Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Meaningful Play 2008 (East Lansing, MI, USA)

Meaningful Play 2008 is an interdisciplinary academic conference that explores the potential of games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways.

Whether designed to entertain or for more “serious” purposes, games have the potential to impact players’ beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, and behavior.

The submission topics included several things related to user experience:

• Exploring meaningful applications of games (such as games to change attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors; to exercise specific cognitive functions)
• Issues in designing meaningful play (such as game design for specific audience segments; using psychology and neuroscience to design and understand games)

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Conference | Detroit, MI, USA
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UX discussion and pizza with LA2M - The Lunch Ann Arbor Marketing Group

At next week’s LA2M meeting, Jamie Cope from N Formation Design will lead a discussion on “Engaging User Experiences”.

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Local meeting
Tags: LA2M marketing
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Features of Adobe Acrobat (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

The next Refresh Detroit <http://www.refresh-detroit.org> meeting will be 6:30pm, Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at Ann Arbor SPARK in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are fortunate to have Adobe representative Doug Halliday lead the presentation.

Doug will highlight features in Acrobat, including creating PDFs, sharing, forms and usability. He’ll also discuss the new features in the upcoming Acrobat 9 version, due for release in mid-summer 2008. Adobe expert Greg Pisocky will join our meeting remotely to explain the accessibility features in Acrobat.

Location
Ann Arbor SPARK <http://tinyurl.com/6jt8nf>
330 East Liberty Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Doug Halliday is Business Development Manager, Manufacturing, at Adobe Systems Inc. In this capacity, he is responsible for driving customer awareness of Adobe solutions in manufacturing, developing partner relationships and formulating strategies with key customers, particularly in the automotive and heavy equipment sectors.

Greg Pisocky is a Business Development Manager in Adobe Systems’ Corporate Product Management Group. As an accessibility specialist, he advises Adobe’s customers on techniques for developing accessible content for those with disabilities.

For more information, visit the Refresh Detroit website
<http://www.refresh-detroit.org> .

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting | Refresh
Tags: refresh detroit
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How Remote Contextual Inquiry Got Us Up-Close with Users (Okemos, MI, USA)

A presentation from Joanna Markel and Serena Rosenhan, ProQuest.

As members of the User Experience Design team at ProQuest, a company that produces information products for libraries, we wanted to know more about how our users approach research. While we routinely conduct usability tests and evaluations as part of our product development processes, we needed a new method to help us answer questions about the tasks and situations for which our products are designed. We turned to contextual inquiry and designed and conducted a series of field observations of college students doing library research. After conducting 13 rather time-consuming in-person observations, we modified our methods to remote online observations and quickly discovered that there were unexpected benefits to this approach in addition to time-savings.

Between the two sets of tests, in-person and remote, we gathered a wealth of data about our users that has impacted both our interface designs and our larger corporate culture.

In our presentation we:
* Share our experience with two methods of contextual inquiry (a more traditional approach and a remote approach), including tips for an easy approach with a big payoff
* Share selected videos to highlight the power of the research method for getting up-close with users
* Share how we used our study findings to improve user experience and drive organizational change
* Inspire attendees to try their own field studies

When
Wednesday June 4, 2008
6:00-8:30PM (Food and networking at 6, program begins at 7)

Where
Techsmith (here’s a map)
Okemos, MI

Cost (includes food and beverage):
$5 Students, $10 UPA members, $20 all others

Register
Please RSVP to events@miupa.org

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting | UPA
Tags: MI-UPA
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3 Presentations with a Monkey (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

May’s Refresh Detroit meeting will be on the 21st, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the downtown Ann Arbor District library in Ann Arbor. Map to the location.

SPONSORED BY YAHOO SEARCH MONKEY DEVELOPER PREVIEW

TOPIC: There will be a few quick presentations by members of our great group, and general discussion on the latest news, challenges, projects, and ideas that the group members have encountered in their web related occupations/hobbies/activities.

The event like always is free to anyone who is interested.

The current speakers will be:

Nick DeNardis
Designer of the Wayne State University Library and Information Science website. He will discuss the latest release of the website, their goals, process and challenges.

Brian Kerr
Information architecture, user experience, and django development guru. Exact topic details to come…

Paul Tarjan - Yahoo! SearchMonkey
The fine folks at Yahoo! are sponsoring this event and promise to bring lots of swag as well as give a short presentation on their new open source semantic web search in your own applications and websites. This new product they are releasing is called “Search Monkey” and you can read more at:

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000523.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/yahoo-open-search-platform-launches-into-private-beta/
http://searchengineland.com/080424-113600.php

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Local meeting | Refresh
Tags: refresh detroit
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Navigating the Job Market (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

Join the Southeast Michigan Chapter of the STC for dinner and a presentation on Monday, May 19^th! Al Pizzurro will share his knowledge about writing resumes, job-searching, and staying positive in the process. This is a perfect program for those in the process of changing jobs, students, and those who just want to update their skills and resumes.

Program Description:

With today’s uncertain economy, it’s best to be proactive about your employment opportunities and marketing your talents. Whether you are just starting your career or making a change, Allan (Al) Pizzurro can offer advice to help you to deal with the ups and downs of job-searching and how to get back into the market. He uses his own experience in job-searching and as a manager to assist people in creating or improving their resumes, guiding them on how to search and apply for positions over the Internet, and providing insight on how to view every opportunity as a chance to network. He also assists people in interview preparation techniques and how to stay actively positioned in the face of negative thoughts especially from places you least expect.

Al Pizzurro has worked for IT and Automotive Companies such as Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Automotive Components Holdings, llc (ACH) and is currently working with Ford Motor Company as a Contract Specialist for Engineering Software.

Showcase your work!

In addition to the presentation, you’ll also have a chance to show off your talents to your peers, Bring your best work to show what you’re writing, creating, editing, or building.

Schedule:
6:30 pm-7:30: dinner and awards ceremony
7:30-8:30: presentation

Location:
Washtenaw Community College

Morris J. Lawrence Building

Room 105/121

4800 E Huron River Dr

Ann Arbor MI 48106-1610

Registration:

When you register, please indicate whether you will be eating dinner. The choices will include a vegetarian and meat option.

Note: Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate walk-ins for dinner. If you mail your registration late, please send an e-mail to registration to ensure we get you on the list for dinner. Thanks for your assistance!

Preregister by Sunday, May 11th and indicate whether you will be having dinner or not. Please register by email at register@stc-sm.org or by mail at:

Registration for May STC Program
22951 Thorncliffe
Southfield, MI 48033

Price with dinner and presentation:
$15 for STC members

$10 for students
$20 for nonmembers

Prices without dinner (Presentation only):

$5 for members and students

$10 for nonmembers

Directions:

http://www.wccnet.edu/aboutwcc/collegeinfo/directionsandmaps/directionstowcc.php

Campus Map:

http://www.wccnet.edu/aboutwcc/collegeinfo/directionsandmaps/campusmap.php

The Morris J. Lawrence building is “ML” on the campus map. There is plenty of free parking in front of the building (lot #1).

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting
Tags: Resume | Southeast Michigan STC | Washtenaw Community College
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Spider Controls: A New GUI Paradigm (Farmington Hills, MI, USA)

The May meeting of the Michigan UPA features Stan Driskell and Spider Controls, a new paradigm for the design of graphic user interfaces (GUIs) based on a universal graphic that displays menu, list/combo box, toolbar, palette, and dialog box options in a common format. This universal graphic makes it easy to embed any type of control, including list boxes, spin buttons, radio buttons, and check boxes. Of the many innovations introduced by Spider Controls, the most consequential are:

• The ability to make menu and toolbar selections with less than 0.5 inch of total cursor travel.
• The ability to display any item from a list of up to 98 items with less than 0.3 inch of total cursor travel.
• The display of all options in easy to scan, vertical columns.
• The ability to frequently make two selections with a single cursor traverse.
• The ability to toggle a Spider display between single and multiple selection modes.
• A display that pops-up at a predictable location abutting but not obscuring the screen area of user interest.
• The availability of the unique “Navigation Center” to manage control manipulation.

A prototype version of Spider Controls imposed onto Microsoft Word has definitively shown that these features significantly increase user productivity. Spider Controls also promises to make extended periods of computer usage less painful and potentially less physically damaging. Although the simulation was unable to appraise user comfort, secretaries who participated in the focus groups overwhelmingly commented on reduced tension and strain.

SPEAKER:

Stan started professional life with six years as an economist in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone lecturing and researching. After a year at the University of Durham in England he then spent six more years as Research Economist with USAID-funded projects in Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Between teaching assignments he designed, managed, and analyzed five separate questionnaire surveys of rural households and developed software that generated questionnaires and subsequently detected error in resulting survey data. His experiences convinced him that the design of materials used by modestly skilled people must maximize comprehension while achieving low error rates.

To better understand challenges faced by computer users caused by complex computer technology, Stan returned to graduate school (University of Michigan – GO BLUE!). His UMich studies encompassed human factors with focus on applying minimizing calculus to Fitts’ Law. This led to what Stan calls the Physical Effort Metric (PEM), which he validated via two formal experiments. After completing his PhD, Stan wanted to utilize the PEM to improve computer usability. He hit upon a graphic configuration of intriguing possibilities that eventually morphed into Spider Controls (SC). To make SC easily and inexpensively available Stan spent the past year designing the Spider Controls Toolkit (SC/Tk), which, aside from other employments, will be used to “Spiderize” major applications of Microsoft Office.

WHEN:
Thursday May 8, 2008 6:00-8:30PM
(Food and networking at 6, program begins at 7)

WHERE:
Cengage
27500 Drake Rd.
Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535

COST (includes food and beverage):
$5 Students, $10 UPA members, $20 all others

REGISTER: Please RSVP to events@miupa.org

See Michigan UPA for more information.

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting
Tags: | GUI | hci | interface design | Michigan UPA
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Recap of Michigan/Ohio local leader meeting

On Wednesday, April 2, we held a local user experience networking meeting in Ann Arbor. We invited leaders of local professional chapters related to user experience, university representatives, and anyone else who was interested in spending the evening meeting new people who are interested in UX. After letting everyone meet each other individually, we had dinner and then went around the room, learning about what each person was involved in. (See some photos.) The attendees:

• Anthony Viviano, Detroit UXnet local ambassador
• Bob Hale, Columbus UXnet local ambassador
• Carol Smith, UPA board member
• Connie Lippert, Refresh Detroit
• Constantinos Coursaris, Michigan State - Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media
• Dan Cooney, Ann Arbor UXnet local ambassador
• Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus, UPA & IUE
• Erin Moulton, STC/SM
• Jason Withrow, Washtenaw Community College
• Jenny Jacob, Hanson, Inc., Toledo
• John Rivard, MOCHI
• Josh Holmes, GANG, AACS (Ann Arbor Computer Society), AADD
• Keith Instone, Toledo UXnet local ambassador
• Lavie Golenberg, Human Factors Student, Wayne State College of Engineering
• Lisa Mullinaux, Bay area
• Mark Newman, U of M - SI & MOCHI
• Maureen Hanratty, U of M - SI, HCI Student, SOCHI
• Michael Beasley, Michigan UPA
• Mike Osswald, Hanson, Inc., Toledo
• Ross Johnson, Refresh Detroit
• Shane Sevo, SemaFX (SIGGRAPH), Creative Energy Alliance, Joomla Detroit,

There were several opportunities for cooperation and collaboration mentioned, such as organizing World Usability Day, joint HCI researcher/practitioner speaker series, monthly meeting information sharing, game design talks, and so on. As opportunities arise, we will leverage the contacts made at this meeting.

We asked several people if they wanted a mailing list or online group to stay in touch, and almost everyone said they were already on too many lists. We think instead it is better to leverage the existing lists, groups, social networks and so on. For example, the UXnet group on Facebook is something to join.

We think while we are using the existing tools to stay in touch and look for opportunities to work together, we should start planning our next meeting of local leaders with a passion for user experience. There are several representatives from local groups that could not make it this time, there are new groups of people to invite (such as advertising professionals or managers of local user experience teams), there is more brainstorming and planning we can do for specific UX projects, and there are other areas of the region we can reach out to.

As UXnet local ambassadors, we think that the biggest value we can add to the local user experience community is to focus on organizing these face-to-face networking events, and then let others take it from there on how they want to cooperate and collaborate.

We look forward to organizing more user experience networking events in the future.

Anthony, Dan, Keith

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Detroit, MI, USA | News | Toledo, OH, USA
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Second Life (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

Michigan Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (MI-ASIS&T)
Spring Meeting at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens
Second Life - Presented by Allison Brueckner, Technology Librarian, Dexter District Library

Thursday, May 15, 2008 from 3-5 p.m.
Matthaei Botanical Gardens http://www.mbgna.umich.edu/ – Small Meeting Room – Room 139
1800 North Dixboro Road - Ann Arbor, MI

Please join us for an interesting presentation, refreshments and a walk in the gardens.

The gardens are open until dusk. The Conservatory will be open prior to our meeting (closes at 4:30 p.m.). Conservatory admission is FREE for meeting participants. If you wish to visit the Conservatory, please stop at the front desk and let the receptionist know you are attending the ASIS&T meeting.

Be sure to return the Reservation Form below by May 9, 2008.
Registration is limited to the first 20 registrants.

Questions?: Please contact Robin Sabo, “sabo1r” at “cmich.edu”

Reservation Form:
Name: ___________________________________
E-mail Address: ____________________________
Phone: ___________________________________

I am a member of (circle all that apply):
ASIS&T,
Special Libraries Association (SLA),
Medical Library Association (MLA)

_____ $8 for Members of ASIS&T, SLA or Medical Library Association
_____ $5 for Students
_____ $10 for all others

Please enclose a check made out to Michigan ASIS&T and mail to:
Allison Brueckner
7249 York Street
Dexter, MI 48130 “Allison.brueckner” at “comcast.net”

Reservations must be received by Friday, May 9, 2008

Posted in ASIS&T | Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Local meeting
Tags: second life
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Wizard of PowerPoint (Southfield, MI, USA)

Featuring: Corinne Stavish, humanities professor at Lawrence Technological University

Description: Corrine Stavish, a professional storyteller and speaker, will discuss how and when to use PowerPoint effectively and when not to use it.

Date: Monday, April 21
Time: Networking and light snacks: 6:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Program: 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Where
Lawrence Technological University
Technology Building
Lear Auditorium (T429)
21000 West Ten Mile Road
Southfield, MI 48075

Price: Program Fees
$5 – STC-SM Chapter Members
$10 – Nonmembers
$5 – Students (members and non-members)

Register and pay by using any of the following methods:

• E-mail—register@stc-sm.org and pay at the door (cash or check)
• Mail—fill out and submit the registration form (http://www.stc-sm.org/register.htm) and send your registration with payment (cash or check) to:Registration for April STC Program
  22951 Thorncliffe
  Southfield, MI 48033

Driving Directions:

• Directions
• Campus Map

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting | STC
Tags: Lawrence Tech | LTU | Michigan | Program | Southfield | STC-SM
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