Exploring UX issues and techniques for open source communities

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uCamp Theme

Our theme is: "uCamp: Exploring UX issues and techniques for open source communities". Time is fast approaching for the Saint Paul uCamp and we need to start planning what talks and design projects we want to include. We need a list of suggestions for talks and also, any design projects, the design team will need to prepare ahead of time so we need to select something.

Check the link to see general ideas for Presentations at the conference Conference Presentation Suggestions page . Scroll down here to a add your ideas for uCamp Suggestions.

uCamp Goals

We see the uCamp as an opportunity to share best practices for design, show developers and others how to add usability to their designs and to leverage the face to face time to best advantage.
(uCamp is a "camp" so it should be interactive, educational and fun (think summer camp with a User-Centred-Design focus).

Planning Meetings:

March 7 2008 uCamp Planning
March 18 2008 uCamp Planning
April 23 2008 uCamp Planning

When and Where

uCamp
Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Time: 1:30pm - 5pm
Location: Conference Hotel
Venue: Banquet room space with tables, projector, whiteboard, presentation area, power outlets, wireless

General

Schedule

Wednesday Afternoon Schedule

Location: BarCamp Space or Breakout Room

Time	Duration	Activity	Format	Who
1:30pm	5 mins	Welcome	talk	uCamp Coordinator and everyone
2:30pm	55 mins	Lightning Talks (anyone can participate! Add a Lightning Talk topic)	discussion	uCamp Coordinator and everyone
2:30pm	45 mins	Processes for Creating Personas (including some information on User Needs Assessment and & using personas to inform the design & development process)	talk	Allison
3:15pm	15 mins	Use Cases in the Context of the Fluid Project (What has been working.)	talk	Allison & Erin
3:30pm	15 mins	Evolution of Use Cases in the Kuali Student Project (What is Kuali Student? What purposes are Use Cases serving in this SOA environment; How are use cases created?)	talk	Cindy,Doris, James, Tim
3:45pm	60 mins	Panel discussion about using user research, use cases, & scenarios in application design in the context of JA-SIG projects (feel free to sign up if you'd like to be on this panel...you can also contact Gary (gary@unicon.net) or Allison (abloodworth@berkeley.edu) with any questions)	panel discussion	Gary, Allison, Kuali team members TBD, other JA-SIG project team members
4:45pm	15 mins	Wrap-up	discussion	uCamp Coordinator and everyone

Who will be attending

Name	Role	Institution
Allison Bloodworth	Sr. Interaction Designer	University of California - Berkeley
Cindy Nahm	Kuali Student UX team	University of British Columbia
Doris Yen	Kuali Student UC Team	University of British Columbia
James Dudek	Kuali Student Use Case Team	University of California - Berkeley
Tim Heidinger	Kuali Student UX team	University of California - Berkeley
Thomas O'Brien	Kuali Student UI Team	University of California - Berkeley
Wil Johnson	Kuali Student UI team	Florida State University
Garey Taylor	Kuali Student UI team	University of Maryland
Joe Yin	Kuali Student UI team	University of British Columbia
Paul Zablosky	Strategy Group	University of British Columbia
Gary Thompson	User Experience Leader	Unicon
Colin Clark	Technical Lead, Fluid Project	Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
Muzaffer Ozakca	Programmer/Analyst	DLP @ Indiana University, Bloomington
Erin Yu	Interaction Designer, Fluid Project	Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
Rachel Hollowgrass	Kuali Student UX team	University of California - Berkeley
Kristol Hancock	Sr. Interaction Designer, Sakai	Indiana University
Leo Fernig	Kuali Student	University of British Columbia

Sign up for the uCamp

Presentation/Workshop Topic Ideas

Topic	Presenter	Who's interested in participating?
Personas (what they are, how to create them, how they add value)	Allison	Gary Thompson
User Needs Assessment
Use Case documentation - what the right level of detail, what are the best collection methods, i.e. paper, databases, etc; how to link use cases w/ wireframes / prototypes		Tim
Prototype techniques and tools	Allison, Gary	Tim
Widgets - what are they, best way to find them, make them and share them		Tim
Accessibility checking tools and techniques	Colin	Tim
Portal basics (working w/ portals)	Gary	Tim
Designing for small form factors (i.e cell phones)		Tim
Any Google Web Toolkit stuff		Tim

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks have been very successful at other conferences and so we are hosting them again at the uCamp.

Add/Edit a Lightning Talk topic

Potential Ideas for Lightning Talks

This section is for lightning talks that people are interested in hearing, but for which we don't have a committed presenter yet. If you're planning to give a lightning talk, please move your topic into the "Planned Lightning Talks" section above.

Topic	Who could give this talk? (You can suggest other people here)	Who's interested in hearing this talk? Comments?
Topic idea	nominated person who could give this talk	anyone who wants to hear the idea
Design Patterns	Allison	Barbara, Paul
What is User Research and How to do it?	Allison, Gary	Paul, Erin
Contextual Inquiries vs. Interviews	Allison, Gary	Muzaffer
Hallway User Testing	Colin	Muzaffer
Quick User Testing for Everyone	Colin, Erin	Paul
Intro to Kuali Student Designs	Tim, Cindy	Allison, Paul, Erin
Intro to uPortal Designs and upcoming ideas	Gary	Allison, Paul, Erin
Designing for small form factors (i.e cell phones)	Erin
Accessibility checking tools and techniques	Colin	Allison, Paul
Support for multiple languages and character sets	Tim or Wil or Cindy
Challenges of Rich UI (AJAX) in Portals, i.e. are portals still the right approach?	Tim or Wil or Cindy	Paul
Using GWT as UI framework	Wil
Coming into a well-established set of projects & finding yourself plunged into a conference	Rachel	Paul and others

Add/Edit a Lightning Talk topic

JA-SIG Conferences

Spring 2008 Saint Paul - uCamp Planning