Protest against Lab Testing at UXLX in Lisbon

May 17th, 2013 by Sabrina

Protest Signs

Today we protested outside the UXLX conference to Stop Lab Testing (Usability Lab Testing).

Why protest?
I co-founded Webnographer with James, because I believed that we needed new techniques and methods to carry out user research.

The lab testing method is over 20 years old now.  Since then there has been a large shift in the technology we use, and our behaviour. We have moved on from using a desktop computer in one fixed environment 20 years ago, to portable devices (smart phones, tablet PCs, and laptops) in a multitude of contexts today. This has changed how and where people access the internet, and how much distraction or attention is given to an interaction in a given environment.

With this huge shift in tools and behaviour, the methods we use to understand individual behaviours needs to change too.

We need methods that help evaluate behaviour in its multitude of contexts, environments, languages, and countries. We need to test products with a multitude of customers, not just 10 people in London, or Lisbon, or Berlin. We need to get feedback independent of where people are located. We need to test with large numbers of users in diverse locations to be able to quantify the impact of design changes.

As Marshall McLuhan said: “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

This means that User Experience Research must be reshaped too. At Webnographer we are building those tools to help you understand people, so that you can make better products too.

To find out more, follow @webnographer on Twitter.

Posted in Events, Research methods and approaches | Comments Off

Going back to Portalegre

May 3rd, 2013 by Tiago

Two weeks ago, I organised for James and Sabrina to give a talk on User Experience at the Technology and Design week of the Management and Technology School of the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre.

It felt different to go back to Portalegre. This time I visited my old school not as a student but as an “outsider”.

On Wednesday, the talk started a bit late but the students seemed to be looking forward to it. James and Sabrina talked about User Experience and how we use Remote Usability here at Webnographer. The students in the auditorium gave me good feedback and were really looking forward to do something with us in the future.

I liked seeing my former colleagues of Computer Science and the Design students at the talk, and I was excited when I saw students of other fields of study there as well. This goes to show that not everyone has a silo of interests but instead have a  T-shaped map of interests: no one is too focused on their own field and will instead happily branch out their interests (and skills) into other related areas.

I was glad to see this because nowadays the T-shape of skills is crucial in a professional environment, specially in the UX business.

Photo by Daniela “Zariga” Correia

Posted in Events | Comments Off

The Good Experience Guide to Lisbon

April 16th, 2013 by James

Lisboa

UXLX, the User Experience conference, is happening next month here in Lisbon. We have put an insider’s guide to Lisbon together for the UX people, consisting of inside tips assembled by the UX, Web and Start Up community here in Portugal.

The idea for the guide happened as last week I was visiting Porto, a city I have not visited for years. I had a nice dinner, but it was not exceptional. I realized that I was surrounded by tourists. I thought to myself: if only I had asked the insiders where to go I would have had a far better time.

Although UXLX is hosted in Expo, at the edge of the city and by the airport, which is a modern area, no one comes to the oldest city in Western Europe for the modernity.

Over the next month Gil, Pedro, Tiago, Rodrigo, and others will be blogging about where you can get the best food, what are the trendiest bars, and which art galleries you should definitely visit.

Downtown Lisbon is a fun, and lively place. So it is important if you are staying in Expo to get out and see the centre.

As the only largish UX company with an office in Lisbon, every year we look forward to UXLX. Together with UxLondon, UXLX is one of the big User Experience conferences in Europe. Bruno Figueiredo always gets some of the great names of UX to speak and to give workshops at the conference.

Anyway, we are looking forward to seeing you in Lisbon and we want you to have an awesome time when you’re here!

Photo of Lisbon by Safa Erişti

Posted in Events | Comments Off

Público newspaper writes
about James and Sabrina

March 17th, 2013 by Pedro

One of the most read newspapers in Portugal, Público just wrote an article about foreign people living and working in Portugal.

Our founders – Sabrina Mach and James Page – were interviewed for the article. The story brought up what I said in November that you don´t need to leave Portugal to get a hot job.

Sabrina was quoted as saying how sad it was to see intelligent people leaving countries like Portugal (and Ireland) – because they are the future.

James went on to quote what I said last November – that every tech job creates 5 jobs in the wider economy.

As of today we are now looking to fill three positions in the Lisbon office: Software Developer, UX Analyst, and an Office Manager.

Posted in About us, Work for us | Comments Off

A Pragmatic Approach

December 13th, 2012 by Rodrigo

Two weeks ago we held the first Geekdom Friday. It’s a once a month, open event where we talk about a technology related subject from which everyone – not just geeks – can learn and chat about.

My talk was about what I’ve learned from the book “The Pragmatic Programmer”, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. Although it is targeted at programmers, it contains lots of useful tips on problem solving that everyone can use.

On “Take Responsibility” the book covered why everyone that touches a project (regardless of at what point, or for how long) should make sure that they see it through, and not sit idly waiting for things to go wrong. Because they often do, and when it happens, one should “provide options, not make lame excuses”.

On “Fighting Entropy”, is about how to avoid chaos from taking over your project, covering the “Broken Window Theory”: all it takes is that one small part of the system gets messy or broken, to settle a sense of abandonment and more “windows” get broken without repair, just like in dark parts of big cities. It’s all about cleaning up the mess as soon as you notice it.

The book explains how quality should always be the main requirement of a project, while trying to settle for what’s called the “Good Enough” product: focus on it’s core before thinking about adding extra functionality.

In the talk I covered briefly the “Evils of Duplication” , where I mention the golden DRY rule (Don’t Repeat Yourself) which teaches us to never duplicate ‘pieces’ of knowledge, we talked about Prototypes and Tracer Bullets. While the first are disposable, often paper-based representations of the product (or parts of) used to test specific areas or ideas, the latter are build to keep, to test how the system holds together, to see if it ‘hits the target’ – you’ll have a trivial implementation that you can test to see how it behaves in practice. Once that’s verified, they act as the basic system ‘skeleton’ on which we can build on.

Often Prototypes and Tracer Bullets are mistaken for each other, although they serve a different (yet useful) purpose: think of “prototyping as the reconnaissance and intelligence gathering that takes place before a single tracer bullet is fired.” (quote, p. 52)

In the end, having a pragmatic approach to problem solving is all about constantly reminding ourselves of the big picture. Think about who will use what you are building, take responsibility for it, learn from mistakes and be prepared for them.

More to come next month!

Photo of David Thomas was taken by James Duncan Davidson

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Design, Events, Findings, Programing & Development, Testimonials | Comments Off

« Older Entries