I thought I’d better post this before April Fools day tomorrow. My employer, Capgemini has accepted to sponsor the Copenhagen RubyFools conference from today and till Wendesday.
The sponsorship involves that Capgemini will sponsor free beer for one hour at the Ruby Cave (social event) tomorrow evening. As far as i know, it starts at 7′o [...]
I wanted this post to be named “Usability Lessons from RailsConf Europe 2007″ — but realized that only some what I want to write below is about usability.
So RailsConf Europe this year is over, and there are a few things i want to highlight from a conference that in general was a smash hit.
Usability and [...]
Live notes from RailsConf Europe 2007 testing tutorial by Chad Fowler and Marcel Molina.
For the last days, Mads and myself have been working hard on our RailsConf presentation Tuesday next week.
At the presentation we will introduce a Ruby on Rails plugin that can create the foundation for a local Rails app based on forms scraped from a remote application. In our case, an internal application used for timereporting in Capgemini.
Two very interesting videos about Google
The new innovative improvements to Google Maps… View the demo video (it’s just a few minutes):Via Jacob Hage’s blog.
My favorite is the drag-and-drop replanning of routes. Danish competitors are lightyears behind here…
If you have not seen it: Check out Douglas Merril (CIO at Google) talk about innovation at Google. [...]
Woohoo. I got a response from O’Reilly that my talk for RailsConf in Berlin is accepted. I will be presenting with my colleague Mads Buus, who’s also active in our Copenhagen Ruby user group.
Here is the talk proposal:
Title: Screenscraping as a tool for changing the (legacy) world
Conference: RailsConf Europe 2007
Type/Duration: 45 Minute Conference Session
Audience Level: [...]
Reboot was very good this year, and after meeting people like Mathias Müller-Prove (works with user experience on OpenOffice and did another presentation), Matthew (works in AllPeers — a company that does an interestning firefox plugin, that I unfortunately never got a demo of).
This inspired me to have a conversation about “the humane interface“… In [...]
Interaction Design Day, Copenhagen
I’m here live blogging at the Danish Interaction Design Day 2007 in Copenhagen (link in Danish). This post is probably the only one I’ll live blog today, as I only attend part of the conference.
The mini conference is a fine mix between trade show and presentations. Best thing is to meet [...]
May 31st and June 1st, the annual Reboot conference will take place here in Copenhagen.
For now, there is no information on who’s speaking and almost no rumours on what’s going on.
But I’m expecting the best: Usually, there is a strong setup of international speakers on topics that range from geek speak to the more managerial [...]
Jesper and I were invited yesterday to speak for the Danish IT usability network (link in Danish) about prototyping and our experience with prototypes.
In short, the presentation touched
Prototyping, how and when to get up to speed
Cases from the public and financial sectors where we have been prototyping
Experience with different tools, such as Axure and Ruby [...]
E-Week has notes from “Google’s Bosworth” (which must be Adam Bosworth, formerly employed at Microsoft and working on the IE4 team).
Below some notable quotes on AJAX. I really like his style a lot. Also, I can recommend his talk from 2005 on high performance systems (via IT conversations), where he mentions that one Google [...]
The most influential talk I have heard this year is Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice. I cannot recommend this talk enough, so I was thrilled to see that Barry did a similar talk that’s available on Google Video.
Google TechTalks April 27, 2006 Barry Schwartz Paradox of Choice (one hour video). If you’re in [...]
UI11 is over and I headed back to Denmark to digest the insightful presentations. The conference had many highlights and it was truly inspirational to meet so many bright people.Some highlights are worth mentioning.
Fantastic speakers
Meeting Luke Wroblewski made me realize there is much to being a successful designer than just graphical design. Most of his [...]
[Jesper's note: It will be interesting to see how this maps to Jakob Nielsen's old ideas about reputation managers.]
Netflix example:
Wall-Mart went head to head with Netflix and lost. They are now linking to Netflix
* 4 million subscribers 10 months ago
* 60,000 titles, 40,000 of which are rented every day
* 2/3 of movies rented come from [...]
Scent of information. Like predator hunting, people hunt for information. The “scent” users pick up is actually trigger words.
Jesper’s live notes from UI Conf. Barry Schwartz really has some deep insightful psychological points, that we can actually use in our daily work as usability professionals.
His main point is that more choices actually makes choosing harder and sometimes can paralyze people. In contradiction to traditional research, he argues that, the more choices you present people to, the less satisified people will eventually be.
[Live notes from UI Conf]
Luke Wroblewski
Management “i hate purple” – the visceral side with immediate reaction. look-and-feel level.
But there is a deeper Structural, visual side. Structure underlining level.
Example: airport map. This example i use over and over again.
* no airplanes
* every single color is as saturated as can be
* small toggle arrows hide important symbol [...]
[Live notes from UI Conf]
My final thoughts: This is a power talk, and the full day tomorrow probably covers it better.
Why agile development continues to grow in popularity
Rare combination: Companies that are strong both on agile development and user experience.
Wrong assumption. Agile is just about finishing something faster
It isn’t just about finishing faster. It’s [...]
AOL clicks related to search result position.
Important lesson: If you’re not in the first ten results you don’t exist
1st on list: 42%
2nd 12%
3rd 8%
They prefer to get the wrong results quickly rather than to waste time finding the right result.
North pole:
More people have been to the North Pole than there have been at search [...]
From UI 11 Conference, Cambridge, Boston October 10, 2006.
I’m sitting in on Jeffrey Eisenbergs sample presentation, which is a compressed version of yesterdays all-day talk. He started off with an example from godaddy.com
Godaddy spent 5 million this year buying airtime for a superbowl commercial.
TV commercial: hopefully this direct link works. (Otherwise choose “superbowl 2006″ and [...]
David Malouf and Bill Scott: Designing Powerful Web Apps with Ajax
From UI 11 Conference, Cambridge, Boston October 9, 2006. David’s and Bills presentation notes available.
Macromedia coined the term “Rich Internet Application” originally because they wanted to create buzz around Macromedia Flash MX.
Usability tests often raise the Q: “Why doesn’t this work like my windows desktop”. [...]
Update: All notes collected in the category “UI11“.
Next week I will be in Cambridge, Massachussets attending User Interface 11 Conference.
I plan to post my notes here on the blog, but don’t expect them to be as extensive as the ones I posted from RailsConf. Maybe more like my notes from Jesse James Garret’s workshop [...]
We are heading to London Wednesday to attend RailsConf (described earlier). I’m really looking forward to the exciting presentations. I’m glad we’re two Capgemini employees going, because many of the parallel sessions in the schedule look interesting.
We’d like to get in touch with any Justaddwater readers attending the conference. Also nice to see several presentations [...]
Thomas and I are really looking forward to this week’s Copenhagen Rails Meetup. Remember to join us
Hi, this is Luis Villa, Thomas and Jesper’s former colleague at Capgemini Spain. They couldn’t make it to @media in London last week, so they asked me to give a summary of the event.
London @media 2006 was a Conference about frontend and web user interface in all its dimensions: strategy, design and building and after [...]
This morning we’re speaking in about corporate weblogs in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s hosted by the Danish IT Industry Association, and We’ll be speaking on the experiences with this blog and how it relates to our jobs at Capgemini.
The presentation is in Danish. More info on previous blog post “Speaking on Corporate Weblogging event“.
Powerpoint version: Capgemini [...]
Last weeks reboot8 conference in Copenhagen is over, and it’s time to get back to work. There were some very good talks but it’s the audience that makes reboot a special event. The highlights of my reboot were the talks from Ben Hammersley, Jesse James Garret, Doc Searls and Jeremy Keith (who was asked by [...]
Ok… what happened? I was blogging about my trip to JavaOne (The arrival, The waiting, Day One), and then what? No day two or anything. There are many excuses but none of them really matter since this is a blog and here I make the rules. Ok Jesper does as well, and he have been [...]
Today is the time for my ten minute presentation at Reboot. I have ten minutes between 16.45 and 17.30 to give my talk.
Topic: Prototype driven development with Ruby on Rails, and demo of the application we made at Capgemini with the Danish public Agency of Companies and Commerce.
Presentation (Powerpoint format) for download here:
Prototype [...]
Today I’m attending Jesse James Garrett’s event “The elements of User Experience” here in Copenhagen. I’ll update this post during the day with my notes. if there’s network access which I sort of hope.
Update: Notes done. Very good day! Now on for the informal cocktail hour!
Click here for My notes, “the elements of User Experience”
Click [...]
[updated with Friday program]
I’ve been very curious with respect to the conference program for reboot8 next week. Especially because I’ll be giving a short talk there.
I see from the Program page that now there is a program available for Thursday at least the entire conference. I just mailed Thomas Madsen-Mygdal to ask if the other [...]
Thomas and I are attending RailsConf Europe in London, September 14-15 later this year.
From the RailsConf website:
The conference is already packed with exciting speakers, including the creator of Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson, Pragmatic Programmer Dave Thomas, best-selling author and passion maven Kathy Sierra, Rails core developers Jamis Buck, Marcel Molina, Jr., Thomas Fuchs, [...]
Just a quick note: I’m attending Jesse James Garrett’s event in Copenhagen May 31st, “The elements of User Experience“. I’m really looking forward to this, as I’m a big admirer of Jesse and Adaptive Path.
You probably know that it was Jesse James Garrett who coined the term “AJAX”, which I think is a way to [...]
The day started with a “Sun General Session” for all conference attendees. If there is one sentence that is worth repeating from this session it must be this one by Rich Green when he is asked by Jonathan Schwartz (President and CEO of Sun) “Are you gonna open source Java?”:
“It isn’t a question of whether, [...]
It is now Thursday morning – The day where the big JavaOne convention starts. For the last couple of days we have been playing tourists in the beautiful hills of San Francisco.
Sunday we went around the town looking at the harbor area and tried the famous San Francisco Cable Cars. We also stumbled upon the [...]
June 13, Thomas and I are invited to speak at an event about corporate weblogs in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s hosted by the Danish IT Industry Association, and We’ll be speaking on the experiences with this blog and how it relates to our jobs at Capgemini. Also, there will be a chance to hear Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, [...]
JavaOne is the biggest Java convention in the world held once a year in USA. Five of my colleagues and me from Capgemini have taken the long trip from Denmark to San Francisco in California (19 hours!). My plan is to give you daily updates on all the interesting sessions I’m attending. I’m especially looking [...]
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be giving a brief talk at reboot8.0
about Rails and rapid prototyping. This is in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 1 or 2.
Thomas Madsen-Mygdal (of reboot) looked for short demos of web applications, which is what I’ll do:
reboot is this year gonna be showcasing 15-20 5 minute demos. Demos of new [...]
For those of you in Denmark in the Copenhagen area.
May 19 I’m speaking about rapid prototyping to make usability testing earlier and more often. The focus will be on the benefits and the business value user testing creates early in the process, so at this event, there’s really no focus on Ruby on Rails as [...]
Are you going to JavaOne in San Francisco this year? I’m attending with 6 of my coworkers flying over on Saturday. I just wanted to let you know about a blogger meetup arranged by SunMink (beer included!). See his post for more details and sign up here (only name and e-mail address required).
- See you [...]
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