UX stands for "User Experience"

IMG_3478
Originally uploaded by wytze

Already in Atlanta I heard about the Fluid Project. At that time I didn't really understand the possible impact, ambitions and scope of this endeavour. Ofcourse not everything could have been clear at that time either, because the project team was still working ong the proposal. Eventually the project received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in April 2007 for a 2-year timeframe. The Fluid project is led by the University of Toronto, with core participation from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Cambridge, the University of British Columbia and York University..
This Amsterdam Sakai conference was the second encounter I had with the project. And I am impressed and I am really looking forward to the results.
Friday morning, while the official conference was already over, I attended an extensive session on the project and its goals. I am not even going to try to sum up all the good things I heard, also because some things are fairly technical. I will just give you my summary here.
First of all this is not just a project within the Sakai context. It is a project that actually all open source software projects should benefit from. The closest relations right now are with Sakai, Moodle, Kuali Student and uPortal. IBM and Sun Microsystems are also partners in the project. The project will provide common tools, as well as guidelines and software components for improving the usability and the accessibility of software. The goals of the project are very ambitious and are described as flexible user interfaces (what do you think of 'swappable interfaces at runtime'!). The project will also explicitly build a community around the efforts, so that it will be sustainable after the funding period. Every contribution is appreciated.
If one wants to put it a little bit differently, one could say that this project will infuse Sakai and other systems with those Web 2.0 features that everyone has come to love, combined with complete accessability, through keyboards and screenreaders. There is already (and we are only two months in the project) a very nice demonstration of what is possible, which is called Lightbox.
The first thing that will be done next, is what is called UX walktroughs. This will mean very detailed analysis of usage of the system right now. Sakai will be one of the systems that will be analysed like this. Signup for this effort is possible; I am seriously thinking about doing this. Go to www.fluidproject.org (website and wiki are being organized while you read) if you also want to give your contributions to this great project.

Come to the U-Camp!

Just a quick note: come and join the U-Camp! This is the email that Tim Archer from Australia sent out yesterday.
-----Original Message-----
From: Archer, Tim [mailto:TArcher@csu.edu.au]
Sent: Wed 30-5-2007 02:05
To: announcements@collab.sakaiproject.org
Subject: Amsterdam U-Camp
Hi All,
It would be great to see a wide range of people at the U-Camp at Amsterdam, both in terms of skills and geographic representation.
Currently, we have 22 people who have indicated that they are attending but only 6 from outside Northern America, and we would particularly like to see more Europeans, Dutch, South Africans, Australians etc :) so that we can enrich the whole experience!
If you are coming it would be a great help to add your name to the Attending U-Camp Roster page, at
http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/OXU
Tim (Chief U-Camp Herder)

Starting up

I am just starting up my work stuff, as I returned from a vacation in Sri Lanka.
Three things to get this weblog started again:
1/ The meeting notes of our 31 Jan meeting are already available. We had a great attendance and some interesting news that was shared. Not everything is in the meeting notes... so, please be present next time (which is on Apr 4, in Utrecht, as always).
2/ The Sakai Foundation seeks to recruit a UX (User eXperience) Lead, which is great news! Everything can contribute money to make this happen.
3/ On March 27, the Innovatium conference will take place in Amsterdam. We will be present.

User Interaction, work in progress

In a post on this weblog Wyzte Koopal pointed out that the User Interface & experience is an important issue to address. I think Wyzte will to glad to read that User Interaction Group is working hard to collect to use cases and to discuss them with the community. People who want to read more about the ongoing User Interface work should read the UI pages on the Sakai Wiki, http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/UI/Home

During the Amsterdam Conference a full day pre-conference workshop will bring together all the members that have a sincere interest in improving the Sakai User Experience.

The U-Camp will provide an opportunity for those interested in the design and support of Sakai to meet, learn, and contribute to the future of the Sakai user experience.
This pre-conference session will include a series of workshops and presentations in the morning where participants will discuss design methodologies, accessibility, patterns, and usability. In the afternoon, we will focus on strategies for improving user delight within Sakai and finding ways to better represent user needs within the community process. (Authored by Colin Clark)

More information: http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/UI/U-Camp+Planning