Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs - UPA (NYC, NY USA)
Monday, August 25th, 2008 by Whitney Quesenbery| August 16, 2008 | ||
| 5:00 pm | to | 8:00 pm |
As children, we’re told the world is a magical place. Babies are delivered by storks. The tooth fairy harvests retired teeth in exchange for currency. Bunnies deliver candies in brightly covered baskets on a spring holiday. The world’s adults use magic to explain away the complexity of life.
In our work, confusing complexity is the natural result of an unchecked design and development process. Teams work hard, responding to customer requests through incremental improvement and feature enhancements, yet they often end up with a dismaying array of features that make users unhappy.
In this entertaining presentation, Jared will share some of his recent research into the craft of professional magic. He’ll demonstrate the parallels between the world of magical illusions and the world of digital design, comparing the similarities between professional illusions and some of today’s top design techniques.
In this presentation, you’ll learn how:
- Illusions performed by professional magicians follow the same design principles as your computer’s file system
- Designers can create specific mental models to eliminate perceived complexity
- Simple design tricks can make designs seem to be faster than they really are
- Whimsicality, attention, and functionality are essential elements to creating delightful experiences
You’ll see examples of illusions built into a variety of designs, including those from Microsoft, Flickr, Netflix, YouTube, and Google. Jared will also, possibly at his own peril, reveal the secrets from several magical illusions to show you just how the tricks were created and the effects are realized, giving you the ammunition necessary to build illusions into your own designs.
Speaker: Jared Spool, Founding Principal, UIE - User Interface Engineering
Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Cost: To be announced
Time: Approx. 6:00 – 8:30 pm
Location: To be announced
Registration: Members will receive advanced notification for registration.
NO EMAIL RSVPs ACCEPTED FOR THIS EVENT
About the Speaker
If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. What you probably don’t know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.
Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual User Interface Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time.
