UX Social Event, Thursday Nov 29

Since last week’s presentation was canceled due to bad weather, we’ve decided to organize an informal get-together for anyone interested in talking about User Experience over a drink or snack.

Join us this Thursday, November 29 at 5:30 pm at:

Wildcraft
425 King Street North, Waterloo
885-0117

We’ve reserved a table in the lounge/bar area, so look for the rowdy group getting all worked up over product design, marketing, usability, and so on…

November 2007 event CANCELLED due to weather

We’re being hit by the season’s first pseudo-winter-storm today and, as a result, have decided to cancel today’s talk on “User Experience at Microsoft.” Our presenter, Qixing Zheng, needs to travel from Mississauga, which is a dicey proposition given today’s weather.

We’ll reschedule Qixing for January or February. In the meantime, mark December 20 on your calendar for our visit from Roger Martin.

Still interested in getting together during November?

We could arrange an informal UX Cocktail hour at a local bar or restaurant. If you like this idea, please fire a note to the group coordinators at uxgroup@gmail.com and we’ll announce plans should they be made.

Slides from October's event "The UX Design Process: Unplugged"

Had a visit recently from an appliance repair technician? If so, you’ll appreciate how even this profession has gone digital, with devices for ordering parts and processing invoices from inside customers’ homes. At last week’s event, Sandra Loop of Sybase iAnywhere led a discussion about the process of designing for the user experience. And to make things interesting, she grounded our discussion in a case study: design the user interface of a new mobile device for appliance repair technicians.

Below, you’ll find Sandra’s slides. They include a list of UX-related activities that we identified and discussed (some at length) during the presentation. Thanks again for a fun and very interactive session, Sandra!

[slideshare id=143142&doc=ux-design-process-unplugged-1193147903555623-4&w=425]

Posting User Experience jobs in the Waterloo region

Our plan for this site is to add a “Jobs” page, with listings or pointers to UX-related jobs in the area. If you’re an employer and would like to promote an open position with your organization, please send your job posting to the UX group coordinators. We’ll get it online for you.

DesignCampWaterloo on November 8

November 8 is World Usability Day. If you’d like to participate locally, look no further than DesignCampWaterloo on the UW campus from 2:00 to 7:00 pm. Details follow.

What is DesignCampWaterloo?

DesignCampWaterloo is an informal, open-forum opportunity for student, professional and academic enthusiasts to gather, talk, and show off their work to like-minded folks. If you’ve got digital designs – web, interface, or graphic – we want to see ‘em. If you don’t, we still want to see you! Being an open forum event, DesignCamp is as much about the audience as it is about the presenters.

This year, DesignCamp is proud to be hosted by World Usability Day 2007 and to welcome WIHIR as our Design Challenge presenters.

DesignCamp is a great opportunity to show off innovative work, get feedback from the audience, and connect with fellow designers. Plus, it’s a great chance for students to meet potential employers from some of Waterloo’s best companies.

When is DesignCampWaterloo?

Thursday, November 8, 2007
2:00 pm – 7:00 pm
University of Waterloo
Student Life Centre

How much does DesignCampWaterloo cost?

Nothing! DesignCampWaterloo is free and open to everyone who is interested. (Really! Everyone!)

8th Annual Human Factors Inter-University Workshop

The region’s hopping these days with UX-related events. Aside from our own monthly events, there’s Design Camp Waterloo on November 8 (planned nicely to coordinate with World Usability Day) and now the Human Factors Inter-University Workshop at UW. Here are the details as provided by Jennifer Jeon of the Advanced Interface Design Lab (AIDL).

Description

We would like to invite you to join us at the 8th Annual Human Factors Inter-University Workshop hosted by the University of Waterloo. This workshop is an informative yet informal event held yearly, bringing students and researchers together from local area institutions to share research progress and ideas in human factors engineering.

Date and location

November 17, 2007
9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies
EIT Room 1105
University of Waterloo

Registration

Registration for this full-day workshop is free! You just need to register by sending an email to iuw2007waterloo@gmail.com with your name and affiliation by October 12, 2007.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship opportunities are available. Please contact us by email if your company is interested in sponsoring this event.

What does it take to enter the User Experience field?

At last night’s UX ChitChat event, one of the questions we discussed was how to support people interested in breaking into the field as a practitioner. We concluded with the observation that it might seem like a daunting challenge! UX covers a broad range of activities across design, business, and technology — so where to start? How to become expert in those topics? Is that even reasonable?

The short answer: no, it’s not reasonable. UX practitioners are “T-shaped”, meaning they are conversant in a breadth of activities, but go deep and become expert at only a few. In this article from Fast Company, Tim Brown of Ideo describes the result:

“They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this point — patterns that yield ideas.”

Back in 2004, Peter Boersma wrote a blog entry worth checking out, in which he explores the T-shaped model in depth from the perspective of information architecture and user experience (complete with pictures, even!).

Last night, we also shared some thoughts on the qualities and characteristics of UX practitioners. In the course of conversation, we touched upon these two resources:

• Robert Reimann’s article “So you want to be an interaction designer” in Cooper’s Journal of Design.
• A recent thread on the IxDA discussion list about “The most important skills of an interaction designer.”

Be sure to check out Qixing Zeng’s blog post from this morning, in which she shares her thoughts as a result of last night’s discussion. Her post includes links to some other resources around the question of what does it take to be a great UX designer?

December 2007: Roger Martin on "Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage"

December 20, 20075:00 to 6:30 pmAccelerator Centre295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo[Map]Everyone is invited to this free event. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Wanda Eby at Communitech so we can gauge attendance and plan for an appropriate room at the Accelerator Centre. We’re thrilled to announce that Roger Martin will pay us a visit on December 20. Roger is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a renowned speaker on the application of “design thinking” to business strategy. For a taste of his ideas and contributions to the field, dig out your back issues of Harvard Business Review, download this PDF of Roger’s article in Fast Company, or browse the results when you search for him on BusinessWeek.

Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage

Two fundamental kinds of thinking co-exist and often collide in business organizations: analytical thinking and design thinking. Both have their places, but as organizations grow, analytical thinking — which focuses on exploitation and refinement of the current state of knowledge — often crowds out design thinking, which pushes knowledge forward and creates new possibilities. To benefit from design thinking, a business needs to understand how analytical thinking and design thinking differ, why and how they come into conflict, and how to create an environment which encourages design thinking to flourish.

May 2008: User Experience Design at Microsoft (rescheduled from Nov/07 and Feb/08 – whew!)

November 22, 2007
February 21, 2008
Delayed until May 2008 as we’re likely co-hosting an event with Microsoft
5:00 to 6:30 pm
Accelerator Centre
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]

On November 22 February 21 Whew, okay, sometime in May we welcome Qixing Zeng from Microsoft Canada. Qixing is a User Experience Evangelist with Microsoft, so she’s well-placed to give us the dirt on how Microsoft is thinking about UX these days — and how that might affect the work we do as well. We’ll nail down the exact topic of Qixing’s talk as the date approaches, but in the meantime here’s a general introduction from her.

User Experience Design at Microsoft

How is Microsoft changing its culture from engineering-driven to Experience First? What is the design model at Microsoft? Microsoft software now spans from standard websites to rich interactive applications to desktop applications, and we interact with it on our TVs, phones, table tops, game consoles, and computers. How does Microsoft strive to create a seamless user experience across all these platforms — while enabling designers and developers to work more productively together? In my talk, I’ll share some insights and examples to answer these questions from my perspective as a UX evangelist within Microsoft. I’ll illustrate these ideas through real world design examples created on the Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation platform.

If there’s a specific Microsoft UX topic you’d like to hear about, please feel free to contact me through my blog. I look forward to meeting you all in November!

In the meantime, here are some useful links:

• Microsoft Design
• Silverlight
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Expression Studio

(October 2007) Designing the User Experience: Unplugged

October 18, 2007
5:00 to 6:30 pm
Accelerator Centre
Meeting room #2
295 Hagey Blvd., Waterloo
[Map]

Event description

Designing the user experience for software requires understanding user needs and behaviors. However, only so much can be learned by asking direct questions of people. Designers can employ a variety of techniques and activities to quickly uncover user needs and influence their understanding of the functionality required — and of potential design solutions. Come participate in an informal, “unplugged” discussion in which we’ll collectively formulate a best-of-breed process for designing user experiences.

About the speaker

Sandra Loop brings experience as a UX designer for the Sybase iAnywhere Professional Services group. Sandra will facilitate the discussion using a real-world mobile application scenario.