World Usability Day in Tallinn University
World Usability Day is single day of events occurring around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen, and government groups for the common objective: to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.
It is about celebration and education – celebrating the strides we have made in creating usable products and educating the masses about how usability impacts our daily lives. It is about making our world work better. It is about reaching out to the common citizen and spreading the message: We don’t have to put up with products and services that don’t work well and that human error is a misnomer.
World Usability Day Tallinn was the one of 93 WUD events in 31 countries and it is the largest UX design event in the Baltics. The conference connects designers, developers and everyone interested in interaction design. In 2015 there was a record-breaking amount of 500 registrants.
The global theme of the 2015 event is innovation. Innovation can mean different things to different people, but most can agree it includes inventions and changes in products and services that improve a situation or solve a problem in a new way. Innovation in User Experience means that people can do what they need and want to, with technology, products and services that enhance their experience. This year the speakers focused on design values, processes, and generation of ideas. The audience were introduced new trends in design for healthcare, well-being, and ambient assisted living.
The keynote speakers Vitaly Friedman (Smashing Magazine) and Jettie Hoonhout (Philips Research) addressed relevant issues from a pragmatic perspective as well as on a more conceptual level. Vitaly Friedman gave a very emotional and bright presentation where he reflected on issues related to adaptive design in the web. While ideas of adaptive design have become quite widespread in the last three-four years, there is still no common understanding on how to design adaptively. While most modern web designers can successfully make a web page responsive on different screen sizes, adaptive design means a more contextual approach. By using the "Mobile first" design principle, the designers begin with going through scenarios using mobile devices with small screen sizes first. This calls to life only the most important, core features of a product, bringing in a concept called "minimum viable product". Then, by increasing the sizes of screens, designers incrementally add new scenarios of usage and consequently add new functions by filling the new available screens. Such adaptive design allows designer to think about the users first, instead of the responsiveness of screen elements. The screen elements in such an approach become tools instead of being the goal.
The second keynote speaker Jettie Hoonhout talked about approaches that address the ‘affectability’ of products. This means the methods and tools that support the development process of products and product concepts that are functional, usable, emotionally appealing and engaging, and can increase the motivation to use the product. The name of her presentation was Design Values: From Easy-to-use to Motivations, Needs and Drive. Jettie thrills on research regarding user interaction and user-centered design. The ExperienceLab at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, where Jettie works, plays an important role in supporting Philips’ innovation process and in ensuring an early focus on consumer needs.
Our special guest from Portugal Nuno M. Garcia presented a talk on innovation in health and well-being. The timely and exact detection of abnormal events in the life of someone is one of the cornerstones of successful Ambient Assisted Living strategies, either because these events need to be avoided, or because it is necessary that these events occur as a mean to implement a program for adapting to a particular lifestyle. Technology has given us a plethora of sensors and actuators that can be used to deploy an infrastructure, which would allow us to successfully track our daily living activities. However, often this would imply to use very technical privacy invading solutions that, despite their efficiency, would render them non-adoptable by users. In his talk, Nuno explored the opportunities and challenges that AAL poses in the field of tracking our daily activities, and how such a solution can be designed to become a user-adoptable part of monitoring and training lifestyles.
There were also interesting presentations on innovation by the MD of Startup Wise Guys Calum Cameron, the CEE of Startup Lead from Microsoft Elise Sass, and a talk about Visual Analytics from CEO at UsabilityTools, Bartosz Mozyrko. Kristjan Karmo moderated the conference.
On the days after the main event, WUD Tallinn was accompanied by workshops and tutorials, which attracted high amount of participants. This year’s WUD was organized by Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies together with Trinidad Consulting and EstCHI. The conference was supported by City24, Veebimajutus.ee, COST Action IC1303 AAPELE, Voog, Defolio, Livecube, Axure.
Story by Vladimir Tomberg.
More information here.
More pictures here.
It is about celebration and education – celebrating the strides we have made in creating usable products and educating the masses about how usability impacts our daily lives. It is about making our world work better. It is about reaching out to the common citizen and spreading the message: We don’t have to put up with products and services that don’t work well and that human error is a misnomer.
World Usability Day Tallinn was the one of 93 WUD events in 31 countries and it is the largest UX design event in the Baltics. The conference connects designers, developers and everyone interested in interaction design. In 2015 there was a record-breaking amount of 500 registrants.
The global theme of the 2015 event is innovation. Innovation can mean different things to different people, but most can agree it includes inventions and changes in products and services that improve a situation or solve a problem in a new way. Innovation in User Experience means that people can do what they need and want to, with technology, products and services that enhance their experience. This year the speakers focused on design values, processes, and generation of ideas. The audience were introduced new trends in design for healthcare, well-being, and ambient assisted living.
The keynote speakers Vitaly Friedman (Smashing Magazine) and Jettie Hoonhout (Philips Research) addressed relevant issues from a pragmatic perspective as well as on a more conceptual level. Vitaly Friedman gave a very emotional and bright presentation where he reflected on issues related to adaptive design in the web. While ideas of adaptive design have become quite widespread in the last three-four years, there is still no common understanding on how to design adaptively. While most modern web designers can successfully make a web page responsive on different screen sizes, adaptive design means a more contextual approach. By using the "Mobile first" design principle, the designers begin with going through scenarios using mobile devices with small screen sizes first. This calls to life only the most important, core features of a product, bringing in a concept called "minimum viable product". Then, by increasing the sizes of screens, designers incrementally add new scenarios of usage and consequently add new functions by filling the new available screens. Such adaptive design allows designer to think about the users first, instead of the responsiveness of screen elements. The screen elements in such an approach become tools instead of being the goal.
The second keynote speaker Jettie Hoonhout talked about approaches that address the ‘affectability’ of products. This means the methods and tools that support the development process of products and product concepts that are functional, usable, emotionally appealing and engaging, and can increase the motivation to use the product. The name of her presentation was Design Values: From Easy-to-use to Motivations, Needs and Drive. Jettie thrills on research regarding user interaction and user-centered design. The ExperienceLab at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, where Jettie works, plays an important role in supporting Philips’ innovation process and in ensuring an early focus on consumer needs.
Our special guest from Portugal Nuno M. Garcia presented a talk on innovation in health and well-being. The timely and exact detection of abnormal events in the life of someone is one of the cornerstones of successful Ambient Assisted Living strategies, either because these events need to be avoided, or because it is necessary that these events occur as a mean to implement a program for adapting to a particular lifestyle. Technology has given us a plethora of sensors and actuators that can be used to deploy an infrastructure, which would allow us to successfully track our daily living activities. However, often this would imply to use very technical privacy invading solutions that, despite their efficiency, would render them non-adoptable by users. In his talk, Nuno explored the opportunities and challenges that AAL poses in the field of tracking our daily activities, and how such a solution can be designed to become a user-adoptable part of monitoring and training lifestyles.
There were also interesting presentations on innovation by the MD of Startup Wise Guys Calum Cameron, the CEE of Startup Lead from Microsoft Elise Sass, and a talk about Visual Analytics from CEO at UsabilityTools, Bartosz Mozyrko. Kristjan Karmo moderated the conference.
On the days after the main event, WUD Tallinn was accompanied by workshops and tutorials, which attracted high amount of participants. This year’s WUD was organized by Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies together with Trinidad Consulting and EstCHI. The conference was supported by City24, Veebimajutus.ee, COST Action IC1303 AAPELE, Voog, Defolio, Livecube, Axure.
Story by Vladimir Tomberg.
More information here.
More pictures here.