Featured image: Post-its and UX Planning - Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash Course Description In this unit, you will come to understand User Experience (UX) as it relates to software engineering and agile practices. The unit is a very high overview (there is no coding, maths, or other aspects you may feel comfortable with) intended to enable you as a Software Engineer to discuss development with UX professionals, or to help you create a bridge between the users and the engineering team.

The last year has been an exciting one for SIGWEB. From the sponsorship of the large Web Science Conference, to that of the small Social Network Working Group; from the increase in student travel sponsorship (to $25,000pa), to our increasing volunteer effort; the SIG has been at work at all levels of our domain. We have forged links with multiple (≈20) conferences and workshops across our field, building a better website for our members, changing our bylaws to cement our relationship with our conferences, while still maintaining our low membership dues.

Last week I proposed that we moderate or move our accessibility, assistive technology, rehabilitation engineering, and eHealth efforts away from direct solutions for people with Alzheimer’s and start to concentrate more on those who do the caring. Based on our experiences, there are seven pieces of practical advice I’d like to give to families who will soon become carers, and the elucidation of some of the unique problems we need to think about with regard to technical provision (next week).

Regular readers will have noticed a lack of posts in February. February was a crazy busy month because I was trying to get my new final year module up and running. The module is titled ‘User Experience from 30,000ft’ and the materials are presented as Open Courseware. Here’s the third lecture which is a guest lecture from the BBC R & D detailing UX in the real world. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOgV8EN6NNs&w=640&h=360] You can get access to all the lectures on YouTube; and you can also get all the material, slides, notes, videos, etc at: http://ocw.

‘‘If your interface has personality, good or bad aesthetics, quality, flow, satisfaction, or fulfilment are not important; I’d probably even go as far as saying that usability is not important either. Personality trumps all the rest because it is the only one that can give the user an emotionally valuable engagement with the software engineering artefact. There are no tests for this principle, if it has personality you’ll know it!’’

I’m writing a final year undergraduate unit on UX – it will be the first that that they have seen being that we are a hardcore engineering School – and I’d like your thoughts! Ignore the administrative stuff associated with work her in Manchester, but what about the unit content (both at the bottom)? Any suggestions for units that have already proved effective will be greatly appreciated! User Experience (UX or UE) is often conated with usability but takes its lead from the emerging discipline of experience design (XD).

‘User Experience (abbreviated: UX) is an umbrella term used to describe all the factors that contribute to the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific software artefact and focuses on the practice of user centred: design, creation, and testing.’ Defining “User Experience” (UX) is akin to walking on the quicksand – there is no firm ground and you’re likely to get mired in many unproductive debates – indeed, to me it seems we are currently “stuck in the muck”.

“It seems to me that gamification may be useful to add a little spice but that without answers to the possible transfer of negative game playing traits the amount of value-added may turn out to be smaller then we imagine.” I’ve recently been having a twitter conversation with Rui about gamification in the context of UX. Now I see myself as far more circumspect than Rui, in that I see gamification as a convenient term to describe ‘digital umami ’1.