach to the delivery of government services. Brian is also active in the standards space and participates in a range of international standards fora. He represents Australia at the United Nations Committee for the Facilitation of Commerce and Trade.

Brian will talk about the opportunities for government agencies to use GovDex. GovDex is a resource developed to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios and administrative jurisdictions. GovDex promotes effective and efficient information sharing, providing governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms.

Second speaker: Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston is the Director of Web Publishing at the National Library of Australia. Her group undertakes web design for the main web site, authoring support for staff and develops the interfaces for complex web-based systems for the management and delivery of the Library's collections. Michele has been working with the Internet for 15 years and is particularly interested in exploring ways that the Library can benefit from popular Internet applications. In addition to the wiki project that is the topic of this presentation, she has championed a collaboration that allows Flickr users to add photos to Picture Australia and a new catalogue that includes book reviews from Amazon and allows Library card holders to leave comments.

Michele will talk about her experience implementing a wiki at the National Library of Australia. This talk may be of interest to you if you are considering incorporating a wiki at your work place to support various forms of collaborative activity. This is not a talk about the process of implementing a wiki, but is a case study on using a wiki to support the Library's extensive and varied collaboration activities. This wiki exercise did not start with a value proposition explained in business terms nor the assumption that users knew precisely what they wanted out of these tools. The wiki experience was a learning experience both for IT support and for the users. Michele is lucky enough to work at an organisation that isn't afraid of making a few (educational) mistakes!

How many webmasters does it take to change a light bulb or fix a tap handle?

The January meeting of the Web Standards Group in Canberra today featured discussion of light bulbs and the design of the tap handles in the National Library of Australia toilets.
Geoff Dibley talked about the design of search facilities for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). He was previously at Geoscience Australia and brought an insightfully analytical approach to the issue.

Geoff started by relating the problems of finding a specific sort of light bulb on a home shopping web site. It turned out that products for the sight had been categorized according to where they were located in a physical supermarket, which did not help the online shopper.

A little humor was injected by one audience member commenting they were from Customs, where "internal search" had a very different meaning from the web use of the term.

Paul Hagon, talked about the redesign and search analysis of Picture Australia's site. He started with a photo of the instructions above the tap handle in the toilets at the library. This is the same tap handle I photographed, commented to NLA about and used in my web design lectures at ANU, as an example of what not to do. The point of this, as Paul pointed out, the large set of instructions indicate that the interface needs to be made simpler: be it a tap handle or web search facility.

Paul had useful advice, backed up by statistics. Most users only enter one, two or three keywords for a search, they do not use advanced searches. The experts who ask for complex search facilities only make up a tiny fraction of users, make them a specialist search page, if you must. About a third of referrals come from public search engines, so make sure they can easily index your content. Items in the news suddenly become popular and you need to be able to direct readers to these. The topics may come from the international media, not just local.

One surprise was that one quarter of queries on the DAFF web site were about jobs. This is something agencies usually hide away in a sub menu, but perhaps need to make more prominent. It may also suggest that the Australian Government should take a more coordinated approach to providing job information.

ps: I asked Paul if his tap handle photo was indexed on Picture Australia. He said not yet, but may be in a few days as it is on Flicker and that is now included. But there are some tap handles already in the database.

Australian Government Web Accessibility Test

The Web Standards Group meeting this Wednesday at the National Library of Australia had a demonstration and a talk on accessibility of government web sites. Debra Wells used JAWS screen reader software on a laptop to try to find information on several web sites. complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites. Ruth Ellison, from Stamford Interactive, then talked on how to motivate web workers and executives to implement accessibility.

Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The first test was to find the Web Publishing Guide on AGIMO's web site<http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au>. What the audience heard was a very fast, uninteligible synthetic voice reading through the options on the AGIMO web site. It was surprising how much text had to be read through to find the needed option. Those who want lots of text on their web site might be made to have to sit down and navigate this way.

The voice was then slowed down to a rate the audience could understand and the BOM web site was navigated <http://www.bom.gov.au>. Unfortunately the standard screen display was used so that while the audience could hear the voice they could not easily follow where it was reading from on the screen. The BOM annual report was found on the BOM home page, but after reading out a lot of "vertical bar"s.

The same process was then carried out on the Environment Department web site. On this site there were many "bullet link"s read out, but the annual report was found. An audience member suggested that a quicker way to find the annual report was with a search. This was tried, but department's search function listed so many old annual reports for parts of the agency, that the latest report for the whole agency was not found.

The Australian Council for the Arts web site was then tried. This has a Flash animated graphic at the top of the page which is labeled with unhelpful numeric codes such as "1", "2", "3". When this was skipped, there were other objects on the page causing navigation problems. This was the poorest page tried in the demonstration and one which needs attention to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

The annual report of the Health and Aging and Archive Office web pages were then checked at high reading high speed. Each took 45 seconds. By now the audience had got used to the synthetic voice and were able to follow where it was up to, if not understand many of the words.
Debora pointed out that many users would not have the latest reading software, which was being demonstrated, due to the cost. Older versions may not be able to read PDF.

An online survey was then filled in on the Australia government home page. This worked reasonably well, but it was evident how tedious repeated text in a web site can be.

A kids flash page about Parliament house was then tried. The sound of a lawn mower included with an animation then drowned out Jaws voice, making navigation difficult. There was an option to turn off sound which the sighted audience could read, but this was not found using the voice system, making the web content unusable.

Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison, from Stamford International, talked about how to get across the importance of accessibility to web designers, project managers and senior decision makers. For those who simply say: "tell them to use the accessibility guidelines", this was a valuable lesson in the realities of motivation.

Ruith gave examples of where accessibility is not just about a group of identified individuals, for example "situational disability", of trying to use a device on a crowded tram. Some impairments are temporary, others permanent and some develop over time. She argued for a holistic approach and not just something tacked onto then end of the web design process.

Ruith suggested ROIs with reduced compensation claims, maintenance and litigation. This might be more effective than appealing to the better nature of a CFO. ;-) She also suggested looking at accessibility when buying off the shelf and tendering for development. She showed images of ZoomText keyboards, Braille displays and alternate mice.

See also books and products:

• Books on Accessible Web Design
• ZoomText Large Print Keyboard
• braille devices

Accessibility of government web sitesScreen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra 21 November, 2007. Recommended:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Accessibility of government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra, 21 November, 2007:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Information architecture

Greetings from the Eleventh Canberra WSG meeting which just finished here at the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Donna Maurer, from Maadmob Interaction Design talked on Information architecture - Beyond the hierarchy.

She said how strict and polyhierarchies are common for government web site designs, but there are alternatives, such as metadata-driven database, faceted classifications (sorted by attributes of entities), organic structures and tagging. Wikipedia is an example of a hypertext structure (which really is not a structure at all). She pointed out that organisation web pages need not be structured by the structure of the organisation, but by the subject area the organisation deals with.

What occurred to me that perhaps Information Architects could have a future as management consultants. They could first design the web site to match what the customer needs and then restructure the organisation to match. An advantage of this is that management consultants get paid a lot more than web designers. ;-)

Andrew Boyd, SMS Management & Technology, on prototyping as part of the web design process:

This was a detailed examination of something mentioned in a previous presentation. He described prototypes and their benefits. He demonstrated a web interface prototype tool AXURE. To me this looked like any of a number of user interface design tools and I wonder if it may be better if the designer used whatever the developers were using. However, as pointed out, the prototype tool can simulate complex AJAX applications. Another buzzword used was "wire framing". The example he showed was of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme schedule on a PDA. This would be a good use for a prototype tool as it would need a difference interface to the average web page.

One worry I have is that much of what web designers are doing is reinventing software development techniques, by trial and error. It would be of advantage if they studied the tools and techniques for software engineering which have been developed over several decades. Also software developers could learn about being more responsive to client needs from web designers.

Web microformats and accessible PDF

The 31 May Web Services Group meeting would be worth attending just for John Allsopp on Microformats, or Brian Hardy on PDF. John talked at a previous WSG meeting, the slides, podcast and photos are available. Brian I were speakers at a university accessibility forum at the AVCC a few weeks ago.

Recommended:

Ninth Canberra WSG meeting
When: Thursday 31 May
Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia ...
Cost: Free
RSVP: Become a WSG member and RSVP at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=94

First speaker: John Allsopp, Westciv
Topic 1: Microformats
John is a founder of Westciv, head developer of Style Master, an organiser of Web Directions (North and South) and author of a book about Microformats.

Second speaker: Brian Hardy, Vision Australia
Topic 2: Accessibility of PDF files
Brian established Vision Australia's web accessibility consultancy service and has been working on access to information issues for more than eight years. He has provided strategic consultancy services on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility for governments and major corporations throughout Australia and internationally. His particular interest is in how accessible design can enhance ICT products and services for all users. ...

Web Standards Group meeting on the user exepreince

The 28 March 2007 meeting of the WSG was the first at the National Library of Australia, rather than the usual Bunker Theater in Canberra. This was the least successful WSG meeting I have attended, but still worthwhile.

DESIGNERS AND DEVELOPERS - LEARNING TO GET ALONG:
Shane Morris, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft:

The talk did not start well, with a noisy joke video from Microsoft. This probably goes down well at Microsoft staff meetings, but was inappropriate for showing to potential customers.

Mr. Morris tried to define the distinction between designers and developers. He did not make it clear, but seemed to be talking about web or user interface "designers" versus ICT "developers". Mr. Morris' view of designers versus developers seems to be based on the obsolete idea that "designers" come from a arts/humanities background and learn nothing about IT and "developers" are scientist/engineers learning only IT with no design. Software Engineers are now trained to have user interface designers within their teams. Graphic and user interface designers now learn IT (at least at the ANU). About half the students I teach web design and eCommerce to are arts/humanities people and half engineering/computer science.

Mr. Morris said that Microsoft were developing a "User Experience Maturity Model", analogous to the "Capability Maturity Model" for software engineering. This sounded interesting, but he did not explain further. There are details on his blog. From reading his blog, Shane has some deep insights and considerable experience at user interface design. Unfortunately little of this came across in his talk.

Another problem was factually incorrect statements. As an example Mr. Morris claimed that Microsoft started in business making compilers. But according to the Wikipeida, Microsoft was "Originally founded to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 ..." . The average member of the public may not know the difference between a compiler and an interpreter, but someone from Microsoft should.

A third problem were gratuitous comments denigrating Microsoft. Mr. Morris claimed Microsoft had not acknowledged design as a part of development until recently and until recently the only tool Microsoft had for design was MS Paint. These seemed ill considered comments, even if they were true (which I doubt). Perhaps people with "Evangelist" in their job title have to make exaggerated and inaccurate claims to galvanize an audience. But Microsoft might want to limit its evangelists to giving internal corporate presentations and keep them away from potential customers.

One point of Mr. Morris' talk I found useful was the last one, which was the lack of usability stands for rich Internet applications. Unfortunately he didn't expand on this. Had he given a presentation on that, it may have been useful.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN REQUIREMENTS AND DESIGN
Craig Errey, Managing Director and psychologist, PTG Global:

Mr. Errey argued that a rigorous process was needed for a defensible user interface design. You may not agree with his engineering approach to design, but at least he gave a clear and useful vision of how to do it (unlike the previous speaker). Craig is taking on a large task to teach software engineering techniques to web designers. But at least he is applying known, well established software and user interface development techniques (some of which I recognise from my training 20 years ago).

USER PERSPECTIVE NEEDED

This was the least successful of the WSG meetings I have attended. This one was still equal to the average presentation I attend, but not to the excellent standard of previous meetings. It perhaps strayed too far from the topic of web standards. The previous format has tended to be to have one "user" presentation, usually from a government agency, and one "company" presentation. Having two vendor talks was one too many. Mr. Morris seemed to be trying to give a user presentation; but a straight sales demonstration of Microsoft's new web tool would have been more useful. Craig's overview of his product was good, but I would have liked to hear from a user of the tool.

HOW MANY WEB DESIGNERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A GOVERNMENT?

One issue which might be addressed by a future meeting is how many web designers are needed by the Australian Government: perhaps less than a dozen. It used to be that graphic designer was needed to design a logo for each government agency. Most agencies are now required to use the one Commonwealth logo, recognizing they are all part of the one organisation. Perhaps it is time all agencies were required to use the same integrated web design. This would make it easier for the users and lessen the number of designers needed.

Previous WSG Meetings:

• May 2006, Wireless Web System for an Avian Influenza Pandemic, by Tom Worthington
• January 2007, Australian Government Web Design, Acccessibility and Market Share