June Update – Card Sorting and Guerrilla UCD

June 4th, 2013

Our SynCapsV3 Spring Sale continues. It is the world’s most comprehensive card sorting analysis package and works equally well for online sorts (for WebSort or Optimal sort) and paper sorts. Until the end of June, you can receive a 25% discount by entering the promotion code ‘SPRING13’.

Guerrilla UCD has moved into the tactics phase. If you missed any of the strategy webinars or cannot make some of the upcoming dates, you’ll be able to download the slides and recording from the My Webinars section of www.guerrillaucd.com. Also, this year you will have access to the 2012 resources as soon as you sign up for a 2013 webinar.

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

 

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May Update – Card Sorting and Guerrilla UCD

May 13th, 2013

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 the downloads page to get 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, you can buy instant access to the video and slides downloads. 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 the Guerrilla UCD shopping cart.

 

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Reminders, reminders

April 9th, 2013

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.

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30-Second User Requirements Survey

April 4th, 2013

Please take our 30-second user requirements survey (use cases vs user stories vs other) and RT. bit.ly/ur_survey
(It’s for an article I’m writing.)

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April Update – Card Sorting and Guerrilla UCD

April 3rd, 2013

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.

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

YouTube

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

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SynCaps V3 – A card sorting revolution

March 14th, 2013

It’s been a long time coming, but we hope you’ll agree it’s been worth the wait. Our ground-breaking card sorting analysis package, SynCaps V3 is now available for download and 14-day free trial. What’s more, if you’re an existing SynCaps V2 user, you can upgrade to V3 for free.

Among the new features of version 3 are:

  • New, ribbon-style user interface
  • Nested groups (up to 9 levels)
  • Participant analysis and filtering

With the participant analysis and filtering features, you’ll be able to see whether you have separate participant communities (who have different needs) and compare their results. Or you can use similarity filters to omit participants who were out on a limb in how they sorted.

Once more, participant analysis and filtering can be used on any existing card sort as long as you can get it into SynCaps data format (WebSort and OptimalSort both do this as standard).

If you’d like to know what SynCaps V3 can do for you, download it and have a look – there’s a comprehensive user guide and release notes describing the new features. Or send us a file in SynCaps format and we’d be happy to show you how V3 can help you make better sense of the results.

Visit www.syntagm.co.uk/design/cardsortdl.shtml for the download and have a look at the new features in our comparison chart at bit.ly/syncaps-compare.

A single-machine license (for all users) costs €240 / £200 / $320 (you can choose which currency during checkout). SynCaps is a Windows desktop application but also runs in Windows emulators for Mac and Linux.

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Guerrilla UCD 2013 – Lower cost, better value

March 5th, 2013

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

 

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Free Card Sorting Webinars

January 9th, 2013

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 @ 16:30 GMT)
2) Card Sorting Part 2 – Basic Analysis (31 Jan @ 16:30 GMT)
3) Card Sorting Part 3 – Advanced Analysis (7 Feb @ 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@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

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Half-Price Webinar Sale Extended

December 31st, 2012

We’ve extended the end-of-the world sale of our 16 Guerrilla UCD webinars through to 7 January. So if your New Year resolutions include building better user experiences or improving the understanding of user-centred design in your team, take a look.

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New Book in Production & Half-Price Sale on Guerrilla UCD Webinars

December 17th, 2012

I’ve got two exciting items of news. My 55-minute guide to usability, accessibility and search engine optimization is in the final stages of production and should be available in January. It’s a good introduction to all three topics (and it’s not just me saying that – see the reviewers comments at www.lightingtheroadahead.com) plus can help to explain their need to colleagues and customers. Visit the site to join our mailing list and be among the first to get hold of a copy.

The second news item is that we’ve finished recording this year’s 16 Guerrilla UCD webinars. They are now available at half price until the end of the year. For each webinar you’ll be able to download a PDF of the slides and a WMV video file. Both can be shared within your team and are yours to keep. Visit www.guerrillaucd.com to see the full list and to start taking advantage of this money-saving offer. (The 60-minute overview is still free. You can either add it to your basket on the Guerrilla UCD site or watch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luNH1zwZgR0.)

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year,

William Hudson

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