July 2004 Archives

The designers in health network hosted it's eighth annual event, "making a difference" last Friday (16th July) and judging from the feedback I heard it was a big success.
Andrew Dineley and Brian Parkinson, the event organisers, deserve a round of applause for pulling together a comprehensive schedule designed to emphasise the networks desire to move the design in health care agenda forward.

Ravi Jassal & Andrew Ferguson, presented "lost in translation" a 1 hour session on the challenges of translating health care information. The first half of which was a poignant role playing session which highlighted the different service an English speaker and non-English patient might receive in the NHS.

Sally Bigwood from Plain Figures presented the highly amusing "The myths, mysteries & magic of data presentation" where she discussed practical step on presenting graphs and tables in print and on the internet.

Andrew Boag of Boag Associates presented "Process & performance in the design of information" and fascinating glimpse of how information design and process can be blended into some visually stunning work, with measurable business benefits.

I then presented a seminar on "Personas in web design" my first attempt at public speaking, nerves aside it seemed to go well, I hope.....

Howard Atkinson of the Ordnance Survey presented an extremely interesting presentation on "Digital Mapping - what can it do for you?", which demonstrated the OS's digital mapping products.

Last of all was Andrew Swartz of Serco Usability Services who presented an interactive seminar on "Web usability and user testing", it certainly was a case of leave the best to last, Andrew delivered a seamless and entertaining presentation and then engaged the whole audience in a though provoking user testing on two American medical sites. A technique I'm going to use when trying to explain to key stakeholders why usability is such an important issue.

74 people attended the event, and as far as I could tell every one of us had a great time.

Despite the fact the BBCi is recognised the world over as an example of excellent web design BBC News online and other news sites have been reporting that BBCi will have to shut down a series of sites after the release of the government backed gaff report yesterday. Why does the government feel this is necessary? In my opinion web design companies (in the private and public sector) should stop whinging that the BBC has an unfair advantage and step up to the plate demonstrate their skills..

It's not the money they throw at it (although, I'm in no doubt that helps) that makes BBCi great. It's the attitude the new media team embodies that makes their web offerings successful.. They made a conscious effort to put their users first, to define the goals of the site and then embarked upon a continual process of development and re-development to make sure that the BBCi met it users needs. The first part of this story is chronicled in The Glass wall a document which is well worth reading.

Instead of complaining about the success of BBCi we should raise our game to meet and then exceed it.