It's been a long, hard slog but well worth the effort for Marie, who was formally presented with a BA (Hons) in Photography on Monday at Portsmouth Guildhall. The sun made a rare appearance just for the photos and we think you'll agree that she looks fantastic.

As well as her degree, Marie has exhibited and sold pieces of her coursework recently, proving what a great creative talent she is.

Congratulations Marie!

  UX Media has moved to bigger and better premises this month as we bring in more members of the team and improved facilities to house the new services we'll be offering in the near future.

Don't worry, we're not far away so you won't get lost finding us. In fact we're still in the same street. Drop in for a coffee, biscuit and a chat when you get a moment. We'd love to see you.

You'll find us at Lodge One, Dolphin Lane, Southampton, SO14 2HN.

Get directions to UX Media

IT Pro have highlight a survey conducted by paypoint.net which suggests that four-fiths of user are more likely to trust a site with a simple, clear payment facility regardless of the level of security implemented on the site.

This is a big thumbs of for usability and the ROI gained by ensuring you have a usable checkout process but there needs to be an education process with users to help them recognise a secure shopping process. Mastercard and VISA are helping to ensure this with thier 'SecureCode' and 'Verified by VISA' schemes but with the overhead of making users remember yet another username and password.

Watch this space, with the integration of payment gateways such as google checkout we may be able to offer users a simple and secure website which increase ROI and keep customers safe. If only google would allow you to integrate thier service directly into a bespoke website.

Kieron will be working with us to create a sustainable technical infrastructure for UX Media, as well as taking on responsibility for solution architecture and technical resource within the company.

With a background in Microsoft .Net and other solutions, Kieron has worked closely with companies in the telecommunications, aerospace and IPTV industries, to provide maintainable and extensible business orientated solutions for a variety of business needs.

We'll be introducing all our clients to Kieron over the next few weeks so feel free to put him to the test with a few challenging questions when you meet him!

The fully functional, accessible site has been designed by Armadillo Jam, with technical direction and development by UX Media. The site aims to deliver tailored and engaging revision and exam material for students and teachers, promoting creative, independent thinking.

Bright Red Publishing works with the best authors, editors, designers and printers to provide a high-quality and reliable service, including a full ecommerce system.

Marie comes from a creative background and has a superb grasp of visual design in the digital field, as well as a thorough understanding of the way businesses need to move forward with their online offerings in the credit crunch era.

Marie will eventually look after some of UX Media's highest profile clients and is looking forward to the challenges ahead.

"I'm so excited about the way UX Media is helping businesses to focus on the user experience of their services and develop forward-thinking strategies to ensure that customers get everything they need from the world of web 2.0 without sacrificing usability.

"I think we'll be going back to content based solutions over the next 12 months, as budgets become stricter and objectives for online services tighten up. It'll be all about evolution instead of revolution."

Contact Marie on 023 8022 2254 or email marie.hastings@ux-media.co.uk to talk about the services UX Media can provide.

Park Life is a monthly newsletter bringing the news and views from Bourne Leisure's range of parks, to Owners of quality holiday homes throughout the country.

May 2008 sees the start of phase 2 of the Carnival UK Group's intranet redevelopment project.

Among overall improvements to the usability of the site's DotNetNuke content management system, UX Media will be working to create a more news-based approach to the homepage, a Friends and Family email alert system, integrated phonebook and Flash organisation chart and multi-view events calendar.

Look out for more updates soon.

UXM Director, Matt Goddard, aimed to open the eyes of local business owners to the under-serviced market of web users with accessibility issues last month, with a presentation to 20 members of Wired Wessex.

As well as revealing some startling facts about the issues faced by visually and mobility impaired users, Matt provided an overview of how businesses can improve their digital services to meet the needs of a wider audience.

His talk covered elements such as:

• What is accessibility?
• Why bother to address it?
• How to measure accessibility
• How to improve your existing website
• How to commission a new website
• Common accessibility myths

Following the presentation, Wired Wessex's Alexander Hay interviewed Matt about his views on user experience, the future of the web and thoughts on ubiquitous computing.

Read the full Wired Wessex interview

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"Contrary to popular opinion, and also contrary to quasi-judicial claims in some places, PDF documents can be no less accessible than HTML. While this may be a shocking revelation, it is nonetheless true. This article will explain how PDF does and does not support accessibility."

A List Apart: Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility

They also provide information invaluable information on the issue faced by people with visual, cognitive and motor disabilities.

IBM accessibility centre developer guidelines

An excellent essays on the features available through FireFox's Web developer toolbar to asses how accessible your website is.

In the article they introduce a rapid approach for demonstrating (selling?) user testing.

On the whole it's a interesting approach and I can certainly see the benefits from an educational stand point but my over riding worry would be that in this high speed world people would start using their approach as a replacement for real user testing.

In their conclusion Marty and Twidale do point out the dangers of their approach and I'm heartened to see that they recognised the treat to traditional user testing.

n.b. At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, their approach might work well for early stage user testing and could be considered for preserving usability budgets for later stage testing. A way of integrating more user testing into the process perhaps?