Researching Usability

A few developments to the project this week has meant that we have some good news to announce:

After revisions to our proposal we got confirmation this week that our JISC Enhancing LMS: AquaBrowser UX study had been accepted! If you have been following the blog and the usability inspection report which evaluated five digital libraries, you will know that Edinburgh University’s Aquabrowser was one of the DLs we investigated. Ideas that spun out originally from my blog post led to a full-blown proposal to evaluate the system which will now be conducted alongside the UX2 project. It will greatly enhance the UX2 project, providing the opportunity to conduct extensive user research including personas and usability testing which can be compared to the heuristic inspection results. More details on the project will be announced on the UX2 project website once it kicks off next week so stay tuned for more information.

Included in the Aquabrowser project is the opportunity to attend the UPA 2010 Conference in Munich this May. By attending it will be possible to learn more on personas and measuring the effectiveness of Web 2.0 among many other subjects. I’m excited to be attending so please get in touch if you will also be there and would like to meet up. I will of course blog about the conference while I’m there.

On the subject of the Usability Professionals Association, the UX2 team will be talking about the project at the next event for the Scottish chapter. The talk takes place next week on 20th April at 6:30pm and during the presentation we hope to spread the word of our work while also discussing some of the inspection report findings. We will also discuss the development work taking place with a demonstration of the prototype. If you live in and around Edinburgh and would like to attend please visit the SUPA website for more information. If you can’t make it but are still interested, we are hoping to put the slides from the presentation online afterwards.