T6 Combining hygiene and creativity to build usable Rich Internet Applications

Jostein Magnussen, NetLife Research AS, NORWAY
Email: jostein@netliferesearch.com

Even Risbakken, NetLife Research AS, NORWAY

Email: even@netliferesearch.com

Intended audience

Both practitioners and researchers

Tutorial goals

We will explore some of the User Experience challenges with Ajax and give the participants guidelines, methods and examples to help them meet the challenges like:

How do we prototype when "the page" disappears? Is the wireframe dead? What are the new usability challenges with the use of Ajax? Accessibility issues with Ajax. Does rich internet applications change the methods we use for developing usable websites?

Tutorial outline

The tutorial will consist of four main parts. There will be several exercises during the tutorial:

Rich Internet Applications and Ajax –
- How it works, why it works and why it sometimes doesn't work
Through examples we look at both good and bad usability resulting from use of Ajax and other techniques for creating Rich Internet Applications.
- We go beyond the over-used examples and go in depth at everything from shopping baskets through making online forms to more complicated web applications. What is best-practice from a User Experience point of view and what kind of design patterns can be extracted.
We will then look more in-depth at some of the consequences of the "Richer web".
- Accessibility - is the new web excluding large groups of users? The rise and fall of conventions - back button, the page metaphor and hypertext.
How does it affect the User Centred Design methodologies?
- How to prototype with Ajax, the importance of focusing on tasks and how to develop with tasks and interactivity without doing tedious task-analysis. We use examples from several projects to illustrate how Ajax and the new web forces us to change the methodology for making usable interfaces. The participants also goes through a mini-redesign exercise where they get to use what they have learned

Instructors

Jostein Magnussen is a Senior Usability Specialist and one of the founders of the leading Norwegian User Experience company NetLife Research. He holds a Master in Psychology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Over the last 6 years Jostein has done interaction design, information architecture and usability activities for clients like DnB NOR, Telenor Mobile, Tiscali Nordic, ATEA Nordic, Storebrand and University of Oslo. He is also a local ambassador in Norway for the global cross-discipline practitioner network UXnet.

Homepage: http://www.netliferesearch.com/JosteinMagnussen/

Even Risbakken is a senior Usability Specialist and founding partner of the leading Norwegian User Experience company NetLife Research. He has lead major user experience projects for large award winning companies in Norway. He holds a master in technology from the University of Stavanger. Over the last 6 years Even has done usability tests with over 600 users in the nordic countries and done interaction design and usability for clients like Jotun, DnB NOR, Vinmonopolet, BBS, Telenor Nordic, Atea Nordic, and several ministries in Norway.

Homepage: http://www.netliferesearch.com/EvenRisbakken/