Daniel Iaboni delivered a wonderful intro to designing for augmented reality last week at our February meeting at Felt Lab. Thanks again to Daniel for traveling from Toronto to generously share his knowledge with us. Thanks, too, to REAP for hosting us at Felt Lab, a perfect venue for this particular event.
Daniel has made his slides available on slideshare for those of you who want to able to review them, or who missed the event.
The last few years have seen augmented reality finally breaking into the mainstream. Designers have an exciting opportunity to create augmented reality interfaces. To do so, they need to consider not only the context of use, but also the environment in which the information is presented.
Daniel Iaboni is dedicated to creating and improving designs to provide an exceptional interaction among users, their environment and their tools. To do so, he draws upon extensive knowledge from the fields of engineering, computer science, psychology and anthropology. In this session he’ll walk us through important concepts in designing for augmented reality, including input and display technologies, current interaction techniques, and approaches to prototyping.
Daniel is currently Lead User Experience Specialist at Akendi, where he works on projects for a variety of clients.
Thursday February 21, 2013 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!
This month, we stretch our skills (and tease our taste buds) by getting an inside look at the role of design in the restaurant business. Many of the principles behind designing great experiences are universal, so there’s lots to learn by exchanging ideas with our compatriots in industries outside our normal fields of interest.
And as far as fields of interest go, it’s tough to knock great food & drink!
Jody Palubiski (Managing Partner) and Cindy Perri (Brand Guardian) of the Charcoal Group are hosting us at the newly-opened Beertown in Waterloo Town Square. Jody and Cindy will describe the goals, considerations, and challenges involved in designing the restaurant experience. They’ll cover ground such as the physical space, menus, logos and visuals, and more. Much of our time together will be open Q&A, so it’s a great chance to learn something new and to draw connections with your own design practice — regardless of the medium in which you work.
Come prepared to buy your own drink during this event, and there’s a strong chance you’ll find a nice selection of foods to accompany it…
Attendance is limited, so please register for this event!
Wednesday January 23, 2013
5:30 to 7:00 pm Beertown Restaurant
(ask for UX Waterloo when you arrive)
Waterloo Town Square
75 King St. South
Waterloo, Ontario
Job: User Experience Designer (1 Year Contract Position)
Company: Blue Coat Systems Canada, Waterloo, Ontario
The Company
Blue Coat Systems is the technical leader in application delivery networking. Blue Coat offers an application delivery network infrastructure that optimizes and secures the flow of information to any user, on any network, anywhere. Blue Coat offers unmatched visibility into the security and performance of business applications and web traffic running across the networks of the distributed enterprise and provides the comprehensive application and user control required to contain costs, enhance business productivity and respond quickly to changing business requirements. Trusted by many of the world’s largest organizations including 97 of the Fortune 100, Blue Coat has shipped more than 20,000 proxy appliances.
The Products
The Blue Coat Proxy SG™ family of proxy appliances provides total visibility and control of Web communications with wire-speed performance. Based on Blue Coat SGOS™, a custom, object-based operating system with integrated caching, these proxy appliances leverage existing authentication systems to enable flexible policy enforcement down to the individual user. Proxy SG combines comprehensive proxy support of all Web protocols with integrated content filtering, instant messaging control, peer-to-peer (P2P) control, streaming control, pop-up ad blocking and virus scanning. Blue Coat’s end-to-end product portfolio includes powerful reporting, policy and configuration management software – delivering a scalable proxy solution for centralized or distributed enterprise environments.
The Opportunity
The Waterloo User Experience team owns the revitalization of the user interfaces for our products. We are looking for a UX Designer to join our team. You will be responsible for designing rich and engaging user experiences for web and mobile applications and helping to define the user experience across Blue Coat products.
The typical duties for this position would include:
Create and maintain documentation (typically wireframes) that enables engineers to build software that fosters a delightful user experience
Collaborate with Subject Matter Experts, Product Management, Documentation teams and Engineers
Participate in regular brainstorming sessions, design reviews and other team-wide design efforts
Assist in standardizing design patterns and visual designs in our products
Conduct user research through the design process to ensure we are meeting customer needs.
The Requirements
User interface design experience, preferably in complex systems.
Post secondary education in Psychology, Information Systems, Computer Science or related discipline.
Understanding of interaction design and experience in applying user-centered design methods.
The following would be a real plus for the position:
Ability to translate user needs or other engineering analysis to design requirements.
Background in requirements gathering (interviewing and observation skills)
Ability to work in cross-functional teams
Effective communicator who is able to work in teams locally and remotely
Wireframe design experience
Graphic design
If you are looking for a challenge in a fast paced company, come and join Blue Coat!
As exciting as a monthly uxWaterloo event can be, the big user experience event in Waterloo Region in September is going to be Fluxible, which is happening on September 22 & 23. This very first Fluxible event features a great lineup of talks and workshops by UX experts from four continents! You may recognize speakers James Wu, Dan Szuc, and Whitney Quesenbery from uxWaterloo events. There are many more joining them for what organizers Bob Barlow-Busch and Mark Connolly describe as a UX party disguised as a conference. Plus, Fluxible has a theme song — how cool is that?
For this uxWaterloo meeting we’ll have a bit of a preview of Fluxible, with some special Fluxible guests joining us for a discussion around various UX topics. Hope you can make it out, and that you also consider registering for Fluxible.
Register for the uxWaterloo September meeting. Hope to see you there!
Where and when
Thursday September 20, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, P2P Room
151 Charles St. W.
Kitchener, ON N2G 1H6
Last month we held a design workshop to brainstorm designs for a software tool that supports rural healthcare workers. This was in support of Tula Foundation, a Canadian not-for-profit, and an organization it supports named TulaSalud.
Ray Brunsting, our guest from Tula, was quite happy with the design ideas that emerged and would like to go further. If any of you would like to continue with the design work that was started at the workshop, Ray would love to hear from you. Of course, this would be on a voluntary basis, but I can say from my own experience that working on a project like this is quite rewarding.
Can you help Tula on this design project? Please let us know, and we’ll connect you with Ray.
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!
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!
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
The user experience of the Aeryon Scout is what sets it apart from the pack. We’ve made an aerial vehicle that can be flown by anyone using Google Maps and we’re looking to enhance our current design. As Aeryon’s UI/UX Designer, you would own the user experience, transforming ideas and turning them into real-world product designs.
Job Description
Work closely with the R&D team to build product demos, prototypes, and interfaces
Define user interface design standards for Aeryon products, optimize ease-of-use and achieve an integrated and consistent product look and feel
Represent the “user experience ” and translate customer requirements into defined product features and specifications
Conduct ongoing research on user interface development
Required Skills
Bachelors degree preferred along with 4+ years relevant design experience
Portfolio required to demonstrate front-end product design and graphic skills
Strong graphics production capability experience with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and other graphics tools
Experience with Agile software methodology
Outstanding interpersonal skills and the ability to collaborate with the team as well as outside vendors
Experience managing multiple design projects
Detailed-oriented and committed to delivering dynamic, visually appealing design under tight time constraints
Willingness to learn new programming techniques and skills
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.
Join uxWaterloo on Meetup to connect with other members, receive alerts about monthly events, and RSVP when you're planning to be there.
About uxWaterloo
uxWaterloo welcomes anyone with an interest in user experience (UX) design, whether you're a seasoned veteran or hoping to get your career started. Located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we meet once a month and engage in a range of activities such as workshops, presentations, or informal meetups over food & drink.
Daniel Iaboni delivered a wonderful intro to designing for augmented reality last week at our February meeting at Felt Lab. Thanks again to Daniel for traveling from Toronto to generously share his knowledge with us. Thanks, too, to REAP for hosting us at Felt Lab, a perfect venue for this particular event.
