Conferences from Thinking and Making

UX Health Check presentation from Redux DC

Austin Govella — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:13:00 GMT

Livia Labate presented the UX Health Check at RedUX DC last month.

Livia's created a website for the UX Health Check where you can keep up with developments, news, how-tos, and tips. And she's posted the video presentation and slides from RedUX DC.

For those of you too lazy to make with the clicky to a new site, you can make with clicky right here to watch Livia's presentation

IA Summit 2009 presentation slides

Austin Govella — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:58:35 GMT

The Non-linear Creations blog has scoured the internet far and wide to collect a list of IA Summit presentations that have posted their slides. You can see the aggregated list over at their website.

The User Experience Health Check, quantitative metrics for the qualitative user experience

Austin Govella — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:27:00 GMT

Livia Labate and I presented on the User Experience Health Check at the 2009 IA Summit in Memphis, TN this last weekend.

The UX Health Check is a technique for UX professionals to express the quality of a product or service’s experience and convey it in terms that are familiar to business stakeholders, creating a common ground for discussion and exploration.

I developed the original concept while working with Livia Labate and team at Comcast Interactive Media. It emerged from a real need from a product team looking to convey how the user experience improvements were evolving over time in a way they could show progress to executives.

Livia has started a site at uxhealthcheck.com where you can view the slides, as well as the poster we presented.

We'll be adding more and more Health Check related content to the site over the next several days and weeks (including templates and presentation audio).

Design Camp - Bryan/College Station - Sat, Jan 17

Austin Govella — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:35:00 GMT

I'm heading up to Bryan this Saturday for Design Camp, "a free conference put on by creative people for creative people". If you're a creative person interested in sharing your ideas and passion, then you should attend! This includes designers, photographers, illustrators, writers, fine artists, and anyone else in a creative field. However, all talks should focus on something pertaining to design or the field itself. Several other Houstonites will be heading up to meet with designers from Bryan, Austin, and even Dallas. Check the "Design Camp wiki":http://designcamp.pbwiki.com/ for more information. If you're interested in going, "RSVP on their Facebook page":http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115202080248. Looks like it'll be pretty fantastic. If all goes well, I'll do a presentation on Web Page Design for Print Designers based on new material from "the new book":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321600800?ie=UTF8&tag=thinkingandma-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0321600800.

EightShapes announces UX deliverables workshop in August

Austin Govella — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:13:48 GMT

"EightShapes":http://www.eightshapes.com/, the user experience consultancy has announced a "UX deliverables workshop in August":http://www.eightshapes.com/workshop.php on 08/08/08. Led by documentation wunderkinds, "Dan Brown":http://www.greenonions.com/ and "Nathan Curtis":http://www.nathancurtis.com/, the workshop should be pretty awesome for helping you hone your chops. We've had them in at "Comcast Interactive Media":http://cimlife.com several times. Their workshops are very informative, well-paced, and educational. Well worth the $345. (Includes workshop, materials, and lunch.) There's "more info":http://www.eightshapes.com/workshop.php on the EightShapes website.

The U.X. health check, a Summit side conversation

Austin Govella — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:57:00 GMT

At Comcast Interactive, we've been working on a new method for evaluating our work. What's emerged, we've been calling a UX Health Check, and I think it might have a lot of potential.

So, while we're milling about the Summit with all you great minds, I'd like to talk to you about the Health Check and get your opinions.

What does it do?

The health check is a method for quantifying the quality of a user experience.

It can measure experience at one point in time, or be used in a repeated way to track the quality of an experience over time.
It can be used for any product or service.
It can measure very detailed feature-sets, or very generalized notions of service.

Where'd it come from?

The health check was created to help product management communicate progress and improvement to executives. Instead of measuring design, it measures how well your users interact with your experience.

What are the outputs?

A measurement of where you are now
A measurement of how your experience has improved or not over time
A recommendation for product managers on where the biggest problems and opportunities are

Interesting?

If this sounds interesting, catch me at the Summit, and I'd love to talk to explain how it works and get your feedback.

Practical prototyping: 2008 IA Summit Panel

Austin Govella — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:57:06 GMT

Sunday April 13th, I'll be moderating a panel on Practical Prototyping featuring Chris Conley, Anders Ramsey, Todd Zaki Warfel, and Jed Wood. They plan to show and talk about a range of actual prototypes, and it looks like it will be really interesting.

Presentation Info

Panel: Practical prototypingSunday April 13 2008, 1:30 - 3:00PM

Presentation description

Prototypes are a great way to involve customers early in the design and development process. With the decreasing barrier to entry and an increasing availability of tools today, like Flash, Fireworks, iRise, Expression, and an endless supply of JS/AJAX libraries prototyping should be in every interaction designers’ toolbox. So, why isn’t prototyping as common place in software development as it is in industrial design and architecture? The failure to include prototyping is rarely due to lack of skills with the tools, but instead naiveté about the kinds of prototypes to make and how to use them productively with colleagues and users.

This panel brings together a seasoned group of practitioners to discuss various methods for prototyping with a focus on why we don't prototype in software as much as we should and why we should be doing it more. We'll also discuss what's available today that makes it more accessible and easier today than it was a few years ago (e.g. JS/AJAX libraries, tools like Expression, Flash, Fireworks, iRise) and how to make better decisions about picking the right kind of prototype for the job.

Who Should Attend

Information architects of all levels will benefit from this panel discussion, especially those who are currently dealing with, or planning to deal with Rich Internet Applications or DHTML heavy applications of any kind.

What You Will Learn

When you leave this session, you’ll be equipped with a broader understanding of some of the more commonly used toolkits, reasons why you should be prototyping, how to prototype better, and a greater understanding of some of the pitfalls of prototyping.

Designing with patterns: Lessons from Yahoo! and Comcast

Austin Govella — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Christian Crumlish and I will share design pattern lessons learned at this year's IA Summit in Miami. Christian will talk about his experience with Yahoo's design pattern library while I'll share what we've done at Comcast Interactive Media.

Presentation info

Designing with patterns in the real world: Lessons from Yahoo! and Comcast

Monday, April 14 2008, 11:45 - 12:30PM

Presentation description

Can you streamline web design and development with design patterns? Really? How?
Do patterns help or hinder agile user-centered design?
Do design patterns stifle innovation?

We’ll share what we’ve learned about bootstrapping pattern libraries from scratch and how to “extract” patterns from existing products. We’ll share stories (er, I mean real-world case studies) to illustrate ways pattern libraries can both aid and stifle innovation, how they help solve real-world web design problems, and how they support rapid production of common IA deliverables. We’ll bask in the glow of the “magic triangle” of patterns + code modules + wireframe templates that enable rapid prototyping and agile development, and then cower in the miserly shadow of the “iron triangle” of fast, cheap, or good. How to structure and maintain a pattern library? Check. We’ve got you covered. How do you trick… er… get people to adopt patterns and help improve them? What tools help you do this? Are wikis the answer? How far can you get with an open-source CMS, a boatload of other people’s mistakes, spit, baling wire, and wing and a prayer? To find out, come to Austin and Christian’s presentation where we’ll share what we’ve learned, what works, and what we will never ever do again at Comcast and Yahoo!

More information

You can find more information about the 2008 IA Summit at the conference website.

The International Conference on Managing Design in Global Environments call for papers

Austin Govella — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:18:00 GMT

The International Conference on Managing Design in Global Environments will take place on November 20, 2007, in Seoul, Korea. The Korea Institute of Design Promotion -- with the assistance of DMI -- is now seeking submissions of a broad range of papers that discuss the globalization of design and design management, including those focused on theory-building and empirical research as well as case studies.

All proposals must be emailed to the Scientific Committee Chairs by October 11, 2007.

For complete information about the conference, please visit the DMI website.