Originally scheduled for November/07 but canceled due to weather, we’ve rescheduled Qixing Zeng’s presentation to February 21, 2008.
We’ve reconfirmed with Roger Martin that he’ll visit with us on December 20, so be sure to mark that date in your calendar. Roger will be speaking about “Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage.” Click for more details such as directions and Roger’s abstract.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 book an appropriately-sized room at the Accelerator Centre.
Thanks to Stacey Scott, Assistant Professor in Systems Design Engineering at UW, for the heads-up about this upcoming seminar.
Fri, Dec 14, 10:00-11:00amUniversity of Waterloo, J.R. Coutts Engineering Lecture Hall (RCH), Rm 309Speaker: Daniel Wigdor, University of Toronto
In this talk, I will describe our early-stages work seeking to begin to move past the “wow” factor for multi-touch devices, towards systems which are truly usable by and useful to their users. I will describe our table-centric interactive space, and our efforts to apply the results and techniques of various fields of psychology to build a usable multi-surface collaborative environment. I will also describe a new paradigm for multi-touch, the two-sided input device, and our table and portable implementations of this class of system. Finally, I will describe the next steps of our project, including large display interaction for focused multi-user collaboration.
Daniel Wigdor is a Ph.D. candidate at the DGP lab in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto, and a fellow at Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC). Since 2005, he has worked at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) as part of the DiamondSpace project, working to extend tabletop collaboration through the addition of ancillary vertical displays.
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…
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
2:00 pm – 7:00 pm
University of Waterloo
Student Life Centre
Nothing! DesignCampWaterloo is free and open to everyone who is interested. (Really! Everyone!)
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).
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.
November 17, 2007
9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies
EIT Room 1105
University of Waterloo
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 opportunities are available. Please contact us by email if your company is interested in sponsoring this event.
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.
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.
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.
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: