Detroit, MI, USA

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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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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Demo Night (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

By: Deborah @ 6:42 pm on the Refresh Detroit blog.

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

When: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:30PM-8PM

Join us for demo night on April 23, 2008 at the Ann Arbor Public Library, as meeting participants will demo their latest websites, designs, applications, tools, and products. Each person has five minutes to present and answer questions.

Demo night is a great opportunity to share your work, see what others have been working on, and get feedback on works in progress.

Interested in demoing your work? RSVP by commenting below with your name and application/design/tool/product, so we have an idea of how many people will be presenting.

As of April 3, 2008, the following people are planning to present their work:

• Julie Van De Water
• Nick DeNardis
• Vince Chmielewski

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting | Toledo, OH, USA
Tags: ann arbor | applications | designs | presentations | products | refresh detroit | tools | websites
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[MOCHI] Sean O’Driscoll - Social Media: If you could only leverage what your customers know

Please join us next monday for a very special event. We will be
hosting former Microsoft Community Support expert, Sean O’Driscoll. Details of the talk below. All are welcome and light snacks/drinks will be provided during the event.

This will be hosted at the UofM’s School of Information.
Venue: West Hall Rm. 411 (Erlicher Rm.)
http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/buildingproject/index.cfm?BuildingID=163

Abstract: Web 2.0, social media, Marketing 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, communities, transparency, virtual worlds, social graphs??? Like most new trends, there’s no shortage of buzz words, but there’s a big gap between the enthusiasm for this “new media” and what it means to a business. This sessions will try to address the following fundamental questions designed to inform a business on how to get started:

• What is Social Media?
• What is Social Media Strategy?
• Why does it matter to a business?
• Who are the “influencers” who make these social spaces thrive?
• How do you measure it?
• What is the social graph…and why should I care?

About the presenter: Sean O’Driscoll is a 15 year Microsoft veteran who recently left to form his own strategy consulting business focused on Social Media, community and influencer initiatives. In his most recent role at Microsoft, he was the general manager of community support services, where for the past 5 years he was responsible for leading the Web 2.0 strategy across Help and Support, focused on influencer engagement, user generated content, and integration with customer listening systems.For a bit more, visit his blog here: www.communitygrouptherapy.com

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting | Toledo, OH, USA
Tags: enterprise 2.0 | Lecture. UofM | marketing 2.0 | MOCHI | Social Media | Web 2.0
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UX local leader meeting (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

Leaders from Southeast Michigan / Northwest Ohio professional chapters interested in user experience will be meeting to network, share best practices and discuss cooperation and collaboration opportunities. Held in conjunction with the Internet user experience conference, the meeting will set the stage for more regional UXnet activities in the future.

Some of the local groups invited to participate include:

• Michigan UPA
• MOCHI
• Refresh Detroit
• MI-ASIS&T
• AIGA Detroit and AIGA Toledo
• STC/SM
• SE Michigan IIBA

Representatives from area universities and colleges are also being invited. In fact, anyone interested in participating in the meeting and furthering UXnet’s mission is welcome to join us. Contact us if you are interested.

Organized by UXnet local ambassadors Keith Instone (Toledo), Dan Cooney (Ann Arbor) and Anthony Viviano (Detroit).

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Planning meeting | Toledo, OH, USA
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Refreshing SnagIt: A Case Study for Focusing on the User Experience

Refresh Detroit is hosting Barb Hernandez from TechSmith to talk about how they evolved their Snagit product to focus on the experience of the user that leads to the conversion from interested person to customer.

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

Abstract

What can you do when conversion rate is flat? TechSmith is a trialware company by nature, so measuring how many people download, try and actually purchase our software is the best measure of conversion and success.

We know that the thousands – dare I say millions of users who own SnagIt can’t live without it and tell us how it has changed the way they communicate with people. So what were we missing, why were we not getting the conversion rate we wanted? Learn about how we focused on the user experience, what we did, and how the changes impacted the conversion rate.

Speaker: Barb Hernandez, User Experience Manager at TechSmith, Lansing, Michigan

Posted in Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA | Local meeting
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IUE 2008 (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)

Internet User Experience 2008, sponsored by UXnet, is a conference spotlighting methods for dramatically improving today’s web site user experience. This fourth annual conference brings you top industry speakers, practitioners, and authors to provide you with the most complete package of Internet user experience design training, case studies, and real-world examples ever assembled.

We cover most aspects of web site design and strategy, including user experience design, graphics, branding, marketing message, effective web writing, and enhancements that drive customers to your site.

The program includes half-day and full-day tutorials, student posters, presentations and a full-day workshop (after the main conference).

Posted in ACM SIGCHI | Ann Arbor, MI, USA | Calendar | Conference | Detroit, MI, USA | STC | Toledo, OH, USA | UPA
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PRSA 2008 (Detroit, MI, USA)

Share your strategies, theories, ideas, research and results with the most dynamic gathering of PR professionals in the world at the Public Relations Society of America’s annual conference, PRSA 2008.

PRSA is seeking public relations and communications professionals, educators and experts in related fields — including CMOs, CEOs, CFOs, economists, social scientists, futurists, management consultants, journalists, bloggers, technologists and editors, as well as specialists in interactive communications and design, marketing communications, technology, research and measurement — to present at this year’s Conference.

Posted in Annual association conference | Calendar | Detroit, MI, USA
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