December event: Product potluck 2010

For our December meeting we’ve featured a product potluck event for two years in a row now. If that’s not a tradition, I don’t know what is! And so, after an autumn schedule that has featured some high-powered visitors to our meetings, our meeting on December 16 will extend the potluck tradition with a relaxing and, we expect, enriching, evening of conversation and camaraderie. Please join us for a potluck with a twist: instead of food, we’re asking you to bring a product. Make it a product that you either love or hate, because we’ll be sharing stories with each other about these products. And the juicier the story, the better!

Some guidelines and tips:

• You’ll have a few minutes to introduce your product and describe what you love or hate about it.If the product you want to share isn’t something you can physically demonstrate at the event (like a particle accelerator, a Wankel rotary engine, or a table saw), then bring something that helps you talk about the product.
• If you’d like to share software or a website, a laptop would be best, but a printed screenshot will do the job if technology is scarce.This year, we’re meeting at McMullan’s on King — because what’s a potluck without food! (Note the UX Group is volunteer-run and without a budget, so plan to pick up your own tab.)

If you’re hoping to attend, please help us make an appropriate reservation by registering. Thanks! Everyone’s invited, so spread the word.

5:30pm, Thursday December 16

Location to be announced shortly.

Let’s meet at McMullan’s on King, which is at the corner of King St N and Princess St in Waterloo.

(December 2009) Annual Product Potluck

Tuesday December 15, 2009
5:30 to whenever!
McMullan’s on Kin
56 King Street North, Waterloo (enter off Princess Street)
[Map]

‘Tis the season to share, admire, complain, laugh, eat, and drink.

Last year we held our first “product potluck”, a chance to swap stories and get hands-on with some fun and frustrating products. It was so much fun that we’ve decided to make it an annual December holiday event.

Please join us on December 15 for a potluck with a twist: instead of food, we’re asking you to bring a product. Make it a product that you either love or hate, because we’ll be sharing stories with each other about these products. And the juicier the story, the better!

Some guidelines and tips:

• You’ll have a few minutes to introduce your product and describe what you love or hate about it.
• If the product you want to share isn’t something you can physically demonstrate at the event (like a particle accelerator, a Wankel rotary engine, or a table saw), then bring something that helps you talk about the product. If you’d like to share software or a website, a laptop would be best, but a printed screenshot will do the job if technology is scarce.

This year, we’re meeting at McMullan’s on King — because what’s a potluck without food! (Note the UX Group is volunteer-run and without a budget, so plan to pick up your own tab.)

RSVPs requested

If you’re hoping to attend, please help us make an appropriate reservation by RSVP’ing to Wanda Eby at Communitech. Thanks! Everyone’s invited, so spread the word.

Find out what you missed at last month's Product Potluck

Qixing Zheng has just posted a summary of last month’s Product Potluck over on the UX Connection Blog. Gordon Varney penned the summary and photos were provided by the people whose products were mentioned. Thanks, everyone! Here are a few snippets from the summary:

Books have been around for so many years that the kinks have universally been worked out. Attempts to “improve” the classic norms are generally disastrous: we expect page numbers to be on the outside edge, for example…

These frames are made from spring steel and are incredibly flexible and apparently virtually indestructible. They have no hinge per se and can be easily twisted apart and restored (with a practiced flick of the wrist.)…

The design’s affordances communicated well what you should do to fasten or unfasten it. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that the clasp itself is very small…

Talk then moved on to a sushi knife, side tracked to Apple and Steve Jobs, and somehow ended up with a demonstration of the latest RIM Blackberry…