UPA 2010 Conference Podcast

Rolf Molich, co-inventor of the heuristic evaluation method (with Nielsen), has some strong opinions on the quality of the work of usability professionals. He talks about some popular usability myths, what he can back up with clear data. He tells Jens Jacobsen why he thinks we should question our own work from time to time.

Arne Kittler, Fork Unstable Media, talked with Jens Jacobsen about the Amazonisation of e-commerce. Arne describes why designers choose just to copy Amazon and other successful brands - and what the drawbacks of this method are.

Angela Colter talked with Jens Jacobsen about readability and usability. Too often we focus on usability and forget that a web page also must be readable and understandable. She points out which automatic tools can help assessing this, and where their limitations are.

Thomas Geis, CEO of ProContext Consulting, talked with Jens Jacobsen about CIF—the Common Industry Format for usability-related information. He explains what the CIF is, who uses it, and what benefit an international standard from ISO for usability professionals can have.

Martijn Klompenhouwer works as user experience consultant for the company User Intelligence in Amsterdam. He told Jens Jacobsen in this interview how web analytics can help preparing and validating usability tests. More on his presentation he held with his colleague Adam Cox can be found at: http://www.userintelligence.com/ideas/news/combining-methods-web-analytics-and-user-testing

Jason Huang is founder and president of Tang Consulting (Shanghai). He is also president of UPA China. Jens Jacobsen talked with Jason about the expectations of users when they visit a website, with special focus on the language offered. They also spoke about the differences in the design between websites from China and from western countries.

Sarah Weise is an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. Jens Jacobsen talked with her about Express Usability and what you can expect when all you've got are 40 hours. She developed a menu of usability engineering dishes from which you can choose to serve your client a rich, nourishing, and low cost meal—resp. usability consulting.

Aaron Cheang is Leader User Experience Researcher on the Google Wave team. He talked with Jens Jacobsen about Disruptive Innovation and what this term means exactly—and where the problems are when you are designing a product that falls into this category. Aaron also shares some insights that he and his team gained when they designed and released Google Wave.

Jakob Biesterfeldt serves as co-chair of this year's event. As part of the organizing team, Jakob talks to Jens Jacobsen about some of the special activities within the program and about the organizers' focus on providing many networking possibilities for the participants.

Before the conference, Robert Skrobe spoke to Trent Mankelow via Skype. Trent serves as the UPA's Director of Marketing and Communications. In the interview, Trent talks about what conference attendees can expect from their stay in Munich in addition to the event itself.