Collaboration with Oracle.

Wed Aug 15 23:54:16 UTC 2007

Hi all,
I think the design patterns and the user testing are probably the best 
place to start. 

On this issue...
We continue to struggle with "what is the right level of granularity" 
for these patterns...which is quite related to who is the audience, 
designers or developers.  Our goal is that we meet the needs of both.  
Also, in distributed, complex projects such as Sakai, uPortal & Moodle, 
what is the right level of flexibility to promote consistency yet allow 
for creative innovation and the "it depends" in design.

I could talk all day on this one as we struggled quite a bit with it.  We have some solutions we could share that may or may not work for you. We are very big into design patterns at Oracle. 

How about we do a conference call on this?  I am out next week on vacation, but towards the middle end of the following week (8/29 - 8/31 is good for me).

On the UE front, I could ask folks in our larger org to present as well.  Or I could join the chat myself.  I am not a big emailer, because my fingers get tired :(  .  But I would love to talk.
Thanks,
George

Daphne Ogle wrote:
>>
> Hi George,
>
> It's great to hear Oracle will be participating in the Fluid project.
>
> Welcome!  It would be great to hear about your work at Oracle and how 
> we might utilize some of your methods, etc. on our Fluid work.  The 
> timing is great since we are in the midst of defining much of this 
> work for Fluid.  I've commented below on some of the biggest 
> challenges I see for us from the UX perspective.   I'm sure there are 
> more but these are just the ones on the top of my mind right now.  
>  Does it make sense to schedule a conference call or Breeze meeting to 
> talk about the topics below (and others people think of)?  Are you 
> planning to attend the Fluid 
> summit, http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Fall+2007+Fluid+Summit?  
> If so we could also include some of this on our UX agenda.  My 
> preference would be to talk before then since we'll be presenting and 
> discussing several Fluid UX processes and methodologies at the summit.
>
> As far as current work in progress, there are several activities going 
> on and it would be great to have you participate in any or 
> all...whatever makes sense from your perspective.  Here's the short list:
> - UX walkthroughs (a hybrid usability & accessibility heuristic 
> combined with cognitive walkthroughs) of Sakai, uPortal & 
> Moodle, http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/User+Experience+Walk-throughs.  
> Also see Colin's blog post, "Fluid UX Walk-throughs Getting 
> Started",  http://fluidproject.atrc.utoronto.ca/blog/ about ways to 
> get involved in this work.
> - Several process definitions are being created for review and 
> refinement at the Summit:  1) User testing protocol, 2) Content 
> management 
> research, http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Content+Management+Research 
> (very drafty and still populating with information from work last 
> week), 3) Component design process, 4) UX walkthrough process and 
> protocol (on the wiki at URL above).  These are all at various 
> "in-progress" states and I'm sure you're thoughts on them would be 
> appreciated.  There isn't anything posted yet for the user testing or 
> design processes but I expect there will be soon.
> - Design 
> patterns, http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/DESPAT/Home.  
> This work is being done within the Sakai working group.  Please feel 
> free to join our weekly calls and/or give feedback on the pattern 
> library thus far.
>
> -Daphne
>>
>> George Hackman wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> Thanks for the intro Jutta.  I look forward to contributing where I 
>>> can.  A couple of topics, I could talk about further include...
>>> * UI design patterns and how we use them at Oracle to promote usability 
>>> and consistency.   This is a big help for us as we have a lot of 
>>> developers to support with a fairly small UX team.
>>>       
> We continue to struggle with "what is the right level of granularity" 
> for these patterns...which is quite related to who is the audience, 
> designers or developers.  Our goal is that we meet the needs of both.  
> Also, in distributed, complex projects such as Sakai, uPortal & 
> Moodle, what is the right level of flexibility to promote consistency 
> yet allow for creative innovation and the "it depends" in design.
>>> * Accessibility and evolving standards.  Accessibility is key to us as 
>>> we sell lots of software to the goverment.  I could talk about our 
>>> program and what we are doing here.
>>>       
> Great!  I'm sure we face similar challenges here with creating 
> accessible system behavior at the same time standards are evolving.
>>> * Usability methods that we use at Oracle (Customer visits 
>>> (ethnography),  usability testing (remote and local) etc.).  You are 
>>> probably familiar with most of these, but I could call out what we do 
>>> differently or uniquely.
>>>       
> It's always good to hear what others have found to work.  I see a big 
> challenge for us here to define, suggest, promote UX process and 
> methods to a distributed group whom all likely already have some 
> process and methods in place in their current organization.   How much 
> consistency in these activities do we need?  How do we make sure the 
> community is "brought along" early in the design activities (research, 
> modeling, etc.)  Do we require (rather than just encourage) research 
> and modeling (persona and scenarios for example) for instance?  
>  Research will likely be done in a distributed manner.  What are the 
> best techniques for making sense of the research findings (modeling 
> activities are best done, or at least started, f2f at a white board 
> for instance.
>>> These are just starting points.  I am open to new ideas or topics.
>>> Thanks,
>>> George
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> fluid-work mailing list
>>> fluid-work at fluidproject.org
>>> http://fluidproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
>>>   
>>
>> -- 
>>
>>
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>
> Daphne Ogle
> Senior Interaction Designer
> University of California, Berkeley
> Educational Technology Services
> daphne at media.berkeley.edu <mailto:daphne at media.berkeley.edu>
> cell (510)847-0308
>
>
>