Still recovery from a tremendous (and the funniest possible) fall down the stairs at SAPO Unplugged 08! To anyone attending (me included) it was one of those memorable moments that it will be hard to forget! Thankfully all I got was some bruises and some pain (which hasn’t yet entirely gone), but other than that I’m ok!
I think it was a nice opportunity to talk about Usability. Some trends, applications and side-effects of it’s use in the development process. Something we don’t get to talk about enough!
SAPO unplugged was an opportunity to see the work in progress of Pedro Branco from the Minho University about facial expression usage as a form of human-machine interaction.
Óscar Mealha and Florim from the hosting University of Aveiro presented their work in progress for a software application aiming to help measure and analyze the underlining structure of websites, a powerful tool i’d say to help correct and perfect user navigation across websites, minimizing critical paths while optimizing the overall user experience with less clicks and choices!
Henning Fischer from Adaptive Path was in charge with the keynote and we give an inspiring presentation entitled “Stop Designing Products” which wasn’t entirely about usability but an important call for action in achieving better and more engaging user experiences with the products and systems we design and develop!
Last but not least! Bruno Figueiredo and Ivo Gomes completed the program and delivered two very interesting presentations, Bruno presented and explained some of the decisions behind the project that produced the latest SAPO Homepage. Ivo showed up the power and easiness of paper prototyping and how easy and power it is for software and products development.
I talked briefly about the undergoing quality and usability project at SAPO for which I’m currently responsible, about it’s goals and how it’s being applied.
I hope those who managed to attend it liked it as much as I did, and might have taken something back to their works other than a good laugh about the falling “star” 
May 22nd, 2008
É já na próxima 2ª feira às 14 horas no Salão Nobre da Faculdade de Motricidade Humana que terá lugar o ‘Ergonomics in Design“:
O programa está disponível aqui. Estava a pensar dar lá um salto para assistir à apresentação do Prof. M.S. Wogalter sobre “O futuro dos avisos: activados pela tecnologia“, um problema bastante actual e pertinente como vem descrito no último livro do D. Norman: “Design of future things“.
Pode ser que nos encontremos por lá.
May 22nd, 2008
É o primeiro de vários eventos que o SAPO irá organizar fora de ‘casa’ e abertos a todos os que desejem participar, que é o mesmo que dizer que a entrada é gratuita.
O primeiro SAPO Unplugged é já na próxima semana em na Reitoria da Universidade de Aveiro e o tema escolhido foi Usabilidade, um tema que consideramos ser hoje um dos mais importantes para o nosso trabalho enquanto portal web.
Por isso convido todos os interessados a juntarem-se a nós, e aproveito para vos deixar algumas referências sobre os respectivos oradores:
Vemo-nos por lá 
May 13th, 2008
It took us a bit more time than we wanted, but we finally managed: The portuguese branch of
Interaction Design Association - IxDA is finally a reality, so if you’re interested in Interaction Design, User-Experience and Usability do add yourself to the
google group we’ve just created.
I honestly hope we can have the first (real life) meeting at the end of the month, begginng of June.
Any ideas for a discussion theme?
Levou um pouco mais de tempo do que gostaríamos, mas finalmente o grupo
Português da Interaction Design Association - IxDA é uma realidade. Por isso quem estiver interessado em Interaction-Design, User-Experience e Usabilidade é só adicionar o seu email à
mailling list que foi criada para o efeito.
Espero sinceramente que a primeira reunião (presencial) ocorra no final do mês de maio, início de junho. Alguma ideia para o tema do encontro?
May 8th, 2008
I’ve been working on a presentation about a special aspect of interface design: the need for PLAY! Boring interfaces don’t go far! And we as Humans have this inner desire for play so the more engaging a service/site is the better especially on the web where our attention span is so scarce!
Although the hard core of the presentation content is done (I’ve made a demo of it at Tecnonov last Saturday), and I’ll be posting it online in a couple of days, but the thing is that I would love to enrich it with a lot of good and bad examples of interface design! My Request for Help here is precisely for that, I would love to hear from your most loved or hated interface designs that you have to work everyday! Please drop me an email with a screenshot and why you actually that particular ’strong’ feeling about it! I promise to give full acknowledge of each submission if it actually makes it to final presentation!
Email: pedro (.) custodio (at) gmail (.) com
April 8th, 2008