June 2012 bonus event: REAP project demos and design feedback

June has turned into a rare, but not unheard of, a two-event month for uxWaterloo. In addition to our previously-announced design workshop with Tula Foundation as our regular event, we have this second bouns event to look forward to!

Back in March we visited the Felt lab to see what REAP students were creating and provide them with feedback on their work. The session worked so well that REAP has asked uxWaterloo for a return visit.

Come out and share your insights and design expertise with the next generation of UX practitioners and researchers, while learning more about exciting new technologies. The discussions are sure to be enlightening all around.

Wednesday June 13, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map]
Sign up now, as space is limited!

June 2012 event: Design workshop with Tula Foundation

Last October we ran a successful design workshop event with REEP, a Waterloo Region not-for-profit devoted to improving the energy efficiency of homes.

For our June event we have another design workshop, this time in conjunction with Tula Foundation, a Canadian not-for-profit, and an organization it supports named TulaSalud. TulaSalud is a Guatemalan non-governmental organization that assists the Ministry of Health and partner institutions with improving the health of the country’s rural population through e-health initiatives.

Our goal for this workshop will be to brainstorm designs for a software tool that supports rural healthcare workers. This will be a chance to dig into a real world problem and make a difference through design.

Details

Thursday June 21, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub
151 Charles Street West, Suite 100, Kitchener

Sign up now, as space is limited!

May 2012 event: A UX Q&A

Wow, could we have gotten fewer actual words into the theme for this month’s event? I think not!

This month’s Q&A session is, surprisingly, a format that we haven’t explicitly done before.

Do you have questions about some aspect of UX, but haven’t had a chance to find answers? Now’s your chance. Whether you’re wondering how to quantify the usability of a product, or curious about what card-sorting is, there’s bound to be someone in our extended family of UX practitioners and researchers who can shed some light.

Why use a pencil and paper to create prototypes? How does multi-variate testing work? What’s the difference between a wireframe and a prototype? What is it you want to know?

Bring your questions, your answers, and your willingness to engage in a group discussion with the uxWaterloo crew.

Details

Thursday May 17, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub
151 Charles Street West, Suite 100, Kitchener

Sign up now, as space is limited!

April 2012 event: UX at the movies

It’s been three years to the month since our last movie night, and that just feels far too long!

For our April gathering we’re turning down the lights, popping the corn, and firing up the projector. Join us for an informal screening of a variety of movies about our relationship with the tools and technologies that surround us — either as designers, or as end users. We’ll view clips from commercial films as well as a good variety of online videos from sources such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Suggest a movie

Of course, making an event like this successful requires participation and input from all of the attendees! Have you seen something that inspired you professionally? That got you thinking about your approach to user experience? That made you smile? Bring your suggestions and we’ll get them on the movie playlist. And, as always, be prepared for plenty of discussion, both serious and playful.

Details

Thursday April 19, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub
151 Charles Street West, Suite 100, Kitchener

Sign up now, as space is limited!

March 2012 Recap- REAP project demos and design feedback

In our March event at the FELT lab, uxWaterloo members gave our feedback to the students from the Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) at the University of Waterloo.  We listened to quick presentations from each group, and then broke into groups so we could chat more about the usability issues and concerns that they were having in their projects. Thanks to the students for showing us their ideas and allowing us to share our usability expertise!

Our next event in April will give us another chance to provide feedback and apply our usability knowledge.  This time, we’ll be having a workshop, where we’re helping a not-for-profit group by providing ideas for their mobile app.  Stay tuned fore more!

March 2012 REAP Student Project Highlights

Video Wall– This group was able to film someone and make them look like they were part of an image on a screen.  They were able to gather great ideas about how this could be used in shopping malls and other public spaces.   Their main challenge was how to go from fun to getting a message through to the public.

iPad app for Thinkering– Their iPad app can be used for brainstorming sessions, or thinkering, where groups may want to have one person recording their session.  The app creates a cloud of tags that will become searchable.  We brainstormed lots of other day-to-day uses for the app, provided some interaction design suggestions, and came up with ideas for more integration with other devices.

Blister Games- This group has the challenge of taking a boardgame, digitizing it, and making it available on mobile devices.  We were able to suggest ways that they could use of negative space to their advantage, and also provide zoom in/out options that could help players keep track of their moves, and the full board.

(March 2012) REAP project demos and design feedback

Wednesday March 7, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map]
Sign up now, as space is limited!

We like to mix up the kinds of events we do at uxWaterloo. It keeps things interesting, provides exposure to a wider range of ideas, and enables us to share our expertise with the community.

Some of you will recall our visit to the Felt lab back in November. That event was a chance to try out some of the interesting interactive display technologies at Felt. Well, we’re going back, but this time we’re on a mission to help students in the Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) at the University of Waterloo by providing them with feedback on the projects that they are working on.

Come out and share your insights and design expertise with the next generation of UX practitioners and researchers, while learning more about exciting new technologies. The discussions are sure to be enlightening all around.

(February 2012) The user experience of conferences

Thursday February 16, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Bauer Kitchen (private room booked under “UX Waterloo”)
Located in the Bauer Marketplace

What makes for a truly amazing conference experience?

Not everything we build as user experience designers is digital (service designers have known this forever!). Even if your own work to date has been strictly online, much of your knowledge is transferable to the real world. So this month, we put that idea to the test — by digging into the DNA of a successful conference experience.

Come prepared to share your own conference experiences, or to chime in with reactions to what others have to say. There’ll be no presentations this month, just informal discussion among UX peers. Have you been to a conference before? Let’s hear about it! Describe what you loved about the experience, and share some low points as well.

Your ideas could very well influence KW’s very own UX conference in September, Fluxible 2012.

RSVP requested

We’re meeting in a private room at the Bauer Kitchen, booked for “UX Waterloo”. Please note that food and drinks will not be supplied, but you’re free to place individual orders if wanted.

Please RSVP below if you plan to attend. Attendance will be capped at 20 people, so sign up soon!

January 2012 Recap- Global UX

 Whitney Quesenbery (@whitneyq) and Daniel Szuc (@dszuc) were our special guests who called into last week’s uxWaterloo meeting by video conference.  They are the authors of Global UX, which describes their in-depth interviews with design professionals who represent over 60 countries and 25 languages.   Check out the following highlights from their presentation, and thanks again to Whitney and Daniel for joining us!

 Are there tips that ux professionals can use when running global usability tests? 

When conducting usability tests, let your testers talk to you about what they do.  Acknowledge who they are in their world and change your testing methods to suit them.  Plan breaks between global usability tests and give yourself more time after sessions for debriefing, to ensure that you’ve absorbed the information from the meeting.  Overall, don’t think of people as your usability testers. Instead, think of them as your global collaborators.

From your interviews, what were the most common characteristics of people working in global ux?

The common characteristics were openness, curiosity, and a willingness to learn about other cultures.  More details about these and other characteristics are available in this article: Global UX: A Journey.

What tips do you have for project teams wanting to improve in global ux?

Create a mindset in your project team where team members care enough to ask how to make a product more global.  Have a cultural debrief at the beginning of a project where you ask “what are the things that we assume and could constrain our project team’s thinking?”  Each team member should ask themselves  “who do I need to speak to to help me learn and confirm what I know and don’t know?”

What can I do to improve how I work on global ux projects?

If you need to research a group of users you don’t know about, spend time with them.  Immerse yourself in their world for a little while to understand the services they use and understand how they interact with others.  Furthermore, get out of the office and watch people using your products!  You don’t necessarily need to travel widely to gather a global perspective and you can learn a lot by calling your global coworkers to ask for their perspective.  If you do decide to travel, have a local buddy that can answer your questions and help you with your travel plans. Involve them in your usability tests and get their opinions in your debrief sessions.   They can help you understand any cultural or language differences that you may encounter.

(January 2012) Global UX: The challenges of designing across the planet

Sorry, this event has been sold out! Also, please note the venue change below.

Thursday January 19, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
VENUE CHANGE:
Desire2Learn
Meet in the lobby of the Tannery building in front of the elevators
151 Charles St. W., Suite 100 in Kitchener

“It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”

It’s true: designing user experiences for (or in) a global context can pose an enormous challenge. But it can also present enormous opportunities and rewards. This month, we’re joined by the authors of Global UX, a recently-published book that acts as a travel guide for UX teams tasked with blowing away borders and boundaries. Whitney Quesenbery and Daniel Szuc based their book not just on their own professional experience (which is considerable), but on dozens of in-depth interviews with design professionals who represent over 60 countries and 25 languages.

So needless to say, this will be a great event for anyone thinking about global design and UX.

What to expect

In the spirit of a connected world, Whitney and Dano will join us via Web conference in one of Communitech’s most tricked-out AV rooms in The Hub. Whitney will connect from her home in the Eastern US. Daniel currently lives in Hong Kong, but will dial in from London UK. So we’re going global in almost every sense!

Whitney and Daniel will lead us through a discussion of how UX practice is changing and how UX practitioners and teams around the world are designing for a global context. Their goal is to share what people are thinking about how they work in UX practices in global, cross-cultural, distributed team environments. They’ll challenge us to think about the process of understanding people from different countries and cultures. And they’ll share insights into how other teams have tackled the challenges of working on global products.

These glimpses into global practice may serve as either a mirror, reflecting your own work — or as a beacon, showing a path ahead. Either way, this event will both inform and inspire you!

About the presenters

Daniel Szuc (@dszuc) is Principal Consultant at Apogee, a usability consulting Services Company based in Hong Kong. Dan previously worked on a usability team for Telstra Australia. He is currently VP of the International UPA (Usability Professionals’ Association) and has lectured about UX in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the USA, Israel, New Zealand, and Japan. He co-wrote a “Usability Kit” with Gerry Gaffney, which is an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams. Dan holds a BS in Information Management from Melbourne University in Australia.

Whitney Quesenbery (@whitneyq) is a user researcher, user experience practitioner, and usability expert with a passion for clear communication. She works with organizations from the National Cancer Institute to IEEE, Sage and The Open University. She has been president of the UPA and served on two national advisory committees for usability and accessibility. She enjoys meeting people around the world and using those insights to design products where people matter. She is the author of Storytelling for User Experience (with Kevin Brooks, Rosenfeld Media).

December Recap- UX Show and Tell

Our December “Show and Tell” was a great way to close out 2011 and learn about what others have been working on!

Mark gave us more insight into how he has designed an application that displays connections between medical facilities.

Chris provided an update about the volunteering he is doing with REEP.  This was great to hear, as there are a number of uxWaterloo volunteers helping REEP and continuing the design discussions that we had in our October event.

David explained how he created a solution that allows product designers to share feedback on their designs through an intranet.  It was great to see such a collaborative approach to wireframing!

James demoed a tool that is helping designers put their wireframes in a development-friendly format.

Artem has been working on a BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) game that allows users to use their chat session as a game and place votes to play the game.

Bob took us through a new venture that he’s working on, where he’s able to provide design thinking into the business plan and strategy.

It was great to hear about such a large variety of projects and we look forward to other show and tell events in the new year.  Thanks to everyone for making our 2011 uxWaterloo events so interesting and insightful!  All the best to you over the holidays and stay tuned to our uxWaterloo blog and @uxWat feed on Twitter for news about our 2012 events!