(This email can also be read online at https://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/blog/?p=242)

May Update – Card Sorting and Guerrilla UCD

We’re having a Spring Sale on the world’s most comprehensive card sorting analysis package, SynCapsV3 for Windows. When you buy a license, enter the promotion code ‘SPRING13’ before the end of June and you’ll receive a 25% discount. The normal price is €240 / £200 / $320 but with the sale the figures are €180 / £150 / $240 (plus VAT where applicable). You can choose the billing currency during checkout. Visit http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortdl.shtml#syncapsv3 to download the software and click ‘Buy’ in the licensing dialog to purchase a license. Don’t forget to enter the promotion code!

In our Guerrilla UCD webinar series, we are just coming to the end of the first five strategy webinars. Last week’s session was on human error and error handling (messages and feedback). Coincidentally, Jakob Nielsen has just published an Alert Box article on one of the topics we discussed, novel versus routine tasks. See http://www.nngroup.com/articles/novel-vs-routine-tasks/

If you missed the session, jump to http://www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd/errorhandling.shtml to buy instant access to the video and slides. Next week’s webinar is on usability evaluation methods while our tactics webinars (covering more specific design topics) start on 23 May.

Strategy Webinars

2. Visual Design for Usability

3. Navigation & Menu Design

4. Designing for SEO & Accessibility

5. Human Error, Messages & Feedback

6. Usability Evaluation

Tactics Webinars (starting 23 May)

7. User-Centred IA with Card Sorting

8. Dynamic Web Pages: Effective Use of Ajax

9. Writing Effective Web & Intranet Content

10. Designing for Advanced Users

11. Persuasion, Trust and Seduction

Our Lean and Agile webinars start on 12 Sep after a summer break. You can get a quick overview of the webinars and dates for upcoming sessions by visiting http://www.syntagm.co.uk/cgi-bin/basket.pl

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

(Apologies if you receive more than one of these.)

Don’t forget that our second Guerrilla UCD webinar, on visual design (for non-designers), is this Thursday at 16:30 London time. Visit bit.ly/gucd-2 for details and to register.

Also, please complete our 30-second user requirements survey if you haven’t already (and don’t forget that user requirements are the things that you start with to identify needs – so chances are that if you’re using use cases AND user stories on the same project, the use cases are being used for specification, not user requirements).

The survey is at bit.ly/ur_survey. Please circulate/RT to friends and colleagues, especially anyone on the development side (I’ve tweeted this on <at> guerrillaucd).

Regards,

William Hudson
User Experience Strategist , Syntagm Ltd

Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)
Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Guerrilla UCD – Usability and User-Experience Webinars for the Whole Team
www.guerrillaucd.com | <at> guerrillaucd

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985)

Registration Number: 1895345 | 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS (UK)

(Apologies if you receive this more than once.)

We are running a very brief (30-second) survey on user requirement methods such as use cases and user stories for an article I’m writing.

It will take less than 30 seconds. Please distribute it widely; it’s intended for both UX professionals and developers.

Survey link: http://bit.ly/ur_survey

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist , Syntagm Ltd

Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)
Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Guerrilla UCD – Usability and User-Experience Webinars for the Whole Team
www.guerrillaucd.com | <at> guerrillaucd

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985)

Registration Number: 1895345 | 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS (UK)

(Apologies if you receive this more than once.)

April Update – Card Sorting and Guerrilla UCD

Our latest card sorting analysis package, SynCapsV3 for Windows, was released a few weeks ago. It provides a number of new features currently unavailable elsewhere, including nested groups and the ability to filter and partition results according to how similar participants were in sorting. For more details, follow the links below.

·         Three, free one-hour webinars on card sorting (the last covers the latest features)

·         Card templates (for paper sorts), instructions and software for download (including our entirely free SynCapsV1)

On the Guerrilla UCD front, we ran a free, one-hour overview in March. The recording and slides are available here:

·         YouTube

·         Download the video (wmv, 45 MB) 

·         Download the slides (pdf, 5 MB)

Tomorrow (Thursday) will be the first, full 90-minute webinar, Guerrilla UCD Boot Camp, where we cover the some of the background and need for user-centred design and why just introducing usability testing is not the best solution. We’ll then cover the rest of the strategy webinars in April and May:

Getting Started

1. Guerrilla UCD Boot Camp

Strategy Webinars

2. Visual Design for Usability

3. Navigation & Menu Design

4. Designing for SEO & Accessibility

5. Human Error, Messages & Feedback

6. Usability Evaluation

I hope this is of interest. If not, please just reply to let me know.

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

We ran three free webinars on card sorting a few weeks ago. All of the webinars (plus some earlier videos and slide shows) can now be viewed or downloaded from www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortvideos.shtml

PDFs of the slides are also available on that page.

I have two news further items to share. The first is that the latest version of our card sorting package for Windows, SynCaps V3, is now available for download and free trial. We think it’s the most comprehensive card sorting analysis application available and will dramatically increase the value you or your colleagues get from card sorting (with relevance to web, intranet and user-centred design in general). There is a long list of new features, but the most notable are nested groups – so participants can build their own hierarchies – and participant analysis. The latter allows you to omit wayward participants or to identify groups who have substantially different requirements. It is a free upgrade for SynCaps V2 users. See my blog for full details.

The second piece of news is that we’re just about to kick off the 2013 season of our 16 x 90-minute Guerrilla UCD webinars. There will be a free, 60-minute overview webinar on 21 March. All of the webinars will be recorded so you can attend live or download the recording and slides later. The purpose of the series is to improve understanding of user experience and UCD within teams. Also refer to the blog for more details.

Regards,

William Hudson
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

(Apologies if you receive more than one of these.)

Guerrilla UCD for 2013 – Lower cost, better value

We’re kicking off our 2013 season of 16 x 90-minute Guerrilla UCD webinars with a free one-hour overview on 21st March. It starts at 16:30 London time but, like all of the webinars, you can take part from anywhere in the world and if you miss it, download a recording and slides.

To register for the free overview, either visit GotoWebinar or add it to your basket at the GuerrillaUCD web site (there is a short checkout process but nothing to pay if that is the only thing you add).

The really exciting news is that this year, all webinars are 20% cheaper, plus you get immediate access to last year’s recordings and slides (as well as this year’s live webinar, recording and slides as they become available).

The full list of webinars is:

Getting Started

0. Free One-Hour Overview

1. Guerrilla UCD Boot Camp

Strategy Webinars

2. Visual Design for Usability

3. Navigation & Menu Design

4. Designing for SEO & Accessibility

5. Human Error, Messages & Feedback

6. Usability Evaluation

Tactics Webinars

7. User-Centred IA with Card Sorting

8. Dynamic Web Pages: Effective Use of Ajax

9. Writing Effective Web & Intranet Content

10. Designing for Advanced Users

11. Persuasion, Trust and Seduction

Lean & Agile Webinars

12. Making the Case for UCD in Agile

13. Integrating UCD & Agile

14. Agile UX: Users, Personas & Design Maps

15. Agile UX: Use Cases, Stories & Scenarios

16. Agile UX: Conceptual Models

Regards,

William Hudson
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

(Apologies if you receive this more than once.)

Reminder - Free Card-Sorting Webinars

Just a brief reminder that our third and final card-sorting webinar is coming up this Thursday. It’s free and covers a new approach to analysis to help you get the most from card sorting, whether from paper or online sorts.

Recordings and slides are available at http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortvideos.shtml (there is also a link for registering for the remaining webinar on that page).

Full details can be found on my blog at http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/blog/?p=208

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist , Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)
Conference Committee, UCD 2013 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).
Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability and User-Experience Webinars for the Whole Team
www.guerrillaucd.com | <at> guerrillaucd

(Apologies if you receive this more than once.)

Reminder - Free Card-Sorting Webinars

Just a brief reminder that the second of our free card-sorting webinars is coming up this Thursday. So if you’re trying to improve the navigation of your web or intranet solutions (or just find out where the rough spots are) do tune in.

Recordings and slides are available at http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortvideos.shtml (there are also links for registering for the remaining two webinars on that page).

Full details can be found on my blog at http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/blog/?p=208

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist , Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)
Conference Committee, UCD 2012 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).
Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Author of Lighting the Road Ahead – The 55 minute guide to usability, accessibility and SEO
www.lightingtheroadahead.com

Guerrilla UCD – Usability and User-Experience Webinars for the Whole Team
www.guerrillaucd.com | <at> guerrillaucd

(Apologies if you receive more than one copy of this.)

Reminder – Free Card Sorting Webinars

In the run up to the release of our new card sorting analysis package, SynCaps V3, we are hosting a series of free one-hour webinars on card sorting for user experience design. These will cover a range of topics and deal with both paper and online sorting. You do not have to be a current SynCaps user to attend or to benefit from the content.

Follow these links to register for the webinars:
1) Card Sorting Part 1 – Paper Sorting (24 Jan <at> 16:30 GMT)
2) Card Sorting Part 2 – Basic Analysis (31 Jan <at> 16:30 GMT)
3) Card Sorting Part 3 – Advanced Analysis (7 Feb <at> 16:30 GMT)

Part 3 deals specifically with a whole range of new facilities in the upcoming release of SynCaps V3. These are designed to make it easy for you to make sense of card sort data (including existing online sorts) by performing participant analysis. This will allow you to remove “noisy” participants and identify distinct user communities based on how participants sorted their cards.

If you cannot make the webinars themselves, registering will give you access to downloadable recordings.

If you would like to take part in beta testing of SynCaps V3 and are an existing SynCaps user, please drop me a line – william.hudson <at> syntagm.co.uk

For more information on the existing versions of SynCaps, including the entirely free SynCaps V1, visit www.syncaps.com. For background information on card sorting have a look at my card sorting entry in the Interaction Design Encyclopedia at www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/card_sorting.html

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2012 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

(Apologies if you receive more than one copy of this.)

Free Card Sorting Webinars

In the run up to the release of our new card sorting analysis package, SynCaps V3, we are hosting a series of free one-hour webinars on card sorting for user experience design. These will cover a range of topics and deal with both paper and online sorting. You do not have to be a current SynCaps user to attend or to benefit from the content.

Follow these links to register for the webinars:
1) Card Sorting Part 1 – Paper Sorting (24 Jan <at> 16:30 GMT)
2) Card Sorting Part 2 – Basic Analysis (31 Jan <at> 16:30 GMT)
3) Card Sorting Part 3 – Advanced Analysis (7 Feb <at> 16:30 GMT)

Part 3 deals specifically with a whole range of new facilities in the upcoming release of SynCaps V3. These are designed to make it easy for you to make sense of card sort data (including existing online sorts) by performing participant analysis. This will allow you to remove “noisy” participants and identify distinct user communities based on how participants sorted their cards.

If you cannot make the webinars themselves, registering will give you access to downloadable recordings.

If you would like to take part in beta testing of SynCaps V3 and are an existing SynCaps user, please drop me a line – william.hudson <at> syntagm.co.uk

For more information on the existing versions of SynCaps, including the entirely free SynCaps V1, visit www.syncaps.com. For background information on card sorting have a look at my card sorting entry in the Interaction Design Encyclopedia at www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/card_sorting.html

Regards,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2012 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD

(Apologies if you receive this more than once.)

Half-Price Guerrilla UCD Webinars Extended

Just a brief note to mention that our Guerrilla UCD webinar sale has been extended to 7 Jan. So if any of your New Year resolutions involve improving user experience or the understanding of user-centred design in your team pay a visit to www.guerrillaucd.com for full details and a free one-hour overview.

With best wishes for the New Year,

William (Hudson)
User Experience Strategist, Syntagm Ltd
Courses Co-Chair, CHI 2013 (Paris)

Conference Committee, UCD 2012 (London)

Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).

Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS.

Guerrilla UCD – Usability & User Experience Webinars
www.syntagm.co.uk/guerrillaucd  | <at> GuerrillaUCD